The Life Story of an Old Rebel | Page 3

pro-Cathedral of the diocese, and whenever a new church had to be opened, or there was any important ceremonial anywhere in Lancashire, our choir was generally invited. In this way I was delighted to go to the opening of the new church at Lydiate, so that I was taking part in the third stage of the Catholic history of the diocese--having said a prayer in the old ruin, and attended Mass in Rimmer's, and now assisting at the solemn High Mass at the opening of the Church of our Lady, not far from the old chapel of St. Catherine.
At the time I went to Mass in Lumber Street Chapel, Liverpool, which is nearly 70 years since, there were but four other chapels, as they were generally called then, in the town--Copperas Hill (St. Nicholas'), Seel Street (St. Peter's), St. Anthony's and St. Patrick's. It must have been a custom acquired in the Penal days to call the older Catholic places of worship rather after the names of the streets in which they were situated than of the saint to whom they were dedicated. During the Famine years the bishops and clergy must have found it extremely difficult to provide for the tremendous influx of our people. I have seen them crowded out into the chapel yards and into the open streets; satisfied if they could get even a glimpse of the inside of the sacred building through an open window. I see by the Catholic Directory there are at the time I now write thirty-nine churches and chapels in Liverpool. The schools have increased in a like proportion.
The progress in numbers, wealth and influence of the Irish people may be pretty well marked by the gradual increase in the number of churches and schools, which have been built for the most part by the Irish and their descendants. All honour to the noble-hearted, hard-handed toilers who have contributed to such work, and greater glory still to the humble men who, after a hard week's work in a ship's hold at the docks, or perhaps in the "jigger loft" of a warehouse eight stories high, turn out every Sunday morning to act as "collectors," and go in pairs from door to door, one with the book and the other with the bag in hand, to raise the means of erecting the noble churches and schools that everywhere meet our view in Liverpool to-day.
With regard to the social position our people occupy in Liverpool, there have been many Irishmen who have come well to the front in the race of life, some of whom have occupied the foremost positions in connection with the public life of the town. On the other hand; a large number of our fellow-countrymen in Liverpool are by no means in that enviable condition. Many of them have set out from Ireland, intending to go to America, but, their little means failing them, have been obliged to remain in Liverpool. Here they considered themselves fortunate if they met someone from the same part of the country as themselves to give them a helping hand, for it is a fine trait in the Irish character--and "over here in England" the trait has not been lost--that, however poor, they are always ready to befriend what seems to them a still poorer neighbour. Those who have lived here some time are glad to see someone from their "own place," and, amid the squalor of an English city, the imaginative Celt--as he listens to the gossip about the changes, the marriages, and the deaths that have taken place since he left "home "--for a brief moment lives once more upon "the old sod," and sees visions of the little cabin by the wood side where dwelt those he loved, of the mountain chapel where he worshipped, of a bright-eyed Irish girl beloved in the golden days of youth. These and a host of other associations of the past come floating back upon his memory, as he hears the tidings brought by Terence, or Michael, or Maurya, who has just "come over." It often so happens that, from the very goodness of the Irish heart, the newcomers are frequently drawn into the same miserable mode of life as the friends who have come to England before them may have fallen into.
Irish intellect and Irish courage have in thousands of cases brought our people to their proper place in the social scale, but it is only too often the case that adverse circumstances compel the great bulk of them to have recourse to the hardest, the most precarious, and the worst paid employments to be found in the British labour market.
In the large towns, in the poorer streets in which our people live, a stranger would be struck by the swarms of children, and