parentage. They comprise today ten per cent of our foreign
born population.

The discontent and grievances of the Irish had a vivid historical
background in their own country. There were four principal causes
which induced the transplanting of the race: rebellion, famine,
restrictive legislation, and absentee landlordism. Every uprising of
this bellicose people from the time of Cromwell onward had been
followed by voluntary and involuntary exile. It is said that
Cromwell's Government transported many thousand Irish to the West
Indies. Many of these exiles subsequently found their way to the
Carolinas, Virginia, and other colonies. After the great Irish
rebellion of 1798 and again after Robert Emmet's melancholy failure in
the rising of 1803 many fled across the sea. The Act of Union in 1801
brought "no submissive love for England," and constant political
agitations for which the Celtic Irish need but little stimulus have
kept the pathway to America populous.

The harsh penal laws of two centuries ago prescribing transportation
and long terms of penal servitude were a compelling agency in driving
the Irish to America. Illiberal laws against religious nonconformists,
especially against the Catholics, closed the doors of political
advancement in their faces, submitted them to humiliating
discriminations, and drove many from the island. Finally, the selfish
Navigation Laws forbade both exportation of cattle to England and the
sending of foodstuffs to the colonies, dealing thereby a heavy blow to
Irish agriculture. These restrictions were followed by other
inhibitions until almost every industry or business in which the Irish
engaged was unduly limited and controlled. It should, however, not be
forgotten that these restrictions bore with equal weight upon the
Ulster settlers from Scotland and England, who managed somehow to
endure them successfully.

Absentee landlordism was oppressive both to the cotter's body and to
his soul, for it not only bound him to perpetual poverty but kindled
within him a deep sense of injustice. The historian, Justin McCarthy,
says that the Irishman "regarded the right to have a bit of land, his
share, exactly as other people regard the right to live." So political
and economic conditions combined to feed the discontent of a people
peculiarly sensitive to wrongs and swift in their resentments.

But the most potent cause of the great Irish influx into America was
famine in Ireland. The economi