2. This paper appeared originally in the Boston Pilot.
The Irish race, both here and in the old world, has suffered so much in the way of misrepresentation at the hands of English and pro-English writers, its merits have been so minimized and its defects so magnified, that it is almost a hopeless task to attempt the refutation of even a tithe of the falsehoods.
It is only when a writer offers an easily accessible authority for his statements that the general reader can take the time and trouble, if so disposed, to investigate the reference and verify the accuracy or honesty of the author who professes to have quoted truly.
Mr. Henry Cabot Lodge has written, and the Century Magazine has published an article on “The Distribution of Ability in the United States,” in which he exalts the English race at the expense of some others, and depreciates the Irish race, with or without malice prepense, in a manner which is, to say the least, remarkable.
Mr. Lodge deals in some general statements easily susceptible of disproof, as when he says that “there was virtually no Irish immigration during the colonial period, and indeed none of consequence until the present century was well advanced.”
He offers no authority for this absurd statement; so it may be assumed that he ignorantly believes it true. Perhaps he also honestly believes in the race called “Scotch-Irish,” whom he defines as “descendants of the Scotch and English who settled in the North of Ireland.” Let these things pass. We are concerned only with the accuracy and honesty of Mr. Lodge’s quotations when he refers to a specific authority for facts and figures and professes to be governed by that authority.
In order to classify the distribution of “ability,” Mr. Lodge says that he “took Appleton’s Encyclopedia of American Biography in six volumes, one of the largest and most recent works upon the subject, and classified the persons mentioned therein who were citizens of the United States according to occupation, birthplace and race extraction.”
Mr. Lodge says that he found the work large and laborious. We can confirm that statement; for we also have taken the six volumes of Appleton’s and have gone conscientiously through the 14,000 and odd names therein recorded, to see if that otherwise valuable publication had really given the Irish race such an astonishingly poor record as Mr. Lodge’s tables show. We find that it has not. We find that Mr. Lodge and his authority differ so astoundingly, on almost every point, that his deductions are absolutely worthless because his statements are so utterly untrue.
In the matter of quantity, Appleton’s gives to the Irish race a list nearly one hundred per cent greater than Mr. Lodge professes to have found in its pages. On the score of quality, taking Mr. Lodge’s own test of merit, Appleton’s gives about 300 per cent more to the race than Mr. Lodge accords it.
Mr. Lodge classifies race by the paternal side alone, which is probably fair enough for practical purposes, and says:
“In a large number of cases, especially where the extraction is not English, the race stock is given in the dictionary. In a still larger number of instances the name and the place of birth furnish unmistakable evidence as to race. That error should be avoided in this classification is not to be expected, but I am perfectly satisfied that the race distribution is in the main correct. Such errors as exist tend, I think, here as elsewhere in these statistics, to balance one another, and the net result is, I believe, so substantially accurate as to have very real value, and to throw a great deal of light on what we owe in the way of ability to each of the various races who settled the United States.”
He counts as original settlers all who came to this country before the date of the adoption of the Constitution, A. D. 1789; those who came after that date are classified as “immigrants.” Taking the Encyclopedia as his authority, he examines the birth or race extraction of 14,243 persons therein named as having achieved sufficient distinction to deserve mention. As a result he finds that over 10,000 of the number should be credited to the “English” race.
It is not worth while to inquire into the accuracy of that estimate, since Mr. Lodge’s treatment of another race sufficiently disproves his claims to accuracy on any score.
In Tables “D” and “H,” covering respectively the original settlers and the immigrants, he gives the number of men of the Irish race who have achieved the distinction of a place in Appleton’s. Nowhere, apparently, is any allowance made either for the distinguished descendants of the original Irish settlers, distinguished or obscure themselves, nor for the distinguished children of undistinguished immigrants since 1789.
Charles Carroll of Carrollton is, we suppose, credited to the Irish of pre-Constitution days, and Thomas Addis Emmet to the “immigrant” class, but where does Mr. Lodge place the distinguished descendants of both? Where does he place the distinguished sons of obscure fathers, such men as Andrew Jackson and Robert Fulton? Certainly not among the race to which, according to Appleton, they belong, for they have no recognition in his “double star” table, to be described hereafter. Do they go to swell the ranks of the 10,000 English or those of the mixed and mythical “Scotch-Irish”?
What does he do with Philip Sheridan, who being neither an “immigrant” nor descended from pre-Constitution ancestors, is in a worse case than his namesake, Philip Nolan, being a “man without a race?” We cannot believe that Mr. Lodge ever intended committing such a palpable absurdity, because if carried to its logical conclusion, it would apply equally to distinguished men of all races. Mr. Lodge himself, for all that Appleton’s tells us to the contrary, never had a pre-Constitution ancestor, and has, therefore, no right to class himself among the 10,000 “English,” as he presumably does.
Mr. Lodge has a delightfully simple method of determining the relative values of great men. It is by noting how much of pictorial glory is awarded to each in the Encyclopedia. Persons whose biographical sketches are not illustrated with a portrait are not counted in at all.
Those who have a vignette portrait are classified as “single stars.” The truly great, who have full-page portraits, are called “double stars”—of these there are 58 among the whole 14,243.
Mr. Lodge confesses that encyclopediac fame is hardly just in giving double star honors to William Gilmore Simms and shutting out Hawthorne, Poe and Lowell, but Fame is notoriously capricious of her favors; which is why, perhaps, such authors as John Hay, T. W. Parsons, Theodore Roosevelt and many others are sent pictureless to posterity, while Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth and Mrs. Ann S. Stephens are immortalized in becoming wood-cuts. Mr. Lodge himself shines as a “single-star,” as does also Mr. E. P. Roe.
But even in his stellar classification Mr. Lodge makes a singular mistake, again on the wrong side of the Irish account. His “totals by race extraction” allow only one double star to “Irish.” Yet his cyclopedic authority has full-page steel engravings of the following six, all credited to the Irish race, without any hint of a mythical Scotch mixture: Chester A. Arthur, son of Rev. William Arthur of Antrim; John C. Calhoun, son of Patrick and grandson of James of Donegal; Robert Fulton, son of a Kilkenny man; Andrew Jackson, son of Andrew of Carrickfergus; James K. Polk, descendant of Irish Polk or “Pollock”; Philip H. Sheridan, race not mentioned but pretty well known.
Mr. Lodge is equally reckless of fact when he attempts to count the “single stars” of the Irish race. He finds only thirteen of these among the early settler class and eleven among the “immigrants”—twenty-four in all. Here are the names of sixty-five, given by Appleton’s, and not including such men of the Irish race as Lawrence Barrett, Lawrence and Philip Kearny, J. A. MacGahan, Commodore Macdonough and others, whose race is not specified in the cyclopedia:
Following is Mr. Lodge’s tabulated misrepresentation of Irish ability according to his Tables “D” and “H,” but not according to the facts as given by Appleton’s:
| Before 1789. | After 1789. | Total. | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Statesmen | 9 | 13 | 22 |
| Soldiers | 18 | 19 | 37 |
| Clergy | 28 | 85 | 113 |
| Lawyers | 12 | 6 | 18 |
| Physicians | 2 | 2 | 4 |
| Literature | 17 | 22 | 39 |
| Art | 7 | 12 | 19 |
| Science | 3 | 6 | 9 |
| Educators | 0 | 7 | 7 |
| Navy | 4 | 4 | 8 |
| Business | 3 | 8 | 11 |
| Philanthropy | 4 | 4 | 8 |
| Pioneers and Explorers | 0 | 3 | 3 |
| Inventors | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Engineers | 2 | 1 | 3 |
| Architects | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Musicians | 0 | 1 | 1 |
| Actors | 0 | 7 | 7 |
| Total | 109 | 200 | 309 |
Under the first head, “Statesmen,” Mr. Lodge “includes not only persons who have held public office, but all who as reformers, agitators, or in any other capacity have distinguished themselves in public affairs.” He allows nine statesmen to the Irish in his first list. His authority, Appleton’s Encyclopedia, is more liberal, giving them no less than thirty, including seven signers of the Declaration of Independence.
Not to answer assertion with mere counter-assertion, we have compiled the following list, from Appleton’s, including only such names as are specifically stated to belong to the Irish race, omitting all that are claimed as “Scotch-Irish,” and not even counting men of known Irish origin who are not so described in the cyclopedia.
In so doing we purposely leave out scores of Kellys, Butlers, Moores, Barrys, Boyles, etc. We do not wish to claim anything beyond the strict letter of Mr. Lodge’s authority, Appleton’s Encyclopedia. For every name in the following lists given by Appleton’s as Irish, but possibly of remoter Scotch or English origin, there will be found half a dozen other names in Appleton’s of obvious Celtic Irish origin which are not here included because not so specified in the cyclopedia. We are taking Mr. Lodge’s authority as such, in order to show how wildly he has departed from it. Following is the correct list compiled from Appleton’s:
3. Many eminent architects are, of course, to be credited to men of Irish blood in this country, but it must be remembered that we are now dealing solely with a certain edition of a certain encyclopedia.
Mr. Lodge is right, i. e., he follows his authority honestly in giving practically the correct number of names belonging to the departments of Art, Science and Architecture, and these alone.
It is worth noting that, if the Irish are conspicuous by their absence from the last named, they are gloriously prominent in the first. The race which has given to America, Crawford, Milmore, Kelly, St. Gaudens, Thompson, Hennessey, O’Donovan and as many more, has contributed at least its share to the glory of the country in that department.
The corrected figures, not according to Mr. Lodge, but according to the authority from which Mr. Lodge professed to have taken his own are, therefore, as follows. We give first the summary of the Lodge tables and then that of Appleton’s cyclopedia. They speak for themselves:
| According to Mr. Lodge. | According to his authority. | |
|---|---|---|
| Statesmen | 22 | 67 |
| Soldiers | 37 | 107 |
| Clergy | 113 | 140 |
| Lawyers | 18 | 59 |
| Physicians | 4 | 16 |
| Literature | 39 | 70 |
| Art | 19 | 19 |
| Science | 9 | 9 |
| Educators | 7 | 14 |
| Navy | 8 | 19 |
| Business | 11 | 35 |
| Philanthropy | 8 | 12 |
| Pioneers and Explorers | 3 | 5 |
| Inventors | 0 | 3 |
| Engineers | 3 | 4 |
| Architects | 0 | 0 |
| Musicians | 1 | 2 |
| Actors | 7 | 18 |
| 309 | 599 |
The true figures are almost twice as large as those of Mr. Lodge, and are far from representing the great total of Irish ability contributed to the United States, but not acknowledged in the cyclopedia.
Mr. Lodge must plead guilty to one of two charges. Either he has deliberately misrepresented the facts, or he is so careless or incompetent that he can neither count nor quote within 50 per cent of the truth.