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Show build up Irish prosperity. How This Most Desirable Thing Can Be Realized. The writer of the. following treatise ;s one of those men who have set their minds on the building up of an Irish Ireland; and. truly, Irish Ireland needs their aid, being today in deadly peril. Ireland is in danger of becoming an Anglicized Ireland that is, an Ireland in name! a mere geographical term, no longer a nation with a nation's high ideals, but a mere province crouching in abject submission at the feet of an imperious master. Nationality Is like an impregnable fortress which cannot fall but through the carelessness or treachery of its defenders. de-fenders. Nations perish from internal weakness; rarely, if ever, from external assault. A nation ceases to exist onlv when It has lost that vivifying spirit which is known as nationalism. As long as it retains! its own language, cultivates culti-vates its own literature and adheres to its own customs it remains a nation, despite foreign rule. In a word; it falls from its rank as a nation by its own will, not by the effort of its enemies. This is the view which the writer of this work adopts. : The author is a young man. and has all the vigor, the earnestness and the outspokenness of unperverted youth. He is an enthusiast, but a practical one,' not a mere dreamer who sighs for the winning of unattainable good. He belongs to that rising generation of Irish nationalists upon whom the hopes of our country chiefly -rest. He deals in this little work with questions very vital to Ireland, and deals with them as effectively and fully as a limited lim-ited space allows. Passing bv the evil influences of that "fons et origo mal-orum" mal-orum" the foreign government, he prefers pre-fers to treat of the internal evils from which our country suffers evils which he believes can be remedied by ourselves. our-selves. We think most of his readers will agree with him in his condemnation of seolninism. that mental disease (perhaps (per-haps we should saw disease of the brain and heart) which, unhappily, is so rife among our upper and middle classes. Seoinin and Seoininism are now familiar words used to designate that section of the Irish people who are servile imitators of the ways and manners man-ners of the foreigner the Preacan Mor and who look down upon and contemn con-temn anything and everything that is distinctly Irish. This class of person per-son differs but little, save in being more contemptible, from another known as the Garrison, who pride themselves on their English descent and boast of being as English in blood as they are in sentiment. They have been long the "pampered minions" of our foreign rulers, and repay their patronage pat-ronage by what they call loyalty, which means as they choose to understand under-stand the word that they will uphold the authority of the foreign power as long as that authority unduly favors themselves, and no longer. History rhows clearly that their loyalty is synonymous syn-onymous with selfishness. The motives which animate this class of nersons tre not high, but we can easily understand them. They are willing to sell their country for a consideration like the miser Trapbois in Scott'Ss novel. The seoinin class is Catholic in creed and Irish or Celtic by descent. They ought to be national in sentiment, but unhappily they are not. Unlike The Garrison, they owe the government nothing. Whatever freedom they enjoy en-joy in religious or civil life they owe to the struggles and sacrifices of their nationalist brethren. Yet they are enemies to Irish nationality cither by openly opposing or by ignoring ignor-ing it. They do not believe in their own country or their own countrymen, ' nor apparently in themselves. Davis must have- had : these people in mind when he penned the following lines: "That chainless wave and lovely land Fref 60m and Nationhood demand Be sure the Great God never planned. For slumbering slaves a home so grand." These slumbering slaves do not love or believe in their own country. - Th?y have no share in the hope that their I land may yet regain its freedom. They are anglicized, vet thev are not vno-. lish. They are merely Irish slaves who ape the ways of their masters. Our author attributes the degeneracy. degener-acy. of this class to the training we call it education they have received in our intermediate schools, conducted mainly by religious bodies. He dwells with due emphasis on the consequences of this ( false and pernicious system of teaching pursued in the greater number num-ber of these schools; in which everything every-thing Irish la either -quite Ignored or siurred-oyer., to wit; Irish history, language, literature, and all that knowledge; which, if imparted,- would tend to make the pupils respect them- selves too much to become the servile copyists and admirers of the ways and 'fashions of a foreign pf-bplennd vould incline them to love and . honor' their own country. His arraignnieiit of a system so unnatural and so debasing, so opposed to the growth of the nation-1 nation-1 spirit in the youth of Ireland, is not a whit too severe. The parents of these children whose natural, tendencies are thus perverted are, no' doubt, in many Instances to Mame, but the burden of blame rests on the teachers. It ran scarcely be denied de-nied that to these anglicizing schools is mainly to be attributed the denationalization dena-tionalization of our upper and middle classes. What can be hoped for in after life from boys and girls who are subjected sub-jected during their school days to the anglicizing methods pursued in these schools: from boys' schools in which Irish games are tabooed, in which the study of Irish history, language and literature has no place; or from those in which young girls expend, or rather misspend, their time in acquiring a smattering of foreign langunages or in hammering out foreign music on a foreign for-eign piano, with all the useless etceteras etcet-eras comprised in what is termed a fashionable education? Though such an education may suit the idlers of the aristocratic class "the butterflies of fashion" it is surelv ouite out of place when adopted by the daughters of the middle classes who are supposed to do some useful work in life to justify their existence; who, if they enter into the married state, should be efficient helpmates help-mates to their husbands or, if they remain single, useful members of their own families. But what help can such girls give to any one? The ordinary business of a good housewife is a mystery to them. In fine, they are suit from school into the outside world without having gained a, knowledge which would fit them to preside over an Irish home, or -indeed over any home. Those Irish parents who- send their children to English schools are justly censured, but what difference dees it make whether Irish children are anglicized at home or abroad? |