selected as their future home; but we do most emphatically deprecate the conduct of those among them who, trading on such natural and generous feelings for selfish purposes, turn them aside from their duty as parents and citizens, and, assuming to be their leaders, have swayed them in the interest of this or that faction, wholly neglecting at the same time the performance of duties to the execution of which 97 any one might be proud to devote his life. Let us illustrate what we mean. There are, at least, two and a half millions of Irish in the United States, the great majority of whom, for very sufficient, if not obvious, reasons occupy socially and pecuniarily a very inferior position to that which their natural abilities would entitle them, yet we see how little effort is being made by their countrymen, of more education or larger wealth, to assist them. The Catholic Church has done much, but the church, necessarily, can only attend to their spiritual wants and to the education of their children; the temperance and benevolent societies are good in their way, but their power is limited, and their sphere of action very restricted; but we look in vain for an organization that will take by the hand the bewildered and uncertain stranger as he lands at Castle Garden or in the harbor of Boston, shield him from the temptations and villany which mark him out as a victim from the moment his foot touches the firm earth and his battle of life commences, find him employment in the great centres of trade and commerce, or conduct him safely to the broad spreading fields of the free and fruitful West. If he be a farmer or agricultural laborer, as the majority of Irish immigrants are, what society of his countrymen is prepared to defray his expenses to the rural districts, where labor is always in demand, and wages high, or help him to locate on the Western lands, which can be had almost for the asking, and where he can bring up his family in comfort and happiness? If half the money and one-quarter the time and labor which were recently so foolishly expended in futile efforts to free Ireland and invade the British dependencies had been used for the benefit of the poorer class of our Irish immigrants, how many thousands of them might now be enjoying happy homes in our fertile Western states and territories, instead of infesting the purlieus of New York, underbidding each other for precarious and unhealthy employment. How many victims of disappointed hope or mistaken confidence might have been rescued from the slough of despondency and degradation into which they have fallen, and placed in a position of at least comparative independence. The liberation of Ireland through the instrumentality of her exiled children is an old and a splendid dream, but it is only a dream so long as the present relations exist between this country and England. We yield to no one in appreciation of all that is noble in that pious and gallant nation,