Irish Catholic Voluntary Associations in the Canadian Liberal Order, 1840-1882
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Irish Catholic Voluntary Associations in the Canadian Liberal Order, 1840-1882 by Mike McLaughlin A thesis submitted to the Faculty of Graduate and Postdoctoral Affairs in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in History Carleton University Ottawa, Ontario ©2016 Mike McLaughlin Abstract This study will explore the ways in which Irish Catholic voluntary associations engaged with the Canadian liberal order in the nineteenth century by focusing especially on three specific associations that were formed at particular times to confront particular social problems: temperance societies, the Catholic League, and Home Rule branches. Some organizations opposed liberalism and the liberal state, while others disseminated liberal values. Some, like temperance societies, did both. Informed by Ian McKay's Liberal Order Framework, I have framed the Canadian context within which Irish Catholic voluntary associations functioned in a liberalizing society with a strong attachment to Protestant British identity. In studies focusing on state formation, democracy, and liberalism, scholars such as Alan Greer and Ian Radforth, Jeffrey McNairn, and Darren Ferry have positioned mainstream voluntary associations as having had a central role in the development of liberalism and the formation of the Canadian state. This study sets out to examine the extent to which Irish Catholic voluntary associations had a similar function. Research suggests that in some cases Irish voluntary associations resisted the liberal Canadian state through their advancement of Catholic values that challenged state encroachment into the lives of parishioners, demonstrations of a robust collective identity that, though couched in liberal terms, emphasized ethno-religious difference, and objections to illiberal techniques of governing by British authorities such as the land tenure system in Ireland and the suspension of legal due process both there and in Canada. Yet in other significant ways the organizations under review in this study contributed to the development of liberal British Canada by promoting principles of self-government, participating in the solidification of the liberal Canadian state, and casting their own Irish nationalism in liberal ii terms. By the time the Canadian Parliament passed resolutions in support of Irish Home Rule in 1882, a liberal consensus was emerging between Canadian Irish Catholics and the Canadian liberal order on the issue of Irish self-government, thus forcing promoters of liberalism in Canada to allow a greater level of pluralism than they wanted, albeit on thoroughly liberal terms. iii Acknowledgments This dissertation is truly a collaborative effort. I would like to thank the members of my examination committee, Bruce Elliott, Mark McGowan, Leighann Neilson, Karen March, Dominique Marshall, and John Walsh, who all generously provided thoughtful advice and insights on how to improve this work. I need to extend a special thank you to my adviser Bruce Elliott for his tireless work on this project, without which this work would not have been possible. I would also like to acknowledge and thank the staff, faculty, administration, and my colleagues in the Department of History at Carleton University who on daily basis create a warm, encouraging, yet academically demanding atmosphere, which fosters advanced scholarship in a supportive environment. Funding for this project was generously provided by Carleton's Department of History, the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, and the Faculty of Graduate Studies and Postdoctoral Affairs. In addition to departmental funding, I was aided by Shannon Scholarships in Social History, as well as Teaching Assistantships. My friends and family went along with me on this dissertation ride and our conversations (that were not necessarily conducted on temperance principles) helped me express and clarify some of the ideas on these pages. My partner Wei Lin Wang was patient and supportive as I worked on this project, and throughout my many freak-outs as I assembled the various scraps of paper that I “wrote something important on” and knew I “put somewhere, but I can't remember where.” iv Table of Contents Abstract ii Acknowledgements iv Table of Contents v List of Tables vii List of Appendices viii I. Liberalism, State Formation, and Irish Catholic Voluntary Associations 1 Definitions, Social Functions, and Ethnicity 2 Voluntary Associations and the New Political History: State Formation and The Liberal Order in the British World 8 Chapters and Argument 19 II. The Illiberalism of Ultramontanism and the Struggle for Acceptance 27 Introduction 27 The Rise and Impact of Ultramontanism 32 Anti-Catholicism and Community Responses 51 Membership and Leadership of Irish Catholic Voluntary Societies 58 Conclusions 66 III. Irish Catholic Clergy and Catholicism in the Temperance Crusade 68 Introduction 68 Irish Catholics in the Global Temperance Movement 71 Moral Suasion Versus the Power of the State 80 Protestant and Catholic Temperance: Two Solitudes 85 National and Global Catholic Temperance Organizations 92 Conclusions 104 IV. Irish Catholic Lay Temperance: Membership, Leadership, Class, and Values 107 Introduction 107 Voluntary Associations and the Middle Class 109 Class Identity and Values in Irish Catholic Temperance Societies 117 Elites in the Irish Catholic Temperance Movement 123 Working-Class Irish Catholics in Temperance Societies 129 Liberal Individualism and Occupational Self-Interest 135 Conclusions 139 V. Performing Gender and Ethnicity in Irish Catholic Temperance 142 Introduction 142 Irish Catholic Temperance and the Self-Regulating Male Subject 145 The Complementarity of Catholic Masculinity and Femininity in the Liberal Order 148 The Charitable Bazaar and Commercial Exchange in the Liberal Order 157 Performing Respectability on St Patrick's Day 163 Conclusions 177 v VI. The Fenian Challenge and the Defence of the Liberal Order 179 Introduction 179 The Fenian Challenge to the Irish Place in Canada's Liberal Order 185 The Radical Nationalist Response in Defence of a Liberal Order 191 Radical Irish Nationalism and the Liberal Order 204 Patrick Boyle, Peter O'Leary: Settler Colonialism in the Liberal Order 210 J.L.P. O'Hanly: Settler Colonialism and the Liberal Order 220 Conclusions 232 VII. The Catholic League and the Liberal State 235 Politics and Patronage 235 The Catholic League, the Liberal Party and the Push for Unity 241 Systemic Discrimination and a Liberal Govermentality 250 Political Fractures Within the Irish Catholic Community 258 Conclusions 270 VIII. Home Rule and Striving for a Liberal Consensus 272 Introduction 272 Irish Home Rule in the Canadian Liberal Order 276 Parnell, the Land League, and the Radicalization of Irish Home Rule 284 Parnell and the Land League in Canada 286 Parnell's Arrest and the Defence of Legal Liberalism 297 Organizing the Home Rule Resolutions 306 Costigan Introduces the Resolutions 311 The Liberal Language of the Resolutions 315 Political Compromise and the Place of Irish Catholics in the Liberal State 320 Conclusions 325 IX. Conclusions 327 Bibliography 360 vi List of Tables Table 2.1 Irish Catholics in Biographical Dictionaries 61 vii List of Appendices Appendix A: The 1882 Home Rule Resolutions 337 Appendix B: Seal of the Montreal St Patrick's Total Abstinence Society 339 Appendix C: Officers of Irish Catholic Voluntary Associations in Montreal, 1842-1880 340 Appendix D: Officers of Irish Catholic Voluntary Associations in Ottawa, 1864-1880 347 Appendix E: Officers of Irish Catholic Voluntary Associations in Toronto, 1843-1877 349 Appendix F: Officers of Irish Catholic Voluntary Associations in Halifax, 1871-1880 351 Appendix G: Officers of Irish Catholic Voluntary Associations in Quebec City, 1871 353 Appendix H: Officers of Irish Catholic Voluntary Associations in Hamilton, 1869-1876 354 Appendix I: Officers of Irish Catholic Temperance Societies in Montreal, 1845-1880 355 Appendix J: Officers of Irish Catholic Temperance Societies in Ottawa, 1864-1880 358 Appendix K: Officers of Irish Catholic Temperance Societies in Halifax, 1871-1880 359 viii Chapter One: Liberalism, State Formation, and Irish Catholic Voluntary Associations David Wilson argues that the Irish in nineteenth-century Canada are best understood as a charter group that helped to establish the dominant society to which later immigrants would have to adjust.1 Wilson observed that because during the half-century before Confederation, English-speaking Canada was a highly malleable cultural entity, the Irish did more than adapt to Canadian patterns; they actually helped to define and shape those patterns.2 This study will trace the ways in which the Irish defined and shaped Canadian cultural patterns by examining the role Irish Catholic voluntary associations played in the development of nineteenth-century liberal British Canada. This study will cover the period from just after the Rebellions and the establishment of Responsible Government—which Ian McKay has argued was the era when the construction of the liberal state began—to the formation of Home Rule associations, the emergence of a liberal consensus between Canadian Irish Catholics and the Canadian state, and the passage of the Home Rule Resolutions by the Canadian Parliament in 1882. The development of the Canadian state in the nineteenth century as a broadly liberal and British entity has become a major study area. Canadian historians have employed numerous models to explore this evolution, from