Ireland - Constitution

In the name of the Most Holy Trinity, from Whom is all authority and to Whom, as our final end, all actions both of men and States must be referred, We, the people of Ireland, humbly acknowledging all our obligations to our Divine Lord, Jesus Christ, Who sustained our fathers through centuries of trial, Gratefully remembering their heroic and unremitting struggle to regain the rightful independence of our Nation, And seeking to promote the common good, with due observance of Prudence, Justice and Charity, so that the dignity and freedom of the individual may be assured, true social order attained, the unity of our country restored, and concord established with other nations, Do hereby adopt, enact, and give to ourselves this Constitution.

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RELIGION

4. But religion can be useful to man only when it is pure. The constitution of the United States has, therefore, wisely provided that it should never be united with the state. Art. 6, 3. Vide Christianity; Religious test; Theo- cracy.

RELIGIOUS TEST. The constitution of the United States, art. 6, s. 3, de-clares that "no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office, or public trust under the United States." 2. This clause was introduced for the double purpose of satisfying the scruples of many respectable persons, who feel an invincible repugnance to any religious test or affirmation, and to cut off forever every pretence of any alliance between church and state in the national government. Story on the Const. 1841. (from; Bouvier 1856)

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Question to me.
I think you're confused. Joe was referring to the United States, not Ireland. So, what does the Irish Constitution have to do with the price of tea in China?

Just curious...

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My answer (Feel free to disagree. Your mind and thoughts are your's alone)

Religion has a whole lot to do with law. Look at the turmoil in Ireland which has a constitution based upon a religion.

Should we use a bible as pre-written legislation?

There are many good things in bibles and many not so good things.

And which bible or interpretation should we use as pre-written legislation?

Since people have such strong beliefs in their interpretation of a bible this leads to; (and did for hundreds of years) WAR + other evils.

The founding fathers and many others were tired of this religion based war and turmoil.

They wanted the law of the New World to be based upon the mans reasoning.

LAW OF NATURE. The law of nature is that which God, the sovereign of the universe, has prescribed to all men, not by any formal promulgation, but by the internal dictate of reason alone. (Bouviers 1856 law dictionary)

They wrote a constitution that created a central government and placed military installations in the States.

England was Ruled by a Christian Majesty.

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(Letter from Thomas Jefferson to Roger C. Weightman)

Monticello, June 24, 1826

Respected Sir-

The kind invitation I receive from you, on the part of the citizens of the city of Washington, to be present with them at their celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of American Independence, as one of the surviving signers of an instrument pregnant with our own, and the fate of the world, is most flattering to myself, and heightened by the honorable accompaniment proposed for the comfort of such a journey. It adds sensibly to the sufferings of sickness, to be deprived by it of a personal participation in the rejoicings of that day. But acquiescence is a duty, under circumstances not placed among those we are permitted to control. I should, indeed, with peculiar delight, have met and exchanged there congratulations personally with the small band, the remnant of that host of worthies, who joined with us on that day, in the bold and doubtful election we were to make for our country, between submission or the sword; and to have enjoyed with them the consolatory fact, that our fellow citizens, after half a century of experience and prosperity, continue to approve the choice we made.

May it be to the world, what I believe it will be, (to some parts sooner, to others later, but finally to all,) the signal of arousing men to burst the chains under which monkish ignorance and superstition had persuaded them to bind themselves, and to assume the blessings and security of self-government.

That form which we have substituted, restores the free right to the unbounded exercise of reason and freedom of opinion. All eyes are opened, or opening, to the rights of man.

The general spread of the light of science has already laid open to every view the palpable truth, that the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately, by the grace of God.

These are grounds of hope for others. For ourselves, let the annual return of this day forever refresh our recollections of these rights, and an undiminished devotion to them.

I will ask permission here to express the pleasure with which I should have met my ancient neighbors of the city of Washington and its vicinities, with whom I passed so many years of a pleasing social intercourse; an intercourse which so much relieved the anxieties of the public cares, and left impressions so deeply engraved in my affections, as never to be forgotten. With my regret that ill health forbids me the gratification of an acceptance, be pleased to receive for yourself, and those for whom you write, the assurance of my highest respect and friendly attachments.

Th. Jefferson

Catholic Emancipation

Anthony S. Wohl, Professor of History, Vassar College

In 1829, partly in response to widespread agitation throughout Ireland led by Daniel O'Connell's Catholic Association and the possibility of revolution in Ireland, the Catholic Emacipation Act, enabling Catholics to sit in the British Parliament at Westminster, was passed (symbolically, for many, on a Friday 13th!) Even though the Emancipation Act was hedged with qualifications (for example, no Catholic could be Regent, Lord Chancellor, Lord Chancellor of Ireland, or Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, no Catholic mayor could wear his civic robes at public worship, and every county now had to enumerate all new religious establishments: most important, the Irish county freehold franchise for parliamentary elections was raised from 40 shillings to £10), the Act marked a tremendous defeat for the Ultras, that is the stout defenders of the Protestant establishment. Among the opponents were some of the leading literary figures of the day, including Southey, Coleridge, and Wordsworth. To supporters of Catholic Emancipation, it was only just that their Catholic compatriots should have the political right to sit in the British Parliament. To the opponents of the Act, however, it marked a retreat from the ancient principle (and real privileges ) of an established, official, state church, and, most ominously, meant that Catholics could now, by their vote in a parliament that discussed and decided on a wide range of matters affecting the Church of England (Anglican Church) have real influence over that church! Thus the Duke of York argued in the House of Lords that

Surely their lordships could not wish to place the established church of England upon a worse footing than any other church within these realms: nor allow the Roman Catholics, who not only refused to submit to our rules, but who denied any authority of the civil power over their church, to legislate for the established church; which must be the case if they should be admitted to seats in either House of parliament".

The Duke of York then went on to voice a common concern - - that the emancipation of the Catholics was a vioation of the Crown's Coronation Oath and thus of the constitution.

He begged to read the words of that oath:--'I will, to the utmost of my power, maintain the laws of God, the true profession of the gospel, and the Protestant reformed religion established by law - - and I will preserve unto the bishops and clergy of this realm, and to the churches commited to their charge, all such rights and privileges as by law do or shall appertain to them, or any of them.' " (Speech of the Duke of York against Catholic Claims, 1825. From Hansard, XIII, 138-42 [25 April, 1825], quoted in E. R. Norman, Anti-Catholicism in Victorian England, New York: Barnes and Noble, 1968, 127).

Much to the disgust of the Ultras, the King did not veto the Catholic Emacipation Bill in the name of his Coronation Oath. Thus if for some Catholics Emacipation marked the triumph of liberalism and the beginnings of a more pluralistic society, to others it marked a violation of constitutional forms and royal commitments, and a damning blow to the strength, prestige, and security of the Established Church of England. Most ominously, for the opponents of Catholic Emancipation, it indicated a betrayal on the part of the Tory party in general and of its leader, Robert Peel, in particular. Peel was accused during a crucial bye-election:

Oh! Member for Oxford, you shuffle and wheel You have altered your name from R. Peel to Repeal"

(Birmingham Argus, January 1829, quoted in A. Briggs, The Making of Modern England, 1784-1867. The Age of Improvement, N.Y., Harper & Row, 1959, 232.

New Converts to Roman Catholicism

George P. Landow, Professor of English and Art History, Brown University

The new in the phrase "New Catholics" contrasts these converts to those often wealthy families who had retained their allegiance to Roman Catholicism after Henry VIII left the Roman Church and made Anglicanism the established -- that is, official state -- religion of Great Britain and deprived Catholics of many civil rights.

The expression "New Catholics" or "New Converts" refers to those Victorians who converted to the Roman Church, generally as a result of Tractarianism (or the Oxford Movement). John Henry Newman -- later Cardinal Newman -- was the most famous and influential of these converts, and he inspired a number of talented young men to follow his example. The poet Gerard Manley Hopkins was another Oxonian who converted at a time when an allegiance to Catholicism meant isolation from the nationÕs intellectual, poltical, and cultural establishment.

Parallels with Irish

Anthony S. Wohl, Professor of History, Vassar College

1. Religion. To many Protestants, especially of the low church or Dissenters, Roman Catholicism was a highly irrational religion, which empasized child-like love of ritual, cermony, and emotion. Hence, all Catholics, it was argued, followed the heart rather than the head, were emotional rather than rational, and in their worship of saints and loyalty to the Pope revealed a slavish love of superstition and authority.

2. Sexual. The high Irish birth-rate was held, like that of the English working classes, to be the product of an animal-like sexuality, a surrender to bodily appetites which indicated that the Irish, like the English working classes, were closer in their evolution to the apes than the angels! Unlike the English working man, however, the Irishman's sexuality was regarded as the inevitable by-product of a religion which permitted or even encouraged self-indulgence and discouraged the virtues of self-discipline and self-denial which the Victorians held in such esteem as part of their puritan tradition.

Racism and Anti-Irish Prejudice in Victorian England

Anthony S. Wohl, Professor of History, Vassar College

During the nineteenth century theories of race were advanced both by the scientific community and in the popular daily and periodical press. Even before Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species in 1859, the old concept of the great chain of being, marking the gradations of mankind, was being subjected to a new scientific racism. The "science "of phrenology purported to demonstrate that the structure of the skull, especially the jaw formation and facial angles, revealed the position of various races on the evolutionary scale, and a debate raged on whether there had been one creation for all mankind (monogenism) or several (polygenism). "To a large extent, the story of racial science in Britain between 1800 and 1850," Nancy Stepan writes "is the story of desperate efforts to rebut polygenism and the eventual acceptance of popular quasi-polygenist prejudices in the language of science" (30). Polygenists stressed the unequal nature of the various creations and this theory mingled with general evolutionary theories and concepts of arrested development to create an atmosphere congenial to racial stereotyping.

In much of the pseudo-scientific literature of the day the Irish were held to be inferior, an example of a lower evolutionary form, closer to the apes than their "superiors", the Anglo-Saxons . Cartoons in Punch portrayed the Irish as having bestial, ape-like or demonic features and the Irishman, (especially the political radical) was invariably given a long or prognathous jaw, the stigmata to the phrenologists of a lower evolutionary order, degeneracy, or criminality. Thus John Beddoe, who later became the President of the Anthropological Institute (1889-1891), wrote in his Races of Britain (1862) that all men of genius were orthognathous (less prominent jaw bones) while the Irish and the Welsh were prognathous and that the Celt was closely related to Cromagnon man, who, in turn, was linked, according to Beddoe, to the "Africanoid". The position of the Celt in Beddoe's "Index of Nigrescence" was very different from that of the Anglo-Saxon. These ideas were not confined to a lunatic fringe of the scientific community, for although they never won over the mainstream of British scientists they were disseminated broadly and it was even hinted that the Irish might be the elusive missing link! Certainly the "ape-like" Celt became something of an malevolent cliche of Victorian racism. Thus Charles Kingsley could write

I am haunted by the human chimpanzees I saw [in Ireland] . . . I don't believe they are our fault. . . . But to see white chimpanzees is dreadful; if they were black, one would not feel it so much. . . ." (Charles Kingsley in a letter to his wife, quoted in L.P. Curtis, Anglo-Saxons and Celts, p.84).

Even seemingly complimentary generalizations about the Irish national character could, in the Victorian context, be damaging to the Celt. Thus, following the work of Ernest Renan's La Poésie des Races Celtiques (1854), it was broadly argued that the Celt was poetic, light-hearted and imaginative, highly emotional, playful, passionate, and sentimental. But these were characteristics the Victorians also associated with children. Thus the Irish were "immature" and in need of guidance by others, more highly developed than themselves. Irish "emotion" was contrasted, unfavorably, with English "reason", Irish "femininity" with English "masculine" virtues, Irish "poetic" attributes with English "pragmatism". These were all arguments which conveniently supported British rule in Ireland.

References L.P. Curtis, Anglo-Saxons and Celts: A Study of Anti-Irish Prejudice in Victorian England (1968).

L.P. Curtis, Apes and Angels: The Irishman in Victorian Caricature (1971)./

N. Stepan, The Idea of Race in Science: Great Britain (1982)

S. Gilley, "English Attitudes to the Irish in England, 1789-1900", in C. Homes, ed., Immigrants and Minorities in British Society (1978:check)

N. Kirk, "Ethnicity, Class and Popular Toryism, 1850-1870", in K. Lunn, ed., Host, Immigrants and Minorities . Historical Responses to Newcomers in British Society, 1870-1914 (1980).

Desmond's Concise History of Ireland