At the opening of the revolutionary era, the whole Irish race threw its weight into the colonial scale. The Irish Commons, according to T. D’Arcy McGee in “The Irish Settlers in America,” refused to vote forty-five thousand dollars for the war. The Irish in England, headed by Burke, Barrè, and Sheridan, spoke and wrote openly in defense of America. The Irish in France were equally zealous. Counts MacMahon, Dillon, Colonel Roche-Fermoy, General Conway, etc., held themselves ready to volunteer into the service of America and afterwards at the desire of the American agent in Paris did so. John Barry was the first Commodore of the American Navy. He was in many actions and was always successful. He has been called by naval writers “The father of the American Navy.” The first prize carried into the United States was a British ship captured by Captain O’Brien and brought into Marblehead. Charles Thompson, an Irishman, was secretary to the first Continental Congress. He wrote out the Declaration of Independence from Jefferson’s draft. Mr. John Dunlap, a native of Strabane, Ireland, issued in 1771 the Pennsylvania Packet, the first daily paper published in America. He was printer to the Convention of 1774 and to the first Congress, and was the first who printed the Declaration of Independence. Nine of the signers of the Declaration of Independence were of Irish origin: Secretary Thompson, Thornton for New Hampshire, James Smith for Pennsylvania, George Taylor, Pennsylvania; George Read, Delaware; Charles Carroll, of Carrollton, Maryland; Thomas Lynch, of South Carolina; Thomas McKean, a signer for Pennsylvania; Edward Rutledge, of South Carolina. Six of the thirty-six delegates to the Convention for ascertaining the Constitution were Irish: Read, McKean, John Rutledge, Pierce Butler, of South Carolina, Daniel Carroll and Thomas Fitzsimmons. The site of Washington is partly on the farm of Daniel Carroll, a cousin of Charles, the signer, and was presented to Washington by him.