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Show IRISH IN THE COLONIES PART THEX PLAYED IN FORMATION FORMA-TION OF AMERICAN REPUBLIC. Ireland W?.s a Parent Source cf Colonial Co-lonial Population Equally With England. A comprehensive and graphic paper on "The Irish in the Formation of the Republic" was read by J. A. Emery, Esq., at a recent meeting of the Knights of St.. Patrick in San Francisco. Mr. Emery's paper was as follows: Irish blood is no late comer upon this soil; it flowed through the veins of eolcn'al sires, through fingers that signed the immortal instrument of independence, in-dependence, through rents in homespun from which passed life at Lexington; i . . . - . , : t . I t V, .-1 , fl . T3 , , 1 Hill the fatal word of Putnam; it it mingled with the soil of every revolutionary revo-lutionary battlefiedd, surged through brains that counseled Washington, through hands that ruled with his; it is of the sacred life-blcod of the Republic, Re-public, and who denies it honor or re-, re-, fuses it place denies the deeds of the l dead to cover his injustice to the living. liv-ing. .',:'. I So I assert with surety of proof: First That Ireland was a parent ! source of colonial population equally with England, and tnat common no- j tion that derives our national life and, 1 consequently, our national obligations) almost entirely .from Anglican sources-, J is as false in fact as it ia pernicious in theory; and Second That Irish talent, treasure and blood w-'ere equally exerted and equally contributed to the success of the revolution and the foundation of constitutional government. Many a man, . I know, will think my first proposition too broad, but let him pause before he makes judgment and cast a backward glance at the condition condi-tion of Ireland in the last half of the seventeenth century, a time When the perma.nence of the English colonies was not yet assured, and he must perceive a cluster of powerful causes operating to drive Irishmen FROM THEIR NATIVE LAND, . beside which the causes that produced the Puritan emigration to America I were few and insignificant. In Irish I memory it is a time so heaped with horror the mind shrinks from its contemplation con-templation and the eye would mercifully merci-fully close upon its unutterable woe of blood and wrong. From end to end the ! land trembled in the devilish grasp of j Cromwell; in succeeding terror followed fol-lowed war, famine, persecution, his Ministry enforcing his policy of depop- 1 ulation. And they succeeded admira- uiy; tnnusanas ten beneath their sword, thousands sought refuge in the continental kingdoms, and thousands more, men, .women and children, were yearly seized and transported to New-England, New-England, Virginia and the Wrest Indies. How great the number we may never know. Brudcin, a contemporary of Cromwell, set the whole number deported de-ported to America at 100,00(1; a manuscript manu-script in the possession of the late Dr. Lingard, the English historian, fixed it at 60.000: if we suppose the true number num-ber between the two, the whole white population of British America was not then r s many more. How many fled to join these exiles Ave can but conjec-j conjec-j ture, but Bozman, a respectable colo-I colo-I nial. authority, mentions the insurrection insurrec-tion of 1641 as having affected the population pop-ulation of Maryland..", After Cromwell there was, not so much of ' transportation: it was no lon;;er needed. Tht multiplying evils of succeeding years made exiles without with-out paying the cost of their passage. "The pretended Popish plots in the reign of Charles II, the revolution of 1688, which fell so heavily on Ireland, the statutes of William restricting Irish manufactures, the laws of Anne extirpating extir-pating Catholic worship," all these scourged the people and drove a portion por-tion of every Irish generation from its" home: Catholic ami Protestant alike sought refuge from the bitterness of j alien rulers. From the time of Cromwell to the outbreak of our revolution it is estimated esti-mated .that nearly FIVE HUNDRED THOUSAND IRISH SOLDIERS died in the service of foreign powers, leaving a name that is today throughout through-out the armies of Europe a synonym of bravery and of honor. . flow many 01 uiese fugitives found their way to the American colonies it in difficult to ascertain, but we have every assurance that they came in great numbers, though colonial memorials memor-ials are neither complete nor satisfactory. satisfac-tory. "In 1727." remarks the Philadelphia) Gazette, "there arrived in Philadelphia in one year 1,155 Irish, none of whom were servants." Holmes' statistics for 1729 gives the arrival of Irish at ten to one of any other nationality. Mr. Herbert- Spencer, writing upon pre. revolutionary colonization, speaks of the Irish emigration of this period a.M "amazingly copious." that it was composed com-posed mostly of linen workers ane5 small farmers, who had sold their land and brought money with them, and: Charles Elliot Fergis, a leading member mem-ber of the American Historical society, sums up my argument by declaring "that at the outbreak of the revolution the. colonists from Ireland numbered not very far from 1.000.000 people." THE GREAT EMIGRANT BODY, as far as we can learn the opinion of the day, was a brave, sturdy, frugal, industrious, religious element; nor was it wanting in. men of large ability, high blood, fortune -or education. Th Moores. the Burkes, , the Lynches and the Rutledges. were among the most prominent of the' southern colonists, and in the north. the Sheas, the Moy-lans, Moy-lans, Delaneys and the Carrolls were no leas names of eminence and honors They peopled. New England with the Vuritan, subtnic '. Virginia with tl:'-PrcsbyteHan, tl:'-PrcsbyteHan, built Philadelphia with -the Quaker, and ..; the foa'n&s-of. the" Pritomwe; ur.d---.- tiu" leadership, of' an Irish peer, flying from intolerance an l surrounded by bigotry, they participated partici-pated in asserting anl maintaining t!;e first, d1"" Clara tiuj; f religions freedom on the A.iic". ic.i' v continent. Of the general influence of the Irish : colonials Charlc-: l lMiot Fergis has thi; to any: "Their good work was es;v iaily Keen in education, to say nothin r of religion, !e;nr.ing. enterprise -it. I political genius. Almost all Mie sche i.j and college-; in the southern colonies were of their foundation, and much the same may be said of the middle states."-Now. states."-Now. surely if colonial settlement was a rivalry of races, the Irin'.imari was with the loaders, the more wonderfully wonder-fully and none the less certainly that ho colonized neither in the name of his own race nor tinder the flag of his own country. Let us now pass from the colonial to the revolutionary period, and I will ask you. first of all. to note the singular ceimeide-nco that Ireland and America began demanding the recognition of certain common political rights about the same time and for similar reasons1.' Each slowly approached a declaration political independence, and both obtained ob-tained a recognition of their demands in the same year, from the same niin- j istry and from the same monarch. I Common interests led to reciprocal ex-I pressions of sympathy and mat, :1 actions ac-tions beneficial to both. T. quote a certain historian, "American resistance gave Ire-land an opportunity to propose her ultimatum, and Ireland's ultimatum helped to hasten the recognition, of American independence." The Iri.h party of that time gave more than sympathy. In their own parliament par-liament its leaders, in defiance of every threat. and in spite of every promise, oppose:l the levy of troops for the American war. discouraged their enlistment enlist-ment and refused to vote them mup-plit's. mup-plit's. The English viceroy refers to the Irish party of his d.ay as the "American "Ameri-can party," and the Earl of Chatham trenchently declared that "Ireland was an American." In England, in the very teeth of parliament, par-liament, and at the very foot of tho throne, that famous group of Irish Whig.s Sheridan, Barre, Tierncy and Fitzoatrick gave their most powerful support to the colonial cause, and Edmund Ed-mund Burke, the greatest Irishman that ever used a tongue, pleaded for in-c'tependent America in two orations the past never excelled and the future will never surpass. ' While Irishmen abroad were aiding with tongue and pen, the Irishmen in the colonies were SPENDING LIFE AND TREASURE in the same great cause. In those dark days when the ragged army of Washington Wash-ington left the bloody marksi of naked feet upon the snow of Valley Forge, when the fugitive fled from city to city, when the most sanguine saw visions of defeat and the general gloom had even touched the soul of the great leader, twenty-seven, members of the first Irih society in America, the Friendly Son.- of St. Patrick, subscribed 10o,000, a vast sum in that day, to that Pennsyl- vanian snhccrintion of 200 flOO that bringing relief to that suffering army, gave newr impetus to the rebellion and averted, in- the words of Robert Morrif. "a catastrophe it sickens the mind to contemplate." Generous with their wealth, they were extravagant in the expenditure of their blood. No need to introduce those Irish names that mark every page of i revolutionary history. Of Barry, "the Father of the American Navy"; of O'Brien, whose capture of the British storeship Fenimore Cooper called "the Lexington of the Seas"; of Montgom--sno e.iojaq .wous ui ipj ou.w 'Xja bee: of Clifton, of Wayne, of Sullivan, of Stark, of all that vast host of Irish soldiery that did their simple duty in every contest from Lexington to York-town. York-town. Their exact number we shall never exactly know. In the very strongholds of English blood, their enlistment is very large. The Middlesex company of Massachusetts minutemen. gives 65 per cent of Iriph names. The muster roll of the New York line sounds LIKE THE ROLL CALL OF AN IRISH VILLAGE. That they formed a majority of the continental army ia assured by indisputable indis-putable evidence. In his comments upon the American revolution, Lecky remarks the keen military spirit of the Irish emigrant, and that he was destined des-tined to do the greater part ot the revolutionary rev-olutionary fighting. Major General Robinson, after an American) service of twenty-four years1, testified before the British ' parliamentary committee on the conduct of the American, war, that "half the rebel (continental) army were Irish." And James Galloway, a loyalist member of the Pennsylvania assembly, assem-bly, testified before the same committee commit-tee in answer to a question put to Edmund Ed-mund Burke as to the make-up of the I American army, "the names and places of nativity being taken down I can answer with precision, they are scarce-I scarce-I ly one-fourth American, about one-half I Irish and the remaining one-fourth French. English, Scotch and other nationalities," na-tionalities," and the grandson of Washington, Wash-ington, the verrerable George Washington. Washing-ton. Park Custis, seals the historical verdict by declaring in the memorial of hin great family that "of the operatives opera-tives of the war, I mean the soldier?, up to the coming of the French, Ireland Ire-land had furnished in the ratio of 100 to 1 cf any other nation.',' Then honored hon-ored be the sons of Erin for the service ser-vice rendered in the war of independence. indepen-dence. Let the shamrock be entwined with the laurel of the revolution, and truth and justice guided, the pen -of history his-tory inscribe on the table of America's Amer-ica's remembrance, "Eternal gratitude to Irishmen." AFTER THE WAR. The Irish . colonist d'esiied unity no le?is t'nan independence; with peace assured as-sured he undertook hip hare of the struggle fcr corllfut:anal organization organiza-tion with the oxme zeal and earnest- i vivzs thut characterized' his fig'ht fori freedom. Few names are more honorably honor-ably mentioned in the proceedings of thu ccns'titutional convention that the Clintons, the Lynches", Thompson, Ruttcdge, Daniel Carroll and Thomas FiUiaimmiorw cf Pennylvamiia, and if they were identified witih any one 1 principle of the constitution more than the other, it waa the recognition of the rig'hts of c-cruciciace and the exclusion from that great ir.atrurr.ent of that most dangerous and detectable of al! ; institutions, a estate 1 elision. i The white Oapitol at Wa.?hingtcn ! risca from the broad acre. s that, were' ence the farm of Dr. Carroll of Mary- ' lan 3; it rests no more securely upon j rro-bly- toward the sky than did the American principle cf religious toleration tol-eration resting in Iiisu hearts riese from Ir.'ch Hps to aid in giving the first na- i tional condemnation to that persecu- tiion fcr belief that had disgraced ' every age and dishonoied every 'ftj- i pie. I deal enly 'with a pat ticular period; to continue my examination to I'm present day would require too great a demand upon your time and your indulgence. in-dulgence. I have sough', to emphasize the numbers character and service of the colonial Irk-h and the relatior. of their motherland to that of t'heir adoption. adop-tion. Little a. I have said, and poorly ! 1 have r-sid it, il. m-t be evident that, hi.-1!' : ally, Irish influence on colonial An.uica wasi neither small nor unimportant. Irish blood was an original origi-nal element in the colonial population, and in "the timee. that tried mn's eoulo" every available influence cf Ireland Ire-land and Irishmen was gladly offered in the eer-ice of America against every Auglican influence that menaced its future. THE IRISH EMIGRANT OF TODAY. Who, then', is. he that sneers at-' 6he Irish emigrenat of today? The citizens of a nation .founded, maintained and renewed by emigrant blood; himself tjhe child, the grandchild or the descendant des-cendant of an emigrant. And what re-pieach re-pieach is in the term? Can he forget that emigration is ns old as man" and s:.ii.' '.- h:" movements. 1; 1 .,;.. 1 .. . Eden ; r.-d reived westward wu.j :1k i-v.ii. betting the globe with. civ.Uz ul . Tr.-arkt-(l by kingdoms and metered i ' e:7;.iii t. nri-il giiteherel tor a fa pre :! -"Vn it:; pii ;t le aped tr.e Atlantic i. . . ' fari::.fr the cradle of ;-l: -r.i.e i.t'ii.l ..! . ! rat-' :r :" eir.ig.a.nu. i .-f e-vri 1 .- : . " 'jir.tJ Kent: v d'-c 1 '.liiv-r :: n-.i;' tho v.aa:v. raying t. . -'i tl" -w. '(-.,-..-. 1 :ir i.s :':':-. n i:i-:.i?m I; r y and l?." Tl:c- pov. er . the JrV.h r 'p'e ' ' nor ijr. sn n.;.. -,-.. arn: it- :;er -o Mp '. i fieel. but -r. t-'-e enmij ri o-t . tin 'r principle;! .ui I the omnipt .v.n,. e of .::- ! iviiiiati. n. 'i het.e nit.- c ever i be ti.ate$. vo e.tnno; p-.: :. but f.icr. ; are neither islands r. r ' or.tin.-nt-;. ; rather r.-r tibM; v.c-r i v.. - It. - wc ean-; ean-; not it re.-:i.--ribly attract ...id e ci. ! ipgly fi-x ct o::r -'lde by the ir.-agi.- -. word:i: l-se l'tee!" Eviry time we do-I do-I elare for tro- principle-' of f!'".lo-m. 1 every lr.nd in whi a we forbid them to 1 he i-i ifietl is he n;:e!'.'rth at our side, he-; he-; m-ath our ilaiv a tributary, an aliy, a i friend, a brother. |