oppression of the Sister Island by England. The fact that emigrants come from Europe is accepted as a proof that the countries which they leave are ill-governed; and Americans, in dealing with the emigration question, are apt to forget the existence and nature of the forces which induced their own ancestors to seek homes in the New World. The _New York Times_ declared in an article last June, that there is no essential difference between the two divisions of the Irish in America and of the Irish in Ireland. The voyage across the Atlantic works no transformation in Pat, and he is still as much an Irishman after his plunge into an alien civilisation and taking out his papers as when he stood on the old sod in Meath or Tipperary. "He cares no more for the American eagle than for an owl; but a sprig of shamrock stirs him to ecstasy. The name of Washington has no meaning for his ear; but that of St. Patrick is a living and potent reality." That statement, however, must be taken with qualification. There are to-day 90,000 acres of land in Minnesota as thoroughly Irish as if they were planted in the centre of Connaught. There are Pats and Pats. Many of the most wealthy and prosperous merchants, bankers, and landowners whom we met in the West were not merely of Irish extraction, but born Irishmen, and the extraordinary spectacle of Irish millionaires who knew how to keep their money, and to add to it, too, may be seen in San Francisco and elsewhere in the West. Many, less fortunate, have high positions either in the army, or as politicians, or in the estimation of all that is great and good in America--such as Mr. O'Conor--men who have held aloof from politics, and who could not be tempted, even by the Presidentship, to enter the arena of party strife. One convicted rebel of 1840 now occupies a leading place at the American bar. I heard him denounce the Land Bill in terms he might have used in denouncing the atrocities of the Saxon in his hot days when O'Connell was king. The influence which has been acquired in many parts of the Union by the Irish immigration and by the descendants of immigrants has naturally excited at various times the opposition and indignation of the American born, and it has always been more or less opposed by the Teutons of different nationalities who occupy such a powerful position in all the great States of the West. But "the Native Party" is now either dead or sleeping. A very distinguished officer and politician said to me that he had at one time been a most eager and ardent adherent of the policy of the Native American Party, but that when he saw how earnestly and devotedly the Irish had come forward in defence of the Union, how brilliantly they had fought, and how recklessly they had sacrificed their lives, in 1861, he felt constrained to abandon his principles, and to admit their free right to all the privileges of American citizenship. I could not, however, but recollect that General