The Catholic bulletin. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1911-1995, 1922-01-14
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Brief Reviews and Notices

Ireland and the Making of Britain.
BY Benedict Fitzpatrick. Published
by Funk G Wagnalls, New York. Price
$500.
This volume tells a strange, new
story and sheds strong light on the
remarkable part which Ireland has
played in history. Many books there
are which show Erin as the land of
Saints and Scholars: few if any give
such critical, solid, thorough and
dramatic narrative as this work. The
author spent more than ten years in
deep research throughout the large
Libraries of Europe in gathering ma
terial for his story. Appendices and
copious footnotes, carefully verified,
give an added value to the book.
Setting out to show what part Ires
land had in the making of her neigh
Dor Britain, the writer news to the
line, regardless of feeling or serti-
ment. We have been accustomed to
the English theories of barbarity in
Ireland: exactly the reverse is true.
For centuries the English wallowed in
the trough of the profoundest pagan
ism. Christianity had led the peoples
of the continent into the true fold.
Civilization quickly followed. The
English, on the contrary, remained for
years the veriest sayages in morals
and customs.
The picture of Irish schools and
teachers is the most glowing and the
most complete that we have seen.
Facts, based on the contemporary rec
ords, are presented with irrefutable
logic. Names and dates and places
are brought in, in great profusion.
showing the vast numbers of students
from every country of Europe who
fiocked in shiploads to Irish shores
and there settled down to a life of
study and mental culture. The Irish
scholars themselves went forth and
founded monasteries and seats of
learning from Prussia to Italy, and
from Brittany to Bavaria. In fact, in
early times, Irish and educated were
almost synonymous terms.
All this time the English were pa
sans, maurauders, pirates who always
tortured and then killed their victims.
The synonym for these English was
barbara bellatores, barbarous maraud-
erS.
The legislation in England even up
20 the sixteenth century was marked
by brutality; bloody whippings and
fortunes being the ordinary forms of
punishment even for idleness. In ire
land, on the contrary, the laws were
based on Christian principles of char
ity and moderation, entirely void of
that brutal element that stained the
legal customs of the English.
One of the most interesting parts
of this work is that which deals with
slavery. The Angles-Jutes-S aXCns
were so depraved that they made
commercial practice of selling their
men, women and children to the Irish
as slaves. Ireland was overrun with
English slaves who, after all. were
better off thus than living in their
own country, since the Irish treated
them with kindness and considera-
ton. 1t was several centuries before
even the jealous Irish missionaries
essayed to lift the Saxon pagans from
the depths of the most appalling ig
norance, sensuality and barbarity. In
1172, the Synod of Armagh ordered
all English slaves freed, the first
great emancipation act on record.
1t will prove quite a shock TO the
modern Englishman to read the true
story of his early ancestors and tn
contrast them with what he after.
wards was pleased to style the igno-
rant Irish. In these early ages, Ire
land alone stood forth as the sanctu-
airy of learning, culture and civiliza-
| ton of the highest order, while the
English groveled in the mire of saw
agery. 1t is also consoling to the
Celt of to-day to reflect that his fore
| bears dwelt on the summit of culture
and education until toppled therefrom
by superior brutal force.
| This work from the pen of Mr.
Fitzpatrick must of necessity be read
and digested by every lover of Ire
land who desires to learn the true
story of this noble but outrageously
oppressed race.