"Irishmen were at the bottom of the Mollie Maguire conspiracy in Pennsylvania; Irishmen plotted against the officials and the Chinese in San Francisco; the Tammany ring was largely supported by Irish citizens, and even the Boston police were tampered with by Irish politicians of that city." To controvert this view, and particularly the reflection upon the Boston police, the _Republic_ newspaper of Boston sent a circular letter to a number of prominent men, requesting such denials as they might see fit to furnish. Governor Robinson writes: "I have already taken occasion to contradict emphatically an assertion said to have been recently made in England that the act to establish a board of police for the city of Boston, passed by the legislature of Massachusetts in 1885, was necessitated by the threatening and disorderly character and conduct of the Irish people in Boston. In all the conferences, arguments and declarations about that act, before its introduction, or while it was under consideration in the legislature, no intimation of that kind ever reached me, and I do not believe it to be true. Nor is there, in my opinion, any more foundation for the statement to which you call my attention. Sharp political controversies arise; but happily no question of race or nationality aggravates the differences among our people upon public matters." Charles A. Dana, editor of _New York Sun_, says: "I cannot now recall the name of a single citizen of Irish birth who was known as a supporter of the Tammany ring; and it is notorious that the head of it, the late William M. Tweed, was a full-blooded American. At the same time, one of the most conspicuous of its adversaries, the late Charles O'Conor, though born in this country, was thoroughly Irish in heart and sympathy. Another distinguished enemy of Mr. Tweed's ring was his successor as the leader of Tammany Hall, the present Mr. John Kelly, a man of Irish descent, and a more determined foe of every kind of corruption and of public dishonesty has never lived." Gen. Butler thus replies: "I can certainly give you the most thorough denial of the slanders upon the Irishmen by the article of the _Nineteenth Century_. I have known the Irish-Americans intimately ever since my boyhood, and they are as good, loyal people as any in the world, and as soldiers among the very best."