The life & times of John England, first bishop of Charleston (1786-1842)
Guilday, Peter, 1884-1947
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Contents of the Second Volume Pusiic Discourses. 1824-1842 Tue AppreEss BEFORE ConcREss. 1826 ANTECEDENTS TO THE First PROVINCIAL COUNCIL. 1821-1828 First PRovINcIAL COUNCIL OF BALTIMORE. 1829 CATHOLIC EDUCATION AND SocIAL WELFARE FoREIGN CATHOLIC MISSIONARY SOCIETIES. 1822- 1842 NATIONAL CATHOLIC ProcREss. 1829-1833 THE SECOND PROVINCIAL CoUNCIL OF BALTIMORE. 1833 1833-1837 1834-1837 1836 Tue ApostToLic DELEGATION TO HAITI. CoapJuTOR-BisHop WILLIAM CLANCY. Tue LETTER TO THE Society oF LYONS. THe Tuirp ProvinciAL CoUNCIL OF BALTIMORE. 1837 1822-1828 1828-1840 1839- Writincs or BisHop ENGLAND I. Writincs oF BisHop ENGLAND II. GENERAL CONVENTIONS OF THE DIOCESE. 1841 FourtTH PRovINcCIAL CouNcIL OF BALTIMORE. 1840 Last ILLNEss AND DEATH. 1842 APPENDIX. Essay ON THE SOURCES INDEX Pal rahe j ‘W in CCE TN fs en CHAPTER XIX Pustic Discourses (1824-1841 ) In announcing to the Catholic clergy of the United States in March, 1847, his design to publish Dr. England’s Works, Bishop Ignatius Reynolds tells us that his chief motive was to preserve for future generations the labors of a great writer and orator who possessed in an eminent degree the talent of communicating his thoughts in a style remarkable for its strength and beauty and clearness, of always marshalling his arguments to the greatest ad- vantage, and of accommodating himself to the circumstances and spirit of his age.* No project of this kind ever designed in the history of the Amer- ican Church had more brilliant editors: James A. Corcoran; Pat- rick Neeson Lynch; and Augustine F. Hewit, one of that remarkable group of priests who were to found the Paulists in 1858. There must be a motive to induce one to read Dr. England’s published writings, we read in the Introduction to his Works. That motive, is the life and character of this wonderful man. It was not only the perfect periods of his rhetoric and the crystal clearness of his reasoning that crowded St. Finnbar’s Cathedral with the elite of Charleston. It was belief in the man as well, in his sincerity, his singleness of motive, his spirit of sacrifice, his absolute consecration of himself to the service of God and the salvation of souls. All this was in his daily life as they saw it and this passed into his works and gave them a living force. Such a man could persuade as well as convince. His learning was profound and varied. . . . He was a master of logic. But his personality dominated all these and invariably impressed itself upon his students, priests and people.? In one sense, Bishop England’s sermons were all public dis- courses. The announcement that he was to preach always brought *Preface to volume I, p. v. Baltimore, 1847-49. "Duffy, in Biographical Introduction to Messmer edition of England’s Works, vol. I, pp. xvi-xvii. Cleveland, 1908. 2 THE LIFE OF JOHN ENGLAND large audiences to his own cathedral; to the churches, Catholic and non-Catholic, in the Carolinas and Georgia, whose pulpits he occu- pied; to the court houses and assembly halls; and to open-air meetings held mostly under Protestant auspices. His twenty dis- courses to the Conventions of the three States and to the Society of St. John the Baptist, which he had organized on the model of the Society for the Propagation of the Faith of Lyons, were all public when given, or became public immediately in the columns of the Miscellany. The discourses, however, which are chosen here for a_ brief analysis of his oratory are most properly called public discourses in the sense that they were prepared for general assemblies. The first of these is his Epochs of Irish History, delivered in 1824. By a singular coincidence, writes Thomas D’Arcy McGee, in his Catholic History of North America, Ireland and America began clamoring at the gates of British power for redress at one and the same time. Both began with the Navigation Act, with taxation, and with free trade; both advanced by degrees to declarations of political sovereignty, America in 1776, Ireland in 1780; both obtained the recogni- tion of their demands the same year, from the same ministry and the same monarch. This identity of causes produced identity of feeling; identity of feeling led to open acts of sympathy and correspondence; the double diversion thus effected—was mutually beneficial. America’s resistance gave Ireland an opportunity to propose her ultimatum; and Ireland’s ultimatum helped to hasten the recognition of America’s inde- pendence.? This identity of Irish and American history goes back much farther than the days of the War of Independence. M. J. O’Brien’s contribution to the subject, A Hidden Phase of American History, has brought out a striking amount of testimony for Irish participa- tion in the colonial culture of America; and the historian of the United States can no longer pass over in silence Ireland’s part in the making of America or allow his pen to copy the misstatements of his predecessors. Catholic Irish from the South and West of Ire- land and non-Catholic Irish from the North of the Emerald Isle are no longer being ignored in the study of the colonial, revolutionary *Pp. 246-247. PUBLIC DISCOURSES 3 or national periods of our history; and within recent years a flood of new light has been thrown upon the contribution Ireland made from the time of the English settlement at Jamestown to the present. Irishmen were signers of the Declaration of Independence; Irishmen were members of the first American Congress which began in 1774 and continued down to the year of the framing of the Constitution; Irishmen were among the Framers of the Constitution; Irishmen commanded brigades and regiments in the struggle for independence, and an Irishman [Commodore John Barry] stands in the unique position of Father of the American Navy. Irishmen were Governors of American pro- vinces and States prior to the opening of the nineteenth century; an Irishman [Dongan] was Governor of the Province of New York, and another [Sir William Johnson] was governor of the Indians from the Hudson to the Mississippi River; Irishmen were Governors of the Carolinas; an Irishman governed the Province of Maryland; an Irishman was the first Governor of Delaware; and another Irishman was one of the earliest Gov- ernors of the State of Pennsylvania; the son of an Irishman was the first Governor of the State of New York, and the son of an Irishman was the first Mayor of the City of New York after the Revolution.* Irish schoolmasters were also to be found in every part of the colonies. O’Brien gives a typical example of their position in American history by citing the case of John Sullivan, who came to New England in 1723, and applied to the Rev. Mr. Moody, of Scot- land Parish, Maine, for the post of teacher in the community, with a letter written in seven languages. John Sullivan was the father of a Governor of New Hampshire and of a Gov- ernor of Massachusetts, of the first Judge appointed in New Hampshire, of an Attorney-General of New Hampshire, of a Major-General in the Revolutionary army, and of four sons who were officers in that army; he was the grandfather of a Governor of Maine and of a United States Senator from New Hampshire and of an Attorney-General of that State; the great-grandfather of an Attorney-General of New Hampshire and of a Judge of its courts, and the great-great-grandfather of a distinguished officer in the Civil War.5 The earliest known record of an Irish emigration to the Caro- “O’Brien, op. cit., pp. 358-359. Many documents on the nature and extent of immigration from Ireland will be found in Abbott, Historical Aspects of the Immigration Problem. Chicago, 1926. "Ibid., p. 248. 4, THE LIFE OF JOHN ENGLAND linas is given in the Shaftesbury Papers, which record that a large colony of Irish men and women left for South Carolina in 1669. Towards the end of the seventeenth century an Irish settle- ment was begun in Berkeley County, South Carolina, some of the settlers coming from the Northern colonies and others from the Irish groups then in the Barbadoes. Ramsay in his History of South Carolina says that “of all countries none have furnished the province with so many inhabitants as Ireland. Scarce a ship sailed from any of its ports for Charleston that was not crowded with men, women and children.” To North Carolina also many Irishmen came during the first half of the eighteenth century. These were mostly from the North of Ireland or Irish from Pennsylvania. The Colonial Records of the State tell us that the early Irish immigrants came to the Caro- linas by two routes: one by the Delaware River from Pennsylvania; the other by the port of Charleston: Those landing at the Southern port immediately sought the fertile forests of the upper country, approaching North Caro- lina and Georgia on the other, and not being particular about boundaries, extended southward at pleasure; while on the north they were checked by a counter tide of immigration. Those who landed on the Delaware, after the desirable lands east of the Alleghenies in Pennsylvania were occupied, turned their course southward and were speedily on the Catawba. Passing on, they met the southern tide, and the stream turned westward to the wilderness long known as “beyond the moun- tains’ (now Tennessee). These two streams from the same original fountain, Ireland, meeting and intermingling in this new soil, preserve their characteristic differences, the one pos- sessing some of the air and manner of Pennsylvania, the other of Charleston. The Colonial Records of Georgia indicate an equally impor- tant infusion of Irish blood into that colony, and Irishmen are among the earliest builders of towns in the State. Many of these emigrants came from the North, from the Carolinas, Pennsylvania and Maryland, and there is a record for the year 1768, that “the most numerous single colony which, up to that time, had come to Georgia from any European country,” came from Ireland. Not all these emigrants into the Carolinas and Georgia were “convicts” or “redemptioners.” Many were schoolmasters in an PUBLIC DISCOURSES 5 epoch when that profession demanded a very high type of scholar. Many others were self-exiled on account of political principles. All classes of Irishman in the colonies, in spite of various dif- ferences which were ineradicable, were as one in the hereditary sense of wrong inflicted on their land by the British Government from time immemorial. It is now generally admitted that from the reign of James I (1603-1625) until the War of Independence, a period of a century and a half, the American colonies witnessed a steady and ever-increasing influx of Irish immigrants. Political principles bound them together, wherever they settled. “An Irish- man, the instant he set foot on American soil,” wrote an English visitor in 1782, “became ipso facto an American.” But the fact that needs hardly any emphasis in the long history of the Irish in America is their enthusiastic love for their native land. Knowledge of political crises in Ireland was spread among Irishmen and their descendants here, and a close friendship existed between the col- onists and those who were struggling at home for freedom. A sense of social homogeneity has never been absent from the Irish people in whatever quarter of the world they settled; and there grew up in consequence in eighteenth-century colonial America various so- cieties which had for their object the social and political well-be- ing of their race. One of the earliest of these was the Boston Charitable Irish So- ciety, founded in 1737. Prior to the Revolution, but post-dating the Sons of Liberty by a few years, was the Society of the Friendly Sons of Saint Patrick, founded in Philadelphia in 1771 and in New York in 1784. A similar organization, the Hibernian Society for the Relief of Emigrants from Ireland, was established in Phila- delphia in 1770, and in 1779 the Hibernian Society was incor- porated in Charleston, one of the founders being Father Simon Felix Gallagher. This organization became popular in the Caro- linas and Georgia, and Dr. England could hardly fail to take a keen interest in its charitable and social activities. All these so- cieties were primarily benevolent organizations. The bond of union was the Irish nationality of its members either by birth or parentage, and the maintenance of the national spirit was one of the primary objects of the society. But this devotion to the history and tradi- 6 THE LIFE OF JOHN ENGLAND tions of their native land was constantly and inseparably bound up with an unwavering loyalty to the land of their adoption.® The soul of the movement for Irish freedom at the end of the eighteenth century was the Society of United Irishmen, founded in 1791, by a group of Irishmen of Belfast. The emancipation of Catholic Ireland and Parliamentary Reform were the chief ob- jects of the society, and branches were soon begun in the United States, traces of their activity being visible as early as 1794. News- papers were founded to carry the message of the leaders to their American subscribers; the chief of these was the New York Aurora, then a mouthpiece of the Jeffersonian party. The English Govern- ment could not overlook the danger of the influence wielded in America by these groups, and the British Minister, Sir Robert Liston, is said in consequence to have used his power with friends of President Adams to have the Alien and Sedition Laws passed in 1798. "Cf. Men of Irish Blood who have attained Distinction in American Jour- nalism, by M. E. Hennessy, in the Journal of the American Irish Historical Society, vol. III, p. 63. Matthew Lyon was the first Irishman to suffer under the Sedition Law. Strangely enough, Adams met his defeat for re-election by Lyon’s deciding vote. SW. J. MacNeven, Pieces of Irish History, illustrative of the Conditions of the Catholics of Ireland, of the Origin and Progress of the Political System of the United Irishmen, and of their Transactions with the Anglo-Irish Government. New York, 1807; Madden, History of Irish Periodical Literature, 2 vols. London, 1867; Foik, Pioneer Efforts of Catholic Journalism in the United States (365 pp.) — MS in the Library of the Catholic University of America, Washington, D. C. A digest of this volume will be found in the Catholic Historical Review, vol. I, pp. 258-270. PUBLIC DISCOURSES 7 American-Irish newspapers became a weapon in the final struggle with Great Britain for the emancipation of Catholic Ireland. The Shamrock or Hibernian Chronicle (1810), the Globe and Emerald (1824), the Truth Teller (1825), the Irish Shield and Monthly Milesian (1828), and the Jrish Advocate (1831), are some among the various press enterprises started at this time to keep Irish- Americans properly informed of the progress towards Emancipa- tion and also to lay before them the status of political parties in the United States on questions touching Irish Freedom. The [rish- man and Charleston Weekly Register, begun in Charleston in 1829, is a link between the partly political newspress of this first period and the second, when the object of these papers became largely the defense of Irish history and tradition and of the Catholic Faith. The appearance of Bishop England’s Miscellany in June, 1822, gave joy to all his Irish compatriots in the United States. Here was a weekly newspaper, edited by the foremost spirit in the American Church, by one who had already won laurels in the Veto Contro- versy, and it was to be expected that Dr. England would admirably carry on the fight for enlightenment in the South. His Visitation of 1821-23 had spread his fame in almost every city of the three States under his jurisdiction. By actual count, from January 1, 1821, until the last date in the Diurnal, December 5, 1823, he had given two hundred and seven public discourses in all the im- portant centers of the three States, in court houses, in Presbyterian, Methodist, Baptist, and Episcopalian churches, and in the houses of non-Catholics. It is doubtful whether any American bishop had such remarkable experiences. He was met everywhere with a charm- ing courtesy on the part of the town officials and non-Catholic min- isters, who vied with one another to secure him for their churches. Two sermons a day, sometimes three, not to speak of private ex- hortations to the little groups of Catholics he discovered, were the ordinary demand on his energies. One has but to search the precious pages of the Diurnal to realize that there was something so attractive in his discourses, and so sincere in the man himself, that differences of belief were forgotten in the desire to hear Christian truths explained by a young bishop who was all that Southern culture and intelligence might desire. His fame as a 8 THE LIFE OF JOHN ENGLAND public speaker increased from this time forward, and before many years had passed from one end of the Union to the other, his name became a household word with Catholics of every nationality, who re- cognized in him a champion fully equipped, and equal to the good fight. The feeling of his own countrymen towards him cannot be described, so intense was their pride in his great qualities, his power of pen and tongue, his resistless force as a controversialist, his capacity for public affairs, the nobleness and grandeur of his nature, which all men respected, and which made for him the fastest friends among those who were not of his Church. There were other great and good bishops, who by their saintly character and holy lives com- manded a respectful toleration for their faith; but Bishop England extorted respect for his religion by the matchless power with which he unfolded its principles to those who crowded round him wherever he went, and refuted the calum- nies and misrepresentations that had been the stock-in-trade of the enemies of Catholicity for centuries. Like all Irishmen, of that day as of the present, Bishop England at once became an American citizen, thoroughly identified with his adopted country, proud of her greatness, jealous of her honour, loving her beyond all others, save that old land whose recollection lay warm in his heart.® March Seventeenth was a holiday second only to the Fourth of July in all the larger cities where a fitting celebration might be held. Accordingly, Dr. England was invited by the Hibernian So- ciety of Savannah to deliver the annual address on St. Patrick’s Day, 1824, in that city. This was the occasion of his first public discourse: Epochs of Irish History. PUBLIC DISCOURSES 2 the centre aisle were exclusively for ladies; those of the north- ern and southern aisles were thronged with ladies and gentle- men, whilst some of the first citizens of Georgia, together with some of the stoutest boys who left the sod with their bunches of the lovely green, gave a true exhibition of equality, in the close packing of the aisles themselves. On the platform of the altar three chairs were occupied by the Rev. Robert Browne, the Pastor of the Church, the Rev. Abiel Carter, the Protestant Episcopal Clergyman, and the Rev. Mr. Howe, the Presbyterian Clergyman. The President of the Trustees of the Church, Mr. Gaudry, led the President of the Society, Colonel Hunter, to his seat. Liberty Square, on which the church fronts, contained hundreds who could not find room to enter, and whom the rain, which commenced after the entrance of the procession, compelled reluctantly to disperse. The Right Rev. Dr. England appeared in the pulpit, with a cross formed with shamrocks on his stole, and after telling the history of Ire- land’s greatness, of her wrongs and of her woes, in doing which he was often much affected, but not without the full sympathy of those who surrounded him, he concluded with the two last verses of Moore’s beautiful poem, O blame not the Bard, after having enforced the moral, that misery and ruin must be the portion of every country which creates and preserves sectional and sectarian hostility and beseeching the Americans, native and adopted, to avoid the rock upon which his country had been ruined. We learn from a letter, written at Augusta, August 8, 1824, that Dr. England’s address was given without notes. “I was unable,” he writes, “to make any preparation; the shortness of the notice and the importance of the duties in the discharge of which I was oc- cupied, left me no time to make any arranged discourse. I there- fore took the order of our history, trusting to my feelings for what- ever reflections it might be proper to make.” When the Hibernian Society asked for a copy of the address in order to publish it, he set to work in the midst of his Visitation of Georgia and wrote out the discourse as best he remembered it. The result is a remarkable composition, both by the arrangement of the contents as well as by its eloquence. The argument is clearly put: the history of Ireland is a mirror for America. He traces the civilization of the Irish back to the re- motest times. All the sources he used are not visible in the ad- dress, but it is evident that Mathew Carey’s Vindiciae Hibernicae 10 THE LIFE OF JOHN ENGLAND or Ireland Vindicated, which that well-known publicist printed in Philadelphia in 1819, is the main fountain of many of his citations. A new and enlarged edition of this most successful of all early American works on Ireland came out in 1823, and with this source- book at hand, Dr. England needed little else to direct his pen. Francis Plowden is quoted in his Epochs as are Sir John Davies and the Bishop of Derry’s Irish Historical Library. The Epochs of Irish History is one of the clearest expositions on that subject in English.14 Dr. England traces Ireland’s story in pre-Christian times, first of all by means of the monumenta scat- tered through the country. The systematic destruction of docu- ments from the reign of Henry II to that of James I left little writ- ten testimony for the historian; but, as Dr. England said, the tradi- tions lived on among the people: . . . though the parchment should be shrivelled to ashes in the flames; though the sceptre may be stricken from the mon- arch’s hand; and the pointed crown be torn from his dishevelled head; though the assembly may be driven from the hall of de- liberation, and the blazonings of heraldic precedence be mingled in confusion and trampled in the dust; though it may be criminal to preserve the name of your progenitors, and the great portion of the people should be compelled to take up sur- names from trades and occupations, and in a language which was yet scarcely blending into form, and next to unintelligible: still the memory of facts will outlive the destruction of their testimony, and the reasonable traditions of a nation will supply the place of writings. He then treats the problem of the origin of the Irish, with their social and religious customs up to the coming of St. Patrick, their Apostle. The historical sources for these years, he says, which have been preserved, coincide with the tradition and the songs of the people. Acting on the principle that “there is no Saint of whom we have more lives and of whom we know less than St. Patrick,” Dr. England touches but slightly upon the details of his life. He sums up the introduction of the Christian Faith into Ireland in a splendid phrase: “Whatever may have been the cause, Ireland did The copy of this rare volume (Dublin, 1724) in the Library of the Cath- olic University of America has bound with it an original print of that scarce little book, History of the Irish Writers, by William Harris (Dublin, 1736). “Works (Messmer), vol. VII, p. 398. PUBLIC DISCOURSES ll not slay her Apostles.” The fruits of Patrick’s apostolic labors are described in a passage that deserves to be remembered: . upon the arrival of Patrick, a new impulse was given to the missionary force, and the true religion began widely to dif- fuse itself. Much opposition, of course, was made by many to the labours of the apostle; but he, well knowing that his doc- trines were such as could bear to have their foundations closely examined, desired at once to lay them before the assembled wisdom and judgment, and learning of the nation. He went to the Congress at Tara, and there openly preached a crucified God. The Druids and principal abettors of the Irish mytholo- gy disputed with him; but he was chiefly thwarted by the machinations, and intrigues, and open resistance of Niall, the son of the monarch, whose influence was very extensive. So that the apostle did not, at this time, reap all the fruit upon which he had calculated. Yet were many persons brought to a deep sense of the folly of idolatry, and the necessity of serv- ing God, who is a spirit, in spirit and in truth. The only positive infliction of which we have an account, is of one subsequently to this—an imprisonment of the saint and his companion in irons during about fourteen days. Being released from durance, he went southwards, and converted the King of Munster and his family; then going up towards the northwest, he brought over the King of Connaught, and his sons to the profession of the faith, and carried on the mission in Ulster with extraordinary success. In a short time churches rose upon the ruins of idols. Monasteries of men and women were everywhere founded, and the religion of Christ in a few years predominated through the island. We have no rec- ord of so sudden, so perfect, so general a conversion of any other nation. The apostle of Ireland saw his flock now too large for his superintendence, and new bishoprics were created. His name is now held in esteem, and in that same assembly at Tara, where on a former occasion he was disappointed, he is now covered with honours: he is admitted to his seat, he is ranked amongst their most learned men, and made one of the judges to preserve the purity of their historical records. The place formerly held by the teachers of idolatry is now given to the apostles of the Lamb. Ireland now adds the gem of Roman literature to the treasures which she had long pos- sessed, and her clergy and laity are emulous of each other in making progress in the new field of learning to which they had been introduced. Her ancient music resounds in the tem- ple of the living God, and her virgins lift the melody of their voices to celebrate in grateful notes, the triumph of redemp- 12 THE LIFE OF JOHN ENGLAND tion. O, land of my fathers! how beauteous were your hills, how lovely were your valleys, how pure were your streams in that day before the eye of heaven! The hand of the spoiler did not desolate your fields; the foot of the stranger was not upon the necks of your children; the sword of the persecutor did not stain your temples with blood; the torch of the incen- diary did not consume the retreats of devotion; the ruthless bigot had not as yet armed your sons for their mutual destruc- tion; but the conviction of the understanding formed the basis of piety, and perfect charity exhibited the form of undefiled religion. The children of Ireland were in that day known to be disciples of our Lord Jesus, because they loved one another. The days of Patrick were prolonged until from his metro- politan eminence of Armagh, he beheld the land flourish in beauty, lovely in peace, and decorated with virtue. The place of the Irish in the dark days which followed the collapse of the Roman Empire is then described and with sheer beauty of diction the discourse moves with splendid stateliness down through the Middle Ages to the days of the Normans: “The head of the venomous destroyer” as he calls that race, “was fre- quently lopped off; but the fens of Lerna never nurtured a more multiplying antagonist than the defeated and yet conquering bar- barian of the North. He sat down in France, he occupied Eng- land, he assailed Ireland. Often repulsed, he yet returned, and at length had considerable possessions and extensive sway in our country.” Then follow the conquest of Ireland under Henry Plantagenet and the long night that set in for her people. “Let it be to you,” Dr. England warns his American auditors, “a lesson of caution. May the sad fate of my country create in you vigilance to detect and firmness to restrain those ambitious and immoral individuals who would divide a people, that they may build up their own fortunes with the fragments of national union.” The period of the Protestant Rebellion he would prefer not to treat: I do not wish, my friends, to excite in you, nor to revive in myself, those feelings of pain and indignation which the sub- sequent history of Ireland is but too well calculated to create. The Danes commenced the destruction of its records and the system of its disorganization. Other more successful and more persevering enemies were now their successors. It was asked by PUBLIC DISCOURSES 13 a poet subsequently to this epoch, Cur lyra percussa, funestas edidit sonores? And it was well answered, that the sound of the national music should be that of mournful melody, be- cause in the day of her disaster, her liberties had been cloven down, her children were devoted to slavery, she was seated in the dust, her glory was tarnished, her face bedewed with tears, the testimonies of her greatness were torn away and de- stroyed, she was sprinkled with obloquy, even sucklings were brought to laugh at her woe, and to mock at her affliction. A proud neighbor who had plundered her of her jewels flung the garb of folly on her shoulders and pointed her out to the de- rision of the world. How could her harp be tuned to mirth and revelry? Well might her children answer as did God’s chosen people of old: “Upon the rivers of Babylon, there we sat and we wept, when we remembered Sion. Upon the willows in the midst thereof we hung up our harps; because there they who led us captive asked for the words of our songs, and they who led us away said, ‘Sing to us a hymn of the canticles of Sion.’ How shall we sing the song of the Lord in a strange land? If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, may my right hand be forgotten: may my tongue cleave to my jaws if I do not remember thee. If I do not place Jerusalem as the begin- ning of my joy.” Yes, my friends, human nature is the same in every age and throughout the world. The Israelite in Baby- Jon and the Irishman in his own land of streams, equally felt the hand of the oppressor. I shall not continue. No man in Ireland, Dr. England says, dared write the true his- tory of these centuries of Irish history. Dark and more dark are the tints in which those times must be painted: Let us not too closely view the picture. O! well do I recollect that the relations of my aged countrymen, when seated on their knees I listened to the tales of their sufferings, and the reality of the evils which they endured from the men who claimed pre-eminence in civilized society, exceeded the descriptions of romance; and the highly coloured tints of the poet, who writes to make his readers weep, are light and vapid when contrasted with the glowing streaks of oppression which may be traced on the humbled children of Ireland. How often have I wept at the escapes and the endurance of my grandsires! Their lot was humble, because they professed the religion of their pro- genitors. Never, whilst memory holds her seat shall I forget the story of the woes of my father, which with tears he related me to prove my comparative happiness; for he narrowly escaped the fate of a felon because, without changing his 14 THE LIFE OF JOHN ENGLAND religion, he dared to explore the vestibule of science; and yet the people of Ireland are accused of being ignorant! O, my friends, what is that policy which barbarizes and then re- proaches you with barbarism? It is true, that in comparison with my progenitors of a few centuries my trials have been nothing: . . . But, thank God, I at length breathe the air of a freeman, and no one reproaches me with the causes of my glory—that I am sprung from a country which was civilized before others were discovered; that my religion is coeval with Christianity, coextensive with civilization. If the minds of his hearers could but rest without torture for a moment he would bring home to them the lesson of the dread days gone by: O, ter quaterque beati, may we pronounce the sons of America—not for having fallen under their walls without having witnessed the ruin of their country—but for enjoying all the blessing of freedom without having tasted the bitterness of slavery, and without having experienced the afflictions of persecution. O, nimium felices si sua bona norint. They do not value the mighty benefits the want of which they have never experienced. Let them see an island rich in soil and blooming in culture, yet a prey to every species of tyranny and despotism, filled with crime and a charnel-house from the executioner; these are the lamentable consequences of sectional and sectarian broils; the force of her people is broken, their energies are paralyzed, and they are the prey of a despicable oligarchy, because they permit themselves to be foolishly excited and wickedly played off against each other. O, tell it to your chil- dren and to your children’s children, and let them transmit the moral to your latest descendants. My country has been ruined because her people were parcelled into parties and the parties were like the offspring of the dragon’s teeth armed for mutual destruction. The balmy air of charity surrounds and _ in- vigorates us here. O, may it never be tainted! Bishop England then does ample justice to the Presbyterians of the North of Ireland, to the United Irishmen, and to many dis- tinguished members of the Established Church, for the strides they had made since 1791, in securing liberty and toleration for their country. “Never in a body”, he said, “was there found more true patriotism than in the body of the Presbyterian Clergy of Ireland of that day.” But again sectarian hatreds were let loose upon the PUBLIC DISCOURSES 15 land by their oppressors and the hopes of liberty were destroyed. The moral was self-evident: Here we have religious differences; but here we freely dis- cuss religious topics in language respectful to the feelings of each other; here each follows the conviction of his own mind, and is accountable only at the tribunal of that God who will judge us all, and to whom only we stand or fall, and he alone can clearly decide who is obstinately or carelessly wrong, and who is innocently and invincibly ignorant of his truth, and his justice requires the condemnation of the former, but his mercy protects the latter. Whilst we sedulously inquire, and freely discuss, we must leave to him his exclusive prerogative, that of deciding upon the merit and the fate of individuals. He who, positively certain of his adhesion to truth, would call down fire from heaven upon unbelieving cities or obstinate individuals, knows not by what spirit he is led. It is the pride of human passion, and not the ardour of religious zeal. Persecution makes hypocrites; to hate a person even for infidelity is a crime against charity, and to grasp the sword to punish for un- belief is to usurp the seat of the judging Son of Man. I do not know of any other to whom that commission has been given. No person who wants charity will enter heaven, and to usurp the exclusive office of the Redeemer is not the best ground on which a claim of salvation can rest. I possess evidence of truth, but I cannot without being able to inspect the mind of him who differs from me, possess evidence that he knows himself to be in opposition to truth. Free discussion, and difference of doctrine, are perfectly compatible with affection and charity. But hatred, and religious discord, and persecution, have ruined many souls. Let us learn wisdom from the misfortunes of my country. Dr. England then recalls the days of the Veto Controversy in which he was a participant, and describes the efforts of the Catholic clergy to offset any union of Church and State in Ireland. “May God long preserve the liberties of America”, he says, “from any union of any Church with any State!” Upon this note he ends his discourse, and to this note the entire purpose of the Essay was to lead. It is to these years of the first quarter of the nineteenth century that we must trace the movement, known under various names since that time, which sought to deprive Catholic Americans of their freedom under the laws of the land. In contrast to the scenes of violence against the Church which 16 THE LIFE OF JOHN ENGLAND Dr. England was to witness before his death, is the description of the courtesies paid to him after his address at Savannah was de- livered. The Hibernian Society proceeded to the City Hotel, and a Captain Poole spoke in the name of the members: The address which you have this day delivered has shed a burst of light on the historic page of that ill-fated country, which notwithstanding persecution at home and _ prejudice abroad, still maintains her claim to genius, literature, and hospitality. The Society in conferring honorary membership on you, has acted in obedience to grateful feeling; and we, in discharging the duty confided to us, feel highly gratified, assured, as we are, that we have been made the means of con- veying to you an honour to which your merit entitles you. We hope, sir, that you will receive it as it is intended, and indulge in the further expectation that your religious instruction, moral rectitude and national feelings, will be productive of benefit to our common country.” Three years passed before Dr. England again found the leisure to accept one of the many invitations to address the learned and patriotic societies within his diocese. On January 10, 1827, he delivered a lecture on The Religion and Customs of the Tribes of the American Indians before the Literary and Philosophical Society of Charleston, at the City Hall. It is difficult to know how he came to choose the subject. As printed, the essay consists of two parts, one of which was delivered that evening, the other appearing later in the Southern Review. The treatment is not a happy one; the argument is involved; and the ideas at times are confused. The thesis is an argument to disprove a position taken by the historian Hume:—that polytheism was man’s first religion and the savage his first social state. Citations in favor of the thesis are given from the printed discourses of Sir William Jones, President of the Asiatic Society. The importance of the lecture comes not so much from the first part as from the second, in which Dr. England gives forty pages of translated quotations from the Lettres Edifiantes et Cu- rieuses, printed in Paris in 1781, a set of which was in his library. This was the first time in the history of American literature that attention was called to the wealth of scientific material in the ®Cath. Misc., vol. V, p. 57. PUBLIC DISCOURSES 17 Letters and Relations of the Jesuits and other missionaries among the Indian tribes.'? Dr. England’s next notable discourse was on The Origin and History of the Duel. Duelling came into the South with the earliest settlers and remained for over two centuries an accepted part of the social code. Gamble writes in his Savannah Duels and Duellists (1737-1877): “A blow, an intimation of dishonesty, a reflection on veracity, a sharp difference of opinion on a political issue, an accusation of cheating at cards, an insinuation of unchastity on the part of a woman, these and other offenses of less magnitude constituted the provocation that justified challenges.”'* One has but to peruse the pages of this and similar volumes to appreciate the extent of the social plague caused by duelling in the South up to the last generation. The practice grew beyond all control in the first quarter of the nineteenth century. So frequent had duels be- come that public-spirited men in the leading cities of the South began in 1825-1826 the promotion of Anti-Duelling Associations. In Charleston, such a body had been founded in 1825, to put an end to the practice, and Dr. England was one of its leading spirits. The constitution of the Savannah Society strictly condemned duelling as a violation of law, both human and divine, as hostile to the peace and good order of society, and as destructive to the happiness of domestic life. The method adopted by its members was a seasonable and friendly interposition, with or without the aid of the civil magistracy, as was seen to them most expedient, to prevent the occurrence of any contemplated or appointed duel, of which they may have information or well-founded appre- hension, and to procure from time to time the publication of such essays or papers against duelling as they may deem calcu- lated to operate for the correction of the error of the prevalent opinion on the subject. Such a movement was not permitted to grow without a strong opposition; but public opinion was gradually awakened, and for some years the practice of duelling decreased. The principal work done by the Anti-Duelling Association was to inform the public mind on the illegality of the practice. It is to John England’s Works (Messmer), vol. V, pp. 104-159; cf. L. Farrand, Basis of American History, pp. 248-261. New York, 1904. “P, 183. Savannah, 1925. 18 THE LIFE OF JOHN ENGLAND credit that he accomplished this in his address On the Origin and History of the Duel, delivered before the Anti-Duelling Associa- tion in the Cathedral at Charleston in November, 1827. It has been said of this address that “it is one of the most masterly and over-powering productions ever penned in any language!” That there was much confusion of thought on the origin of the duel, Dr. England took for granted: It is a matter of notoriety that during several ages a practice has prevailed, more or less generally, amongst civilized nations, of terminating some differences of individuals by single combat, in a manner previously arranged; and this fight has at times been considered a very becoming and honourable mode of clos- ing those altercations. Some persons have frequently en- deavoured to find in what circumstances of the duel the quality of honour consisted, but have been baffled, sometimes by the diversity of cases, all said to be honourable; at other times by the opposition to correct principles in those general, but essential characteristics, which were found in every case. I must avow that I do not recollect a moment when I did not feel the practice to be censurable, though I do remember a time when I was under what I now believe to have been a very erroneous impression: that engaging in such a combat was, at least, an exhibition of courage; hence I never conceived it to be honourable. And having been upon terms of intimacy with several men of powerful mind, and generally correct feeling, and in vain sought to learn from them in what one or more circumstances of the practice honour consisted, I could never obtain any elucidation. Was it in killing your adversary? No! for honour was generally satisfied without his death, and very frequently after the discharge of a pistol which inflicted a wound upon public morality alone, the parties who previously appeared to seek mutual destruction became fast and honour- able friends. 