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Show THE COMPOSITION OPi AMERICAN CITIZENSHIP. ' - V Senator Hoar's Glowing Tribute to the Influence of the Celtic Race in the Upbuilding of the RepublicCommingling of Races a Source of Strength to the Nation-Permanence Nation-Permanence of the Republic Assured, I The concluding lecture in the course i of the Young Men's Catholic association associa-tion of Boston was delivered on the evening of Dec. 30 in Boston College hall, James street, by Senitor George Frisbie Hoar. There was a large and distinguished audience, and the senator sen-ator was interrupted frequently with outbursts of applause. j Previous to the lecture there was a I reception in the music room of the college, col-lege, which was decorated with na- tional and college emblems. At S:15 the senator, escorted by Hon. Henry F. Naphen. entered the hall, and was given an ovation. Mr. Naphen introduced Senator Hoar, paying a glowing tribute to his integrity, his determination and righteousness. right-eousness. The subject of the address was' 'The Composition of American Citizenship." I am to devote this hour, said the senator, to a few scattering thoughts, i not very profound, on the composition of American citizenship. There is nothing unusual or at all remarkable 1 in this occasion to an American citi- zen. You are, I doubt not, obedient and loyal children of the great church which for ages has preserved the ancient an-cient faith, demanding in spiritual things the submission alike of the human hu-man will atld the human intellect to her authority, whose history reaches I back to a past which would be forgotten for-gotten but for the memory she has preserved of it; and if the prediction of the greatest English historians be true, is not unlikely to survive all existing ex-isting forms of religious faith in a far distant future. Yet. you receive with kindness and honor one who is a Protestant Pro-testant of Protestants, a Puritan of Puritans, a heretic of heretics. You are, nearly every one of you, descended from the great race on whose neck the iron heel of England has been for 800 years. Neither distance, dis-tance, nor persecution, nor poverty, nor oppression has destroyed or diminished dimin-ished your noble and burning love for the island from which you or your fathers came. On the other hand. 1 am of the English race in every line of descent that I can trace for 300 years. The instinct of race is in my bosom, as it is in yours. With all her faults and with ail her wrongs, I love England Eng-land still. i w ith certain unalienable rights, that j among these are life, liberty and the i pursuit of happiness. "That to secure these rights, govern-i govern-i ments are instituted among men, de- riving their just powers from the con-! con-! sent of the governed. That, whenever any form of government becomes destructive de-structive of th.se ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish St, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing or-ganizing its powers in such form as to I them shall seem, most likely to effect j their safety and happiness." ' When our fathers laid that corner-! corner-! stone for the state, they meant to make for the nations of the earth, without distinction of race or rank, city of refuge "a city that hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God." CELT IN MANY NATIONS. I want to talk chiefly of the contribution contri-bution of one race to our mighty alchemy. al-chemy. I should get very quickly and very far beyond my depth if I were to undertake to trace , the race which is known as Celtic tc, its origin in the t SENATOR GEORGE FRISBIE HOAR. SPIRIT OF AMERICAN CITIZENSHIP, CITIZEN-SHIP, Yet. as I behold this sea pf faces, I encounter no looks that are not kind and friendly. What is it that has wrought this miracle, possible today as in no other time in history, possible here as in no other country the round world over? Is it the reasonable and cheerful spirit of American citzenship? I want you to look with me for a moment mo-ment at one great element from which that quality comes." Nobody can tell exactly, but nearly or quite 21.000,000 immigrants have j come to this country within living memorv. If thev were alive now they would "make their own against any power in the world. I am not sure that they could not hold it against the powers of the world combined. What brought them across the sea? Undoubtedly our great natural resources re-sources had something to do with it. But the natural resources of South America are as great as ours, and yet the immigrants do not go there It was not a community of religious faith that attracted them. The larger part of our immigration till very lately has been of conscientious and devoted Catholics. Yet they came to a Protestant Protest-ant country. . The one thing that brought these men here, perhaps half unconsciously to themselves, is three or four little sentences Thomas Jefferson wrote, and the fathers of the republic signed: "We hold these truth to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they arc endowed by their Creator i heart of Asia. But it has entered into many great nations. It has kept its quality wonderfully wherever you find it, in whatever national life it has mingled. min-gled. The Irishman in Ireland is by common consent the purest example of it in existence today. The word "Celt" is said by some authors to mean "warrior." By others it is said to mean "woodsman" or "dweller in the woods." The Celt has entered, as I just said, into many great nations. Wherever he goes he takes his quality with him. He is always the mint in the julep. It is a singular fact, but I believe now everywhere accepted by our statisticians statis-ticians and ethnologists, that the composition com-position of this country as found by the last census, leaving out the negro, is made up of just about the same racial elements, in just about the same proportion, pro-portion, that, made up England in the time of Elizabeth, when she began her great career of empire and glory. Ireland has kept, under the Providence Provi-dence of God, the pure Celtic leaven to be mingled with our mass also. The Celt has come here. He is here to abide. We would not help it if we' would. And I, for one, would not help it if I could. Of the twenty-six presidents of the United Slates, fifteen were of English origin, an origin which has this great admixture of the Celtic in it. In one the Welshman, in two the Dutchman, in three the Scotsman and in five the Scotch-Irishman is predominant. The Celts seem everywhere, to a superficial su-perficial view, to be a losing race. But everywhere in the quality they impart, im-part, they have conquered their conquerors. con-querors. Among all the great races, none was ever more distinguished for valor, for profound religious feeling, for acute sensibility, for humor and for tender sympathy. They have been wonderful fighters, from Charlemagne down to Wellington and Montgomery ANDREW JACKSON AND PHIL SHERIDAN. They have been wonderful orators, as witness Burke and Sheridan and Grattan and Curran and Plunket. They have always made a brave and long and sullen resistance when, they were overcome by a superior force. They never would stay whipped. They preserved under adversity and under the heel of oppression, for centuries long, their sublime and unconquerable unconquera-ble discontent. They always had the same pertinacity that the Spaniards imputed to us in the late war. Instead In-stead of retiring when they were beaten, beat-en, as any gentleman should, they kept straight on. There is one thing in which the Celt has shown, in his purest existing type, the modern Irishman, that he has no cuperior in history. Everywhere the great virtues, the corner-stone virtues . of the state, of all human society, are the great loves rove of country, love of woman, love of home. Was there ever an example of these like that given to mankind of the poor Irish immigrant of half a century ago? There were ten or eleven years in J which' the population of Ireland nearly I fell off one-fourth. But the migration, nearly all to the United States, amounted to 2,000,000 people. It was ascertained by official inquiry in England Eng-land that these immigrants were sending send-ing home the enormous sum of $5,000-, 000 every year to enable father and mother and brother and sister to follow fol-low them to their new country, or to live: in comfort in the old. When we think of the poverty of that people, and their scant wages, building our railroads for us at 60 cents a day, I believe there can be found no other like example in the world of a generosity gener-osity so magnificent. If there be one lesson in which all authorities are agreed, it is that the greatest nations are made up of a mingling of races. If you leave out the negro', our country is made up of ahmit 1 1 1 i coma rlrr.nt3 in ahnlll t h e aoout the same elements, in anoui ine same proportions, that made Great ! Britain when the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth. The Celt not only had kept THE PURITY OF HIS BLOOD. In Ire-land, . hut. in spito of Saxon and Norman and Dane, he was still the largest single part of England. Now, in this mighty chemistry, whose processes are age long, whose cauldrons are continents, the elements do not mingle without effervescence and strife. Conflicts of religion, the struggle for political mastery, the hatred ha-tred of race, the scorn of the gentleman gentle-man for the inferior, the sullen anger of poverty toward wealth, all keep the great mass in what, after all, js a healthy activity. But still, time, the great reconciler, does his sure work. Then the nation becomes one people. They have common interests and common, com-mon, loves and common fears. The same stars look down on them. They worship the same God. They hope for the same heaven. Sunset and sunrise, spring and autumn, summer and winter, win-ter, speak the same lesson to. the soul. The noblest olJvumansj?assions, love of county, burns alike m-ery bosonu The boys and girls go. jf p."' .the same school and the same coUege.-prpsperity and adversity, hope and fear,; joy and sorrow, come to all alike. As civilization civiliza-tion and wealth grow, they come to read the same books and to think the same thoughts. They follow the same flag. They stand side by side on the same battlefields. The kindly charities of life melt the ice. The .touch of nature na-ture that makes the whole world akin makes one family of them also. And then the magnet which is in every boy's bosom sets the needle trembling in the bosom of the girl, the same needle nee-dle that responded to the same magnet when Adam saw his bride on waking from his first sleep. Cupid is ever the strongest of the gods. The races intermarry. inter-marry. Now, I, think we can affirm without doubt, if history teaches us anything, that, the greatest and strongest nations always have been and always will be those that are constantly getting new blood from an unbroken stream of immigration. im-migration. The great ra'.-es assert their great qualities, no matter how adverse in the beginning may be their conditions. The peasant, the serf, the hewer of wood and the drawer of water, the lower social stratum, not the gentleman gentle-man of blue blood, not the ruler, not the aristocrat, gives character to the nation, and in the end' BECOMES THE DOMINANT POWER. The staying and growing and mastering mas-tering quality has been shown by the Celtic race, wherever it has been found. If the Celt has been oppressed in Ireland, Ire-land, the Celt has given very largely the strength to England that has enabled her to oppress him. Our anxiety as to the permanence of the republic has gone by. It would be presumptuous to make a confident prediction pre-diction for the future of anything in this world. But if there be anything that will abide, we" have a right to hope that the republic will abide. It has already outlasted kingdoms and thrones and dynasties and forms of government in the old world. The simple mechanism which is at the bottom bot-tom of our New England communities, communi-ties, the town and the parish, whose origin no man can discover, have performed per-formed the same important functions of government in simple democratic majesty, now for nearly 300 years, while the map of Europe has many times changed. Empire has succeeded republic, and republic has succeeded empire. I deem the two most glorious actions In our history, and among the most glorious actions in all history, the declaration de-claration of our own independence, and the raising of Japan to her feet among the nations of the earth. No man, no' people, lives up to its ideal always. We have fallen sadly short of ours. The centrifugal forces seem at work just now. But I am confident con-fident that the attraction of the eternal eter-nal gravitation will assert its power again, and that the nation in its larger orbit wil sweep round, true to the law the Creator established, in which it must live or bear no life. I have not undertaken In this hour to speak of the negro element in our national life. That needs its separau and special consideration. I believe that the golden rule, the religion of Christ, the Declaration of Independence, the constitution of the United States, will, in God's own time, settle this problem for us also, and that the countrymen of Daniel O'Connell, the great liberator and great abolitionist, abolition-ist, will largely help us to settle it. The Irishman takes kindly enough to politics. He does his full share in war. I hope we may join together, more than we have been wont to do. in those works of peaceful public spirit which do not depend on political feeling for their stimulant, or look to office or party success as a reward. You have already furnished some splendid examples both among the dead and the living, of a lofty and noble public pub-lic virtue. It may be invidious to mention men-tion living men, but I cannot forbear paying my tribute of homage to one illustrious clergyman of your faith, John Ireland, who was able to declare, when he was bishop of Minnesota, that not 5 per cent of the liquor dealers Within that diocese were Catholics. I have verified this story within sixty days from his own lips. I wish' to pay my profound homage to the man who brought that to pass. I felt that his Christianity and that of my revered and beloved master, Edward Everett Hale, vvere, in essentials, very much the same. The most important part of human history is that which science does not explain. The part of us that comes by race the part of us that comes by evolution evo-lution from the grass and the mollusk, and the monkey is. after all. not the most important part of us. There is a spiritual lineage in which the Celtic and the Saxon are very near akin. There is something in this which does not come to us from the grass or the mollusk or the monkey. It is not Saxon, nor Celtic, nor Norman, nor Teuton. The white man and the black man and the red man and the brown man can feel it. I cio not ueneie u are ever to forget it. It is the bond that holds this country of ours together. to-gether. Patriotism, love of home, love of honor, love of justice these are the things for which, as we reverently hope God has created this republic ot ours 'to be a perpetual witness, and of which the mere student of the physical side of man's nature has nothing to say. . , But the one thing we want to do now for ourselves in dealing with' one another an-other especially in this dear old commonwealth com-monwealth of ours, whose population is divided so nearly equally between native born and foreign born and the children of foreign born, is to forget the things which make for strife, and cultivate the things that make for peace. Let us study one another s history. his-tory. Let us dwell side by side in the same neighborhood. To each other's faults a little blind, To each other's virtues very kind. |