A committee of three Washington members of the society was appointed to wait upon Mr. Moseley and officially notify him of his selection. This committee consisted of Mr. J. D. O’Connell of the U. S. Treasury Department; Paymaster Carmody, U. S. N., and Capt. John M. Tobin. The committee had waited upon Mr. Moseley as instructed, and Chairman O’Connell thus presented the matter: Mr. Moseley,—Complying with the directions of the Council of the American-Irish Historical Society, we have come to announce to you, in their name, your selection as President-General of the society. To be the bearer of such information is generally a pleasant duty; and it would be a pleasure to us in this instance, were it not for the bereavement felt so keenly by every member of our society because of the death of its first President-General, the late Richard W. Meade, Rear-Admiral of the United States Navy—illustrious in name and lineage and in the annals of his country. It is a great honor to you, sir, to have been selected by the unanimous voice of our council to the highest office in our society, in immediate succession to such an illustrious man. Nevertheless, we hope that under your administration the society is destined to grow with the growth and strengthen with the strength of the Republic, and that it will eventually achieve the glorious object of its institution, namely, to prove to the civilized world, and especially to the “English-speaking peoples,” that there is no distinction of blood or race among the colonists and their descendants who peopled this part of the continent from Great Britain and Ireland; that they and the succeeding and ever-increasing waves of immigration, up to and long after the Revolutionary War, were all people of the same mixture of blood—Celtic and Germanic; the Celtic—and in that the Irish Celtic—then predominant, as it still continues to be in every region of the globe where the English language is spoken; predominant also on every ocean where floats our own flag, and the flag of “our kin beyond the sea,” which bears the insignia of the “three kingdoms”—a flag we do not now respect, and never shall while it is the emblem of tyranny in any land or on any sea. [Illustration: GEN. JAMES R. O’BEIRNE NEW YORK ] [Illustration: M. J. HARSON RHODE ISLAND ] [Illustration: GEN. M. C. BUTLER SOUTH CAROLINA ] [Illustration: GEN. ST. CLAIR A. MULHOLLAND PENNSYLVANIA ] VICE-PRESIDENTS _The President-General’s Reply._ President-General Moseley replied as follows: