CATHOLICS AND THE AMERICAN FLEET

New Zealand Tablet, 30 July 1908, Page 21

CATHOLICS AND THE AMERICAN FLEET

Nircß«\| EFORE another issue of this journal reaches:. ■ SJii^^ the' pleasant shores of the Waitemata, New- " wjljJwM Zealand will, have opened the portals of its <sgsg*£i heart in welcome to the American fleet." As- ; sb^«r« citizens,' our co-religionists will' join heartily «*S!^Js* * n the. glad greetings to the great fighting; -**^La t avui °* a friendly Power whose protecting: guns may, in the not far-off future, -be am important factor, in preserving— the. peace- of the seas'that are called Pacific, and keeping its, far-flung islands', immune from the "menace of the Distant East. Evem still more, as Catholics,- have our co-religionisW throughout New Zealand a share -in the rejoicings; which will welcome to our shores the moving emblems: and instruments of the strength of the great young; Power whose migjht is one guarantee for peace om the shores ■of two great oceans. _ For Catholics were*, not alone the discoverers, .the explorers/ i:he missionary pioneers from' the woods of -Canada to the -Mississippi;; - they were the first apostles of , America's religious .liberty ; and they took an active and "honorable part in winning the liberties -and the independence ~ which form the hegira of - that great nation— the beginnings of its . real progress, the foundation "of the power which, -in one of its aspects," will soon be represented " in con- "" crete form upon the^ waters of the Hauraki Gulf. , • The dawn- of -'•the independence of England's American colonies came, strangely enough, at the moment oE

her supreme triumph there. She had forced Spain to relinquish her hold upon Louisiana, and to exchange Florifia for Havana; Wolfe's great victory' at Quebec had practically place.d . Canada in her lap ; and her sway extended from Hudson's Bay to the waters of the Gulf of Mexico. Yet (as Green says) the moment of the crowning triumph of Wolfe on the Heights of Abraham was the moment at which began the history of the United States. Spain closely watched her colonies in Central and South America ; England's American colonies had waxed prosperous partly through her neglect of them. But the long wars with France had given her a closer insight than ever into their growing wealth, their resources, their coming importance,. In the idea of the time, colonies were supposed to exist exclusively for the benefit of the mother country ; and to British statesmen of those days, it seemed natural that the empty coffers of their treasury should

be materially supplied by taxing the resources of the rising communities beyond the Atlantic. ' The people ', says a. historian, ' had heretofore willingly paid taxes where they controlled their disbursement, and the question of the right of the mother country to tax them, and the just limits on either side, involved new and undiscussed points '. The whole question of selfgovernment became involved. The great majority of the population were Protestant, devoted to their faith, but greatly attached likewise to what they felt to be their rights. The Catholics — French, Acadian, and Indian— were on the side of independence. A historian of our times adds :—

1 The Irish and Scotch Catholics, with a remembrance of old wrongs, and a bitter hatred for the House of Hanover, needed no labored argument to draw them into the popular movement. -The fears expressed one hundred years before in the British Parliament, that the Maryland Catholics would one day attempt to set up their independence, were about to be justified ; for if the Catholics did not start the movement, they went heartily into it \

0 Charles Carroll, of Carroliton, was one of the ablest of the advocates of American independence. He was the means of saving Maryland to the popular party and leading tjhem in triumph. In days when Catholics were deprived of civil rights, he won back such a measure of religious liberty that he was elected a delegate to the Provincial Congress at Maryland in 1775. He was the first Catholic to hold public office since the days of James 11., and in such esteem was he held that he represented, at the Congress, a Protestant constituency. He was one of four .Catholics who signed the Declaration of Independence. According to Lord Brougham, he staked more property on the issue than all ihe other signatories put together. As he set his hand to the historic document, a whisper ran . around the hall of Congress : ' There go some millions of property ! ' There being, however, many Carrolls •in Maryland, somebody remarked :. ' Nobody will know what Carroll it is. You: .will get clear '„ 'Not so ! ' he replied ; and he instantly added his address—' of Carroliton '. When, in 1832, he lay dying, in his ninety-sixth year, he declared that the greatest happiness of his life was this: ' I have faithfully practised the duties of my religion '. Scarcely less famous was the Wexford Catholic, ' Saucy Jack Barry ', the father and first commodore of the American navy. A great number of his sailors and marines were, like him, Irish Catholics. Then there were General , Moylan (another Irish Catholic), the first quartermaster of the war of independence, and General Wayne, who in 1792 became Commander-in-chief of the American army. And what shall we say of that noble Catholic patriot, Bishop Carroll, .„ and of.- Washington's trusted friend, Father John Carroll, and of Daniel Carroll, and of Thomas Fitzsimons, Dominic Lynch, and of so many

other Catholic, leaders in ..the cause? -Then there is the noble part, which Catholic .France and (though to

a lesser degree) Spain took in the war of independence ; and there is the strenuous fighting that was done for the struggling young country". by. Catholic soldiers under ~fche Catholic Generals Lafayette, Rochambeau, Fleury, Dupartail, Lowzun, De Gras, De Kalb, Kosciusko, Pulaski, and others. Of the 288,000 men of the United States army, 232,000 were Continental and 56,000 militia. Of this army, there were two Irishmen to every native". At the close of the war, Mr. Galloway (who had been Speaker of the Pennsylvania Assembly) said of the American army that, according to the birth entries, ' there were scarcely one-fourth natives of America ; about half were Irish, and the other fourth principally Scotch and English '. When, in 1780, Washington's army was on the verge of starvation and mutiny, Catholics again rushed to the rescue — Fitzsimons with £5000, twenty-seven members of the Irish Catholic Friendly Sons of St. Patrick with £103,500, and Charles Carroll with an immense sum. The young- Republic was thus saved at the darkest crisis in the war of independence. Haec olim meminisse juvabit— and these are a few of the happy memories that, will rise spontaneously to the mind of the Catholic who has read history, as he surveys the grey leviathans that in a brief space will represent the friendly might of America in the waters of our north provincial capital.