It is the Irish emigration that has chiefly supplied the multitudes who flock around English altars, that has made churches and schools spring up, that has finally called for the restoration of a numerous hierarchy; and, as if to mark this fact, and point out the great part that Ireland had in restoring Catholic life to England, God has so arranged it that the first head and brightest ornament of that new hierarchy should be the son of Irish emigrants; for such is the great and illustrious Cardinal Wiseman. And even in these United States, let people say what they please, has not the Irish race held the first place in planting the cross throughout the length and breadth of the land? In this, and wherever else I speak of the Irish race, I do not, of course, confine myself to those born in Ireland. The work which a race is called to do is to be done by those who now live, and by their children and their children’s children, wherever they happen to be born. Indeed, it would be a contradiction in terms to consider the father and son, wherever born, as belonging to different races. Be it for weal or for woe, be it unto honour or unto shame, the fathers cannot disown the children nor the children the fathers. If it depended on feeling or wishes, I, for one, would be very glad to dissolve connection with any one who insists that he owes nothing to the race that gave him a father or a mother. I would readily leave such a one to his proud claim of owning no paternity but the land on which he vegetates, and I only regret that he will scarcely bring to it much credit or advantage. He who is unwilling to acknowledge the father that begot him, or the mother that gave him suck, is not a prize worth contending for. But whatever we or he may wish, whatever be the results to us or to him, he is flesh of our flesh and bone of our bone. What God has united, neither he nor we can put asunder. It is not that we should form separate classes or castes, or that we claim other rights or privileges, or have other duties than those of other races; but the one to which each man belongs has been fixed by the Almighty Provider in the very act of giving him being, and he who would fain conceal, or disown, or be ashamed of his race—that is, of the order of Providence to which he owes his existence—could succeed in nothing else but in proving himself unworthy the esteem of men of any race. I know and gratefully acknowledge the important services rendered to Catholicity in the United States by persons of other races. There was, first of all, the Maryland colony, with whose noble history that of few, if any, of the other colonies can compare. By their justice and humanity in treating with the native tribes, by similar justice and fair dealing with other colonists, of every religion and every race, by their domestic virtues and patriotic course, the men of that colony deserved and received a high place in the esteem of their countrymen and of the world.