all their varieties through the past ages. That which America
exemplifies in her Constitution and system of representative government
is the most modern, and of any yet devised gives promise of being the
most substantial and enduring.

It is not unusual to hear arguments against our institutions and our
Government, addressed particularly to recent arrivals and the sons of
recent arrivals to our shores. They sometimes take the form of a claim
that our institutions were founded long ago; that changed conditions
require that they now be changed. Especially is it claimed by those
seeking such changes that these new arrivals and men of their race and
ideas had no hand in the making of our country, and that it was formed
by those who were hostile to them and therefore they owe it no support.
Whatever may be the condition in relation to others, and whatever
ignorance and bigotry may imagine, such arguments do not apply to those
of the race and blood so prominent in this assemblage. To establish this
it were but necessary to cite eleven of the fifty-five signers of the
Declaration of Independence and recall that on the roll of Washington's
generals were Sullivan, Knox, Wayne, and the gallant son of Trinity
College, Dublin, who fell at Quebec at the head of his troops,--Richard
Montgomery. But scholarship has answered ignorance. The learned and
patriotic research of men of the education of Dr. James J. Walsh and
Michael J. O'Brien, the historian of the Irish American Society, has
demonstrated that a generous portion of the rank and file of the men who
fought in the Revolution and supported those who framed our institutions
was not alien to those who are represented here. It is no wonder that
from among such that which is American has drawn some of its most
steadfast defenders.

In these days of violent agitation scholarly men should reflect that the