Page:The collected works of Theodore Parker volume 7.djvu/140

136 parents; of the nine hundred and thirty-three persons in the house of correction here, six hundred and sixteen were natives of other countries; I know not how many were the children of Irishmen, who had not enjoyed the advantages of our institutions. I cannot tell how many rum-shops are kept by foreigners. Now, in Ireland, no pains have been taken with the education of the people by the Government; very little by the Catholic church; indeed, the British Government for a long time rendered it impossible for the church to do anything in this way. For more than seventy years, in that Catholic country, none but a Protestant could keep a school, or even be a tutor in a private family. A Catholic schoolmaster was to be transported, and, if he returned, adjudged guilty of high treason, barbarously put to death, drawn, and quartered. A Protestant schoolmaster is as repulsive to a Catholic as a Mahometan schoolmaster or an Atheist would be to you. It is not surprising, therefore, that the Irish are ignorant; and, as a consequence thereof, are idle, thriftless, poor, intemperate, and barbarian; not to be wondered at if they conduct like wild beasts when they are set loose in a land where we think the individual must be left free to the greatest extent. Of course they will violate our laws, those wild bisons leaping over the fences which easily restrain the civilized domestic cattle; will commit the great crimes of violence, even capital offences, which certainly have increased rapidly of late. This increase of foreigners is prodigious; more than half the children in your public schools are children of foreigners ; there are more Catholic than Protestant children born in Boston.

With the general and unquestionable advance of morality, some offences are regarded as crimes which were not noticed a few years ago. Drunkenness is an example of this. An Irishman in his native country thinks little of beating another or being beaten; he brings his habits of violence with him, and does not at once learn to conform to our laws. Then, too, a good deal of crime which was once concealed is now brought to light by the press, by the superior activity of the police; and yet, after all that is said, it seems quite clear that what is legally called crime, and