/ THE ^'SCOTCH=IRISH" 5HIBB0LETH ANALYZED AND REJECTED WITH SOME REFERENCE TO THE PRESENT " ANGLO-SAXON " COMEDY WASHINGTON, D. C. Published by the American-Irish Historical Society 1898 THE "SCOTCH-IRISH" SHIBBOLETH ANALYZED AND REJECTED WITH SOME REFERENCE TO THE PRESENT "aNGLO-SAXON " COMEDY BY JOSEPH SMITH SHCRETARY OF THE POLICE COMMISSION, LOWELL, MASS. WASHINGTON, D. C. PUBLISHED BY THE AMERICAN-IRISH HISTORICAL SOCIETY. 1898. '^ PUBLICATION American-Irish Historical Society. Number 5. I N DEX Page Allegheny Region 14 America 3, 10, 15, 16, 17 American Antiquarian Society. . 22 American Constitution 5 American History 2, 14 American-Irish Historical So- ciety 1 , 1 9, 20 American Revolution 3, 10, 14 Anglican Church 24 " Anglo-Saxon," The ... .2, 4, 14, 19 Antrim, Ireland 9 Antrim, N. H 21 Barry, Jack 12 Cabot 5 Canobie Lake, N. H 2, 4 CarroUs, The 12 Celts, The 23 Charitable Irish Society (Boston) 21, 22 Collins 21 Columbus 5 Commonwealth, The 17 Constitution, The American .... 5 Cork, Ireland 26 Coronado 5 Cortez 5 Cotton Mather 5 Cromwell 17 Danes, The 23 Declaration of Independence . . 5 Donaghadee 9 Down, Ireland 9 Dublin, Ireland 26 Dublin, N. H 21 Dutch, The 5, 11, 23, 24 Elizabeth, Queen 7, 23 Emmet 19 England, 2, 7, 8, 9, 10, 13, 20, 23, 25 English Cavaliers 14 English Puritans 14 Ericson 5 Fiske, Prof. John, I, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 24. 26 France 23, 25 Page French, The 2,4,5, i°» ^^» ^^' '^ Froude 9 Germans 4, 5, 14, 16 Germany 23 Great Britain 3. 24 Green, Samuel Swett 22 Hessians, The 10 Highlanders, The 6, 7, 21 Holland 23 Hudson 5 Huguenots 18, 19 Ireland .. .3, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 12, 14, 16 17, 20, 21, 22, 23 Irish Presbyterians 21 Irish Republic 22 James Stuart of Scotland 7, 8 Knox, John 24 Lafayette • 5. 19 Leinster, Province of 26 Limerick, Ireland 26 Linehan, John C 17, 21, 22 Lodge, Henry Cabot 18, 19, 22 London 8 London Guilds 8 Londonderry, Ireland 9 Londonderry, N. H 21, 22 Lowlander, The 6, 7, 8, 21 Macintosh, Rev. John S., 6, 7, 8, 10, II McGregor, Rev. Mr 21 McManuses I5> 25 McMasters i McNeill, Gen. John 22 Mayflower, The 5 Miles Standish 5 Moore, Thomas • 12 Motley's "Rise of the Dutch Republic " 23 Munster, Province of 26 Murphys 15, 25 Murray, Thomas Hamilton. • . .20, 22 New England 13.15 New Hampshire 2, 17,21, 22 O'Briens, The 12 (V) VI Page O'Sullivans, The 13 " Old Virginia and Her Neigh- bors," Fiske's 14 Parkman i Penn, William 5 Pennsylvania 2, 4 Pere Marquette 5 Petty, Sir W il, 17 Philadelphia 6 Plantation, The 7 Plunkett, Archbishop 23 Plymouth Rock 5 Portsmouth, N. H 22 Presbyterians, 9, 13, 16, 21, 23, 24, 25 Putnam, Eben 20 Revolution, The American. .3, 10, 14 Rochambeau 5 Roche, James Jeffrey 18 Roosevelt i Saxons 23 Schuylkill 6 Scotland, 3.6,7,8,9, 12,20,21,23,24,25 Page Scots, The 7, 9, 18, 23, 25 Scotch-Irish Society. ..r, 2, 3, 11, 16 Stark's Rangers 22 Stewart, Rev. Andrew^ 9, 15, 23 Stuyvesant 5 St. Patrick's Day 3, 22, 26 St. Patrick's Lodge of Masons.. 22 Sullivan, John 12 Sullivan, Owen 12 Tennessee 2, 4 Thompson, Robert Ellis 21 Ulster, Province of 3, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, II, 13, 14, 15, 16, 20, 25, 26 United Irishmen, Society of. ... 10 United States 4, 6, 13 Virginia 14 Walloons n, 24 Walter Scott 7 Washington 5 Waterford, Ireland 26 " Winning of the West," Roose- velt's I Winthrop 5 BY WAY OF PREFACE. In these latter days of the Nineteenth Century we are hearing a great deal about this race and that; we are being told of the virtue and gemus of this one, of the vice and incapacity of that; and our ears are bombarded with clamor and claptrap as wearisome as it is nonsensical. It is just as well when these matters come before us to keep cool and make use of such com- mon sense as God has endowed us with. The ponderous nonsense wasted on the Teutonic, Latin, and Anglo-Saxon races means absolutely nothmg when analyzed; it represents as a rule the vanity or prejudice of the writer and his clientele ; and the terminology of " race " is as misleading as it is unscientific The number of writers who bring to history and ethnology the same cool, scientific spirit that a botanist or geologist brings to plants and strata can be counted on the fingers of one hand. The average historian seems to hold the present responsible for the past, instead of admitting the common sense logic that the past is responsible for the present; and starting with this stupid inversion he insists upon defending the crimes and blunders of ages long gone to their account. , , t^ Our knowledge of the different " races " which peopled early Europe is as vague and fragmentary as our knowledge of the people of Atlantis. The sources of our knowledge appear to be a few allusions in the works of classic writers who either got their information at second hand from the officers and soldiers serving in the armies of Greece and Rome, or, as camp followers, from the tribes they came in contact with, whose speech they were usually ignorant of, and whose antecedents they knew nothing about. As well might some modern writer seek to base a scientific theory of the origin, language name etc., of the American races, upon the story of some vagrant Spanish soldier, returning from the plunder of a Mexican town, or the exploration of some tropical river. Certainly, the soldiers of Cortez and Alvarado were as learned, observant, and inteUigent as those of Alexander and Cssar, and their opportunities for research and study as numerous and satisfactory. While fascinating and stimulating to the imagination, the attempt to extract light from an age of black disorder and historic chaos, to illumine ethnolog- ical theories, is as vain as it is unprofitable. The human nucleii that have made history as we know it were nations, not races. Groups of men, composed of various fragments of tribes, super- imposed upon or mingled with the original occupants of certain geographical limits, forming a body that through environment, climate, war, peace, economic (vii) Vlll conditions, and the mutations of time and circumstances, became a homo- geneous whole. Thus in the stress and hurly-burly of the centuries were formed the French, German, Italian, Spanish, Irish, English, and other groups of nations, out of the same human tribal elements, and hammered into shape by the changing conditions they were subjected to and the different experi- ences they underwent. In the formation of what is somewhat vaguely termed " national character," the influence of the original elements of the nation — the racial disjecta — was trifling as compared with the experiences undergone in reaching the stage of homogeneity. The fighting strength or weakness of a people in the bar- barous stage gave them war or peace, security or insecurity. The presence of a strong leader, with a genius for organization and battle, usually meant a stable government and comparative peace, with the complementary benefits of security, agriculture, industry, increase in population, and a measure of civili- zation; weak and inefficient leadership meant contrary results. The two conditions are illustrated by Norman and Saxon England, the American and Spanish Republics, Austria and Turkey. The solemn nonsense written about Irish, English, French, German, and other national characters, the superiority of this one over that, the genius of such a one and the incapacity of some other, is a mere waste of time. Wis- dom or folly is peculiar to no nation; virtue and vice are the incidents of humanity. Bravery, patriotism, self-sacrifice, love of family, devotion to altar and hearthstone, are as common in Peru and Persia, Holland and Hindostan, as in France and England, America and Germany. Nothing, in fact, is so shallow, misleading, and mischievous as the application of sonorous generali- zations to matters like nationalities. They sound well, but they really mean nothing. The processes which produced the different nations of Europe, under the most favorable conditions, are on this continent making the American nation. .The splinters and fragments of westward sweeping Asian tribes made the Frenchman, the Englishman, and the others of Europe; and men from all the countries of Europe, landing here and commingling, are making the American. The children of the German, Frenchman, Irishman, and English- man, subjected to the same experiences of education, training, and opportunity, are made into Americans, — and what man, ignorant of their antecedents, could say which was the son of France, which the child of Ireland or England? With these few simple premises in view, the racial clamor of the hour seems trivial, silly, and unworthy of people endowed with ordinary common sense. JOSEPH SMITH. Lowell, Mass., Aug. 15, 1898. THE "SCOTCH-IRISH" SHIBBOLETH, ANALYZED AND REJECTED. The organization of the American-Irish Historical Society was completed none too soon, if we are to take note of the mass of printed matter which, under the mis- leading title of history, is being foisted on the American public in ever-increasing volume. With few exceptions, — Parkman, McMasters, Fiske, Roosevelt, and others, — the American historian has been a provincial in thought, exploiting his clan and magnifying his ism, and having but the faintest conception of the scope, purpose, and spirit of history, or of the true and scientific character of the historian. He was simply a partisan, a special pleader, glorifying some particular ele- ment in the country, ignoring or decrying all others, and seemingly incapable of doing ordinary justice even to the common enemy. Yet while this defect is happily absent from the modern school of historians, — witness Roosevelt's admirable work, "The Winning of the West," — we still have streams of literary contributions to history, flowing from various obscure sources, as amazing as they are grotesque and absurd ; amazing, because received and accepted gravely as history ; grotesque, because of their strange deductions ; absurd, because of their transparent ignorance of even plain and undisputed facts of history. The proceedings of that remarkable but already disin- tegrating body which calls itself the Scotch-Irish Society, have added to the gayety, if not the knowledge, of nations, and have furnished food for the scoffer and the wag for a dozen years. Here is a body with a well-grounded grievance and an empty treasury of knowledge, which has been laboring as strenuously for years to pervert history and publish misinformation as any of the old-school historians. Starting with the patent fact that much of American his- tory has been written to glorify England and the bogus "Anglo-Saxon" as the source and author of all the good things in American life, this Scotch-Irish Society swung the pendulum in the other direction, refusing all credit to the English, giving no recognition to the Dutch, and ignoring the French entirely. Worse still, they claimed everything for a race which they themselves had created, and which they christened with the ridiculous title of Scotch- Irish. The average Scotchman and Irishman seemed to be in the dark about it : what it was or where it came from puzzled ethnologists ; we had to be content with the information that it was a miracle-working, marvellous people, having all human virtues and many heavenly halos, and that it was discovered simultaneously somewhere in New Hampshire or Pennsylvania, and in a similarly definite locality in Tennessee. Its saints and heroes appeared to have a penchant for Irish names and Calvinistic religions ; and its prophets and scribes ranged in obscurity from a Morrison, of Canobie Lake, N. H., to a host of librarians, professors and politicians afflicted with cacoethes scribe7idi. The society which discovered this race — possibly in the graves of the mound builders — saw visions, fulminated annual pronunciamentos, and appeared to have an abnor- mal admiration for the Ulsterman, attributing virtues to him that might even make that humorless individual roar with Homeric laughter. * * * In time we came to learn, deviously and by expert inter- pretation, that the " vScotch-Irish " were the descendants of the Irish who emigrated from Ireland, especially Ulster, in the eighteenth century, and that their trademark was Protestantism or public prominence. This, of course, simplifies matters. It is certainly true that a large emigration flowed out of Ulster into America during the eighteenth century, even after the Revolution ; but the people who so emigrated were Irish, — plain, strong-limbed, angry, English-hating Irish, who came over the stormy Atlantic with a thorough detestation of England and a hearty contempt of Scotland, and all the tyranny, robbery, oppression, and civil, relig- ious, and political proscription Great Britain represented. They and their fathers had lived in Ireland and loved Ireland ; and if the habits, customs, loves, hates, ideas, and thoughts gained in an Irish atmosphere, on Irish soil, make Irishmen, these people were Irish. They called themselves Irish ; the English on American soil called them Irish and banned them as Irish ; they named their settlements after Irish towns ; they founded societies which they called Irish ; they celebrated St. Patrick's Day in true Irish fashion, and seemed to have no fear that a day would come when a ridiculous association would call them and their children by any other title. Stranger yet, the men who remained behind in Ulster have yet to learn the startling information that they are " Scotch-Irish." At first blush one might account for the new name on the plain ground of crass ignorance ; but the fact that the members of the Scotch-Irish society read and write presupposes some intelligence and perhaps knowledge, and compels us to seek the raison d'etre in other causes. The only reasonable and plausible cause must be looked for in pure, bald religious arrogance and intolerance, and a wish to separate the Irish race into two clans on religious grounds, — the Catholic or Irish-Irish, and the Protestant or Scotch-Irish, This looks like the attribution of mean motives to men, but no other explanation presents itself. And if this sort of logic is good there is no reason why the Turks should not be called Moors, for both profess Moslemism ; or why the French, Spaniards, and Italians should not be called Irishmen, since all are in religion Catholics. Such primary school logic is good as far as it goes ; but it does n't go far, even in Pennsylvania, Tennes- see, or Canobie Lake. * * * A certain other class of writers has been exploiting the " Anglo-Saxon " race, ascribing to it virtues and attributes almost divine. But as Anglo-Saxonism has in the end proved to be merely John Bullism, sensible people have turned the mythical animal over to after-dinner speakers and emotional parsons. The passing of the Anglo-Saxon, however, has left an aching void in the hearts and emotions of certain people who wanted a " race " of their own to brag about. They would n't have the Anglo-Saxon at any price ; they were not Germans or French or Italians or Spanish; they fought shy of the Scotch ; they shrieked at the Irish, and they apparently did not understand that the term American was good enough for anybody. In this hysteri- cal crisis they invented that ethnical absurdity, the Scotch- Irishman, and Scotch-Irish race. Just what the Scotch-Irish race is, who the Scotch-Irish are, where they come from, what they look like, where their habitat is, are questions that no fellow seems able to answer. In recent years the people of the United States have been favored with a series of congresses of respectable and worthy citizens, who have assembled to glorify this new " race." It is not out of place to say that the proceedings and addresses of these Scotch-Irish congresses have been published, and they are simply delicious, the best examples of unconscious humor in the language. The fun-loving American people should not miss them. I have before me the volume of the second congress, held in 1890, — the race is quite a recent discovery, being coeval with the microbe, — and I find its contents delightful. The perusal of this interesting work of fiction compels me to say that the history of the settlement and making of the Republic should be rewritten at once in the interest of truth. Such impostors as the English, Irish, French, Dutch, Germans, and Spaniards should be exposed at once. For generations we have been wasting our admiration and love on the old humbugs who landed at Plymouth Rock from the rickety " Mayflower " ; we have been tricked into respect and reverence for William Penn ; we have allowed ourselves to believe that the idle gentry who settled Virginia were fellows of parts ; we have even been led slyly to cherish admiration for such frauds as the French voyagers, the Spanish conquerors and the stout old Dutch burghers. But that is all over ; the illusion has vanished. Columbus, Cortez, Coronado, Penn, Cabot, Hudson, Stuy- vesant, Ericson, Cotton Mather, Winthrop, Miles Standish, Washington, Lafayette, Rochambeau, Pere Marquette, and all the rest of them were Scotch-Irishmen, whatever popu- lar misrepresentation may say they were. The Scotch- Irish congresses have settled that with other things. Summed up in a sentence, the framing of the Declaration of Independence, the framing of the Constitution, the founding of the Republic, the making of our laws, the winning of our battles and the establishment of our schools, colleges, and universities, are just a few of the things accomplished by this marvellous race whose light was hidden under several bushels up to a recent period. Yet, while we are told what the Scotch-Irish have done (and we are favored with the names of a long line of so-called Scotch-Irishmen), the Scotch-Irish historians have not got down to business and told us where this glorious creature originated ; he is still living in some imaginary- region, like Prester John of old. * * Perhaps the man who comes nearest to supplying this aching void, and telling us who and what this marvellous, ethnic paragon is, is the Rev. John S. Macintosh, of Philadelphia, in his highly entertaining monograph styled, "The Making of the Ulsterman." Let us in a grave and reverent spirit examine this gentleman's masterpiece of imaginative literature. He opens his wonderful story with a meeting in Antrim, Ireland, of three men — a Lowlander (Scotch), an Ulster- man (Irish), and himself (an American), whom he calls a Scotch-Irishman, though born on the banks of the Schuyl- kill. He remarks feelingly, after presenting them to the reader : " There we were, a very evolution in history." They were, in fact, the three Scotch-Irish musketeers ; and there they sat, looking out over the Irish waters toward the hungry lowlands of Scotland, pitying the world, scratch- ing their heads thoughtfully, only remembering how they had made the United States, without letting anybody find it out. They talked, figured each other out, and said, like the big, brawny, red-legged Highlanders they were not : " Are we not the splendid men entirely ? " Dr. Macintosh now proceeds to mix his three muske- teers in order to pull the Simon-pure Scotch-Irishman out of the shuffle. Let us follow him slowly, without mirth, if possible. The first element in the Scotch-Irishman is the Lowland Scotchman. Be sure and get the real article; nothing else will do. Has it ever occurred to you what a remark- able man the Lowlander is ? Probably not. You have had your eye on the Highlander as the finest fruit of Scot- land ; but that is all romance and Walter Scott. The Lowlander is the man ; whether he be a hollow-chested Paisley weaver, a penny-scraping Glasgow huckster, or a black-browed Border cattle-thief. He must also be a true- blue Calvinist, and none of your pleasure-loving Papists or Episcopalians, Now, who was the Lowlander of Macintosh ? He was a mixture of Scot, Pict, Norseman, Saxon, Friesian, Briton, Erse, Norman, and possibly a score of other things. The same mixture in dogs produces the noble breed we call a mongrel. Continuing his analysis, the Philadelphian says the Scots originally came from the North of Ireland ; but in some way they differed from the relations they left behind them. How and why, the monographer doesn't say; but the reader will naturally conclude that it was because they had the bad taste to leave the fertile vales of Ulster for the starved Lowlands across the water. How- ever, we must go on. The Lowlander is the seedling from which sprang the Scotch-Irish banyan that has transformed the American continent. Dr. Macintosh transplants him to Ulster in italics, thus: "The Lowlander becomes the Ulsterman." We have thus made the first stage of the Scotch-Irish hegira. Now let us examine Ulster of the Plantation. In the days of Elizabeth Tudor, Ulster was a bird to pluck. When not engaged in robbing Spanish commerce or Dutch herring-boats, the Virgin Queen's courtiers plundered and murdered in Ireland. Ulster, by war with England and internecine troubles, was reduced to utter exhaustion by the time the venerable and dubious virgin died, and her throne passed to James Stuart of Scotland. King Jamie went to London with a fine crowd of beggarly- lairds at his heels, and found war-wasted Ulster on his hands, James Stuart was hardly an ideal king such as poets sing of ; but he was as good as kingdoms usually get. He had the tongue of a wrangling parson, the spirit of a tailor's apprentice, the meanness of a usurer, and the morals of a procuress. He went into business at once, and exchanged the lands of Ulster for the cash of the London guilds and a few Scotch concerns, the conditions of the contract being that they were to introduce settlers into the province, build fortifications, and hold the lands by the sword. The rights of the inhabitants were not considered at all ; it was simply an outrageous piece of spoliation, varied by murder. Dr. Macintosh, with a smug mixture of imagination and Pharisaism, tells us that this wholesale scheme of slaughter and robbery was a benevolent plan of God's to save the world, and that the day this charter of plunder and outrage was promulgated, April i6, 1605, must always be one of historic value. To mere modern laymen the shouldering of this cruel and perfidious piece of kingly rascality on to an all-wise Providence by a clergyman smacks very much of blasphemy. But we must have a genesis for the Scotch-Irishman, and the settlement of Ulster is the thing. Now the veracious parson strikes a rapid gait. The Lowlander, he says, was to find Ulster nothing but savage wilds, and was to transform it by his skill and industry into smiling valleys and busy towns. History advises us that in those days, the rudest and most wasteful agriculturists in Europe were those of Scotland and England. Having got his Lowlander into Ireland, — and the good man wants it understood that none but Lowlanders went there, — he thus apostrophizes him : " In Ulster now stands the transplanted Scot, the man of opportunity, of utility, and order, the man of law and self-respect and self-reliance, with a king's charter in his hand, with a king's smile upon him, with the cheers of England's hopeful civiliza- tion encouraging him," Is this not really beautiful ? What a poet the reverend Philadelphian is ? How Froude would have loved him. But once more the hard facts of history crop out to plague the poetic parson. Let me quote from a Presbyterian parson of Ulster, who was born there in the early days of the Plantation, and who was pastor of the town of Donaghadee, from 1645 to 1671. He ought to know something about his law-abiding. God-fearing, order-loving, charter-bearing neighbors, and was in a position to appre- ciate the hopeful civilization of England as exemplified in Ulster. Listen to the words of the Rev. Andrew Stewart : — "From Scotland came many, 2ind front Eitgland not a few ; yet all of them, generally, the sewn of both nations ^ who for debt or breaking or fleeing from, justice, or seeking shelter^ came hither, hoping to be withotit fear of man s jtistice in a land where there was nothing, or but little as yet, of the fear of God. And in a few years there flocked such a multitude of people from Scotland, that these northern counties of Down, Antrim, Londonderry, etc., were in a good measure planted ; yet most of tJie people, as I said before, made up a body — and it is strange — of dif- ferent names, nations, dialects, tempers, breeding — and in a word — all void of godliness, who seemed rather to flee God in this enterprise than to follow their mercy ; albeit at first it must be remembered that they cared little for any churchy Thus we see that the settlers were not angels and were far from being wholly Scots. Ireland is the land of saints ; but it has never been the land of angels, Presbyterian or otherwise. The good parson overlooks the important fact 10 that a large number of English, Dutch, German, Walloon, and French Protestants were introduced from time to time into Ulster, and these with the native population went to make the Ulsterman. But let us go on. For nearly one hundred and fifty years these races lived in Ulster, forming the Ulsterman. Along in the middle of the eighteenth century, the Ulsterman began to grow tired of England's hopeful civilization, which was banning his religion, plundering his home, and destroying his indus- tries ; and he was emigrating to America with a heart full of bitterness. England called the Ulsterman an Irishman; he claimed that name himself, as he might well do, after being domiciled on the soil for generations. In Ireland he founded the Society of United Irishmen; in America he organized Irish charitable societies, and called his settlements by Irish names, in the darkest ignorance of the fact that he was a Scotch-Irishman. Even in Ulster to-day they have not yet discovered the Scotch-Irishman, though American delegates may correct this neglect. Dur- ing our Revolution it was difficult to get people to acknowl- edge kinship with the Scotch, who were damned as vigorously as the Hessians, as Tories and mercenaries. The Irish of the Revolution were plain, ordinary Irish. The maker of the Ulsterman dwells pathetically on the imaginary massacre of 1641, when a poor, unarmed peas- antry are alleged to have wiped out nearly two hundred thousand well-armed people, dwelling in towns and fortified places, and backed by the Government. As the population of all the province was hardly two hundred thousand in all, this massacre implies a sort of national hari-kari. Yet in 1656, just fifteen years after this awful slaughter, Dr. Macintosh says the Scotch-Irish could put forty thousand fighting men in the field. This is the most won- II derful case of racial fecundity on record, or it is a magnifi- cent piece of mendacity. Remember the figures, — forty thousand. Sir W. Petty, who lived and wrote for the Government in those days, says the estimated population of Ulster in 1659, — or three years after Dr. Macintosh's Scotch-Irish army, — was as follows : Irish, 63,350 ; Eng- lish, Scotch, and other aliens, 40,471 ; in all, 103,921. Now what has become of the army of 1656 ? Has everybody in Ulster become Scotch-Irish, or has that wonderful race developed into anthropophagi ? Yet upon such ridiculous matter is the whole Scotch-Irish theory based, foundations as unstable as water. A few Scotch settlers of no character, morals, or any attribute or instinct other than those of banditti, enter Ulster, and we are asked to believe that they absorbed and leavened all the province and later all the North American continent. After a century and a half all the elements, Irish, English, French, Dutch, and Walloons, in Ulster, have been trans- formed by the Scotch. This ridiculous and laughable absurdity has its grave side ; a number of honest, well-mean- ing citizens are being tricked into believing that this rub- bish is fact and history, because it is so stated by men who are reading the record of the past by their imaginations. There never was and never will be a Scotch-Irish race. The men of Ulster who came to America were Irishmen; their children are Americans ; if they are ashamed of the blood, race, or nationality of their fathers they are unworthy sons of their sires. So much for Dr. Macintosh, of Philadelphia, and his plan of Scotch-Irish creation. The people who became converts to this cult organized themselves into a Scotch-Irish society, with all that enthu- siasm with which the average American organizes anything that is a society or lodge of any sort, for any purpose. In 12 fact, when half a dozen Americans get together anywhere for any common purpose, whether to analyze the green cheese in the moon or to float a non-metallic gold mine, they proceed to organize themselves with officers, consti- tution, by-laws, resolutions, platitudes, and all the equip- ment of a government. The act of organization seems to throw the sanction of authority and law around everything it touches, for the American mind has had law, law, law. hammered into it so persistently that law has become a fetich in the republic, and he who will fearlessly discuss God and the Bible and question the authority of the sacred book will stand dumb before the law he has made. Organ- ized into a society, having presidents, secretaries, com- mittees, contributing brethren, a treasury, and annual congresses, the man of straw began to put on a look of reality. The essays of the society on the various branches of the Scotch-Irish " race," from the inspired pens of profes- sors in minor colleges, politicians, and others, were gravely published and the new race began its life on earth. It represented a triumph of mind over matter. Why it never joined forces with the apostles of theosophy has always been a puzzle ; they had a common ground of phan- tasm to unite on, and by timely and judicious revelations from Mahatmas, Scotch-Ireland or Irish-Scotland — the cradle of the intangible race — might have been fixed in the Himalayas on the roof of the world. In nearly all particulars the society was a success ; all it lacked was a few real Scotch-Irishmen to place on exhi- bition as a guarantee of good faith ; but these could not be secured. When John Sullivan, son of Owen O'Sullivan of Limerick ; Philip Sheridan, Thomas Moore, Jack Barry, the Carrolls, O'Briens, and men of almost pure English 13 lineage are grouped together under the one head of Scotch- Irish, we may well conclude that the children of some kindergarten have been allowed by their good-natured teachers to play at parliament. When we consider that one of the most gifted seers of the cult has solemnly laid down the simple rule, which was revealed to him in a vision after a mince-pie supper, — that all the O's are Irish-Irish and all the Macs are Scotch-Irish, the inclusion of the O'Briens and O'Sullivans among the ghost-dancers by less erudite prophets is enough to appall the stoutest heart. The fact cannot be gainsaid that the Irish-Presbyterians, almost to a man, were against England; but it was their nationality — Irish — and the sufferings entailed on them in Ulster, and not their Presbyterianism, that made them ardent rebels. If further proof were necessary, attention might be called to the fact that all the Scotch settlements in America were ultra-loyal to the British Crown, whether in what is now the United States or in British America. * * Prof. John Fiske of Harvard is a man whose liter- ary and historical contributions must be reckoned with; while he exhibits dogmatic tendencies in certain directions, he prefers to be right and sound rather than clever or sonorous. One hardly expects a New England historian to exert undue care to deal fairly with the Irish ; New England, like Old England, has not reached that growth where it has found that the world contains other people beside its own ; the New England tradition is that after the tragedy on Calvary the Deity substituted the New Englander for the Hebrew as his human choice ; and Professor Fiske is human enough to have the poison of his provincial surroundings and antecedents in his blood. H Having been taught that the Anglo-Saxon — the English- man and his children — had accomplished everything- great and good on the continent, it would have been a serious disillusion to have to acknowledge that England's bete noir, the Irish, had really done infinitely more for America than the Anglo-Saxon. Hence, when it is shown that certain men did do great deeds who were not of English origin, when they had Irish names and were of Irish extraction, it was a difficult matter to assume that these men were something else besides Irish ; but he has overcome this difficulty, if with some qualms. In "Old Virginia and her Neighbors," Volume II., page 391, Prof. John Fiske says : " Until recent years little has been written of the coming of the so-called Scotch-Irish to America, and yet it is an event of scarcely less impor- tance than the exodus of English Puritans to New Eng- land and that of English Cavaliers to Virginia. It is impossible to understand the drift which American history, social and political, has taken since the time of Andrew Jackson, without studying the early life of the Scotch-Irish population of the Allegheny region, the pioneers of the American backwoods. I do not mean to be understood as saying that the whole of that population at the time of the Revolution was Scotch-Irish, for there was a consider- able German element in it, besides an infusion of English moving inward from the coast. But the Scotch-Irish element was more numerous and far more important than all the rest. " Who were the people called by this rather awkward compound name, Scotch-Irish .-• The answer carries us back to the year 161 1, when James I. began peopling Ulster with colonists from Scotland and the north of Eng- land. The plan was to put into Ireland a Protestant pop- ulation that might ultimately outnumber the Catholics and 15 become the controlling element in the country. The settlers were picked men and zvomcn of the most excellent sort. By the middle of the seventeenth century there were three hjmdred tJionsand of them in Ulster." Professor Fiske excites to mirth. His "picked men" were those described by the Rev. Andrew Stewart, an eye witness, already quoted, as " the scum of both nations [England and Scotland], who for debt or breaking or flee- ing from justice, or seeking shelter, came hither [to Ulster] ... all void of godliness." The Rev. Mr. Stewart is a better authority on this subject than Professor Fiske. Again Professor Fiske says : " That province [Ulster] had been the most neglected part of the island, a wilder- ness of bogs and fens ; they transformed it into a garden. They also established manufactures of woollens and linens which have since been famous throughout the world. By the beginning of the eighteenth century their numbers had risen to nearly a million. Their social condition was not that of peasants ; they were intelligent yeomanry and artisans. In a document signed in 171 8 by a miscellaneous group of 319 men only thirteen made their mark, while 306 wrote their names in full. Nothing like that could have happened at that time in any other part of the British Empire, hardly even in New England. " When these people began coming to America those families that had been longest in Ireland had dwelt there but for three generations, and confusion of mind seems to lurk in any nomenclature which couples them with the true Irish. . . . On the other hand, since love laughs at feuds and schisms, intermarriages between the colonists of Ulster and the native Irish were by no means unusual, and instances occur of Murphys and McManuses of the Presbyterian faith. It was common in Ulster to allude to Presbyterians as ' Scotch,' to Roman Catholics as * Irish,' i6 and to members of the English Church as ' Protestants/ without much reference to pedigree. From this point of view the term ' Scotch ' may be defensible, provided we do not let it conceal the fact that the people to whom it applied are for the most part Lowland Scotch Presbyterians, very slightly Hibernicized in blood." * * The merest examination of this will show that Professor Fiske is on uncertain ground ; he is begging the question; his own training and education convince him that there is a false ring to the term " Scotch-Irish " ; the statements he makes or quotes show the earmarks of that organized hum- bug, the Scotch-Irish Society ; and he is reluctant to face the question squarely, and, by reversing the conventional concealments, evasions, and falsifications which have marked the writing of American history in the interest of the English elements, acknowledge the splendid work done by the Irish in America. Let us examine his statements in detail. Relative to Ulster settlement he says : " The settlers were picked men and women of the most excellent sort. By the middle of the seventeenth century there were 300,000 of them in Ulster. The province was a wilderness of bogs and fens ; they transformed it into a garden. They also established manufactures of woollens and linens ; . . . they were intelligent yeomanry and artisans." These extracts are the amusing myths of the Scotch-Irish Society. We have an emigration from Scotland to Ireland by, say, 1650, of 300,000, with no account of the English, French, Walloon and German immigrants who were intro- duced to Ireland, and nothing said about the original settlers of Ulster, the Irish. In 1659, as already stated. Petty, a government official in Ulster, estimated the popu- lation as follows : Irish, 63,350 ; English, Scotch, and other 17 aliens, 40,571 ; a total of 103,921. It is very possible that Sir Petty's estimate is correct ; that he would find it very difficult to arrive at a correct estimate of the Irish ; and much more easy to get at the numbers of those who were naturally the English supporters. It is well to recall that at the date of this estimate Ireland had gone through the horrors of twelve years of civil war, marked by cruelty of the most ferocious kind ; that the Cromwellians had added deportation and slavery in the Americas to their other crimes and abominations ; that Cromwell had settled his own soldiers on confiscated lands ; and that he was not particularly partial to the Scotch, whom he had fought and defeated, and whose immigration he was not likely to encourage, at a time when they were parleying with the exile Charles and plotting the downfall of the Common- wealth. Professor Fiske's three hundred thousand seem to vanish in smoke. The character of the population introduced into a coun- try where the natives are treated as outlaws and wild beasts by the government is not hard to guess. It is not at all likely that it is going to consist of model farmers, expert artisans, pious, educated, peaceful men and women ; those kind of people usually remain at home. The adven- turer, the ne'er-do-well, the poor, the desperate, the home- less ; those are the kind willing to face the hazards of war and fortune in a land where the natives are hard fighters and haters of the government, even though exhausted by war. Hon. John C. Linehan, State Insurance Commissioner of New Hampshire, declares that " In these latter days a new school of writers has sprung up, whose pride of ances- try outstrips its knowledge, and whose prejudices blind its love of truth. With the difference in relig-ion between i8 certain sections of the Irish people as a basis, they are bent on creating a new race, christening it ' Scotch-Irish,' laboring hard to prove that it is a ' brand ' superior to either of the two old types, and while clinging to the Scotch root, claim that their ancestors were different from the Irish in blood, morals, language, and religion. This is a question not difficult to settle for those who are disposed to treat it honestly, but, as a rule, the writers who are the most prolific, as well as the speakers who are the most eloquent, know the least about the subject, and care less, if they can only succeed in having their theories accepted. The Irish origin of the Scots is studiously avoided by nearly all the Scotch-Irish writers, or if mentioned at all, is spoken of in a manner which leaves the reader to infer that the Scots had made a mistake in selecting their ancestors, and it was the duty of their descendants, so far as it lay in their power, to rectify the error." James Jeffrey Roche, replying to an article by Henry Cabot Lodge, says in the Boston Pilot, July 9, 1892, ** Of course, if we accept Mr. Lodge's definition, that an Irish- man of the Protestant religion is not an Irishman, but a Scotchman, more particularly if he be an Englishman by descent, Mr. Lodge's case is proven, even though his own witnesses otherwise contradict him ; and equally, of course, a Catholic Irishman becomes a Scotchman, or vice versa, by simply changing his religion. " In his anxiety to make a point against Catholics by extolling the French Huguenots and 'Scotch-Irish,' Mr. Lodge forgets common sense, and what is worse, forgets common honesty. When he comes to claim especial glory for his own section of the country, he gives away his whole case by saying : ' The criticism that birthplace should not be the test for the classification by communi- ■• ■ -<. ' «UA ' . T jT! . ' I.. .— .^. -«. l' .UM I IJMllLm.lUUa-/^JIUW I | 19 ties seems hardly to require an answer, for a moment's reflection ought to convince any one that no other is practicable,' although he hastens to add that ' place of birth is no test of race,' " Nothing is, apparently, except religion ; and the test of that is, whether or not it is Mr. Lodge's own brand of religion. We have not a word to say against the latter, even though in his case, unfortunately, it has not devel- oped an ' ability ' for counting correctly or quoting hon- estly. . . . Irishmen, at least, do not qualify their admiration of national heroes by inquiries into their religion. Protestant Emmet is still the idol of the Irish Catholic ; and we doubt if any intelligent Huguenot would give up his share in the glory of Catholic Lafayette." The main importance attaching to history written in the " Scotch-Irish " and " Anglo-Saxon " fashion is that it is poisoning the growing generations ; this falsified and fab- ricated history is being introduced into the schools, and a deliberate propaganda is being carried on to show that persecution and the persecutor were always right and the misgoverned were always wrong, and Americans are expected to acquiesce in this outrage. It is the duty of the members of the American-Irish Historical Society to rebuke these things wherever found ; to insist that nothing but the truth shall be taught in the public schools, and to demand that the self-respect and good name of the Irish and their children shall not be insulted. No honorable means should be left untried to accomplish these ends ; we are numerous enough in this Republic to compel the giving of what every citizen of the Republic is entitled to, truth and justice, and the slander- ers, falsifiers, and wrong-doers should be followed per- sistently and mercilessly until they are driven into obscurity by an alarmed and righteous public opinion. 20 The American-Irish Historical Society will be false to its purposes and principles if it does less than this ; if it does not demand squarely and positively the simple truth and exact justice, it has no reason for existence. Our numbers, wealth, influence, warrant us in refusing to be misrepresented in the history of the Republic, and properly utilized, they will enable us to punish and pillory our slanderers. Let us mete out justice, fair play, and honorable treat- ment to the men of all our nations, who have helped to make this greatest of the nations, and let us fearlessly and persistently demand them for ourselves. * * Thomas Hamilton Murray, writing on this subject to Eben Putnam, of Salem, Mass., declares : — " It has always been a matter of astonishment to me that persons who ring the changes on the ' Scotch-Irish ' dis- play such a superficial knowledge of the plantation of Ulster and of the composition of the people of that prov- ince. One would think that before holding forth as exponents of the doctrine, they would first solidly inform themselves as to the conditions of the period and place in question. . . . We of the old Irish race draw no invidious distinctions, but receive into brotherhood all born on Irish soil or of Irish parents, regardless of creed and no matter where their grandfather or great-grandfather may have come' from. . . . Why anybody of Irish birth or descent should try to sink his glorious heritage and seek to estab- lish himself as ' Scotch rather than Irish,' or why anybody should try to do it for him, is something difficult to under- stand. Ireland possesses a more ancient civilization than either Scotland or England. Her hagiology, her educa- tional institutions, her old nobility, her code of laws, her jurisprudence, are of much greater antiquity. 'The Irish,' 21 declares Collins, ' colonized Scotland, gave to it a name, a literature and a language, gave it a hundred kings, and gave it Christianity.' For additional evidence on this point, see Knight, Lingard, Chambers, Lecky, Venerable Bede, Buckle, Pinkerton, Logan, Thebaud, Sir Henry Maine, Freeman, the Century Dictionary of Names and other authorities." Commissioner Linehan, of New Hampshire, already quoted, says : — " In the histories of New Hampshire towns colonized by emigrants from Ireland, an attempt has been made by the writers to draw a distinction between what they term the ' Scotch-Irish ' and the Irish. The former were, according to their theories, pure Scotch, mainly from the Lowlands, of Saxon origin, who had emigrated to Ireland, keeping themselves clear from all contact with the native Irish, from whom they differed in language, blood, morals, and religion, and from these people were sprung the founders of Londonderry, Antrim, Dublin, etc. " There is no evidence whatever to show that the ori- ginal settlers held any such opinions of themselves. The first pastor, Rev. Mr. McGregor, bore not a Lowland name, but, on the contrary, one of the proudest Highland names ; and mixed with the first comers were a great many who must, from the character of their names, have been of the old Irish stock, thus proving that this theory of not mingling with the Irish has no solid foundatTon. The composition of the Charitable Irish Society [Boston] is perhaps the best evidence of the truth of this statement. Their names show that they were Irish of the mixed race, Irish, English, and Scotch, and from first to last considered themselves Irish, without prefix or affix." That able writer, Robert Ellis Thompson, speaking of the early Irish Presbyterian immigration to this country, 22 says: "... And these immigrants brought to America such resentments of the wrongs and hardships they had endured in Ireland as made them the most hostile of all classes in America toward the continuance of British rule in this new world, and the foremost in the war to over- throw it. And those who remained in Ulster were not much better affected toward the system of rule they con- tinued to endure. At the close of the century we find the greater part of them uniting with their Roman Catholic countrymen for the overthrow of the monarchy and the establishment of an Irish republic, with the help of the French." Commissioner Linehan recalls, as an indication of how the pride of Irish blood prevailed among New Hampshire men, that between 1765 and 1770 St. Patrick's Lodge of Masons was organized at Portsmouth. Also we find Stark's Rangers on one occasion planning to celebrate the anni- versary of St. Patrick. At another period we see Gen. John McNeill, the descendant of a Londonderry settler, coming down to Boston and becoming a member of the Charitable Irish Society. Mr. Murray, already quoted, writing to Samuel Swett Green, of the American Antiquarian Society, observes that : — " Many persons who continually sing the praises of the so-called ' Scotch-Irish ' stand in serious danger of being considered not only ignorant but positively dishonest. Their practice is to select any or all Irishmen who have attained eminence in American public life, lump them together and label the lump ' Scotch-Irish.' ... " Prejudiced or poorly informed writers have made sad work of this Scotch-Irish business. Thus Henry Cabot Lodge gives the absurd definition of ' Scotch-Irish ' as being ' Protestant in religion and chiefly Scotch and Eng- lish in blood.' This has only been equalled in absurdity by Dr. Macintosh, who has defined this elusive element as 'not Scotch nor Irish, but rather British.' Here we have two gentlemen claiming to speak as with authority, yet unable to agree even in first essentials." * * * A few years since the Protestant Archbishop Plunkett, of Ireland, in addressing some Presbyterian visitors, said ; " I hope that while we shall always be very proud of our imperial nationality, proud of our connection with the British empire, on the history of which, as Irishmen, we have shed some lustre in the past, and from our connection with which we have derived much advantage in return — while we are proud, I say, of our imperial nationality, let us never be forgetful of our Irish nationality. We may be descended from different races — the Danes, Celts, Saxons, and Scots — but we form a combined stratum of our own, and that is Irish, and nothing else." Recurring to this Presbyterian Stewart's views on his neighbors, his statement that people of many nations and dialects came out of Scotland needs an explanation. Motley, in his "Rise of the Dutch Republic," throws a great light on this subject. He says in effect that the religious wars of Protestant and Catholic, and the persecu- tions growing out of them of the ever-increasing sectaries, drove shoals of artisans from Germany, Holland, and France to England ; Elizabeth of England had troubles of her own, and while she quarrelled with the Pope and dis- puted his headship, she was jealously insistent of her own leadership of her State Church, and had no use for the pugnacious sectaries from across the Channel. In time, owing to the English jealousy of foreigners and rival man- ufacturers, and the Queen's abhorrence of rivals against divinely-selected kings, Elizabeth shut down on the 24 refugees and refused them asylum. In those days it was a much graver offence to insult the Majesty of earth than heaven. Scotland, then in the throes of religious squab- bles, and the game of church plundering, and under the practical guidance of the amiable John Knox, gave them a welcome as kindred spirits. When other days came, when Mary's head had rolled from the block at Fotheringay, when her wretched son was enthroned, the foreign element found Scotland a poor land to live in. The settlement of Ulster gave them their chance, and they flocked there with Scotchmen and Englishmen to settle down and intermarry and become, as all before them had become, in that Irish crucible, Irish. The forms of religious dissent driven out of Europe to Great Britain, like Presbyterianism, had a common basis of agreement in their common Calvinism, and the foreigners naturally drifted into that form of ecclesiastical organiza- tion. Few went into the Anglican State Church, and many of that faith drifted away from it to Catholicity and Presbyterianism, and it was a special subject of reproach later that the state beneficed clergy caused such a state of affairs by their indifference and greed. But it remains for American historians to find the terms race and religion synonymous, and to advise an astonished world that when an Irishman, Frenchman, Englishman, Dutchman, or Walloon adopts Presbyterianism as his religious faith he is at once transformed into that hyphen- ated hybrid, a Scotch-Irishman. This is one of the marvels of this inventive age. Before Professor Fiske — for whose talent and industry I have a very great respect — gives us his promised views on the Scotch-Irishman in his forthcoming work, " The Dutch and Quaker Settlements in America," let me pro- pound a question or two to him. 25 If, as is pretended, a certain number of Lowland Scotch- men of the Presbyterian religion accomplished so much in Ulster and America, why have not the great majority of the same people accomplished as much in their own land and elsewhere, when all the conditions were in their favor ? And again, if so much was accomplished by an Irish environment and an Irish racial admixture, and so little achieved by the pure Scot under more favorable circum- stances, is it not a reasonable deduction that the Irish ele- ment was the responsible factor in the achievement ? If not, why not ? That invader and invaded should hate each other bitterly is not of any particular importance as bearing on nation- ality ; it is the experience of all lands and races. Presby- terian Murphys and McManuses are no argument for Scotch Murphys and McManuses; it may indicate inter- marriage and change of religious faith ; it can't indicate a change of blood. The transformation of bogs and fens into gardens is merely a fairy story ; the bogs and fens are in Ulster to-day. The fertile valleys of Ulster ready to be entered on was the bait to catch settlers ; for the defeated and disheartened native Irish had been driven to the barren hills and bogs. Men as a rule don't risk life and fortune for the privilege of transforming bogs to gardens in a hostile country ; and, moreover, as Motley says, England and Scotland in that age had the rudest system of agriculture in Europe. The higher system of agriculture as well as the woollen and linen industries came with the skilled exiles from Holland and France ; and even as great a plunderer as Wentworth was wise enough to foster them. And I might ask, why didn't these marvellous Scots make their own country famous for woollen and linen industries, when they made their own laws and could snap their fingers at English jealousy ? 26 Finally, if these people were Scotch " slightly Hiberni- cized," why did they on their arrival in America organize Irish societies ? Why did they name towns and rivers with Irish names ? Why did they celebrate St. Patrick's Day rather than St. Andrew's ? It will pay Professor Fiske to examine into the Irish emigration of the eighteenth century and learn, as less erudite people have done, that as much of this stream flowed from Limerick, Cork, Waterford, Dublin, and Eng- lish Bristol, as from Ulster ; and that Leinster and Mun- ster poured in fully as many Irish to Colonial America as did the northern province. What he is unwittingly doing is setting up the abhorrent dividing Hues of religion and marking off the race into " Irish-Irish " and "Scotch- Irish " upon the line of Catholicity and Protestantism. I, as one of the Protestant Irish, most strenuously object ; the name Irish was good enough for my fathers ; their son is proud to wear it as they did ; and we must all insist that the Irish, without any qualifications, all children of a com- mon and well-loved motherland, shall be given their full measure of credit for the splendid work done by them in America. 27 THE SCOTCH-IRISHMAN IN VERSE. The following bits of amusing verse treating the elusive and intangible Scotch-Irish race appeared in the Boston Pilot. The shafts of the anonymous poet are sharp enough to pierce even the leathery hide and sappy brain of the chroniclers of the phantom land where dwell the mysterious Scotch-Irish tribes ; and they show the fun and derision which the solemn fabrications of the histo- rians of Buckramland excite in th^ Irish mind : — LAMENT OF THE SCOTCH-IRISH EXILE. Oh, I want to win me hame To my ain countrie, The land frae whence I came Far away across the sea; But I canna find it there, on the atlas anywhere, And I greet and wonder sair Where the deil can it be? I hae never met a man In a' the warld wide Who has trod my native Ian' Or its distant shores espied; But they tell me there 's a place where my hypothetic race Its dim origin can trace — Tipperary-on- the-Clyde . But anither answers : " Nae, Ye are verra far frae richt ; Glasgow Town in Dublin Bay Is the spot we saw the licht." But I dinna find the maps bearing out these pawkie chaps. And I sometimes think perhaps It has vanished out o' sight. Oh, I fain wad win me hame To that undiscovered Ian' That has neither place nor name. Where the Scoto-Irishman May behold the castles fair by his fathers builded there, Many, many ages ere Ancient history began. Calvin K. Brannigan. 28 THE GATHERING OF THE SCOTCH-IRISH CLANS. Are ye gangin' to the meetin', to the meetin' o' the clans, With your tartans and your pibrochs and your bonnets and brogans? There are Neeleys from New Hampshire and Mulligans from Maine, McCarthys from Missouri and a Tennessee McShane. Kellys, Caseys, Dunns, and Daceys, by the dozen and the score. And O'Ferral, of Virginia, whom the Trilbyites adore. There are Cochranes (born Corcoran), as polished as you please. And Kenyons who were Keenans, and Murfrees once Murphys. And we '11 sit upon the pint-stoup and we '11 talk of auld lang syne As we quaff the flowing haggis to our lasses' bonnie eyne. And we '11 join in jubilation for the thing that we are not; For we say we aren't Irish, and God knows we aren't Scot ! Calvin K. Brannigan. * * * Note : Some years ago the Hon. Henry Cabot Lodge wrote an article for the " Century," entitled, " The Distribution of Ability in America," which was written in the customary unhappy manner of the " Scholar in Politics." The American article was prompted by and modelled after a sketch in a British quarterly purporting to do a similar work for Ireland and Great Britain. Mr. Lodge's screed was a lamentable affair, false in its premises, absurd in its conclusions, and marked by errors and omissions, that could only be attributed to haste, ignorance, or his chronic inability to understand that the world has contained races other than the Anglo-Saxon. Mr. Lodge was promptly taken to task by Mr. James Jeffrey Roche, editor of the Pilot^ who, taking the same sources of information alleged to have been consulted by Mr. Lodge, soundly castigated that distinguished personage and showed how " A little knowledge is a dangerous thing." Apropos of Mr. Lodge's " Distribution of Ability," he was, at the time of writing, a member of Congress ; and, full of the remarkable 29 things he fancied he had discovered, he gurgled and cackled round the House, imparting his marvels to all. That very clever man, the late Governor Greenhalge, of Massachusetts, was in Congress at the time and he learned of Mr. Lodge's discoveries with mischievous delight. Despite the fact that the two gentlemen were excellent friends, Mr. Greenhalge had no illusions concerning Mr. Lodge's limitations. When the Nahant statesman approached him with, " My dear Greenhalge, I have made a remarkable discovery," Greenhalge smiled and said, " I know you have." " Oh, you 've heard about it, have you ? " " I 've heard nothing, except that you 've written about the ' Dis- tribution of Ability ' ; but then, my dear fellow, I know exactly what you've found out and written, because I know you." " Oh, come now, Greenhalge," said the Nahant historian, a trifle nettled ; " what have I found out ?" "You have discovered," said Greenhalge, with a twinkle in his eye, " that ninety per cent of American ability sprang from New England, principally Massachusetts ; ninety per cent of that blossomed in and around Boston ; and of that ninety per cent, perhaps ninety per cent must be credited to Nahant." This Chinese devotion to the worship of his ancestors is the in- eradicable defect in Mr. Lodge's role of historian ; yet in his ardor to bepraise that twin of the Scotch-Irishman, the Anglo-Saxon, he flouts even the race of the Italian ancestor whose name he bears, — Cabot. * * * INTERSTATE COMMERCE COMMISSION