The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1912-03-19
IRISH IDEALISM
 IS DISCUSSED BY GOVERNOR BALDWIN
Governor Simeon B. Baldwin deliv-

OVVkItVUn UHLDvTaW Governor Simeon B. Baldwin deliv- cred the principal address at the an- nual banquet of the Friendly Sons of St. Patrick at Hartford last evening. Others who spoke were Mayor Daniel Dunn of Willimantic, Mayor Smith of Hartford, and John E. Gilman, past national commander of the G. A. R. The Idealism of the Irish People was the topic chosen by Governor Baldwin who said in part: There are some inherent character | istics that distinguish every man in the world from every other:-some- thing in the exterior man, and some thing in the inner man. The face and voice bespeak, in a certain fashion, the character of their possessor, but never adequately. That must be learned only on long acquaintance 50 there are some inherent char acteristics that mark off every peo- pie. There is a certain type of in- dividuality that constitutes a composite portrait of many,-of all of them. It | is shown, in fuller measure, by his in- Ter nature. One way of looking at things belongs to the Oriental: an- other to the European or American
 One way of doing things belongs to the Latin American, and one to the to the American of the United States. Marked Characterists.
 ''I am addressing an assembly repre- | senting a people with long history. 1t is people with marked national
 characteristics. I desire to speak of one of them, only, this evening. It is one that has made those who belong
 to it doubly welcome in New England, which so many have made their home. It is idealiSm.
 New England was the creation of idealists. The English settlers came
 here to find field where now theories of church and State could find devel- l opment. There were none which they did not discuss: few that they did not try anS try out. Their first settlement at Plymouth was made to give a trial to communism, and it re- 1 ceived a fair one.
 'In those early days, when Ireland was the center of the world of western | learning, idealism drove her sons to l carry the good news of the gospel of | Christianity to Britain and to Ger | many.
 Later, in the year before Yale was 1 founded, in 1700, an Irish lad was
 lnatriculated at Trinity college in Dublin who, (to be known as Bishop | ist of his age. He sought to set up a seat of idealism in the new world. He came here. He projected a university l in Bermuda. He lived three years i in New England, and added handsome gifts to the .endowments of Yale. I | became myself entitled to be called by his name, as Berkeley Scholar" and mad the benefit of one of his prize funds at Yale, while in the Law | School, there.
 i Berkeley, you may recollect. said | that the only real things in the world
 were the soul of God and the soul of
 Man, and the ideas they formed.
 Things that you could touch and see; 1 the objects of knowledge by your
 senses, did not really exist, at all. It
 was your notions of them that existed. | What we called matter had no real ex- | .stence. | This philosophy has spread far.
 The English did not receive it with
 much favor. Byron alluded to the | theory thus?
 "'When Berkeley said there was no l matter,
 "It was no matter what he said.' Berkeley, and Swift, another great Irishman, were both high priests of 1 idealism, though through different l channels of expression. Swift's Gull | liver's Travels was his mode of expres- sing political idealism. And will tell you where, first and | foremost, the Irish in America have | shown their idealism. It is in their l loyalty to the idea of an Ireland gov erned by an Irish Parliament. That
 seems now to be coming fast. What l has brought it?
 | The hundred votes of the Irish | members of the British Parliament;
 and they never could have been there | to cast them, had not Irishmen, or
 the descendants of Irishmen, here, sent on American money to give them
 for their services what England, un-
 til the other day had steadily refused | Loyalty to ones coutnry is not con- fined to idealists. The coldest and
 hardest materialists may be ready to support his coutnry, because it pays to
 support it. The Phil. Sheridan's may
 make the most ardent and dashing | soldiers, but there are those who go
 slower and got there, too.
 Loyalty by. Americans to their State | and country, one may expect of all: but the Irish-American is not content 1 with that. He is loyal also to the land of his fathers: to the green flag
 that marks departed glory; to the shamrock that grows on far distant fields; and to the memories that bind l it's trefoil beauty to the p1ous hands | of tS Patrick.
 Loyalty to national ideas is never | lost. The loyalty of the American
 Irishman has now assured Home Rule
 to Ireland His loyalty also to the national ideas of America is one of the great assets of the American State, the | American nation.
 | 'WithOut ldealSm, no nallon cd,i
 permanently endure. With it, ii well directed. and we'll supplemented by active endeavor, anything can be ac- complished in civil government. | 'The American people, as whole, | are ;deaIists, also, and every day
 makes them more so by the inflowing
 tide of European immigration.
 "A composit man is forming, to constitute the citizens of Connecticut | in another century. He will have a
 stronger dash of the enthusiasm of the
 Latin race; of the sterner forces of
 the blood of the Norseman;' of the re-
 fective mind of the far East. He Will
 also have what came here first. the l idealism of the English colonists; and
 what came here next, the idealism ot l the sons of St. Patrick.
 Knights Templar