THE MAKING OF A NATION

Otago Daily Times, Issue 13835, 23 February 1907, Page 13

THE MAKING OF A NATION

IiEGLNiMNGS OF NEW'ZICALAND

.NATIONALITY.

lII.—THE IRISH. By Guv 11. Suiolkkield. '[Copyright.] if ever political despair and economic desperation, extending not over one year or a decade, lmt over centuries, could d'.'ivo a people from tho land of its birth and tradition to renew its institutions and its glories undei different skie.; tlit.: - yolives were present as n goad to Hie Irish.

• More than a century ago, when Ireland had scarcely realised the hopelessness, for Hie tnno at least, of the struggle for national independence, the suzerain power had opened the way. through (lie chain gang and the convict shin, to a. world which was to lie infinitely brighter as the years went by. The track to the Australias was scarcely blazed by Cook with, messages of peace and goodwill to the black races when the sombre convict ships clove the seas in bis wake and transplanted in the virgin lands of tho smith the very germ of degradation and political oppression from the Old. World. Even before Irish independence laiuo to its dealri throes in 17J)8 some of its martyrs had been transported to tlia uttermost parts of t|tc earth. It was designed that they and their jehad should expire together in the remoteness of liotany Hay and Villi Diemen's Land. In effect, they lived through loneliness and desolation, through the infant vicissitudes of new nations upon which fhey impressed their character, through the political struggles of an economic evolution that recoiled on their historic oppressors and revived the jehad with new power. Tlicy lived because a bloody history has made, it possible for the Irish character to thrive best in adversity.' TRIO IRISH CHARACTER. Possibly there never went forth to the. making of new nations so potential a body of men; such a force of character and individuality. Irish ability and conimnnsenee have been at tho base of democratic institutions in every part of the New World; Irish bravery and industry have carried entrenchments of difficulty and despair unsuspected by .soldiers; Irish intellect has been in the van of culture wherever lcisuio has succeeded to the arduous struggles of the pioneer. And yet, with all these facts admitted, it is scarcely possible (o trace in the social organism of a'cw Zealand to-day the concrete inHuenee of Irishmen. No race of eurpass- "■ '.ntellectiial power was ever harried

its native toil with its licsom so full of aspirations for a free and selfappointed future. And yet it is true that of all the nations engaged in 1 lie establishment of nur own national society liono has shown so little cohesion, so little forceful co-operation. The Irish have given to Australia, Canada, and New Zealand some of thf.ir most brilliant talents and commanding minds. Who shall say that they have left such a tangible impress on the New Zealand character as the Scotch or English? They ivprr disorganised fugiiivei—first fugitive, hecaut-e they were disorganised, and then disorganised because they were fugitive. THK COXYrGT EXILES. Considering the .state of affairs in Ireland at the end of the eighteenth century, the fact that a person was transported as a convict presupposed nothing more damning against his moral character than that lie bore arms against a foreign rule. Many were men of high character, and lived as yood citizens of even after passing years of their life under I the most debasing conditions. Many were not convicts at all—they had never been tried. Up to the end of 1791 shipments of Irish convicts totalling 192 in number had been sent to Botany liny —"an asylum in -which felons could be cheaply kept, and from which there would be no possibility of their retii'.ning." Walpoie hears testimony that when Lord Carhamplon with a body of troops preceded the judges of Aswzc in the West of Ireland lie, without tiiiil or warrant-, sent hundreds of Irisli prisoners for compulsory service in the Jlj-itish Navy, mid the local magistrates arrested and transported without pretence of legality. Up to the end of the cenLuiy New South Wales received a great- accession of population through this medium. The convicts themselves were Hot convinced of the impossibility of escape, and parties at different- times 't'lltdud their guards and made oft' overland, hoping to reach China. Many of them were never seen again. Othersfound a fairly easy means of leaving the settlement by shipping with Y-'lialers and traders, an avenue which acro-jiits for the presence of many Irish and other Europeans in the I'acilic Islands in the earliest veins of the nineteenth century.

ARRIVAL IN NF'(7 ZEALAND. Lieutenant M'Donmdl, a native of C-ounty Antrim and an officer in tlio British Navy, purchased in 1831 the whaling brig Sir Georgo Murray, which was built at Horeke. ilo acquired at the same' time the dockyard at Ilokianga, and forthwith sailed with his wife and family and some mechanics to settle there. He leturncd to Sydney in a few months. At a later period lie surveyed portions oi the New Zealand coast, giving the namo of M'fioimeU's Clove to Port Ahuriri (Napier). He developed his New Zealand possessions and interested influential Englishmen in tiic country. He afterwards became additional British Resident at Bay of Islands.

The earliest settlement of Irish in New Zeniand—the Kellys,. Lynchs, O'Brien's, O'Neills, and Hyans at the Bay of Islands i.nd Uokianga in 1836—in all probability arrived by way of Sydney, for there was then practically no intercourse between New Zealand and England. On the other hand, th?ir doyen, Thomas Poynton, arrived seven years earlier. He was a sealarer, and, having married in Sydney, t>et tied liown in 1829 it Mangamuku, on the Uokianga River, where 1m followed the occupation, of a timber merchant. He had a number of children, the eldest of whom was taken to Sydney to be baptised. In his histoiy of the beginnings of the Roman Catholic Church in Oceania Father A, Montat says:

"11 (Bishop I'nmpallior) npprit qu a Bokianga il irouverait dcs peuplades important;)* et dcs emigres Irlandais, buns catholiques; rpux-ci regrettaieiit do manqucr dcs services rcligieux et \eiiaicnt (iiielqucfois les chercher a Sydney."

On landing at. Tolara, the liishop was received by Mr l'oynton, who " otnit a la tc-te d'mie viiste exploitation <le lwis do charpente." Mr l'oynton, who died <|tiiio recently, belonged to the same famiiy as Mr .1. \Y. l'oynton, the l'ublie Trustee. In his missionary voyage around the islands of New Zealand the French bishop came across numbers of Irish (settlements. Prom Umipuke, in Foveaux Strait, vaine m Irishman leading a deputation to receive spiritual comfort. At I'ort NichdlM>n, where tl»> pakelias numbered now 3500. there were 250 Catholics, eliietly. Irish, and an Irish priest (Father O'Reilly) was placed in chiiige of them. Hut Waitcmata was even then tlie stronghold of Jritdi colonisation from Australia. Out of i hive thousand inhabitant—the most molley and cosmopolitan community in Ktw Ze,ili|in| newly four hundred were Irish Catholics.

When the Herman Lutheran missionary ■ffohlfis arrived at Kuapuke (Foveaux Strain in 1844 in: was welcomed and entertained by an Irish Catholic who lived there wiih his .Maori wife.

The whaling station at Akaroa, afterwards historically interesting as the scene

of the forestalling of the French, had already attracted a few Irishmen. Phillip Ryan was one of those who greeted the hoisting of the British flag by Captain Stanley. He had been cast iiw,iy on the Society Islands, and reached Otakou in the schooner Return in 1838, Gerald Fitzgerald was one of the crew sent out by Captain Bruce to search for the Kaka off Hanks Peninsula, and John Watson, another Irishman, succeedcd Mr Robinson as magistrate at Aharon, before this the name of O'Kain, tho Irish naturalist, had been given to one of the Peninsula hays by Captain Hamilton, who happened to lie leading O'Kain's book as h« sailed past. *

THE FLOOD-TIDE OF IRISH EMIGRATION.

l'ut if the aggregation of Irish in New Zealand before 1840 was noteworthy in its way it was even more so after the establishment of British sovereignty. Tho hopeless economic condition of Ireland,

lather than tin; actual transportation of offenders," had now set. free in its full volume the Hood of emigration.

Ireland, which in 1841 had 8,196,000 p?ople, was now pouring forth her manhood for the benefit of newer and brighter lands. In fifty years nearly half the population left the country. The proportions of this body of migratory Irish may be judged from (lie fad that out of 19,500 emigrants who reached New South Wales in 1810-1 13,300 were Irish. The colonial agent in England strongly favoured Ireland as a recruiting field on the ground that it. posseiicd■ the cheapest, the most abundant, and the' most eligible supply of agricultural labourers—a class then very much required in the colony. The colonists, on the other hand, made objection that , one-third •of tlie' immigrants arriving in Sydney were Roman, Catholics. It was at such it time as that, when Auckland was the. capital of New Zealand and enjoyed the only dependable connection with Australia, that the constitution of Australian society was likely In be reflected in that of the new settlement. The settlement at Waitemata. was not organised originally at the. other end of tho world, but had grown in a haphazard manner, drawing its population almost entirely from the adjacent, centre of New South Wales and from the whaling and trading ships that frequented these waters. It was under these circumstances that, the Irish preponderance" was established at Auckland without premeditation. Olago for Scots and Canterbury for English were so designed from the outset, but it, was mere chance that made Auckland a colony' of Irish. THE NEW INIQUITY. There were peculiar circumstances which assisted emigration from Ireland under a sort of parish system during tho long neglect- of this valuable field by colonial emigration agents. Family ties were very strong, and the venture of the son in looking for a new home frequently led to the later emigration of the parents and other members of the family. So far as Australasia is concerned, this was the chief operating factor in recruiting emigrants at the time when the exodus from Ireland was greatest.

Late in the forties the discovery of gold in California, coinciding with the. disastrous results of the potato failure, made an irresistible appeal to the enterprising spirit of the Irish, who left their villages in thousands and joined in the "rush," In tlio stream of humanity that set- from tlio Old World towards the golden We6t- the Irish bulked very largely. They-set- their impress upon the institutions of tlus West. Some stayed; others passed on. The, living stream wa& continuously fed and replenished from the Old World. It passed on to Bendigo and Ballaraf. and jlurrangong; left its impress again in strong, fearless characters; and passed on once more to Otago and Westland. In its whole tlood-coiu'se'of twenty years it swept away thousands of Irish, and Irish names and institutions ninrl; its path from heginning to end. Kingston and Queenstown, on Luke Wakatipu, are Irish landmarks. .The goldfislds of Otago and the West- Const are to-diiy repositories o* i-ho veterans of the "New Iniquity," grizzled, gay, hard-hitting men, at whom the pious, (pliet-going Scots glanced narrowly and with protest-. Yet as a class they were men of gre.it virtue and sterling qualities. The majority of them tiided their pilgriniago here, broke up the swag, find entered the councils of the pioneers. They imparted an invaluable leaven of Liberalism to the insular colonial mind. ASSISTED IMMIGRATION. Tints much the Irish had done before the General Government of New Zealand in 1870 embarked upon a systematic search for citizens. Then ugnin Ireland was more persistently neglected thipi under the separate schemes of the Provincial Governments. The English province of Canterbury undci its assisted scheme in the early sixties imported Irish in the proportion of one-third. At this psriod —prior to the gold rush—Otago l)ad only 11 per cent, of Irish, and Sotttliland !\bout 7 per cent. The provinces desired Irish, but before an Irish agency could be started on proper lines the condition ,of the country had so unproved and the attractions of America had so diminished that emigration from the Emerald Tsle was at a low ebb. In the first- three years of the new policy not a single ship was sent' direct from an Irish port to New Zealand, and only 1100 out of 7000 immigrants to New Zealand were Irish. Otago knew something of the Irish us settlers, and secured the majority of them, a circumstance .which evoked a loud protest from othor province?. They were unanimously dissatisfied with the working of tlio Dublin Agency, which left little room for doubt ;that- the Irish were still adhering to their traditional parish system of emigration. In 1873, in face of great discpuragements, colonics of assisted imtnigra-nts from Ireland were, established at Arawhata (South Westland) and Martin's Bay (Otago). At the same time a few Irish miners from the North of England were imported. NEGLECT OF TIIE IRISH FIELD. The last and largest systematic settlement of Irish in New Zealand took place in tlio early sevonties. Mr Jeremiah Hurley, of Auckland, had complained in 1873 of the neglect of Irish emigration, and the" following year Mr George Vesev Stewart, of Ballygawley, Tyrone, offered as the representative of a body of On\ngenien, to settle a colony of not. less than forty Irish farming families at Katikati. The offer was accepted, and in 1875 280 Irish people arrived and settled on the land, others following later.

Whether it ;vas due to a defect- in the scheme or to the reluctance of the Irish to trust it, the Government Emigration Office never real|y succeeded in doing justice to the Irish' field. That Irnlaitd was deliberately neglected at. first lias never been denied, but Sir .Julius Vogel always claimed that when an effort was made later to secure Irish settlers it failed for reasons which could hardly be regretted. He said ill 1878; "It would be impossible for me to say ono word againstthe Irish people, of whose warm-hearted temperament and great natural ability I have been all my life ail ndmirpr. [t "lips for some time been common remark Hint Hie only two Kiiropenn iw\ntfi(fi ill a prosperous condition are. France and Ireland. Ireland has been so prosperous as to otter great inducements to its mast valuable population to remain at home."

But ill spit« of this the. province, of Westliind, which also by thin time had inliinnto knmvledgo :if the Irish character, complained that numbers of Irish nominations for assisted passages were being liejd back until the right- proportion of other nationalities was made lip.

The Irish immigrants in New Zealand at the last census numbered 42,460. and boro the proportion of IS per tent, to the tot<il immigrant population of the State. SeoWi immigrants Jit samo time

amounted to 16.9 per cent., Australians to 16.8 per - cent., and English to 42 per cent. THE IRISH IN PUBLIC LIFE. It. is • necessary, from the fact that native-bom New Zealanders are not. classified according to their parentage, and desirable, since they take their character and ideas from the mass of the population and not from individual communities, that we should go back to the first generation of colonists to' trace the influences that have been at work in moulding our national character.

The influence of the Irish on the public life, of New Zealand lias been exercised by individual personalities rather than by tho collective character of the Irish colonists; but it is .necessary to state by way of reservation that the Roman Catholic belief, which Ims probably til? most powerful religious influence in the country, embraces and is supported 'by a body of people who are chiefly of Irish birth or dfscent.

The constitution of the earliest nroviiicial l'arliaments "ivcn tlio liest indication of the influence of different nationalities in our public life. The humliit of members of Irish nationality in the iejn'i''sentative bodies in the first venr of their existence was as follows: —

The only surviving member of the first Auckland Provincial' Council, Mr .lames T. lioylan, himself an Irishman, remarks upon "The alarming preponderance of Irishmen ' in I hat body. Irish dominance is also nolicnabli! in tiiu Westlaml Connly Council, two members out of night being Irishmen. The absence of Irishmen amongst the 22 representatives of the Otago and Southland bodies is not altogether to be. explained by the fact that these figures belong to a dale anterior to the gold discoveries. Oil the proportional basis there should have been two Irish on the Otago and Southland bodies and one at least in Wellingto.ii.

The twenty-one. Irishmen who conic into the calculation are:

Auckland (1853). —James Thomas Boylan, James O'Neill, James Hcrrom, Andrew O'Brien, William Connell, Allan O'Neill, Patrick Dignan, James Carlton Hijl, Patrick Donovan, Joseph Brennan, John Williamson, James Dilworth.

Hawke's Bay (1859).—Thomas Henry Fitzgerald.

Nelson (1853). —Edward W. Stafford, William T. L. Travel's.

Marlborough (IB6o).—William D. H. Baillie.

Westland (1868).—Jas. Clarke, Timothy Learv.

Canterbury (1853). —Charles Bowen, Rev. William Aylmer, James Edward Fitzgerald.

Sir L. Stnflord and Mr Baillie might both be classed as Scots by birth, though their education and upbringing were Irish.

CELTS AND IRISH,

In considering the influence of the Irish on public life it is well to remember that there is a large "colonist" class in Ireland itself, consisting .of families which crossed over from England and Scotland a good deal later than- the infamous "plantation" of the seventeenth century. While it is true, as Froudc says, that the Irishman of the eighteenth century rose'to his natural level whenever lie was removed from his own unhappy country, it- is also true that many prominent figures in both our national and colonial history were only Irish in that they were horn in Ireland and imbibed that peculiarly brilliant culture which seems to have its home in Irish universities. Every colonial Irishman was not so much a Celt as Charles Gavan Duffy or even as James Edward Fitzgerald, and yet all were in a measure indebted to the soil of Ireland for the nourishment of their native genius. In the above list it is easy to draw the distinction as to dcscenl, but impossible to make any demarcation on the ground of native influence. THE IRISH REPUBLICAN. _ How many of the long stream of fugitives from their own hopeless country have assisted to operate in the New World those republican tendencies which grew like a phcenix out of the blasting and blighting of each succeeding bud of liberty.' The first of all Now Zealand's Irish, .Tamos Edward Fitzgerald, who became first Premier of the colony under responsible government, was an ardent .Home Ruler and believed that, the regeneration of Ireland could only come as the result of local government. In 1848, before he sailed for New Zealand, he addressed a letter to the noblemen of England on the welched condition of Ireland, and he strongly advocated emigration as a means of release from the vested wrongs that ground down bis country. Two years later lio himself came to New Zealand as one of the leaders of the English settlement- in Canterbury. The spirit of the Irish Nationalist remained strong in him. Writing to Wakefield in 1852 a private letter, which was afterwards made public, he said: '■ After all, this place (the colony) is but a village. Its politics are not- large enough for you; but there are politics on this side the world which would be so. It seems unquestionable that- in the coursq, of a very few yeais— sometimes I think months—the Australian colonies will declare their independence. We shall live to see the Australasian Empire rivalling the United States in greatness, wealth, and power. There is a field for great- statesmen. Only yesterday I was saying to , talking' about you, jf you come across the world it must be to Australia, just in time 1o draw up the Declaration of Independence." And yet no colonial to-day has a word of reproach for James Edward Fitzgerald. His sentiment was an of the colonising spirit. That spirit of independence was not confined to the Irish colonists. Before many years it was strong in the most patriotic of tlio English and Scots, and it would liaye been an operating motive,if England had not granted to communities at the other side of the world that freedom uf government which she withheld on her own threshliold.

dfgd