THE FUTURE OF THE YOUNG MEN OF IRELAND

From Irish Ideas by William O'Brien, 1893

Page 154

THE FUTURE OF THE YOUNG MEN OF IRELAND

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other race can offer a parallel. From their exile they have year by year, practically speaking, contributed more than all the poor-rates and all the subsidies of the Imperial Exchequer, to sustain the poorer half of the Irish population three thousand miles away. That is an unrivalled deed of racial generosity. But they have done a greater thing still. It is their principles, their sympathy, their money, which, without firing a shot, have brought about in Ireland a revolution more potent than many that have been purchased with the horrors of a hundred massacres. The Irish-American servant-girl, who has been so often the scoff of English newspaper contumely, has literally done as much to liberate the country of her childhood as if she were a queen disposing of regiments and ironclads in their embattled might.

But while we bow in gratitude to the great continent which has made millions of Irish emigrants welcome, and has enabled them to bless the land they left in enriching the land they fled to, the mere fact that the first thing Irishmen had to do to benefit themselves or their own country was to quit it, reminds us sadly that emigration at its brightest offers an unnatural career to the enterprising youth of Ireland. And think of all the grisly spectres that haunt the story of the Irish exodus even to the continent of the free. Visit the cholera-pits which make Grosse Ile, near Quebec, one vast Irish grave; stand by the monument near Montreal which tells you that underneath sleep six thousand unknown Irish emigrants who died without a cup of water to soothe their thirst, or a loving Irish priest to whisper a last blessing. Remember the pest-laden emigrant ships that discharged half their burden into the Atlantic depths, and discharged, alas! too large a proportion of the remainder into no less appalling abysses of … continue reading »

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