labour, nationality and religion by james connolly 1910

8/14/2019 Labour, Nationality and Religion by James Connolly 1910

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Labor, Nationalityand ReligionBY

James ConnollyBeing a discussion of the Lenten Discourses against

Socialism delivered by Father Kane, S.J.,in Gardiner Street Church, Dublin, 1910.

Published byJAMES CONNOLLY SOCIALIST CLUB

43 West 29th Street, New York1918


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Copyright, 1918,byEGM ONT H. ARENS


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III.

IntroductionThe author of this book, Seamus OConnolly, or as hewas known to the international Labour and Socialist move-ment, Jim Connolly, was born In the County Monaghan,Ulster, Ireland, of pure Gaelic stock, his forbears, like him-self, revolutionary in thought, word and deed.His parents being in humble circumstances, he was com -pelled to work for a living from his early boyhood, sufferingthe usual vicissitudes of the poor, denied the opportunity ofeducation, like all other children of the Irish working class.

It is interesting to know that though he was forty yearsof age before he wrote anything for publication, betweenthat age and his heroic death he had published authoritativeand scholarly comnilations on economic. hintorinnl. anrl nnliti-.-.._._ -., ---- =_____cal matters not only of National but of.International value.Besides his mastery of the English language he was profi-cient in Gaelfc. Latin. German and Italian. His encvclonediaknowledge of -men and matters was not of the study only,but was acquired in the daily struggle for bread. He hadlaboured at many and diverse occupations, textile worker,machinist, dock labourer! soldier in the British army. com-positor, editor, trade union organizer and Socialist propa-g andist.As he lived for truth. on May. 1916. he died that truthmigh t live. To remove. any misconcentions that may beexistant, owing to the conscious attempt by interested partiesto malign his memory, it is well to place on record authorit-ative statements as to his life and work by comrades whohad the honour of being associated with him in the strugglefor human liberty. James Connolly was appolnted com -mander-in-chief of the united forces of the army of theIrish Provisional republic.This army was composed of two sections, the Irish citizenarm y, made up of members of labor unions and Socialists.which was founded in Cork in July, 1908, by the prese twriter and of which Connolly was acting commandant, t # eother section composed of the Irish Volunteers, made up ofmany diverse sections of the Irish people, including theIrish Republican Brotherhood, men affiliated with the GaelicLeague and the Sinn Fein political movement and othersunattached, but all agreeing with the principle of nation-hood and the setting up of an Irish republic.The Revolution as such failed to achieve success andConnolly paid the penalty of his life, being executed aftercapitulation, though severely wounded in action. Connollywas born a Catholic, lived, and died a Catholic. A memberof the working class by birth, he came to a full under-standing and knowledge of the scientlflc soundness a;:fundamental truth of Socialism in his early manhood.spent the majo r portion of his life in propagating the prln-ciples of Socialism and died a convinced enemy of Capitalismand a firm believer in the international brotherhood of man.Lest there be confusion in the minds of men it is vitallynecessary to state here that Connolly was no narrow bigotedjlngositic nationalist. he was an International& understand-ing the meaning of that term and living UP to the spirit ofit namely, that Internationalism COnnOteS nationis&O,~oi&other words nation interdependent with nation.meant to him not freedom for one nation or people but free-


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IV .dom for all nations and peop les, mean ing thereby econ om icfreedom from which all forms of freedom arise, namelysocia l, political, intellectual and religious freedom.Th is question of intellectual freedom will be best under-stood by a perusal of this work, in which Connolly proves tothe reader that the human mind is cond itioned by its eco-nomic bas is and its environment, that all forms of political,socia l, intellectual and theological structures grow out ofand are moulded by the econ om ic order of society, thereforehis comrades, the James Connolly So cialist Club, have feltit incumb ent upon them to republish this work, which firstappeared in serial form in the colum ns of the Irish Worker,the organ of the Irish labour and So cia list movement, pub-lishe d in Dub lin, Ireland, and was later republished in bookform in the year 1910.Th is book is gotten out by the loyalty and generosity ofthe members of the James Connolly So cialist Club. Twentyper cent. of the retail price will be forwarded to Mrs. Con-nolly and her orphans, and the remainder of the profits.if-any, will be utilized to republish the other works of urdead comrade. JIM LARKIN.

VOICE OF TH E EAR LY CHURCHAll Is common with us, except women. Jesu s was ourman, God and Brother. He restored unto all men whatcruel murderers took from them by the sword. Christianshave no master and -no Chistian sh all be bound for breadand raiment. The land is no mans inheritance; none sha ll

pos ses s it as property. Tertn llian (X6-228).

No man sh all be received Into our comm une, who sayeththat the land sh all be sold. Gods footstool is not prop-erty. S t. Cyprlan


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Foreword.Nothing is more conductive to the soread of a move-ment than-the disc uss ions arising out of the efforts of acapable opponent to refute its principles. out of suchdisc uss ions arises clearness of thought, and the consequentrealization on the Dart of both sides to the controversv of

the necessity of considering the movement under d&c&~sion in the light of its esse ntial principles, rather than ofits accide ntal accompanimen ts-the bas ic ideas of themovement itse lf rather than the idea s of the men orwomen who may for the moment be its princ ipal expo-nents or reoresentatives. Men nerish. but orincioles live.Hence the -recent efforts of ec cles iastic s tb put- the So-cia list movement under the ban of the Catholic Church,desnite the wild and reckless nature of the stateme nts bvwhich the end was sought to be attained, has had a goodeffect in com pelling Catho lics to examine more earnestlytheir pos ition as laymen, and the status of the clergy assuch . as well as their relative duties toward each otherwithin the Church and toward the world in general. Onepoint of Catholic doctrine brought out as a result of.suchexamination is the almost forgotten, and sedulously sup-pressed one+, that the Ca tholic Church is theoretically acomm unity m which the clergy are but the officers servingthe laity in a comm on worship and service of God, andthat should the clerav at anv time orofess or teach dottrines not in conformity with the true teachings ofCa tholicity it is not only the right, but it is the abso luteduty of the laity to refuse such doctrines and to disobeysuch teaching. Indeed, it is this saving claus e in Catholicdoctrine which has again and again operated to protectthe Church from the result of the mistaken attemots of theclergy to control the secular activ ities of the -laity. Itsee ms to be unavoidab le, but it is entirely regrettable, thatclergymen consecrated to the worship of God, and sup-posed to be patterned after a Redeemer who was theembodiment of service and hum ility, sho uld in their rela-tion to the laity insis t upon service and humility beingrendered to them instead of by them. The ir Master servedall Mankind in patience and suffering; they ins ist upon allMankind serving them, and in all questions of the soc ialand po litica l relations of men they require the comm on


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2laity to bow the neck in a meekness, hum ility and submis-sion wh ich the clergy scornfully reject. They have ofteninsis ted that the Church is greater than the secular author-ity, and acted therefore in flat defiance of the secu larpowers, but they have forgotten or ignored the fact thatthe laity are a part of the Church, and that therefore theright of rebellion against injustice so freely claimed bythe Papacy and the Hierarchy is also the inalien able rightof the laity. And history proves that in almo st everycase in which the nolitica l or soc ial asnirations of the laitvcam e into opposition to the wi ll of the clergy the laityrepresented the best interests of the Church as a wholeand of Mankind in general. Whenever the clergy suc-ceeded in conquering po litica l power in any country the/result has been disastrous to the interests of religionand inim ica l to the progress of humanity. From whencewe arrive at the con clus ion that he serves religion bestwho ins ists upon the clergy of the Cath olic Church.takingtheir proper pos ition as servants to the laity, and aban-doning their attempt to dom inate the pub lic, as they havelong dominated the private life of their fellow-C atholicsThe 1910 Lenten Discourse s of Father Kane, S.J., inCardiner Street Church, Dub lin, serve to illustrate these,our contentions. The So cia lists of Ireland are grateful tothose who induced such a learned and eloquent oratorin their capital city to attempt combating Soc ialism.Had it been an antagonist les s worthy their satisfac tionwould not have been so great. But they now feel confi-dent that when an opponent so capable, so wide in hisreading, so skilled in his presentation! so admirable in hismethod of attack. and so eloauent m his laneuaae ha;said his final word upon the- ques tion, they-m& restsatisfied that the best case against their cause has beenpresented wh ich can ever be forthcoming under sim ilarausp ices. In presenting their arguments against the posi-tion of the reverend lecturer-as aga inst his reverend co-workers who all over the world are engaged in the sam eunworthy task of com bating this movement for the up-lifting of humanity-we desire, in the spirit of our pre-ced ing remarks, to place before our readers a brief state-ment of some of the many instance s in which the Catholiclaity have been com pelled to take po litica l action contraryto the express comma nds of the Pope and the CatholicHierarchy ,and in which subsequen t events or the moreenlightened cons cience of subsequent ages have fullyjustified the action .of the laity and condem ned the action.of the clergy.Most of our readers are aware that the first Ang lo-Norman invasion of Ireland, in 1169, an invasion charac-terised by every kind of treachery, outrage, and ind iscr im-inate massacre of the Irish, took place under the authoritv


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3of a Bu ll issued by his Holiness, Pope Adrian IV. Doubthas been c ast upon the authenticity of the Bull, but it iscertain that neither Adrian nor any of his suc cessors inthe Pap al chair ever repudiated it.Every Irish man and woman, most enlightened Eng-lishm en, and practica lly every foreign nation to-day wishthat the Irish had succe ede d in preserving their indepen-dence aga inst the English king, Henry II., but at a Synodof the catho lic Church, held in Dublin in 1177, accordingto Rev. P. J. Carew, Professor of Divinity in Maynooth.in his Ecc lesiastica l History of Ireland, the Legate ofPope Alexander III,, set forth Henrys right to the sove-reignity of Ireland in virtue of the Popes authority! andinculcated the necessity of obeying him under pam ofexcommun ication. The English were not yet eight yearsin Ireland, the greater part of the country was st ill closedto them, but already the Irish were being excommun icatedfor refusing to becom e slaves.In Ii-eland, as in all Catholic countries, a church was asanctuary in which even the greatest crim inal cou ld takerefuge and be free from arrest. as the civil authority cou ldnot vfollow upon the consecrated ground. At the- Synodof 1177 the Pope , in order to help the English monarchaga inst the Irish. abo lished the right of sanctuary in Ire-&d, and empowered the Eng lgh to strip the Irishchurch es, and to hunt the Irish refugees who sough t shel-ter there. The greatest crim ina ls of Europe were safeonce they reached the wa lls of the church, but not anIrish patriot.In the year 1319 Edward Bruce, brother of Robert theBruce of Scotlan d, was invited into Ireland bv the Irishchie fs and peop le to help them in their patriotic war forindependence. He accepted the invitation, was joined byvast numbers of the peop le in arms, and together theIrish and Scotch forces swept the Eng lish out of Ulsterand Connacht. The Eng lish king appealed for help toPope John XXI., and that Pon tiff responded by at onceexcommu nicating all the Irish who were in arms againstthe English.

The Battle of the Boyne, fought July lst, 1690, isgenerally regarded in Ireland as a disaste r for the Irishcause-a disaster which made ooss ible the infliction of tw 1centu ries of unspeakable degradation upon the Irish peop le.Yet that battle was the result of an allian ce formed bvPope Innocent XI. with William , Prince of Orange, againstLouis, King of France. King Jame s of England joinedwith King Louis to obtain help to save his own throne, andthe Pope joined in the League with W illiam to curb thepower of France. When the news of the defeat of theIrish at the Boyne reached Rome the Vatican was illumin-ated by order of the new.Pope, Alexander VIII., and .


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4spe cial ma sses offered up in thanksgiving. See VonRankes History of the Pop es, and Murrays Irish Revo-lutionary History.Judge Maguire, of San Franc isco, California, writing ofthis period before the Reformation, says truly: Under alltheir Ca tholic ma jesties , from Henry II. to Henry VIII(nearly 400 years )the Irish peop le, with the exception offive fam ilies, were outlaws . They were murdered at will,like dogs, by their Eng lish Catholic neighbours in Ireland,and there was no law to pun ish the murderers. Yet duringall of this unpa ralleled reign of terror, history -fails toshow a single instance in which the Dower of the CatholicChurch was ever exerted or suggested by the Pope forthe protection of her faithful Irish children.The Irish peop le as a whole are proud of the fact that,accord inn to the renorted testimonv of General Lee of theAmerican army, m ore than half of the Con tinental sold iers.during the War of the Revolution were from Ireland, yetduring that War of Independence Bish op Troy, the Catho-lic Bishop of Ossory, ordered the Catho lics of his dioceseto observe a days fast and to hum ble him self in prayerthat they might avert the divine wrath provoked by theirAmerican fellow-subjects who, seduced by the specious no-tions of liberty and other illusive expectations of sove-reignty, dis cla im any dependence upon Great Britain andendeavour bv force of arms to distress their mothercountry. Quite recently, in 1909, Professor Monaghan,speaking before the Federation of Cath olic So cietie s inAmerica, declared with the approval of the bisho p andclerev that the Ca tholic Hierarchv of the United States_ < I~would, if need be, se ll the sacred vessels off the altar indefence of the American Repub lic. Thus the enlightenedouinion of the Catholics of our day condemns the Pas-t&al of the Catholic bishop of the -Revolutionary period,and endorses the action of the Catholics who disregardedit. In 1798 an insurrection in favour of an Irish Rep ublictook place in Ireland, assu ming most formidable propor-tions in County Wexford. The insurrection had beenplanned by the Society of United Irishmen, many of whoseleaders were Protestants and Freethinkers. The Ca tholicHierarchy and mos t of the priesthood denounced thesociety and incu lcated loyalty to the Government. Themore intelligent of the Catholic mas ses disregarded theseclerical denun ciations. In the Memoirs of his life, MilesByrne, a staunch Ca tholic patriot and revolutionist, whotook part in the insurrection, says: The priests did everything in their power to stop the progress of the Associa -tion of United Irishmen, particularly poor Father JohnRedmond, who refused to hear the con fessio n of any of* the United Irish, and turned them away from his knees.


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5Speaking of Father John Murphy, heworthy, simp le, pious man and oneCatholtc priests who -used the greatest

says, he was aof those Roman. .exertrons ana ex-hortatrons to oblige the people to give up their pikes andfirearms of everv descrintion. The wisdom of the neonleand the foolish nes s of the clergy were amply demonstraiedby the fact that the so ldie rs burned Father Murphyshouse over ,his head, and compe lled him to take the fieldas an insurgent. A heroic fight and a glorious martyr-dom atoned for his mistake, but the soldierlike qua litieshe showed in the field were rendered nugatory by the factthat as a Driest he had been instrum ental in disarm ingmany hundied of the men whom he afterwards comm and:ed. As an insurgent officer he discovered that his great-est hope lay in ihe men who had disregarded his-corn- ,mands as a priest, and retained the arms with which tofight for freedom.Dr. Trov. when Catholic Archbishop of Dub lin, wasaccord ing to an incident related in the Vicerovs Post-Bab, b; Mr. Michael MacDonagh, interrogated by theBritish authorities as to the duty of a priest who discov-ered in the con fessio nal a nlot -against the Government.and answered that, If in con fessi& r any plot agains t theexisting Government was disc lose d to the priest, he (thepriest) would be bound to give information to the Gov-ernment that such plot was in agitation, taking care thatnothing cou ld in any way lead to a sus picio n of theperson from whom, or the means in which , the informa-tion had been obtained. Chief Secretary Wickham , whoreports this conversation with the archbishop, goes onto say, I then asked him whether suc h con fession so madeto the priest. particularlv in the cas e of a crime aga instthe State ,was considered as a full atonement so -as toentitle the penitent to abso lution without a disc losure ofsuch Crimea being first made to the police or to theGovernment of the country. To this the Doctor answeredvery distinctly that he did not cons ider the con fession tothe priest alone, under suc h circumstances , a sufficientatonement, and that either the priest ought to insist on asuch confession to the State or to the police being made.or to enjoin the making of such disclosure subsequentto absolution in like manner as penance is enjoined undersimilar circumstances.There is little doubt in our mind but that Dr. Troymisrepresented Ca tholic doctrine, but it is noteworthy thata parish pries t at Mallow, Co. Cork, ordered a member ofthe United Irishmen, who had sought him in the con-fessio nal, to give information to the authorities of a plotof the Royal Meath Militia to seize the artillery at thatpoint and turn it over to the revolutionists. Th is priest.Father Thom as Barry, afterwards drew a pens ion of


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El00 per year from the Government for his information;his action . was, and is, abhorred by the vast ma ss of theIrish Catholics, but was in strict accord with his duty aslaid down by Archbishop Troy.All impartial historians recognise that the LegislativeAct of Union between Great Britain and Ireland waspassed By perjury and fraudBy slaves who so ldFor place or goldThe ir country and their God.

Yet we are informed by Mr. Plowde n, a Cath olic historian,that a very great preponderance in favour of the Unionexisted in the Cath olic Bodv. Darticularb in their nob ilitvgentry, and clergy. On Iv&ch Ist, 1860, no les s than 32Orange lodges protested aga inst the Act of Union, butj the Ca tholic Hierarchy endorsed it.Everv vear the members of the Irish race scatteredthrough% the earth celebrate the memory of RobertEmmet, and cherish him in their hearts as the highest idealof patriot and martyr; but on the occasio n of his martyr-dom the Catholic Archbishops of Dublin and Armagh pre-sented an address to the Lord Lieutenan t, representativeof the British Government in Ireland, deno uncing Emm etin the strongest nossib le terms. That this action was inconformity with ihe pos ition of the whole Ca tholic Hier-archy was evidenced in 1808 when all the Catholic bishopsof Ireland met in Synod on September 14th, and passedthe following resolution , as reported in Havertys Historyof Ireland: That the Roman Cath olic prelates pledgethemse lves to adhere to the rules by which they havebeen hitherto uniformly guided , viz., to recommend to hisHoliness (for appointment as Irish Roman Catholicbishops) only such persons as are of unimpeacha bleloyalty.After Dan iel OConnell and the Ca tholics of Irelandhad wrested Ca tholic Em ancipa tion from the British Gov-ernment they initiated a demand for a Repeal of theUnion. Their service to Catholic Ema ncipation was aproof. positive of their Ca tholic orthodoxy, but at theurgent request of the British Government Pope GregoryXVI. issue d a Rescript comman ding the priests to abstainfrom attending the Repeal meetings. OConnell said thiswas an illeg al interference with the liberties of the clergy,declared he would take his religion from Rome, but nothis politics, and the Ca tholic opin ion of our day em-phatically endorses his attitude and condemn s the actionof the Pope.In 1847 the Catho lics a.mong the Young Irelandersprepared a mem orial to be presented to the Annual


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7Assem bly of the Bisho ps, defending themselves from thecharge of infidelity. The Archbishop of Tuam declared hewould retire if they were adm itted. They were not ad-mitted. To-day the memory of the Young Irelanders isheld close to the heart of every intellige nt Irish man orwoman.

.uring the great Irish famine of 18456-7-8-g the Irishneonle died in hundreds of thousands of hunger. whilstthere was food enough in the country to feed three timesthe popu lation. When the starving peasantry was ca lledupon to refuse to pay rent to idle landlords, and to risein revolt aga inst the system wh ich was murdering them,the clergy comm anded them to pay their rents, instruc tedthem that they wou ld lose their immortal souls should theyrefuse to do so, and threw all the weight of their posi-tion aga inst the revolutionary movement for the freedomof Ireland. Mr. A. M. Su llivan , an exetremely ardentCa tholic, writing in New Ireland says of this attitudeof the clerav during that cr isis that. Their antaaonismwas fatal g the r&vement-more surely and infalliblyfatal to it, than all the powers of the British Crown.The Irish revolutionary movement known popularly asthe Fenian Brotherhood was denounced bv all the Catho-

lic Hierarchy and most of the clergy, Bish op Moriarty--ofCounty Kerry saying that Hell was not hot enough noreternity long enough to punish such miscreants. , TheFenians were represented as being enemies of religion andof morality, yet the three representatives of their cau se whodied upon the sca ffold died with a nraver unon their lins .and Irish men and women the world over tolday make theanniversary of their martyrdom the occ asio n for a glori-fication and endorsement of the principles for which theydied-a glorification and endorsement in which many ofour clergymen participate.In January, 1871, the Ca tholic Bish op of Derry de-nounced the Home Rule movement of Isaac Butt. To-day

nries ts and peop le agree that the movement led by Isaa cButt was the milde st, most inoffensive movement everknown in Ireland.The Irish Land League, which averted in 1879 a re-petition of the famine horrors of 1847, wh ich broke theback of Irish landlordism, and abolished the worst evils ofBritish rule, was denounced by Archbishop MCabe inSeptember, 1879, October, 1880, and October, 1881.In 1882 the Ladies Land League, an asso ciation ofIrish lad ies organized for the patriotic and benevolent pur-pose of raising funds for the relief of distress, of inquiringinto cases of eviction, and affording relief to evicted ten-ants, was denounced by Archbishop MCabe as immodestand wicked. After th is attack upon the character of


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patriotic Irish womanhood Archb ishop MCabe wascreated a Cardinal.On May ll th, 1883,in the midst of the fight of theIrish peasantry to save themse lves from landlord tyranny,his Holines s the Pope, issued a Rescript condemning dis-affection to the English government, and also condemningthe testim onia l ,to Charles Stewart Parnell. The IrishPeop le answered by more than doubling the subscrip tionto the testim onial. The leader of that fight of the Irishagainst their ancient tyrants was Michael Davitt, to whoseefforts much of the comparative security of peasant lifein Ireland is due. Davitt was denied an audien ce by thePope, but at his death priests and peop le alike unitedto do tribute to his character and gen ius.

In 1883 Dr. MGlyn, a Ca tholic priest in Ame rica, wasinvited to deliver a lecture for the purpose of raisingfunds to save from starvation the starving people of theWes t of Ireland. The Vatican sent a telegram to CardinalMCloskey ordering him to suspend this priest MGlynnfor preaching in favour of the Irish revolution. The tele-gram was signed by Cardinal Sime oni. Afterwards FatherMGlynn was sub jected to the senten ce of com plete ex-com munication for preaching revolutionary doctrinesupon the land ques tion, but after some years the Vatica nacknowledged its error, and revoked the sentence withoutrequiring the victim to change his principles.In all the examp les covered by this brief and verv in-com plete retrospective glance into history the ins tinc tsof the reformers and revolutionists have been right, thepolitical theories of the Vatican and the clergy unques-tionably wrong. The verdict of history as unquestionaMyendorses the former as it conde mns the latter. And in-telligen t Ca tholics everywhere acce pt that verdict. Inso-far as true religion has triumphed in the hearts of menit has triumphed in spite of, not because of, the politicalactivities of the priesthood. Tha t po litica l activity inthe past, like the clerical opposition to Soc ialism at pres-ent, was and is an attemot to serve God and Mammonlan attempt .to com bine the service of Him who in hishumbleness rode upon an ass, with the service of thosewho rode roughshod over the hearts and souls and hopesoi suffering humanitv.The Cap italist Class rose upon the ruins of FeudalCatholicism; in the countries where it gained power itsfirst act was to decree the confisca tion of the estates ofthe Church. Yet to-day that robber cla ss , conce ived insin and begotten in iniquity, asks the Church to defend it,and from the Vatica n downwards the clergy respond tothe ca ll. Jus t as the British Government in Ireland onJanuary 21st, 1623, pub lished a Royal Proclam ation ban-ishing all prrests from Ireland, and in 1765 established a


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9College at Maynooth for the educa tion of priests, andfound the latter course safer for British rule than theformer, so the capitalist clas s has also learned its lessonand in the hour of danger en lists as its lieutenants andchampions the priesthood it persecuted and despised inthe hour of its strength. Can we not imagine somecynical supporter of the capitalist clas s addressing it to-day as the great Catho lic orator, Richard Lalor Shie l, ad-dressed the British Government on the occasio n of theMaynooth Grant of 1845, and saying his words:-You are taking a step in the right direction. Youmu st no t take the Ca tho lic clergy into your pay, but youcan take the Ca tho lic clergy under your care. . . . Arenot lectures at Maynooth cheaper than State prose-cution s? Are not professors les s costly than CrownSolicito rs? Is -not a large standing army, and a greatconstabulary force more expensive than the moral pc !ic ewith which by the priesthood of Ireland you can bethriftily and efficac iously supplied.


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11

Labor, Nationalityand Religion..-

CHAPTER I.It is not to be wondered at that the spirit of restles srevolt which has gained suc h predominating influenceover the- nations of the world should have passed beyondthe arena of po litics to assert itse lf in the doma in ofprac tical economy. The cau ses likely to create a con-flict are unmistakable. They are the marvelous ais-

coveries of scie nc e! the colos sal development of industry,the changed relatrons between workmen and masters,the enormous wealth of the few and the abjec t miserv ofthe many, the more defiant self-reliance and the moresc ien tific organization of the workers, and finally a wide-spread depravity in moral princip le and practice. Th emomentous seriousness of the coming crisis fills everythoughtful mind with anxiety and dread. W ise men dis-cus s it; practical men propose schem es; platformsParliamen ts, club s, kings, all think and talk of it. Noris there any subject which so completely engrosses theattention of the world.-Encyc lical on Labour by PJpeLeo XIII., 1891.In our analysis of the discourses against Soc ialismwhich formed the burden of the Lenten Lectures of FatherKane, S.J., we propose to cite at all times the text we arecriticis ing, and we regret it is not practicab le within ourspac e to quote in full the entire series of lectures, and canonly trust that our readers before making up their m indsupon the ques tion wiil procure a verbatim report of thesedisco urses in order that they may satisfy themselves uponthe correctness of our quotations. As far as it is poss rble

without destroying the unity of our argument we &a llfollow the plan of the lecture itself, and attempt to answereach objec tion as it was formulated. But when an objec-tion is merely stated, and no attempt made to follow it bya reasoned argument sustaining the objection we sha ll notwaste our readers time or our own by wandering off ir an

,


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12attempt to answer. One point stated by our reverendopponenf, and then immediately forgotten ,or system-atica lly Ignored, requires to be restated here as theveritable anchor from wh ich the argument should not beallowed to drift. Had our opponent clung to that anchorit would not have been possib le for him, to introduce somuch extraneous matter, so much sen seles s s pecu lationand foolish slander as he did introduce in the course ofhis long-drawn-out criticism . That point as. stated byFather Kane is: Once for all we mus t unde rstand a So-cia list to be that m an, and only that m an, who h oldsthe esse ntial principle of Soc ialism, i.e., that all wealth-produc ing power, and all that pertains to it, belon gs tothe ownership and control of the State. Thus , at :heoutset of his lectures, in his first d iscourse, the reverendgentleman makes it clear that So cialists are bound asSo cialists only to the acceptance of one great principle-the ownership and control of the wealth-producing powerby the State, and that therefore totally antagon istic inter-pretations of the Bib le or of Prophecy and Revelation,theories of marriage, and of history, may be held by So-cia lists without in the slightest degree interfering withtheir activities as such, or with their proper class ificationas supporter> of So cia list doctrine. If this great centraltruth had been made as clear a s its importance justifies,and as firmly adhered to by our opponent as the So cia liststhemselves adhere to it, then it would not be necessaryfor the present writer to remind our crit ics of those un-com fortable facts in Irish h istoPy to which we have re-ferred in our introduction, nor to those other facts inuniversal history we sh all be forced to cite ere our presentsurvey is finishe d.Says our critic:-We now come to examine its principles. Onefundamental principle of Soc ialism is that labour a!one

is the cau se of value, and that labour alone can give anytitle to ownership. Th is was first formulated by Sain tSimon, and is generally adopted by Soc ialists. Th isprinciple is false. It is founded on an incompleteexnlanation of the oritin of value. We w ill vut it to thetest later on . A t present we need only remark that athing may be of real u se and therefore of realvalue to a man who has a right to use it, even inde-pendently of any labour spen t upon it. Fruit in aforest would have real value for a hungry man, eventhough no human labour had been given to its growqng.Another DrinciD le. one invented bv Karl Marx. is whathe ca lls he Mgteiialistic Conception of Histoiy. It isan application of the wild philosop hic dreams of theGerman., Hege l; it mea ns, in plain E ng lish, that theeconomic, or broadly speaking, the trade con ditions


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13existing in the world, determine the way in which theproduction of wealth mus t work out. Now, this work-ing out of production determines what me ns soc ial,ethical and religious opinions sha ll be. But the eco-nom ic conditions are always in a state of evolution,and thus, after a time: they come into co llisio n withthe previous socia l, ethical and religious state of things.But these latter do not die without a struggle. and con-sequen tly re-act, and lim it to some extentihk. influen ceof- the material evolution which is going on. I havegiven this principle as fully as I can ina short space. Itassu me s that everything in the world depen ds absolutelyand exclusively upon the mere ac tion of mere materialcause s. It is a principle the only proof of which is inthe begging of the question, in supposing that there isno God, no sou l, no free will, nothing but mud and theforces of mud.We are indebted to our critic for his statement of theimportance of this doctrine of the Materialistic Conce ptionoi History, although we are amused at his characterizationof the doctrine itself. In the beginning of his description,

ever mind ful of the necessity of prejudicing his hearers, hedescribes it as an application of the wild philosop hicdreams of Hege l; in the midd le it is stated that thedoctrine rejects dreams as a foundation of religious be!ie fand bases our.ideas of religion upon the impression de-rived from material surround ings, and in the fina l sen-tence, so far from it being dreams, it is nothing but mudand the forces of mud.. Let us examine briefly the true context of this doctrine.While remembering that there are many good So cisl ;stswho do not hold it, and that a belief in it is not an essen-tial to Soc ialism, it is still accepted as the most reasonableexplanation of history by the leading So cialists of thisworld. It teaches that the idea s of men are derived fromtheir material surround ings, and that the forces whichmade and make for historical changes and human progresshad and have their roots in the development of the toolsmen have used in their struaale for existence. usinrr theword tools in its broadest-fossible sense toinclude allthe socia l forces of wealth-production. It teaches thatsince the break-up of comm on ownership and the clancomm unity all human history has turned around thestruggle of contending class es in society-one cla ss striv-ing to retain possession, first of the persons of the othercla ss and hold them as chattel slaves. and then of thetools of the other clas s and hold them as wage-slaves,That all the po litics of the world resolved themseves inthe last analysis into a struggle for the posse ssion of thatportion of the fruits of labour which labour creates, hutdoes not injoy, i.e., Rent, Interest, Profit. Here let us


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14say that no Socialist claims for Marx the discoverv ororiginal formulation of the doctrine of the MaterialisticConception of History-indeed, the brilliant Irish scho-lastic, Duns Scotus, taught it in the Middle Ages-but thatmore precise formulation of the guiding forces of historywhich relate to the influence of economic factors andwhich we all call Economic Determinism has indeed Marxas its clearest exnositor. althoucrh the Irish economist.William Thompson of County C&k, in 1826, had pointedit out before Marx was out of swaddling clothes.On the first point, viz., the influence of our materialsurroundings upon our mental processes and conceptions,a few words should be sufficient to establish its substan-tial truth in the minds of all those who do not fear thelight. -Down on the western coast of Ireland the fishermenuse, or did until quite recently, as their sole means of Sea-going. a little boat made simnlt of a framework coveredwith-animal hides or tarpaulin- and known as a coracle.At one time in the history of the world such boats rep-resented the sole means of ocean travel. Now, is it notas plain as that two and two makes four that the outlookupon life, the conceptions of Mans relation to Nature,the theories of international relations, of politics, of gov-ernment, of the possibilities of life which characterize theage of the Lusitania, the flying machine, and the wirelessmessage, could not possibly have been held by even thewisest men of the aae of the coracle. The brains of menwere as able then and as subtle in their conceptions as.they are to-day, in fact the philosophers of ancient Asiahave never been surpassed and seldom equalled in brainDower in the modern world: but the most subtle. acute andpowerful mind of the ancient world could not even under-stand the terms of the social, political or moral problemswhich confront us to-day, and are intelligently understoodby the average day labourer. We are confronted with asalient instance of this in Holy Scripture. We read theinspired revelation of prophets, judges, and saints givingthe world instructions for its future guidance; we read ofcommands to go forth and convey the gospel to the hea-then; but nowhere do we read that those inspired menknew or spoke of a continent beyond the Atlantic in whichimmortal souls were sitting in darkness, if souls can besaid to sit. The wise men of the ancient world, the m-spired men of the Holy Land, the brilliant philosophersand scholastics of mediaeval Europe, were all limited bytheir material surroundings, could only think in terms ofthe worId with which they were acquainted, and their :deasof what was moral or immoral were fashioned for them bythe social system in which they lived. Slavery is heldto-day to be immoral, and no chattel slaveowner would

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15be given abso lution; but when Constantine the Great ac-cepted the Christian religion the Pope of the period re-ceived him with acclamation, and no one suggested to himthe need of surrendering his slaves, of which he heldthousand s. Queen Elizabeth of England; Good QueenBess, engaged in slave trading and made a good profitin the venture; but no Cath olic historian or pamphleteerof the period ever attacked her for that o ffence, althoughattacks for other cau ses were made in plenty. How is itthat the point of view as to the morality of slavery hascharmed? It cannot be that religion is changed. for weare &Id that religion is the sam; yesterday, to-day, andforever. If it is not becau se it has been discovered thatit is cheaper to hire men and discharge them when thejob is done, than it was to buy men and be com pelled tofeed them all the time, working or idle, sick or well, forwhat reason has the change in our conceptions come?Stated brutally, the fact is that slavery is immoral becau seit is dearer than wage labour. And so with all our otherintellectual processes. They change with the change inour environment, particularly our econ om ic or so cia l en-vironment.A negro slave in the Southern States of America wastold by his owner to go up and fasten the shin gles on thetop of the roof of his mas ters dwe lling. Bos s said he -to the slaveowner, if I go up there and fall do&r and getkilled you will lose that 500 dollars you paid for me;but if you sen d up that Irish labourer and he falls downand breaks hi s neck vou won t even have to burv him .and can get another labourer to-morrow for two dolla rsa day. Th e Irish labourer was sen t up. Moral: Slaveryis immoral because slaves c ost too much.As man .has progressed in his conquest of the secretsof Nature, he has been com pelled to acce pt as eminentlynatural that from which his forefathers shrank as a mani-festation of the power of the supernatural; as the progressof comm erce has taken wealth, and the power that goeswith wealth, out of the exclusive ownership of kings andDU t it in the DOSSeSSiOn of caoitalists and merchants.po litical power -has acquired a new bas is, and diplom aticrelations from being. the expression of the lust for familyaggrandisement have become the servants of the need fornew markets and greater profits-kings wait in the ante-chambe rs of usurers like Roth schild and Baring to gettheir conse nt for war or peace; Pope s have for. hundredsof Years excomm unicated those who nut their monev outat usury and have denied them C hristian burial, but nowa Pierpont Morgan, as financier of the Vatican , lends outat interest the treasures of the Pope s. And man caughtin the grasp of the changing econom ic conditions changeshis intellectual conceptions to meet his hanged environ-


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16ment. The world m oves even although men stand stil l,and not the leas t of the changes have been those of theghostly fathers of the Church towards the world andits problems. Like the girl to the kisses of her sweet-heart the Church has ever to the bland ishments of theworld- Swearing she would neer conse nt, consented.Our critic nroceeds:-The th&d principle of Socia lism is the theory ofKarl Marx by which he tries to prove that all cap ital isY robbery. He-c alls it~the theory of Surplus Value _ Valueis the worth of a thing. Now, the worth of a thing maybe in that it satisfies some need, as a piece of bread or ablanket; or the worth of a thing may be in that you canbarter It for something else , as if you have more breadthan you want, but have not a blanket, you may givesome of your bread to a man who has no bread but c anspare a blanket. The first kind of value is use value, orown worth. The secon d kind of value is exchange value,or market worth. Instead of mere direct barter, moneyis used in civilized nations as an equivalent and standardfor exchange value. Now, Carl Marx asserts that ex-change value, i.e., the worth of a thing as it may bebought or sold , arises onlv from the labour spent on it.He goes on to say that a-workman only gets-h is wages

according to the market value of his labor-that is tosay, he is only pa id for his time and toil-whereas thevalue of his labour, i.e.. the worth which results from hislabour, may be far.in excess of the wages which he gets.Marx ca lls this value or worth which results from labourover and above the wages of labour. which is eauivalentto the labourers suppo;t, Marx ca lls this overworth sur-plus value. He states that while it goes to the pocket ofthe employer, it is really the property of the workman,because it is the result of his labour.. Th is surplus

-value is really cap ital, and is used by the employer tocreate more surplus value-that is to say, more cap ital.Let me out -this in another wav: while the value of athing fo; a mans own use may depend on the thingitself, the value of a thing in the market arises only fromthe labour spent on it. But the labour spent on it mayalso have its market value in winning its wage, or it mayalso have its use value in producing greater value thanits wage. But this use value arises from labour as wellas the exchange value, and, therefore, belongs to theworkman and ndt to the employer. Al l this ingen iousand intricate system rests absolutely upon the one as-sumption that exchange value depends only on thelabour spent. Now, this assumption is quite ialse andquite ground less. The worth of a thing in the marketwil l depend first of all upon the nature of the thing s

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17own worth for use. Secondly, upon the demand andother outside circum stanc es. And thirdlv unon thelabour spent. A bottle of good wine w ill have more ex-change value than a bottle of bad wine, even thoughit may not have cos t more labour. A pair of bootscarved out of wood with long and careful toil will fetchles s in the market than a sim ple pair of brogues. Theprincip le that labour alone is the source of value andthe onlv title to ownershin. was adonted bv the AmericanSo cia list platform in 1904; with the recomm endation that

the workmen of the world should gradually seize on allcapital.Now, as to the So cia list system. In the officia ldeclaration of the English Soc ialists we read-The objectof Soc ialism is the establishment of a svstem of society.based unon the common ownershin and democraticcontrol of the means and instruments for producing anddistributing wealth by, and in the interest of, the wholecommunitv.There is-little to refute here that wi ll not have readilyoccurred to the mind of the intelligen t reader. In fact, thehaste with which Father Kane left this branch of the sub-

iect evinced his knowledge of its dannerous nature. Th eexposition of the true nature of cap?tal, viz., that it isstored-up, unpaid labour, forms the very basis of the So-cialis t criticism of modern societv. and its method ofwealth production; it is the fundamen tal idea of modernMarxist Socialis m, and yet in a discourse covering fourcolum ns of sm all type in the Irish Catholic (what amisnomer!) the full criticism of this really fundamentalpos ition takes up only twelve lines . And such a criti-c i sm!A bottle of good wine will have more exchange valuethan a bottle of bad wine, even though it may not havecost more labour. Does the reverend father not knowthat if good wine can be produced as cheaply as bad wine,and in as great quantity, then good wine wil l come downto the sam e price as the inferior article? And if goodwine cou ld be produced as cheaply as porter it- wouldbe sold at the same price as porter is now-heavenlythought! It is the labour embod ied in the respective ar-ticles, including the labour of keeping in storage, payingrental for vau lts, etc., that determines their exchangevalue. Wine kept in vaults for years comm ands higherprices than new wine, but could chem ists give new winethe same flavour as is pos sessed by stored-up wine thenthe new would bring down the price of the old to aprice governed by the amount of labour embod ied in thenew. A pair of boots carved out of wood with long andcareful labour wil l fetch les s in the market than a sim ple


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18pair of brogues. How illuminatin g1 But what governsthe price of the brogues? Why, the amount of labour so-ciallv necessarv to nroduce them. The amount of labournecessary to produce an article under average soc ialcond itions governs its exchange value. Boots carved outof wood with long and carefu l labour are not producedunder average so cial cond itions; in discuss ing the eco-nomic question we discu ss governing conditions, notexceptions. Hence the exchange value of boots such asthose instance d by Father Kane is as problema tical as themoral value of his hair-splitting. If you do not believelabour cos t governs the exchange value of a commodityask a Dublin master builder to tell YOU what factors hetakes into accou nt when he is asked-to give an estimatefor building an altar. If he is a Catho lic he will cas t uphis estimate with the same items as if he were a Protestant-that is to say, he will count the cos t of labour, includin gthe cos t of labour embodied in the raw material, and hewill base his estimate upon that cost. Ask any manufac-turer, whether emp loying 2 men or 2,000, how he deter-mine s the price at which he can se ll an article, and hewill tell you that the cos t of labour embodied in it settlesthat question for the market and for him. Yet it is thissimple truth that Father Kane and such enem ies ofSoc ialism deny. Altars,. beads, cassocks, shoes, buildings,ploughs, books, a ll articles upon the market, except apo litician s conscience-have their exchange value, deter-mine d in like manner-by their labour cost .The learned gentleman winds up this lecture with asneer at Soc ialist proposals, and an unwilling admissionof the terrible logic of our position in future politic s. Hesays:- The means and method of the So cialis t have now to

be considered. Here we have to consider their destruc-tive and cons tructive methods-what and how thev areto knock down,. what and how they are to build up.Here, however, we meet with an endle ss difference ofSo cialis t opinions . As to the knocking down process,some So cialis ts are very enterprising, and appear toquite fall in with the Anarch ist programme of the dag-ger, the firebrand and the bomb. Others prefer to workthrouah Parliament bv legal voting and bv lenal mea-sures.- Most of them- ap+ar from their ipee ihes andwritings to be very little troubled with sc ruples as tothe right or wrong of means to be employed. Some fash-ionable and aesthetic dabblers in Soc ialism, amongstwhom are men of culture ! education and wealth-as, forinstance , are some promiment members of the FabianSociety-would work very quie tly and very gently; theywould even contemp late offering. some comp ensation tothe owners whose property they sto le, but more prob-


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19ably when the real crash cam e they would gracefullyretire with their culture, their education and theirmoney. A man who makes E25,OOO a year by am usingthe public is not the sort of man who is likely, whenthe time come s, to willingly give up all that he ownsfor the honour of swee ping a~ street cros sing as a So-cialist. That is onlv the suoerficial nonsense which somepeople pass off as Soc ialism. Come to the practicalpoint. The way in which Karl Marx explains how allcapital is to be confiscated is as follows. On the onehand that fierce com petition which is the war of thefinan cial world w ill result in the survival of a very fewand very grasping capita lists. On the other hand, thearmy of labour wi ll be more enlightened, better organ-ized, and more scien tifically led. It is easy to see whatthe enormous multitude of the proletariat-with force,votes and law on their side-can do with the few fat buthelples s m illionaires whose money is wanted. In anycase the Soc ialist intends by one means or another totake private property from all those who have any.As to the constructive methods of the Socialist,.we havedreams. visions, cas tles in the air, fairy tales m which

there is much that is am using, som e/things that are verysen timental, and som e things that are very foul; but inall of them one element is lacking-common sense.It is surely not necessary to point out that acco rding tothe So cialist doctrine the cap italist cla ss are themselvesdoing much of the constructive work; they: pushed bytheir econom ic nec ess ities! concentrate industries, eliminateuse less labour and abohsh use less plants, and prepareindustrv for its handling bv offic ials elected bv the work-

ers therein. On the oth


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20France. Now that cap italism has attained to power andmade comm on cause with its old enem ies, royalty andhierarchy, it would fain disavow much of the teaching ofits earlier days, and hence listen s comp lacently whilstFather Kane attacks the Rights of Man, and sneers at themob, as he elegantly terms the common people forwhom his Master died upon the Cross. We do not pro-pose to follow the reverened gentleman into all his ex-cursion s away from the subje ct, but sh all content our-selves with citing and refuting those passages whichhave a real and permanent bearing upon the questionat issue.He begins:-Mans right to live is also the right to take the

means wherewith to live. Hence he can make use ofsuch material means as are necessary in order that heshou ld live. But he cannot make use of certain neces-sary means if others may use them also. Hence hisright to use these means is at the same time a rightto exclude others from their use. If a man has a rightto eat a definite piece of bread, he has a right that noone else sha ll eat it. We w ill set this truth in anotherlight. The right of private ownership may be consid-ered either in the abstract, or as it is realised in con-crete form. Tha t right in the abstract means that bythe very law of nature there is inherent in man a right* to take hold of and apply for his own support thosematerial means of livelihoodwh ich are not already inthe right possession of another man. What those par-ticular means are is not decided in the concrete by Na-tures law. Nature gives the right to acquire, and byacquiring to own. But some partial fact is required inorder to apply that abstract law to a concrete thing.The fact is naturally the occupying or taking hold of,or entering into possession of, a thing, by which prac-tica l action the abstract law of Nature becom es realisedin a concrete practica l fact. W ith this, or upon this, follows another right of man, the right to own his la-bour and the right to what his labour does. Further-more, this right to exclusive personal ownership is notrestricted to the means of ones daily bread from dayto day; it is a right to secure against want, when theneeded means may not be at hand. The man who hastilled a.field through the winter and spring has a rightto hold as his own. the harvest which he has earnedHence the right of ownership is by Natures law notmerely pass ing, but permanent; it does not come andgo at haphazard:. it is stable. Hear the teaching ofPope Leo XIII. in his Po ntifical explanation of thispoint (Enc yclical on Labour): Th e So cialis ts, workingon the poor mans envy of the rich, endeavor to destroy


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private property, and maintain that personal propertyshould become the common property of all. They areemphatically unjust, because they would rob the lawfulpossessor. . . . I f one man hires out to anotherhis strength or his industry, he does this in order to re-ceive in return the means of livelihood, with the intentionof acquiring a real right, not merely to his wage, but.also to the free disposal of it. Should he invest thiswage in land, it is only his wage in another form.It is precisely in this power of disposal that owner-shiu consists. whether it be auestion of land or otherproperty. Socialists . . -. strike at the liberty ofevery wage-earner, for they deprive him of the liberty ofdisposing of his wages. Every man has, by the law ofNature, the right to possess property of his own.It must be within his right to own things, not merelyfor the use of the moment, not merely things that perishin their use, but such things whose usefulness is perma-nent and stable. Man is prior to the State, andhe holds his natural rights prior to any right of theState . . .When man spends the keeness of his mind and thestrength of his body in winning the fruits of Nature, hethereby makes his own that spot of Natures field which

- he tills, that spot on which. he sets the seal of his ownpersonality. It cannot but be justthat that spo),;houldbe his own, free from outside intrusion.If one of the boys at the National Schools could notreason more logically than that he would remain in thedunces seat all his schooldays. Imagine a priest who de-fends landlordism as Father Kane and the Pope does,saying, The man who has tilled a field through the winterand spring has a right to hold as his own the harvestwhich he has earned, and imagining that he is puttingforward an argument against Socialism. Socialists do notpropose to interfere with any mans right to hold whathe has earned; but they do emphatically insist that sucha man, peasant or worker, shall not be compelled to giveup the greater part, or any, of what he has earned, toan idle class whose members toil not neither do theysoin. but.who have attained their hold uoon the nations$roperty by ruthless force, spoliation and fraud.Mans right to live is also the right to take the meanswherewith to live.

His riaht to use these means is at the same timea right- to exclude others from their use.That is to say that a man has the right to take themeans wherewith to live. and he has also the right toprevent other men taking the. means wherewith to live.The one right cancels the other. When the supply of athing is limited, and that thing is necessary, absolutely


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22necessary, to existence, as is land, water and the mean sof producing wealth, does it not follow that to allowthose things to be made private property enables theowners of them to denv Man the right to live. extenthe agrees to surrender-the greater p&tion of the fruitsof his toil to the owners? Cap italism and Landlordismare based upon the denial to Man of his Right to Liveexcept as a dependant upon Ca pitalists and Landlords;they exist by perpetually con fiscatin g the property whichthe worker has in the fruits of his toil, and establishproperty for the ca pita list by denying it to the labourer.Why talk about the Right to Live under Cap italism? Ifa man had all the patriotism of a Robert Emm et or aGeorge Washington, if he had all the genius of a Gold-sm ith or a Mangan. if he had a ll the relieion of a St.Simeon Stylites & a Francis dAs sisi? if h> belongs tothe working cla ss he has no effective Rrght to Live in thisworId unle ss a can italist can see his wav to make a urofitout of him. Trans lated into actua l practice these naturalrights of which the reverend gentleman discoursed toeloquently mean for 23,000 fam ilies in Dublin the right to-live in one room per family-living, sleep ing, eating anddrinking and dying in the narrow com pass of the fourwa lls of one room.When man soends the keenness of his mind and thestrength of his body in winning the fruiti of Nature hethereby makes his own that spot of Natures field which hetills, so says his Holine ss, as quoted by Father Kane. Itfollows then that the Irish oeasantrv.like the oeasantrv ofEurope in general, are and were the real owners of-theso il, .and that the feudal aristocracy; the landlord cla ss ,whose proudest boast it was, and is; that they have neversoile d their hands by labour, are and were thieves exactingforced tribute from the lawful owners of the so il. Yetthose thieves have ever been supported by the Hierarchyin their pos session of property agains t the peasan ts whohad made it their own by spending the keenness of theirmind and the strength of their body in tilling it.

.

The working cla ss of the world, by their keenness ofmind and their strength of body, have made everythingin the world their own -its land, its factories, its ship s, itsrailroads, its house s, everything on earth and sea hasbeen consecrate d bv the labour of the working cla ss . andtherefore belongs fo that cla ss ; and as factories, ship s.railroads and buildin gs cannot be divided up in piece s, theymust be owned in common. If land belongs to those whohave tilled it, by what mean s, other than com mon owner-ship, shall-we re-establish the right of that 75 per cent.of the Irish people who, according to Mulhall, were evictedbetween 1837 and 1887, or of those agricultural labourerswho toil upon the land but own no one foot of it. or of


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23 ; -all those labourers in towns and citi es whose forefathershave been hunted like wild beas ts from the land they hadmade their own, by the keenness of mind and strengthof body applied to labour, and who are now comp elled toherd in towns, dependent upon the greed of ca pita lists forthe chan ce to exist?

Father Kane, in this portion of his address, came tocurse Socia lism, but his arguments served to bless it.Let me bring from another world-the old PaganWorld-the greatest philosopher of pure reason, as wit-nes s to the truth of the same princip le. Aristotle wrote:Socialism wears a goodly face and affects an air ofphilanthropy. The moment it speaks it is eagerlylistene d to. It speaks of a marvellous love that shal lgrow out from it-between man and man. Th is impres-sion is emphasised when the speaker rails against theshortcomings of existing institutions, giving us thereason for all our shortcom ings the fact that we are notSoc ialists. These evils of human life are not, however,owing to the absen ce of So cialis m, but to the alwaysinevitable presence of human frailty.

Th is is a puzzle. The word Soc ialism, and the Soc ialistprinc iples, were unheard of until the beginning of thenineteenth century; and Aristotle flourished in the year384 B. C. Hence to quote Aristotle as writing aboutSoc ialism is liking that Owen Roe ONeil sent a telegramto the Ca tholic Confederation at Kilkenny in 1647, or thatGeorge Wash inrrton crossed the Delaware in a flvinnmach &e. It is an absurd anachron ism. For hundreds 03years the works of Aristotle were used to comba t Chris-tianity, principally by the Arabians in the Middle Ages ,and now the same works are used bv a Christian Driestto comba t So cia lism . Truly misfortune makes strangebedfellows1

Father Kane says:-We wi ll go back to the old Greek philosopher,Aristotle, the philosophe r compared to whom our Kant,Hegel, Comte, Hobbes and Locke are merely dreamingboys or blundering students. Aristotle founded hisphilosophy on fact, and worked it out through comm onsense. Our modern philosophers , with marvellous talent,evolve their princip les out of their own inner con- 1scious ness , and ground their conclu sions on their ownmental mood.In a critic ism of Drapers Con flict between Religio nand Science, published by the Catholic Truth Societyas the report of a lecture delivered in Cork and Limerick

by the Rev. Dr. ORiordan , the author says , Owing to theuse which the Arabians had made of the name of Aristotle,his name had become a word of offence to Chris tians, somuch so that even Roger Baco n said that his works


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24shou ld be burnt; and further on, St. Thomas (Aquinas)took up the philosophy of Aristotle and, purifying it ofits Pagan errors, he estab lished Christian truth out of thereasoning of the Greek philosopher. So that, accord ingto Father Kane, Aristotle founded his philosophy on fact,and worked it out through comm on sense, and accord ingto Dr. ORiordan this philisopher of fact and comm orisens e. was subversive of -Christianity until it was purifiedof its Pagan errors. We ll, we Soc ialists, while secondto none in our admiration for the encyc lopaed ic knowledgeof Aristotle, will carry the purifying process begun by St.Thomas Aqu inas a step further. We will purify Aristo tlesphilosophy of the teaching it derived from the slave-worldin which he lived, and make it Soc ialistic. Let us remindFather Kane thatAristo tles mind was so comp letely domi-nated by his econ om ic environment that he was unable toconce ive of a world in which there would be no chattelslaves, and so declared that slaves mus t always exist. Aprophecjr now falsified for hundreds of years.

We do not propose to follow the reverend gentlemanin, his wonderful attempt to discredit the Marxist pos itionon Value; that has been dealt with su fficiently already inthe passage upon Value in Exchange, in the criticism ofthe first discourse, and the attempt-to elaborate his posi-tion bv our oononent in his second Discourse is about a senlighiening as an attempt to square the circ le generallyis. It is summ ed up in his declaration that Labour alonecannot create use value, therefore Labour alone cannotconstitute exchanee value. Wh ich is eauivalent to savingthat Appe tite and-Desire aie the real aibiters in civifisealife and under normal conditions of the bas is on whicharticles exchange among human beings. ThC appetite anddesire of human beings for water and for bicycles wil lillustrate to the sim ples t mind the absurdity of our op-ponents pos ition. Water under normal conditions in amodern comm unity wi ll not fetch a half-penny the bucket-ful, but bicycles retail easily at $7 and $8 apiece . Yetour desire and appetite for water is based upon a humannece ssity so imperative that we would die without itssatisfaction, but countless millions go through life with-out even straddling a bicyc le. What makes so cheap thearticle without which we would die? The sma ll amountof labour necessary to convey it from the mountains toour doors, of course. And what makes so costly the articlethat is not a necessity at all? The comparatively greatamount of labour embod ied in ifs production, of course.Then , what fixes the Exchange Value of an article inthe normal, modern market? Its cos t in labour, certainly.It is contrary to Divine Law even to covet ourneighbours field. The Church of Christ has alwaysapproved, both in princip le and in practice, of private


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25and persona l property. It is utterly and irreconcilablyagainst the teaching of the Catholic to deny man s rightto hold persona l property, even independently of thesanction of the State, or to brand such ownership astheft. Pope Leo XIII. wrote: Christian democracy, bythe very fact that it is Christian, must be based uponthe princ iples of Divine Faith in its endeavours for thebetterment of the ma sses. Hence to Christian democ-racy justice is sacred. It must maintain that the rightof acquiring andpo ssessing property cannot be gain&d,and it must safeguard the various distinction s and de-grees wh ich are- indis pen sab le in every well-orderedcomm onwealth. It is clear, therefore, that there isnothing common between Soc ial and Christian democ-racy. They differ from each other as much as the sec tof So cia lism differs from the Church of Christ.

Dear, oh dear1 What heretics we must be ! Andyet we are in good company. Sa ints and pon tiffs of theCa tholic Church have .gone before us on this road, andthe wildest sayings of modern So cialist agitators are softand conservative beside som e of the doctrines which erenow have been put forth as sound Catholic teachings.Read:-The use of all things that is found in this world

ought to be common to all men. Only the most mani-fest iniquity makes one say to the &her, Th is belongsto me, that to you. Hence the origin of contentionamong men.-St. Clement.What thing do you ca ll yours? What thing are youable to say is yours? From whom have you received it?You speak and act like one who upon an- occas ion goingearly to the theatre and posse ssing himse lf withoutobs tacle of the sea ts destine d for the remainder of thepub lic pretends to oppose their entrance in due time, and

to nrohibit them seating themselves, arosating to his ownsol ; use property that ;ls really destined to comm on use.And it is precisely in this manner act the rich.-St. Ba silthe Great:.

Therefore if one wish es to make h ims elf the masterof every wealth, to posse ss it and-to exclude hisbrotherseven to the third or fourth part (generation), such awretch is no more a brother but an inhuman tyrant, acruel barbarian, or rather a ferocious beast of which themouth is always open to devour for his persona l use thefood of the other comp anions.-St. Gregory. Nit.Nature furnishes its wealth to all men in common.God bene ficently has created all things that -their en-joyment be common to all living beings, and that the earthbecome the common possession of all. It is Nature itselfthat has given birth to the right of the community, whilst


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26it is only unjust usurpation that has created the right ofprivate poverty.-St. Ambrose.The earth of which they are born is comm on to all, andtherefore the fruit that the earth brings forth belongswithout dis tinc tion to all.-St. Gregory the Great.The rich man is a thief.-St. Chrysostom.

Our reverend critic proceeds :To enchain men with fetters of equality would beto degrade the wise, the good, the energetic, the nobleamongst them, to the depths of the men who arenearest to the brute. Freedom must have fair play.Man mus t be free to make and mould his own life ac-cording to his own talent. his own merit. and his ownwill, according to the circumstance s in which Provi-dence his placed him. But you say is it not a pitv that,owing to the mere accide nt of birth, a brainless andworthless creature shou ld wear a ducal crown, wh ile aman of mind and character is sweeping the crossing ofa street Yes , to merely human view it is apity, just asit is a pity that one girl shoud be born beau tifulwhile.another girl is born ugly; just as it is a pitythat one man shou ld be born weak-minded and weak-kneed while another man is born with a treasure troveof talent and with a golden mine of sterling character;just as it is a pity that one more man, by the acc identof birth, is born to be himself. There js accident allaround, if you w ish to ca ll it accident. No man de-serves what he gets with him when he is born intothe world, and no man has deserved anything dif-ferent. What you may, perhaps, ca ll accident I ca llProvidence. We do not chose our own lot: it isgiven to us. It is our duty to make the best we canof it.The first part of this is clap-trap; the second is rankblasphemy. The clap-trap cons ists m the pretence that

the So cia list idea of equality involves the idea that menshou ld be reduced to one moral or intellec tual levelTrade unio nists are generally and rightfully in favour of aminimum wage-a wage below which no worker shallbe depressed. Unsc rupulous employers and ignorantiournalists and uoliticians dealing with this demandstrive to make the though tless believe that a minimumwage wi ll prevent higher wages being paid for extraskill. In other words, they speak as If it were a maxi-mum wage that was demanded. So with the Soc ialistidea of equality. Like the trade unionist our demandis for a level below which no man sh all be driven, acomm on bas is of equality of opportunity to all. Tha twhatever promotion, dis tinc tion ,reward or honour begiven. to or attained by a man shall not confer uponhim the right to exploit, to degrade, to dominate, torob or hum iliate his fellows . And our hope and belief is


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27that in the future sane men and women will find as muchdelight in, strive as eagerly for, the honour of servingtheir fellows as they do now for the privilege of plunder.ing them. Men and women are at all time s zealous forhonour, for the esteem of their fellows ; and when thehope of plunder is removed out of the field of humanpossibility those specially gifted ones who now exhausttheir genius -in an effort to rule, will as vehemently exertthemse lves to win the honour accorded to those whoserve.l%e secon d part is, we repeat, rankly blasphe mou s,The reverend gentleman, unable to answer the obviousquestion he supp oses , attempts to .draw an analogybetween what he would ca ll the hand of God in shap ingthe faces , forms, min ds and characters of His creatureg,and the historical and soc ial co nditions which havecreated dukes and crosisng-swee pers, brainless aristocratsand intelligen t slum-dw ellers, morally poison ous kingsand Christian-minded hod-carriers, vile-ladies idling inmansions and clean-souled women slav ing over the /washtub. The attempt is an insult to our intelligence .We, as individua ls, are not personally respo nsible for -our faces , forms or mind s; these are the result of forcesover which we had and have no control.. But the grossinjustice s of our social.system we are responsible for,in the degree in which we help or acq uiesc e in theirperpetuation. In the degree in which we support themto-day we become participators in the crime s upon whichthey were built. And what were those crimes? Needwe remind our readers of the origin of private propertyin Ireland It had its root in the adulterous treason ofan Irish chief; it was founded upon the betrayal ofliberty, and enforced by the who lesale slaughter andenslavement of the Irish people. Must we remind our-readers that if they seek for the origin of aristocra ticproperty in Ireland they mus t seek for it not in the willof a beneficent Deity as this bold blasphemer alleges,nor in titles won by honest labour on the so il, but inthe records of En glish marauders, in the stories ofIpoison ing and treacheries told in the State Papers of theEng lish ruling class ., in the light of the burning homesof Munster in the wake of the armies of Inchiqu in, (a)in the despatches of the Eng lish nobleman who boastedto Elizabeth that his army had left in Ulster nothingsave carcases and ashes, in the piteous tale of the im-

(a) Inchiquin was an Irish apostate in the service of the English.Taken as a hostage into England when a child he was reared up inhatred of the religion and people of his fathers. As an English generalin the Irish rebellion of 1641 he became infamous for his cruelties andpurposeless massacres; the march of his armies could always be tracedby the fire and smoke from burning homes.and villages.


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28prisoned jurors of Connaught (b) who refused to perjurethkmselves and yield up Irish. tribe land s to greedy aris-tocratic thieves from England, or in the log of the emi-grant ship s whose course-acroSs the Atlantii was markedby the floating corps es of hunted Irishmen, Irish womenand Irish children.Or sh all it be necessa ry to reca ll to our readers thegrim fact that the origin of great estate in England isfound in the court records, which tell us that in thereign of Good Queen Bess 72,000 workers were hangedin the name of law and order, hanged as vagrants afterthey had been driven off the lands they had tilled; thatduring the Peasan ) Wars of Germany the nobility slaugh-tered so many poor peasants that one of the aristocracyeventually ca lled a halt, saying, If we kill them all wesh all have no one to live upon; that in Sco tland 15,000peop le were evicted off one estate in the nineteenthcentury-the Sutherland clearances ; that in fact in everyEuropean countrjr the title deeds to aristoc ratic propertyhave been written in the blood of the poor, and that thetree of capitalis m has been watered with the tears ofthe toilers in every age and clime and country.Next (wonder of wonders, our cler ica l friend becomesso licito us for a free press and free speech. He declares:---

In Socia lism there coul& be no healthy publicopinion, no pub lic opinion at all except that manufac-tured by officialdo m or that artificially cultivated bythe demagogues df the mob. There cou ld be no freeexpression of free opinion . The Press would be only thePress of the officials. Printing mach ines, publishingfirms, libraries, publcc h alls, would be the exclusiveproperty of the State.- We do not indeed advocate utter_ licens e for the Press, but we do advocate its legitimateliberty. There would be no liberty of the Press underSocia lism ; no liberty even of spee ch, for the monstermachine of officialdom would grind out all oppositior.-for the monster machine would be labe lled, TheW ill of the People, and The W ill of the Peop!e,would be nothing more than the whim of the tyrantmob, the mos t blind and ruthless tyrant of all, becauseblindly led by blind leaders . Brave me+oea;i;oh:l:and free men wi ll brook no fetter. rthought, in your boyhood, with hot tears, of the deedsof heroes who fought and fell in defence of the frec-

(b) 9%~ english Government under Cl&es I. appoin;te ,a,,,pCo?;mission to inquire into defective titles in Connaught.in Ireland umder the ancient Celtic system were COTXUXXXI propertyit followed that all Irish titles were defective under the feudal law ofEngland. Much land fell into the hands of the Enghsh adventurersunder this Cmmission. and when the Irish juries refused to bebribed or terrorised into returning verdicts to suit the Commissionersthey were promptly imprisoned and their property confiscated.


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30men have robbed and strippedShelley:- Wh at is Freedom?

him. Says well the poetYe can tell__Tha t which slavery is too well,

For it s very name has grownTo an echo of vour own.T is to work, and have such pay,

. As just keeps life, from day to day,In your limbs as in a cellFor the tyrants use to dwe ll.How can a person, or a cla ss , be free when its mean sof life are in the grasp of another? How can the workinacla ss be free wh&r the sole chan ce of existence of it;individual members depends upon their ability to make,a profit for others?The argument about- the Freedani of the Press-astrange argument from such a source -is too absurd toneed serious consideration . Truly, all means of printingwill be the comm on property of all, and if any opposition-party, any new philosophy , doc trine, sc ien ce or even hair-brained schem e h as enough followers to pay society forthe labour of printing its pub lications , society will haveno more right nor desire to refuse the service than aGovernment of the present day has to refuse the use ofits libraries to the political enemies who desire to usethose, sources of knowledge to its undoing. It will be aspos sible to hire a printing machine from the comm unityas it will be to hire a hall. Under Soc ialism the will ofthe people will be supreme, all officials will be elected frombelow and hold their pos ition solely during good be-haviour, and as the intere sts of private property, wh ichaccording to St. Clement are the sole origin oT contentionamong men, will no longer exist there will be little useof law-making machinery, and,no mean s whereby official-dom can corrupt the people.

Th is will be rule of the people at last realised. Butsays Father Kane, at last showing the cloven foot, theW ill of the Peop le would be nothing more than the whimof the tyrant mob, the mos t blind and ruthless tyrant ofall, becau se blindly led by blind leaders. Spoken likea good Tory and staunch friend ,of desp otism! What isthe po litica l and socia l record of the mob in history as aagains t the record of the other clas ses ? There was atime, stretching for more than a thousand years, when themob was without power or influence , when the entire:power of the Governments of the world was concentratedin the hands of the kings, the nobles and the hierarchy.Tha t w as the blackest period in human history. It wasthe neriod during which human fife :was not regardedas being of as much value as the lives of hares and deers;it was the peiiod when freedom. of spee ch was unknownwhen trial by jury was suppresse d, when men and women

l


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31were tortured to make them con fess crime s before theywere found guilty, when persons obnoxious to the rulingpowers were arrested and kept in prison (often a lifetime)without trial; and it was the period during which a vin-dictive lega l code inflicte d the death penalty for more than150 offences-when a boy was hung for stea ling an apple,a farmer for killing a hare on the roadside. It was duringthis undisturbed reign o f the kings, the nob les, and thehierarchv that religiou s persecutions flourished . whenProtestants killed Catholics, C atholics slaughtered Pro-testants, and both hunted Jews, when man made in Godsimage murdered his fellow-man for daring to worshipGod in a way d ifferent from that of the majority; it wasthen that Governments answered their critic s by torture,when racks and thumbscrews pulled apart the limbs ofmen and women. when politica l and religious onoonents ofof State had their naked feet and legs place d in tin boo tsof boiling oil, their heads crushed between the jaws of a8 vice, their bodies stretched across a whee l wh ile theirbones were broken by blows of an iron bar, water forceddown their throats until their stomach s distended andburst, and when little ch ildren toiled in mine and factoryfor 12. 14 and 16 hours ner dav. But at last. with thedevelopment of manufa&ring,- came the gathering to-gether of the mob, and conseq uent knowledge of its num-bers and power, and with the gathering together also camethe nossibilitv of acauiring education. Then the mobstarted upon -its upward march to power-a power onlyto. be realized in the So cialist Repub lic. In the courseof that upward march the mob has transformed andhumanized the world. It has abolished reliaious nersecu-tion and imposed toleration upon the bigots-of ali creeds;it has established the value of human life, softened thehorrors of war as a nreliminarv to abo lishing it, com pelledtrial by jury, abo lished the death penalty for all offence s

. save one, and in some countries abolished it for all; andto-day it is fighting to take the children from the factoryand mine, and put them to schoo l. Th is mob, the mostblind and ruthless tyrant of all, with one sweep of it.grimy, toil-worn hand swept the rack, the thumbscrew , thewhee l. the boots of burning oil .the torturers vice and thestake into the oblivion ofl history, and they who to-daywould seek to view those arguments of kings, nob les, andecc lesia stics must seek them in the lumber room of themuseum.

1 In this civilising, huma nising work the mob had at -a !!times to meet and master the hatred and oppo sition ofkings and nob les; and there is not in history a record ofany movement for abolishin g torture, preventing war,establishing popular suffrage, or shortening the hours o !labour led by the Hierarchy. Against a l! thus achtevement


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32of the mob its enemies have but one instance of abuse ofpower-the French reign of Terror-and they suppres sthe fact that this cla ss ic instance of mob fury lasted buteight months, whereas the cold-blooded cruelty of theruling classes , which provoked it had endured for athousand years.Al l hail, then, to the Mob, the incarnation of Progress1 I

CHAPTER III.Honor of the Home.

The old Pagan idea that the State is everything andowns everything, so as to leave the individua l man with-out any rights except such as is conceded to him bythe State-that old Pagan idea has been adopted bythe Socialis t. Tha t idea is distinc tly contrary to naturallaw as we ll as to the law of Christ. Tha t idea is ab- ,solutely antag onistic to our ideas of home. It wouldchange our home into a mere lodging-house , where arefed and sheltered the subm issive vassals of the State.Soc ialism has taken up that Pagan idea and pushed iteven further than the Pagan. For the Pagan left thefather hom es master, and left the wife and ch ild athome. Socia lism would ruin the home firstly, becauseit would rob the father of the home, of his God-givenright to be master in the citadel of his own home;secondly, because it would banish homes queen fromwhat ought to be her kingdom ; it wou ld break the mar-riage bond which alone can safeguard the innocence andthe stability of the home; it would make the wife ofthe home practically a tenant at will; thirdly, because itwould kidnap the child.The intelligen t reader will note that the reverend critic

is entirely incapable of grasping the conception of a Statein which the people shou ld rule instead of being creatures _of an irrespons ible power as the people were under thePagan powers of Rome to whom..he is referring. Hesays, It (Soc ialism) would change our home into a merelodging-house where are fed and sheltered the subm issivevassals of the State. Thus it is that he cannot clear hismind of the monarchial conception of the State; a Statewhich should be a soc ial instrument in the hands of itsmen and women, where State powers would be wielded asa means by the workers instead of being wielded as arepressive force against thb workers is so strange an ideato him that he simply cannot understand what-it sign ifies.The reader who understands th is ! and perceives the enor-mous gap in this clerical reasonmg, will understand alsothat all the terrific bogies which our critic s conjure up as \a necessary result of the So cia list State are-only bog ies


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33Th is attempt to develop this theory of the State plungeshim into a mass of contradictions. Read:-The first and mos t fundamen tal nrincin le of ethic sis that whereas amongst lesse r creatires phys ical force

or animal instinct impels each thing to act as is be-.fitting its nature, to act in the actual circum stance s! soas to achieve the right order of its kind and the rightend of its existence, man not flung forward by unrea-Boning power, but led by reasons lighf., contem platesthe order of relations that are around him, and weigh-ing their relative necessity or importance, acts so thathis action sha ll be in keeping with his own nature andin harmony with the right conditions in which his lifeis cas t. Now, right and duty are the moral asp ects ofthese fact-relations, and have their moral force accord-ing to the deeper order and more fundamental necessityof these -fact-relations which are the cause of theirexistence and the measure of their power. The reasonfor mans personal rights is in his actual existence.Hence suc h rights are paramount above all. The reasonof the familv is in the insufficien cv of man alone tosecure the tight development of ihe human nature.The reason of cis il society is in the insufficiency of thefamilv alone to attain that fuller nercention of humarnature which is the heritage of its birih, but which itcan only reach through the help of many homesteadsunited into one common weal. Hence, civil society isonly intended by Nature to be the helper of the familv,not its master; to be its safeguard, not its destroyer,to be in a right true sense its servant, but in no senseits owner. Hence. those So cialistic theories which wou!dhand over the fa&lv and the individual to the sunremecomm and of the Szate are false to reason and rebelaga inst right. Rather it is the interest of the Stateitse lf to recognize that its welfare and its security restsupon the right, independence, and deep-rooted stabilityof the fam ilies of which it is the flower and the fruit.A State that is tossed about in its soc ial and politicalexistence by the fluctuating tide of transient individualopinions, am bitions! actions, cannot have that healthy.hardv. dea thless snlrit wh ich vivifies into the same lifenot merelv the chance com nanions of a dav but theSuccessivegenerations of a n&ion.Surely here is a Daniel come to judgmen t! We had toread this passage over several times to satisfy ourselves,that it was not a quotation from a So cia list writer, instea ,bf what it purports to be-a part of the discourse of thereverend gentleman hims elf. For it is the reasoning uporwhich is built that Materialist Interpretation of Historythe lecturer has so eloquently denounced. If the readerwill turn to the first lecture he will see that the doctrine


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34of Marx, as explained by Father Kane , teaches that theecon omic cond itio

labour, nationality and religion by james connolly 1910

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