Ireland."




CHAPTER II

REVOLUTION IN AMERICA AND IN IRELAND


In the Old World and in the New, therefore, two societies, composed of
human beings similar in all essential respects, were growing up under
the protection of the British Crown; the one servile, the other free;
the one stagnant where it was not retrograde, the other prosperous,
progressive, and, by the magnetism of its own freedom, progress, and
prosperity, steadily draining its Irish fellow of talent, energy, and
industrial skill.

What was the ultimate cause of this glaring divergency? Religion, as a
spiritual force, was not the root cause. The American Colonies, with
three exceptions--the earliest Virginia, the latest Georgia, and the
Catholic community of Maryland--were formed by Dissenters,[8] exiles
themselves from persecution, but not necessarily forbearing to others,
and, in the case of the New England Puritans, bitterly intolerant. It is
interesting to observe that the Quakers and the Catholics, men standing
at the opposite poles of theology, set the highest example of tolerance.
Quaker Pennsylvania enforced absolute liberty of conscience, and Quakers
in all the Provinces worked for religious harmony and freedom. Catholic
Maryland, as long as its government remained in Catholic hands, and
under the guidance of the wise and liberal Proprietary, Lord Baltimore,