The reader of history to-day, if conversant with the events occurring in British and French America from the first settlement down to the outbreak of the Revolution, can see the wisdom of securing the friendship of the Six Nations. For a century they stood as a bulwark between the English and their northern rivals. Without their aid and with their enmity the former could not have prospered as they had; and, as a consequence, would not have been in condition to resist the unjust exactions of the home government. For this reason the names of Colonel Thomas Dongan and of Sir William Johnson ought to be held forever in remembrance in New York and in New England for what they had done in bringing this about. The ways of Providence are mysterious, and to mortals often beyond comprehension. This powerful confederacy, for so many years the terror of the French, as it was the hope of the English settlements, outlived its usefulness; and its downfall was finally brought about by the men or the children of the men with whom it had been for so many years in alliance. As in the first instance, the union between it and the English had been effected mainly through the influence of two men of Irish birth, so in the end it was broken forever by an army led by a man of Irish parentage. If these conclusions are correct, Thomas Dongan, Wm. Johnson O’Neill, and John Sullivan ought to be assigned honorable positions among the pioneers and builders of the United States of America. [Illustration: MR. JAMES F. BRENNAN, Of New Hampshire, State Library Commissioner. Residence, PETERBOROUGH. ] [Illustration: JOHN D. HANRAHAN, M. D., Of Vermont, Ex-President Rutland County Medical and Surgical Society. Residence, RUTLAND. ] [Illustration: JOHN F. HAYES, M. D., Of Connecticut, Member Waterbury Board of Education. Residence, WATERBURY. ] [Illustration: WILLIAM A. M. MACK, M. D., Of New Jersey. Mayor of ELIZABETH, N. J. ] FOUR STATE VICE-PRESIDENTS OF THE SOCIETY. THE IRISH ELEMENT IN THE SECOND MASSACHUSETTS VOLUNTEERS IN THE RECENT WAR (WITH SPAIN). BY REV. JOHN J. McCOY, P. R., CHICOPEE, MASS. “What have ye brought to our Nation-building, Sons of the Gael? What is your burden or guerdon from old Innisfail? Here build we higher and deeper than men ever built before; And we raise no Shinar tower, but a temple forevermore.” —_John Boyle O’Reilly._ Just after the Parnell investigation in 1885, when the Irish Parliamentary party came out of the fires of ill will and fraud, and was crowned with the world’s credit, John Boyle O’Reilly said to a priest friend of mine, the Rev. Dr. O’Callaghan of Boston, “Father Denis, in the clubs of Boston to-night it is a glory to be an Irishman.”