Newark evening star and Newark advertiser. [volume] (Newark, N.J.) 1909-1916, 1914-03-30
What Professionals Have Done
for Ireland

terprise Association
The question in Ireland is not (as so
many good Americans think q re-
ligious one. The action Of the Orange
men, who try to import religion into
the question. msleads many.
| The Irish struggle is broadly ma
tional. And Protestants have fought
and bled and laid down their lives for
irish nationality and independence
side by side with their Catholic fell
| w-countrymen.
| If the majority of the Protestant
| population has happened to be against
! us it was not so much from religious
| antagonism as because, being de-
sccndants of British colonists. their
/ sympathies have remained with Brit
/ ain.
1t is q remarkable thing that Ire
! land, one Of the most Catholic of
/ countries, has almost always chosen
4 Protestant leaders. In a hundred and
| fifty years we can hardly claim to
! have had two Catholic leaders whose
names live.
The Irish Volunteers of 17S2 fall of
| them Protestant, because the Catho-
lie was forbidden by law to bear
arms, who proclaimed Irelands indie
pendence, looked to Charlemont and
! to that greatest and noblest of Irish
men, Henry GrHttan, for patriotic
leading.
The United trishmen of the 1905.
in which Catholic and n-Catholic
were united against England, We're
founded by the Protestants, Russell,
MeCracken, Nelson and Wolfe Tone.
The Protestant, Lord Edward Fitz-
gerald, was with Tone, leader of the
rebellion Of '9s.
And to Catholic Ireland no name
is dearer, no memory more sacredly
Worshiped than that of the. martyred
Protestant, Robert Emmett, who, for
his love of Ireland, was publicly be-
headed (by England) in the streets of
Dublin. His dying request is written
on every Irish heart Let no man
write my epitaph till my country has
taken her place among the nations"
The humblest cottage of the poorest
Catholic in the remote mountains of
Ireland will have among the holy pic
lures in the bedroom a picture of Ire
lands first idols, St Patrick the
Evangelist and the Protestant, Rob
ert Emmett, the martyr.
And in the fearful days before
emancipation, when the awful Eng
fish penal laws almost forbade a
Catholic to exist, and when there was
by law, standing price of Is offered
for the head of schoolmaster and of
priest, patriotic. mercful and just
Irish Protestants We're in plenty who
frequently gave hiding to the hunted
priest and saved the hunted ones life
at the risk of his own.
In those days a poor Protestant
blacksmith in Tipperary. to protect
from interruptions ones the property
of his Catholic neighbors, accepted
legal title of, and held in his name,
thousands of acres, dozens of farms
one straw from which rich acres he
never touched. nor one penny from
their owners Though, in the eyes of
the law. all was his). but died as he
had lived, happy and poor. Poor"
at least the outside world would call
his state at passing. But our people
say that few richer than he ever went
before God. And ] believe them.
In the Young Ireland movement
that eliminated in the rising of 1913,
the Protestants, Thomas Davis,
Smith O'Brien and John Mitchell (the
latter grandfather of the present
mayor of New York; were the leaders
most looked up to.
In 1859 Gladstone despite the
threats of rebellion from the Orange
men, disestablshed the church in
Ireland-thus undoing one great in-
justice which kept ireland aroused for
a long time. shortly afterwards, at
mention of Gladstone's name at meet
ing one good Irish Catholic surprised
his neighbors by heartily kissing.
why do you hiss the man who has
just passed the disestablishment
act?" someone asked.
bad luck TO him. the aggrieved
one replied; ''he has taken away the
best grievance ever we had" And it
was one of our best grievances.
Isaac Butt, a Donegal Presbyterian,
founded the Irish home rule move
ment of 1870. But it was the
Protestant, Parnel (the greatest
Englsh-hater that Ireland ever
knew, who carried it to the verge
of suceess-and his most reliable lieu
tenant, Joseph ellis Biggard, Prot
estant representative of a Catholic
constituency, was a man most
heartily hated by the British MEM
bers of Parliament.
He loved to show them the light |
disregard in which he held the British
Parliament and all British institu-
lions. And on one occasion he de-
lighted his heart and forever out
ragged all England by taking adj
vantage of an obsolete but unre-
pealed law of Parliament which for
babe strangers the privilege of hear |
ing a debate. and having the Prince |
of Wales removed from the gallery
of the House as "a stranger"