Sometime previous to his death he sent his diplomas as Master and Doctor to Rev. Paul Limrick, a cousin in Ireland, requesting the latter to have them registered in the parish registry of Dungiven. He asked to have this done “not through vanity, but being a pilgrim on earth and not knowing but my _carcase_ may fall in a strange land, it would be pleasing to me that my relations in time to come might be able to speak of me with authority.” MEN OF IRISH BLOOD WHO HAVE ATTAINED DISTINCTION IN AMERICAN JOURNALISM. BY MICHAEL EDMUND HENNESSY.[21] In journalism, as in every other walk of life, men of Irish blood are, and have been, leaders of those who mould public opinion. As American newspaper men, Irish-Americans have added new laurels to the fair name of Erin’s sons. Irish in name, their intense Americanism pervades every cosmopolitan journal from the Atlantic to the Pacific and from the Canadian line to the Gulf of Mexico. Irishmen were among the pioneers in the establishment of the early American newspapers. It would, indeed, be interesting to follow one by one, step by step, the career of the men of Irish blood who, more than a hundred years ago, braved blind prejudice and established newspapers which did so much for American freedom, and later labored so hard for internal improvements, the developing and the upbuilding of the great Republic. Irishmen were among the first paper manufacturers in this country. Many of them, prior to the Revolutionary War, were engaged in the printing business. Naturally they drifted into publishing newspapers. At the period immediately following the Revolution, it is estimated by the census bureau that there were published in the United States two hundred papers. Of these, it is said, twenty-five were controlled by foreigners, and were, as a rule, the most influential papers published, and were issued in the large towns like Philadelphia, New York and Boston. The election of John Adams as president, and the inauguration of his federal policy, brought into being a strong opposition press, which arrayed itself on the side of Thomas Jefferson. The editors of that period, not unlike the politicians of their time, did not mince matters. Their trenchant quills smote the Federalists with such force that the administration of Mr. Adams deemed it necessary to pass a law that would curb the spirit of the times and muzzle the opposition press. The result was the enactment of the Alien and Sedition act. The twenty-five papers which were controlled by the foreigners were the special mark of the alien and sedition laws. Appleton’s Encyclopedia, speaking on this subject, says: “The apology for the sedition act was the unquestionable licentiousness of the press, which, at that time, was chiefly controlled by refugees and adventurists from Great Britain and Ireland.”