Irish American citizens, holding this opinion, to express their sympathy
with Irishmen striving in Ireland to bring about such a result, and with
Englishmen or Scotchmen contributing to it in Great Britain, be
questioned, any more than the right of Polish citizens of the French
Republic to express their sympathy with Poles labouring in Poland for
the restoration of Polish nationality. It is perhaps even less open to
question than the right of Americans not of Irish race, and of Frenchmen
not of Polish race, to express such sympathies; and certainly less open
to question than the right of Englishmen or Americans to express their
sympathy with Cubans bent on sundering the last link which binds Cuba to
Spain, or with Greeks bent on overthrowing the authority of the Sultan
in Crete.

But for all American citizens of whatever race, the expression of such
sympathies ceases to be legitimate when it assumes the shape of action
transcending the limits set by local or by international law. It is of
the essence of American constitutionalism that one community shall not
lay hands upon the domestic affairs of another; and it is an undeniable
fact that the sympathy of the great body of the American people with
Irish efforts for self-government has been diminished, not increased,
since 1848, by the gradual transfer of the head-quarters and machinery
of those efforts from Ireland to the United States. The recent refusal
of the Mayor of New York, Mr. Hewitt, to allow what is called the "Irish
National flag" to be raised over the City Hall of New York is vastly
more significant of the true drift of American feeling on this subject
than any number of sympathetic resolutions adopted at party conventions
or in State legislatures by party managers, bent on harpooning Irish
voters. If Ireland had really made herself a "nation," with or without
the consent of Great Britain, a refusal to hoist the Irish flag on the
occasion of an Irish holiday would be not only churlish but foolish. But