imported Irish abomination and nuisance. On that day, about this hour, three regiments in New York fired on the people, and forty-four persons were killed and two hundred and twenty men and women were wounded. If it be asked in America, What is the National Irish agitation doing, or what it has done? I answer that, for one thing, it has forever prevented the possibility of the recurrence of such a dreadful and disgraceful event as that. Within a dozen years the old rancor and evil blood have been obliterated from our national life, and whatever we import from Ireland in the future will not be divided and hateful as it has been in the past. The County Monaghan election the other day saw the men who were opposed to each other in New York twelve years ago go to the polls to vote for the national candidate as brothers. The selection of this day is symbolic. On the 12th of July, it used to be the English custom to inflame the religious divisions invented by themselves, to show they ruled us by our differences. For hundreds of years they kept up the inflammation; but the old wound is cured forever.
It may be asked why hundreds of business men should leave their own business to come to this great American Hall, whose very walls are holy with traditions of liberty; it may be wondered that hundreds of business men should come here to this busy center, with the markets roaring outside the windows, to discuss Irish politics. I say, if we came here only for Irish purposes we should have no business in Faneuil Hall—but we have come here for great American and humanitarian purposes. We have come here to prevent the repetition of such a scene of shame as that which happened in New York on the 12th of July, 1871; to prevent such an iniquity as that of importing paupers from the Irish subject country; to destroy the wicked and ruinous drain on the finances of the people of this country, which are sent every year to fill the pockets of the rack-renting landlords of Ireland; and to take such measures as are best calculated to win to our cause our fellow-citizens and the entire American race. We can do this by appealing to the justice and to the intelligence of our fellow-citizens. It will be our first duty to prevent American citizens from misunderstanding the purposes of the Irish National movement, and from believing the misrepresentations of the English papers and their agents in this country. It is our duty to make it known to America that the National League is based on a reverence for law and order, and we hope to win for our cause the conscientious conviction of every good man in America, no matter of what race.The old intolerant spirit which had found expression in the shibboleth, "No Irish need apply," was not yet quite dead in Massachusetts; indeed, it had rather become inten-
