Letters - The Archbishop of Cashel on Emigration to Buenos Ayres

Friday March 1st 1889 - The Southern Cross

Letters - The Archbishop of Cashel on Emigration to Buenos Ayres

We give below part a letter addressed by His Grace the archbishop of Cashel to the Dublin “Freeman’s Journal” advising Irishman no to immigrate to this country. We omit the portion of His Grace’s letter which refers to the tumult of 1875 and the burning of the Jesuit church. The history of such lumentable events may very properly he repeated in Ireland, but in the Argentine Republic it is better they were forgotten.

Thomas W. Croke
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Croke)

To the Editor of the “Freeman Journal”.

The Palace, January 25, 1889.

My Dear Sir,

I have seen by a late issue of the “Freeman” as well as by the columns of other papers, that in face of the sound and fatherly advice given to the contrary by his Lordship of Limerick, the Dean of Cashel and other well-wisher of our people, no less 500 families bound for Buenos Ayres have quite recently left for Queenstown, thence to be conveyed to the far distant, and hitherto almost unknown, land so strangely and, I might say, so defiantly, adopted by them as their future home.

Buenos Ayres, or the City of Good Air, is, to be sure, a beautiful, and, as some think, a very thriving capital. It has close on 500,000 inhabitants. Its streets and stores its Moorish arcades, its princely palaces and public squares, together with the proverbial salubrity of its climate, would make it in many ways a delightful or at least a desirable place to live in. But it is not, after all, the stone structures, however grand, the shaded avenues, however picturesque and refreshing, or even the high wage, however needful and attractive, that a poor Irish emigrant should mainly look for –that moderate share of happiness to which alone, as a rule, he is disposed to aspire here below. He needs something more. He needs to have a friend to speak to. He naturally seeks the companionship of the children of his own race rather than that of utter strangers. He like to breathe the atmosphere of the religion in which he was baptized and brought up, and in which he hopes to die; and he would prefer the scantiest and omost moderate meal with a neighbour, or a neighbours child, to roast and boiled amongst the inhabitants of any other region upon earth.

Now, I have no hesitation whatever in saying, and on authority of the highest order, that the Argentine Republic generally, and Buenos Ayres in a notable degree, is the place of all others with, perhaps, one notorious exception, in which an ordinary emigrating Irishman could find no room for the play or enjoyment of the national tastes and tendencies which I have just enumerated.

Like New Orleans, Buenos Ayres is a most cosmopolitan city. The Revolutions of ’48 brought into it the scum of European scoundrelism. About half of its population bail from the Old World. There are Italians, Spaniards, French, Germans, American Negroes, Indians, and Mulattoes –evory tongue, in fact, tribe, and nation- all mixed up together. How is the poor emigrant from holy Ireland likely to fare as regards religion especially, and social comforts, amongst this to him, uncongenial mass of many tongued humanity?

Between 1810 and 1835 there were thirty-six changes of Government in Buenos Ayres. Since then there have been many others.

I need say no more. I must, however, in conclusion, solemnly conjure my poorer countrymen, as they value their happiness hereafter, never to set foot on the Argentine Republic, however tempted they may be to do so by offers of a free passage or assurance of comfortable homes. The language of the country, being Spanish, is unknown to them; and surely even on that ground alone, if our people must leave the land they love best in quest of fortune elsewhere, they should direct their steps either to the Great Republic of the West, where so many of ther kith and kin live and thrive, and are happy, or to one of the free and flourishing English-speaking colonies that own the sway of Great Britain at the Antipodes.

I remain, my dear Sir,

Your faithful servant,

T. W. Croke – Archbishop of Cashel


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Archbishop of Cashel
Croke became a member of the Irish hierarchy when he was translated to be Archbishop of Cashel, one of the four Catholic Irish archbishoprics (Cashel & Emly, Dublin, Armagh and Tuam) in 1875.
Archbishop Croke was a strong supporter of Irish nationalism, aligning himself with the Irish National Land League during the Land War, and with the chairman of the Irish Parliamentary Party, Charles Stewart Parnell. In an 1887 interview he explained that he had opposed the League's "No rent manifesto" in 1881, preferring to stop payment of all taxes: "I opposed the No Rent Manifesto six years ago because, apart from other reasons, I thought it was inopportune and not likely to be generally acted on. Had a manifesto against paying taxes been issued al the tifne I should certainly have supported it on principle. I am precisely the same frame of mind just now."
He also associated himself with the Temperance Movement of Fr. Mathew and Gaelic League from its foundation in 1893. Within Catholicism he was a supporter of Gallicanism, as opposed to the Ultramontanism favoured by the Archbishop of Dublin, Cardinal Cullen.
His support of nationalism caused successive British governments and Lord Lieutenant of Ireland's governments in Dublin to be deeply suspicious of him, as were some less politically aligned Irish bishops.
Following the scandal that erupted over Parnell's relationship with Kitty O'Shea, the separated wife of fellow MP Captain Willie O'Shea, Archbishop Croke withdrew from active participation in nationalist politics.
He died at the Archbishop's Palace in Thurles on 22 July 1902, aged 78. In honour of Croke, his successors as Archbishop of Cashel and Emly traditionally are asked to throw in the ball at the minor Gaelic football and All-Ireland hurling finals.

Source http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Croke