The Irish standard., 1909-08-21

but on the contrary died martyrs
having refused food and clothing to be
had at the expense of denying their
religion. For sixty-two years this
grave containing the remains of twelve
thousand of our race and blood has
remained unmarked and practically
uncared for.
In the year 1900 your good Father
Mcguire and the other delegates from
Quebec who attended the National
Convention of the Ancient Order of
Hibernians at Boston brought the
matter to the attention of the con-
vention and asked to have a suitable
Celtic cross erected here at this grave.
At that time our organization was
not in a position to accede to their
request but at the last National Con-
vention, be it said to the credit and
honor of the Ancient Order of Hibern-
ians in America, it was voted unan-
! imously to appropriate $4,000 to be
expended by the National officers for
that purpose. Today we are here as
sembled to unveil and dedicate this
magnificent Celtic Cross to the men,
DRY Of those poor Irish immigrants
who were hunted like wild beasts from
their native land, and who died vic
tins of pestilence and fever on this
bleak island, far from the land they
loved, far from friends and relatives,
their only comfort, their religion, and
the sight of the brave and sanity
Catholic priest bringing the last Sac
rament of the Chur h to them. We
are told their resignation to the will
of God in their suffering and misery
was remarkable, extraordinary and
most edifying.
In the erection of this monument our
organization has lived up to it's best
tradition 1t has fulfilled a duty it
owed to the memory of those poor
exiles who died here seeking shelter
from the misery that was forced upon
them. By this act we demonstrate to
the world that here in America we
have not forgotten our kindred who
died the victims of government-made
famine sixty-two years ago.
That terrible famine scattered the
Irish people to every corner of the
earth. Lady Wilde wrote at that time:
A million, decade, what does it mean?
A nation dying of inner decay,
A churchyard silence where life hath
been,
The base of the pyramid crumbling
away.
A drift of men gone over the sea,
A drift of the dead where men
should be.
A million, a decade, of human wrecks,
Corpses dying in fever sheds;
Corpses huddled on floundering decks,
Shroudles dead on their rocky beds.
Nerve and muscle, heart and brain,
| Lost to Ireland and lost in vain.
Here are the fever sheds where those
poor people died and you are now
looking at the rocks that the gifted
poet mentioned in her sad verses. A de-
cade of the flower of Irish manhood
and womanhood were forced to leave
their native land to seek a living on
foreign shores, and from 1850 up to
the present day half million, a de-
cade, have sailed from Ireland. The
first five months Of the present year
nearly twelve thousand young men
and women emigrated from the old
land. Poor old Ireland is sad and
lonely, almost every family is scatter
ed and separated, but wherever the
people go they carry with them the
faith of their ancestors, and respect
amounting to generation for the Cath
Ollie priesthood. Wherever you find
a
Catholic Church with it's cross point
ing heavenward symbolic of man $
redemption.
| For more than sixty years Ireland
has given up the reddest drops Of her
hearts blood through emigration and
her people are wanderers everywhere
The mission of the Ancient Order OF
Hibernians is to organize and unite
the scattered Irish race on the princi-
pie it was founded on, for God and
Country, Faith and Nationality. Let
us here today on the graves Of our
departed dead, renew our obligation to
be faithful to the teachings Of our
holy religion as our fathers were, to
be true to the principles of Irish ma
tionality, and by that we mean the
ideal Of Irish natioral Independence,
Let us ask the sa!:.ted dead whose
,,,ora +I,rou,,, IN boopo in fhnae