A chairde —
Things slow down a
little during the Summer, at least for the SIG.
That’s good, because everything else is speeding up. I’ve been working hard on completing the
first draft of What Happened to
Distributive Justice, a thoroughly researched tome that investigates, well,
what happened to our understanding of distributive justice.
I have to tell you
that some of the things we’ve been finding out are eye-popping. It turns out that what the history books have
been telling us is, in many cases, not exactly true. I’ve come across contemporary newspaper
accounts of events from the 1870s to the 1930s, and, folks, what you’ve been
told in many cases is simply not what happened.
I’ve also looked at
personal correspondence from the period among some of the principals, and,
again, that’s not what we’re taught today.
I even located a previously unknown first-hand account by Archbishop Michael
A. Corrigan of New York City in typescript (I have one of two copies in
existence from the manuscript typed up in the 1890s) that, frankly, proves what
a lot of what people “know” about the Irish in New York in the latter half of
the 19th century Just Ain’t So.
Beannachtai!
Michael
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Contents
Announcements
Organization,
Publication and Membership Information
Letters
News and Reports
Articles
The Fourth Page
Announcements
As a newsletter, we rely on you to tell us what’s going
on. If you have an announcement for an
upcoming event, please let us know. Just
keep in mind that we try to publish on the 17th of every month, so
get your announcements in at least a few days before that. Otherwise, consider sending it in as a report
or a news item for the subsequent month.
• The Usual Nagging
Announcement. We still have a number
of subscribers who are probably wondering why they’re not getting the
newsletter. It’s because they haven’t
verified their subscriptions by clicking on the link in the e-mail Google sent
to their specified e-mail address. If
you subscribed but have not received the newsletter (which means you’re
visiting the blog and are reading this there), it’s an easy matter to
correct. Enter your e-mail address
again, and Google will send you another verification e-mail.
• Your SIG Coordinator, Michael D. Greaney, recently
published an original book, So Much
Generosity: An Appreciation of the Fiction of Nicholas Cardinal Wiseman, John
Henry Cardinal Newman, and Monsignor Robert Hugh Benson. Searching under that name on Amazon and
Barnes and Noble will bring up all you want to know about that book, and a
couple dozen others.
• Your Coordinator was also invited to submit a journal
article to the American Journal of
Economics and Sociology on economic crises from the perspective of binary
economics. This will, no doubt, garner
him a Nobel Prize in economics.
Organization, Publication and
Membership Information
What We Are
Litir Scéala an tSIG
Gaelach is the newsletter of the Irish Special Interest Group of American
Mensa, Ltd. More information about the
SIG and this newsletter may be accessed by clicking
on this link.
Resources
We are preparing to put together a list of
resources and organizations that might be useful to our members. Due to the global scope of our readership, we
are trying to limit the list to organizations that extend beyond a purely local
constituency. This is a matter of simple
logistics, due to the immense number of organizations out there. If you’re looking for a local group to get
involved with — and we encourage that — do an internet search. You may be both amazed and pleased at what
you will find. We expect to list
resources as we rebuild our membership, but right now . . . oh, you know the
rest.
Who We Are
No new members this month, etc. (That’s ET cetera, NOT “eck”
the way so many people want to pronounce it.)
We have an increasing number of visitors and casual readers, — no,
really — but that’s not going to get the SIG reactivated officially, however
gratifying it may be personally. We’re
thinking of having a “feeler” sent in to the Bulletin. When we get around
to it, of course. . . .
Anyway, here’s this month’s membership report:
5 Members of
Mensa
2 Other
1 Institutional
Member
26 Newsletter
Subscribers
34 Total
Circulation, although four of them have not “validated” their subscription
(This does not include forwarded newsletters or visitors to the website who
have not signed up for the newsletter — over 1,000 to date.)
Letters
No letters again this quarter. Received, that is. We’ve sent quite a few out, though. Possibly because most of the quarter was winter,
people may have been too busy to write.
News and Reports
Members of the Irish SIG don’t usually belong only to the
SIG, but to other groups with an Irish orientation as well. This is all to the good — the more society
becomes more social, the better
chance we have of influencing our institutions in a positive way and carrying
out “acts of social justice” aimed at improving the common good for
everybody. We want to encourage your community
participation and then report on local events in which SIG members took part.
• Not really SIG business, but Daniel Kurland, a teacher in
Fairfax County, Virginia, is trying to raise $1,500 to purchase Tablets
for his classroom. It is known that
teaching is one of the few occupations, possibly the only one, in which you
steal office supplies from home to take to the office. As of this morning, Daniel has reached 20% of
his goal.
• CESJ will soon be launching a $75,000 fundraising campaign
to finish What Happened to Distributive
Justice, an examination of critical events in Irish and American history
that led to a shift in what justice means, and how the State increased its role
at the expense of personal liberty.
• The Center for Economic and Social Justice is still working
on obtaining funding for “Justice University,” intended to be a university over
the internet that will not engage in job training, only teaching and learning. On Wednesday CESJ submitted a $750,000 grant
proposal from a foundation in the Midwest, and the Core Group will be meeting
with foundation officials in mid-August.
Articles
Feature Article: Henry George and
the Irish
Michael D. Greaney
In
1886 Laurence Gronlund and other socialist leaders persuaded Henry George to
run for mayor of New York City on the United Labor Party ticket.[1] At
that time, New York was, to all intents and purposes, an Irish-Catholic city,
at least politically. Anyone who wanted to gain public office in New York
needed to secure both the Irish and the Catholic votes, there not being too
much difference between the two.
In
19th century New York, that usually meant working hand-in-glove with
the largely Irish gangs of the Five Points district of lower Manhattan. These
included groups with such colorful names as the Dead Rabbits, the Shirt Tails,
the Chichesters, the Original Hounds, and others. Their names might sound
amusing, but the business was deadly serious.
Traditionally,
the gangs supported the Democratic Party with their ward heelers (low-level
politicians) and shoulder strikers (thugs), voting early and often, making up
voting lists from the cemeteries, and other such tactics. Gang members might
not be too clear on what it meant to be “Catholic,” but, as the old joke has
it, they were willing to fight you to the death for it.
George
had been making overtures to the Irish (a political necessity) since moving to
New York from San Francisco. He weighed in on matters of concern to those of
Irish birth or descent at every opportunity. Possibly in an effort to establish
his credentials, especially in light of the fact that he was of English
descent, George made a trip to the United Kingdom a few years after he arrived
in New York in 1880.[2]
While
in Ireland in 1882 George managed to get himself arrested briefly for
advocating his brand of socialism; his influence on the founders of the
soon-to-be-formed Fabian Society (1884) was well known. In 1883 George also
paid a visit to Cardinal Manning in London.
George
inserted himself into the internal politics of the Irish National Land League.
This had been reorganized in 1882 as the “National League” after the National
Land League was suppressed in October 1881.
George
exacerbated a difference of opinion regarding the nationalization of land
between League founder Michael Davitt (1846-1906), and Charles Stewart Parnell
(1846-1891), the League’s president and most effective spokesman, and Parnell’s
ally, William O’Brien (1852-1928), editor of The United Irishman, the League’s journal. This caused a
significant amount of internal dissension. It eventually weakened and split the
Irish nationalist movement.
The
socialist and non-socialist factions of the movement were eventually able to
come back together and work toward a common goal with each other and groups
that were unaligned with either faction. The seeds of conflict, however, had
been sown. The 1916 Easter Proclamation contained an equivocal statement that
the people of Ireland had a right to own Ireland, but it was carefully not
stated whether this meant individual private ownership, or collective
ownership.
Ironically,
it was the British who ensured that the Irish nationalist movement would not be
torn apart by the differences George had aggravated. By executing all the
leaders of the Easter Rebellion except Eamon de Valera (1882-1975), they made
“Dev” the sole focus of the nationalist movement.
De
Valera was at the time still an American citizen. It would not have been
politically expedient to kill him in view of the British desperate need to have
the United States enter the war on the side of the Allies.
The
later split in the movement over the Treaty, while effective for British
purposes, was a specific issue, not a philosophy, and easier to resolve.
Nevertheless, Irish nationalism to this day retains elements of socialism,
particularly in Sinn Fein and the Provisional IRA.
The
position of Parnell and O’Brien was very close to that of William Thomas
Thornton (1813-1880). Thornton implied as much in 1874 in his revision of his
most important work, A Plea for Peasant
Proprietors, originally published in 1848.
Thornton
contended that had his proposals been adopted in the 1840s, “Fenianism” (Irish
nationalism) would not have gained so much support. Thornton was a very strong
supporter of widespread ownership of all forms of capital, and an opponent of
the “scarcity economics” and population theories of the Reverend Thomas
Malthus.[3]
Unfortunately,
in common with many economists and politicians down to the present day,
Thornton was locked into the “slavery of past savings.” This had been embedded
into public policy in the United Kingdom with the British Bank Charter Act of
1844,[4]
and in the United States with the National Banking Act of 1863 (amended 1864).[5]
Thornton’s
Plea was written in response to the
Great Famine in Ireland (1846-1852). In it, Thornton detailed a feasible
proposal to create widespread ownership of landed capital among the Irish. His On Labour in 1869 (revised 1870)[6]
laid out a similar proposal for other forms of capital.[7]
Parnell’s
agreement with Thornton (and disagreement with George) may account for George
dismissing Thornton’s proposal for widespread ownership on the grounds that
Thornton did not understand the difference between land and capital.[8]
Reading any of Thornton’s books will quickly disabuse the discerning reader of
this accusation.
George
did not bother to prove that Thornton
did not understand the alleged difference between landed and non-landed
capital. He simply asserted, ridiculed Thornton and other economists foolish
enough not to agree with the georgist program, and moved on.
Getting
detained by the Royal Irish Constabulary was useful for George, although not as
useful as it might have been had he spent any time in jail. The moment Prime
Minister William Ewart Gladstone (1809-1898) heard about the arrest, he
telegraphed that George was to be released immediately.
The
socialists, after all, had powerful friends in the media whom Gladstone could
not afford to antagonize over something so trivial as the arrest of an American
tourist, however obnoxious. Consequently, George was not able to make much
political hay out of the arrest or the subsequent surveillance by the RIC.
What
did help, as far as many New York Irish Catholics were concerned, was the fact
that George received an endorsement from Davitt. Davitt’s support of George may
account for the rage later exhibited by George’s followers when they realized
that the other, more prominent and effective leadership of the League, Parnell
and O’Brien, did not share Davitt’s opinion about the nationalization of land.
Parnell and O’Brien, in fact, were strongly opposed to it.
Parnell
and O’Brien were in favor of small, peasant proprietorship.[9]
George’s interference thereby weakened the solidarity of the League. This
became critical a few years later when the Kitty O’Shea affair came to light.
While
not actually an endorsement by the League (although George made it sound as if
it were), Davitt’s support appeared to link the cause of Irish nationalism to
georgist socialism. This was an impression Parnell and O’Brien worked hard to
counter, and George worked even harder to cultivate.
The Fourth Page
The Geraldines of
Ireland, XVII: The First Desmond War Concludes
The destruction of Kilmallock convinced the
English that the war was
far from over. The man chosen to carry on the fight for England's glory was Sir
John Perrot, probably the most effective man the English ever had in Ireland,
and the only one that Ireland was not ultimately to ruin. Eventually he even
opposed himself to Elizabeth's advisors' Irish policy and their treatment of
her (presumed) Irish subjects. Perrot was to spend two years tracking down and
capturing FitzMaurice. He had few victories in the war, and those were only
obtained by his becoming, in his own words, "half-Irish," and
adopting native tactics and weapons.
Becoming
desperate in his struggle with FitzMaurice, Sir John adopted a fabulous
expedient and challenged the Captain of Desmond to personal combat to decide
the issue. While this no doubt stunned the Irish, it outraged the English. Such
a move presumably put the whole question of the English occupation of Ireland
to the test and placed the legitimacy of its continuance on the outcome of a
single fight—in which there was no guarantee that Perrot would be the victor (a
failure, of course, would not have prevented the English from ignoring the
entire agreement, as had been done many times before and would be many times
since). FitzMaurice accepted the challenge on condition that they fight in the
open with Irish weapons and in the Irish manner. Sir John agreed, came to the
appointed place and time in appropriate costume, and waited.
And
waited. Sir John continued to wait, and it began to rain. As a downpour began,
he turned to leave when an Irish messenger came up and delivered a parchment
message from FitzMaurice:
“If I do kill the
great Sir John Perrot, the Queen of England will but send another President
into this province, but if he do kill me, there is none in Ireland to succeed
me, or to command as I do now.”
Sir
John Perrot was completely humiliated, and his recall was only prevented
through the efforts of his patron Burghley. Perrot had attempted to Anglicize
Ireland, and ended by becoming, as the best of the English always had,
"more Irish than the Irish." He had actually gained the grudging
admiration, and, in some measure the affection, of the Irish.
In
the end, FitzMaurice was conquered not by force of arms, but by starvation. The
English blockaded the Captain of Desmond in the Kerry Mountains and let time
work for them. Already weakened and exhausted, it did not take long for the
reduced band to come to terms. In the spring of 1573, FitzMaurice surrendered.
He came to Kilmallock and knelt in submission to Perrot in front of the ruined
church of the town, a sword pointed at his breast.
Because
he had come freely and his men were scattered, and was, as well, obviously
incapable of carrying on a fight, FitzMaurice was permitted to go in peace. A
few days later he escaped to France.
Munster
was a desert. Where there had been rich and thriving lands, there remained
nothing but devastation and famine. Sir Henry Sidney wrote to London and told
of a great victory. He was probably fully aware that nothing had been settled,
though, and that only the first phase of the pacification of Ireland was over.
The
Queen's advisors at this point apparently decided that the Earl of Desmond was
sufficiently cowed to be allowed to become their effective agent in Ireland.
After seven years in prison, this assumption appears to have been correct.
Gerald FitzGerald was sent to Dublin castle to await the Queen's pleasure (i.e., whatever her advisors decided she
should say or do).
No
sooner was Desmond XIV safely ensconced in his new prison than he just up and
walked away, being "out of the castle, out of Dublin, and out of Kildare
before he was missed" (more than likely the men of the Pale simply set him
free on orders from London). Warriors flocked to him, and peasants came out of
the woods to cheer him. The Irish clans welcomed him as a returning chief,
acknowledging him the Desmond returned from exile. In some towns English
officials were hanged or driven out. Before he had been home a week, his
followers had retaken Castlemaine, Kilmallock and Castlemartyr. Although he was
supposed to be Protestant now (having taken the Oath of Supremacy), he drove
off the planted Protestant ministers and brought back the priests and friars
exiled by the English policies, reestablishing the old religious foundations.
Before long, everything that Sir John Perrot had accomplished in Ireland was
overturned. Desmond had even managed to put together an alliance of the
Geraldine chiefs to support him against the crown.
At
this point the English acted swiftly. They offered the Earl not only a full
pardon, but the substance as well as fact of his title; that is, he would be
confirmed in his lands and rank. He submitted to Sir Henry Sidney at Cork on 2nd September 1574, and received the full right to
his estates. The First Desmond War was finally over, but the next was just
beginning.
Something
seemed to have gone out of Desmond with his official submission. While
finagling all he could to advance his own interests and give a moderate push to
Irish national concerns, he completely avoided all head-on confrontation. This
was a complete turn-around from the "Gerald the Great" who had rushed
into battle at the slightest provocation, and who had seemed ready to gather
the clans and his allies together to oppose the English as his cousin
FitzMaurice had done.
FitzGerald made
several minor power grabs over the next few years, but backed down instantly
whenever so ordered by London. One gains the distinct impression of a man who
had fallen off his horse and was unable to bring himself to mount and try
again. While the Irish lords of this period generally viewed a coerced oath as
nothing more than a meaningless noise, FitzGerald's submission apparently
affected him deeply, perhaps even as a personal betrayal, and could not be
ignored. This was to cause him to fail to act when he should have done so to
aid FitzMaurice at the start of the Second Desmond War, although his failure
also seems to have caused him to regain at least a portion of his old self,
through the shock and shame of betraying his own cousin. Some historians have
credited the Earl's actions to a nature as vacillating as Elizabeth's, without
taking into consideration the effect on the man of seven years in an English
prison and his subsequent public humiliation. Those expounding this view are
puzzled at his pertinacity at carrying out the Second Desmond War to the bitter
end and beyond. When his actions are viewed as a personal journey from sin and
humiliation to restitution and redemption, however, FitzGerald's actions, as
well as the "perplexing" Second Desmond War, become perfectly clear
and understandable.
#30#
[1]
Dorfman, The Economic Mind in American
Civilization, op. cit., 149.
[2] Cf. “Parnell and Davitt,” The True Witness and Catholic Chronicle,
Wednesday, June 28, 1882, 4; “The Irish Land Question: Henry George Before the
Nineteenth Century Club,” The New York
Times, February 8, 1883; “Mr. Michael Davitt and Mr. Henry George,” New Zealand Tablet, Friday, March 21,
1884, 9; “Mr. Henry George on the Prospects of Home Rule,” Wanganui Herald, New Zealand, May 7, 1886; “The Manchester Martyrs:
Henry George Draws a Lesson from Their Death,” The New York Times, November 24, 1886.
[3]
William Thomas Thornton, Over-Population
and Its Remedy, or, An Inquiry Into the Extent and Causes of the Distress
Prevailing Among the Labouring Classes of the British Islands, and Into the
Means of Remedying It. London: Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans, 1846.
[4]
7 & 8 Vict. c. 32. See Lord Overstone, Tracts and Other Publications on Metallic
and Paper Currency. London: 1857; The
Evidence Given By Lord Overstone on Bank Acts. London: Longman, Brown &
Co., 1858.
[5]
Ch. 58, 12 Stat. 665, February 25, 1863.
[6]
William Thomas Thornton, On Labour: Its
Wrongful Claims and Rightful Dues, Its Actual Present and Possible Future,
Second Edition. London: Macmillan and Co., 1870.
[7]
Vide the appendices in the “Economic
Classics Edition” of William Thomas Thornton’s A Plea for Peasant Proprietors. Arlington, Virginia: Economic
Justice Media, 2011.
[8]
George, Progress and Poverty, op. cit.,
36.
[9] “Henry George and the Phoenix Park Murders,” The Age, Saturday, April 27, 1889.
