vania,* after the adoption of a federal constitution, was a native of Dublin. We have seen that the first literary blow dealt slavery was given by an Irishman. One of the earliest legislative blows came from a like quarter. † In 1789 the Governor procured the passage of a law gradually abolishing slavery in the state named after the great Quaker.

In the succeeding years we find Irishmen and their descendants as representatives and senators. We find them establishing and conducting educational institutions; we see striking evidences of literary activity; our attention is arrested by the bold engineering plans of Irishmen who were in advance of their time, but who would have made a fortune to-day. Some were unlucky, like Christopher Colles, and died in want, while others were fattening on their ideas; others were more fortunate, like Robert Fulton, who launched the first steam-boat on the Seine, in 1803, running, in 1806, a more complete model on the Hudson. A native of Carrickfergus, Dr. Adrian, was distinguished as a mathematician; and Matthew Carey, the father of H. C. Carey, as a political economist.

The Irish leaning to the Democratic side in the United States, would seem to have a connection with the events of 1798 in Ireland. The British Government, in 1799 and 1800, agreed to let T. A. Emmett, and D. McNevin out of prison, if they would promise to quit the British Dominions for ever. The terms being arranged, Thomas Addis Emmett applied to Rufus King, the United States Minister at London, for passports for himself and his friends, but was refused; Mr. King adding, what must have been meant for a joke, that "there were republicans enough in America." Some few years afterwards, when Mr. King was a candidate for the vice-presidency, and Thomas Addis Emmett was the leader of the New York bar, the great advocate, by a striking narration of the circumstances in letters to the New York Evening Post, raised a feeling throughout the Union which blighted the hopes of the too clever ambassador of a few years before.

were both of Irish parentage. John Rutledge, of South Carolina, makes up the eighth. All these men rose to high public employment.-"Lives of the Signers."

*Alderman John Burns, of Philadelphia.

+ George Bryan.

It was a native of Ireland, John Smilie, who reported a bill in 1812 in favour of war with Great Britain, and the man on whom his mantle fell, John Caldwell Calhoun, was the son of Patrick Calhoun, an emigrant from Donegal to South Carolina. In the naval engagements in 1812-15, the names of the Boyles, the Blakeleys, the Leavins, the Shaws, the Stewarts, the Gallaghers, the McGraths, tell their history. On land we meet everywhere the same Irish energy and valour. The hero of the victory of New Orleans, General Jackson, was, as Cobbett* pointed out with indecent exultation, the son of poor Irish emigrant parents. In 1828, Jackson was elected president by a large majority, the “Irish vote" playing an important part. The Irish did not forget his origin, and they were charmed by his military characteristics.+ "Old Hickory" had some of the most remarkable traits of the Irishman in strong development.

Contributions were raised in the States for repeal, and in 1847 large sums were sent to support the famishing in Ireland. The '48 movement excited great enthusiasm among the Catholic Irish, and thousands of dollars poured in to the directories, as they have more recently to head centre treasuries. Be the objects wise or unwise, such subscriptions show the noble generosity of the Irish heart.

See Cobbett's Life of Andrew Jackson.

+ Jackson's partiality for Irishmen was strong, but not blind. His personal attendants were nearly all natives of Ireland, and he seems to have felt that kindly interest in them which makes the servant of an Irish gentleman feel himself a "humble friend." Jackson's man-servant, Jemmy O'Neil, used to indulge a little too freely, and on such occasions assumed too much control over visitors and dwellers in the "White House." Wearied out with complaints, Jackson decided to dismiss him, and having sent for him said, "Jemmy, you and I must part." "Why so, General?" asked Jemmy. "Because," replies the President, "every one complains of you." "And do you believe them, General?" asks Jemmy with a mixture of surprise and reproach. "Of course," answers Jackson, "what everyone says must be true." "Well, now General," cries Jemmy, "I've heard twice as much said against you, and I never would believe a word of it." Jackson's military experience should have indeed had a hardening effect if this would not touch him. Mr. Lowell, the author of the "Biglow Papers," has a genuine admiration for "Old Hickory," and tells us of him :

"He'd 'a' smashed the tables o' the law

In time o' need to load his gun with."

When the "White House" was threatened with a mob, he refused the volunteered guard of naval and military, and loading his own and his nephew's guns, prepared to meet his foes.

In Mexico, Irishmen and Irish names are as numerous as the Irishman, in a famous bull, said absentees were in Ireland.* One of Scott's most efficient colonels was Riley. But neither to his achievements nor to those of minor note-of the Pattersons, the Lees, the Magruders, the Neals, the McReynolds-can justice be done here. Born in the same village as Major McReynolds,† James Shields won a record which might call for extended notice. On his return to the United States he was greeted with ovations, and Illinois elected him to the Senate. In the Session, 1850-51, he reported as one of Committee on Military Affairs, in favour of conferring the rank of Lieut.-General on his old Commander and comrade, Scott.

But why go into further particulars? If arithmetic goes for anything, Irish blood is the main-tide of the great country below the line. In 1848, the Irish immigration exceeded that from all other sources. In that year, 98,061 persons of Irish birth passed into the Union; in 1849, 112,561 ; in 1850, 117,038; as against in the same years respectively, 51,973; 55,705; 45,535 from Germany; 23,062; 28,321; 28,163 from England; and 6,415; 8,840; 6,772 from Scotland; and approximate proportions have continued. And what sort of stuff was this sent by Ireland? I have seen them on the quays of Queenstown, many of them young farmers and farmers' daughters, all of them as fine specimens of the human race, as ever pressed the earth. Within a century, the Irish in America have contributed to the ranks of war and statesmanship in the Union, distinction and efficiency, in as large proportion as they have strength and endurance to the equally noble field of labour. The Republic owes much to the Presidents Vice-Presidents the generals and commanders, the representatives and orators, the lawyers and scholars of Irish blood; she owes still more to the pure mothers of healthy instincts and faultless mould, which the green valleys and pure traditions of Ireland have given her, and to the unequalled hosts, wielding no sword and shouldering no gun, but armed with pick and axe and spade, who fought and fight

The reader will have read the story. "And are there so many absentees?" asked an incredulous stranger of an Irishman, who had been inveighing against those renegades to duty. "Be gor the country is swarming with them," was the answer.

t Dungannon, County Tyrone.

the wilderness, and who have carried the starry banner where no flag ever floated before.

It is a noble work this subduing the wilderness. On no subject has more wretched stuff been talked than on emigration, and Irish emigration in particular. It was by emigration the world was peopled, and emigration must go forward until every corner of the world is fully inhabited. There is nothing unhappy about Irishmen crossing the Atlantic; the unhappy thing is that, in a great many cases, the circumstances which immediately led to emigration were cruel and oppressive, and among the bitterest fruit of oligarchic rule. But if Ireland's years had rolled on from the misty time of legend to this hour as happy as a maiden's dreams, her people would have had to emigrate, or eat each other, or else resort to immoral contrivances to limit population, sickening folly from which the pure, robust Irish nature has always turned away with disgust. When a country the size of Ireland is over-populated, duty and manliness bid the strong ones make for the wilderness, to face the hardships for which the aged and tender are unequal. It is a hard thing, indeed, to leave one's country, and all the harder because the intending emigrant fails to realize the fact that he will make for himself a new home. It is hard; but life is made up of hard things, and men must not grumble at hardness. Yet the regrets of an Irishman for his country is a feature in his character which commands admiration; it proves him to be made of the finest human clay; and we need not wonder it has inspired poets, and been fruitful of romance. "Do you find it hard to die?" asked some priests in Montreal, as they stood by the side of a dying student. The green valleys, the mountain side, his father's cabin, the mother's love, her soft musical voice, came before his fading fancy. His eye brightened for a moment, and then was drowned in one large tearful wave, "I do," said the dying man," but not half so hard as I found it to leave Ireland."

When travelling in the United States, I found the opinion universal that a "smart" Irishman was the smartest man in the world. When the emigrants go into the country, they are the most industrious of all the population. In the south, west, and east, you find the Irish workman strong and successful. The

Irishman who started a quarter of a century ago with a dollar in his pocket, and who has in the interval climbed to wealth and influence, is met everywhere. The idea that Irishmen do not make prosperous merchants is common in England, in the face of the existence of such men as the late Mr. Graves, M.P., of Liverpool; and it obtains on this continent, though Stewart was an Irishman. In Tennessee and Mississippi, where Irishmen, owing to the talisman of such names as Jackson, Carroll, Coffee, Brandon, are held in the highest favour, mercantile success has attended the labour and enterprise of hundreds. In Virginia, the largest fortune ever made by commerce was made by Andrew Beirne, an Irishman. In Missouri, Brian Mullanphy headed the list of millionaires. His son, a lawyer and a judge, who died in 1850, bequeathed $200,000 for the benefit of emigrants entering the Mississippi. John McDonogh died in the same year, at New Orleans, leaving behind him the largest single property in the Southern States. Daniel Clarke's great wealth has been made widely known by the Gaines Case.

In California, a fourth of the farms are in the hands of Irishmen. They constitute one-fourth of the population of San Francisco. With the exception of four persons, six Irishmen are the highest rated in that City.+

According to Mr. Maguire, the Trish stand well in the public esteem of the people of the United States. We sometimes hear the contrary. That they should stand well is only natural. Mr. Maguire devotes many pages of his book to Scotch-Irish, a class to which D'Arcy McGee applied his heaviest lash. On people who would try by the use of such a meaningless phrase to deny their country I would not waste a word. They are despised by those whom they try to conciliate; and while men, the most illustrious and the worthiest our race has produced, were and are proud of. being Irish, the Ireland and the great people they reverenced can afford to leave the sneaks of passing favour unrecognized. The misfortune is that such conduct reflects on the country the liscredit of the individual.

The Irish in America. By John Francis Maguire, M.P., p. 258.

+ Ibid.

I once asked a servant at an hotel what part of Ireland she came from. Her rich