THE UNVARNISHED TRUTH.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XII, Issue 27, 24 October 1884, Page 29

THE UNVARNISHED TRUTH.

(Bey. Father Clarke, in the Month.)

A TBAVEiiIrBB in Donegal not long since asked a parish priest of a large village there respecting the general morality of the country, and was assured by him that the serious sins committed in his parish from one year's end to the other could be counted on the fingers of the hand._ Another traveller asked a priest in one of the largest of the American cities a similar question, and the answer he received was that all the city through there were few boys of thirteen or fourteen who had not already lost their innocence. Out of our Catholic young men. said an American Bishop I believe nine out of ten are practical infidels, or at least neglect the practice of their religion altogether. This loss of Faith is in almost every case the result of previous moral corruption. Pittsburgh, where there is a large Catholic population, is said to contain more bad houses, in proportion to its population, than any other city in the world, and the age at which boys begin to frequent them i 3 scarcely credible. Cincinnati is not nanch better, and in Chicago I heard the saddest accounts of the unblushing effrontery of open vice. But why need they go, ' I shall be asked, to the large cities ? Bend them to Canada, establish them on the Western farms where labour is in great demand, let them join the Catbolic colony of Bishop Ireland, send them where they will remain under the care of the Catholic priest, and thus you will avoid those frightful evils, and yet secure to them the benefits of emigration. Admirable in theory, but in practice of little avail 1 There may be a few hundreds here and there flourishing under the benevolent supervision of priest or bishop. But as a general rule, whatever the cause may be, Irishmen will not remain in Canada. Out of those who emigrated there in the course of 1882, nearly half (I think 50,000 out of 114,000, but I am quoting the figures from memory) had crossed the American frontier before twelve months had passed. From some other cause, which I do not pretend to explain, the proportion of Irish emigrants who settle in the cities of the States is lamentably great as compared with those who choose a country life. In this they afford a striking contrast with English Jemigrants who are generally farmers. We often read brilliant accounts of the settlers who are emigrated by Mr. Tuke's benevolent exertions, or even by the Government Emigration Fund. I have no doubt that the elaborate care exercised by those who have devoted weeks and months to their charitable task ensures for those whom they send out a comfortable position. I would go farther, and say that that those whom the Government expect fare, in general, unmeasurably better in America than they would have done at home, as regards their material and worldly success. Far removed from the pinch of poverty, and from the recurring famine from time to time, with good wages, plenteous food and work, to be had by all who are willing to work, they fare well enough as regards this world. No just complaint can be made by those who are induced to cross the Atlantic., that they have been allured from their homes by falne or exaggerated representations. The accounts sent home of their prosperity are true enough, and if they are selected instances yet I do not think they are unfairly selected. But if we followed up the history of any cargo of emigrants sent forth from Mayo or Connemara, we should find after a few years, that while some few remained in Canada, or in so.me Catbolic settlement in the State?, keeping up to their religious duties and prosperous alike in body and soul, the great mass had either drifted into the big cities, or else were living in the country out^of the reach of Catholic church or Catholic school. Of these two later alternatives I scarcely know which is the more prejudicial to faith and morals. In the cities the children grow up too often corrupt in morals, and through the corruption of their morality lose their faith ; in country districts they lose their faith simply from lack of Catholic teaching, and when in later life they go, as most of them go, to find employment in the cities, they either are Catholics only nominally, or else are so ill-instructed in their religious duties as to fall in- most cases an easy prey to indifference, or vice, or even to open and professed infidelity. It is this which seems to me th« worst of all the miseries of wholesale eviction. It is not so much the children starving by the roadside and the delicate women turned out without food or shelter ; it is not so much the^ breaking up of the ancestral home and the rending of the very strings of those who, rightly or wrongly, regard their long tenure as constituting a sacred claim which it is a sort of sacrilege ruthlessly to set at nought ; these are not the ultimate wops of eviction. It is not the piercing wail of old men and women left behind which makes God's minister unable to restrain his tears as he accompanies the sorrowful party back from the railway station where they have parted with son or daughter, bound for the distant shores of " New Ireland." This is but a transient evil. It is not the houses standing empty and the cottages falling into ruin, for, after all. if their inmates Ate benefited by their change of home, if boys and girls, who would 1 have been miserable in their hopeless poverty at home, are to be happy and prosperous across the Atlantic, priests and bishops would rejoice at their departure. It is the knowledge that souls which? Would have been saved at home will be lost abroad ; that boys and girls, who would at home have been reared in piety and purity, will too often learn all that is foul and impious in the tenement houses and courts and alleys of American cities ; it is the sad prospect of young.menwbo would at home have been stalwart champions and obedient sons of H#ly Church, living riotously, setting the law of God at nought, drifting into inSdelity, listening with laughter and applause to blasphemous, infidel lecturers like Tngersoll ; it is the thought of poor girls, who at home would have been crowned with the beauteous crown of virgin modesty, now exposed to the corruptions of a large city, perhaps walking the streets in open sin ; it is the number of baptized Catholics who live without God and die without hope. This it is which is the bitter reflection of the zealous pastor who sees the Irish peasants quit their homes in Mayo or Donegal for a home across the sea.

It is true that when whole families emigrate together some of these evils are diminished : that boy and girl emigrating on theit

own account are exposed to certain risks which are avoided when father and mother accompany their children, and the inmates of the old home in Ireland are transferred one and all to their new home in the States. But while some dangers are less, others are far greater. Those who have been carefully trained in the Catholic Faith in their early days go out with an aesfis which it is their own fault if Ihey discard : whereas the children who emigrate with their parents in their early child-hood incur a danger worse than almost all the dangers I have already mentioned : they run a risk more perilous to them than the temptations to immorality, neglect of religion, infidelity, indifference, which beset one who emigrates in early manhood or womanhood, This danger is one which is greater than any of those I have alreadymentioned as threatening the Faith in America.