The point that I wish to make is this: I concede willingly, and, I may say, gladly, that the founders of the great Irish-American societies in America, a century or a century and a half ago, were not all of the distinctively Irish race whose faith was Catholic; but of their nationality there was not the shadow of a doubt. They were Irish, and proud to call themselves such. They were not “Scotch-Irish,” nor “Anglo-Irish.” If they belonged, for the most part, to the faith of Grattan and Tone and Emmet, does any true Irishman love their memory the less therefor? Not one! In all the history of this, our poor, crime-stained, unhappy world, there is no nation so free from the sin of persecution for conscience’s sake as poor, persecuted Catholic Ireland. Our national saints and martyrs have been Catholic and Protestant. We have never discriminated against any man because of his religious belief, but, rather, have been proud of following our leaders who loved Ireland first. But we are jealous in claiming our own. We do not want any man to be called “Scotch-Irish” or “Anglo-Saxon,” because he did not happen to be of the same faith as Strongbow or Henry the Second, the Catholic invaders who first overran Ireland. Emmet is ours as much as O’Connell; Parnell belongs to Ireland as much as Owen Roe. We do not discriminate between Andrew Jackson and Phil Sheridan when we glory in the deeds of Irish-Americans. We have only one living thought at present. Our faces are set against any alliance with the hereditary enemy of Ireland and of America. That feeling is not Irish alone; it is American. It is born of experience. On our part, seven hundred years old. On the part of America, over one hundred years old. But is not the experience of one century as valuable as that of seven when we have to deal with real things? It ought to be more valuable, even as the injury of yesterday is more stinging than one of seven years ago. The danger of an Anglo-American alliance is imminent. Its effect on Ireland is comparatively trivial. Its effect on America is immeasurably disastrous. By it we should forfeit the friendship of France, whose men and money made our freedom possible, and of Russia, whose timely aid saved us from disintegration during the Civil War. “Republics are ungrateful,” says the old adage. _This_ republic must prove, at least, one exception to the rule, if it be a rule. The American, and especially the Irish-American, who would favor an alliance with England, would be unworthy of Heaven, unwelcome in Purgatory, and lonesome in Perdition. THE IRISH NAME. John Jerome Rooney, of New York, read the following beautiful and stirring poem: