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Show ScotcMrisi) ana tk Ofber.- Trisb (Xow York Sun.) The many controversial letters uo are receiving on the question of the Scotch-Irish and tho other Irish justify us in repeating an admonition we have uttered several times already. It is that the introduction in-troduction into this country of ihe racial and religious re-ligious controversies of the Old "World is both unprofitable un-profitable and mischievous. In the first place, they can never be settled here any more than they have been settled on the other side of the water, after centuries of more or less violent disputation. Incidentally, our correspondents correspond-ents quarrel over the propoi tiouate share of the Catholic Irish, and the Presbyterian Irish in the securing of the independence of this republic in the M-ur of the Revolution. It is an idle controversy. contro-versy. Both rendered splendid service in that con test, from both have come many ot the men most distinguished in our history, and all people of Irish lineage and of every lineage here have reason for pride and gratitude because of their achieve-' ' mcnts. Few American families coming down from that Colonial period have not in them some infusion of Irish blood, whether of the one strain or the other. If you strike at either, you may hit some of your own ancestors.. After the Revolution, during the period from 1820 to 1850, there came to the United States from Ireland more than a million immigrants. In 1S20 the population of the Union was only 9.6:J3,S22, and in 1850 it was only 23,191,M70. How great an influence in-fluence on our American stock in those days this large infusion of Irish blood had is thus made manifest. It affected the race extraction of the population of every state. From 1S20 to 1900 the aggregate of the Irish immigrati was nearly four millions. They were people of a vigorous, enduring and prolific race, whether Catholics or Presbyterians, Presbyte-rians, of Scotch or of Irish descent, and they and their descendants make up now a very great part of the population. In the city of Xew York alone, in 1900, there were 727.4G4: people of Irish birth and their children chil-dren native to this country. Add the whole number num-ber of the inhabitants of Irish descent whose lineage line-age goes back to the earlier Irish immigrants, and how many of the 3.437,202-inhabitants in 1900 were without some trace of that blood I . In the south, unfortunately, the foreign immigration immi-gration of more than twenty millions during the eighty years from 1820 to 1900 was relatively sndl. African blood, takes the place there -of the white European blood brotyht to the northern states by that immigration, and because of it a race and color line has been established, while at the north the tendency is, happily, to the mixture of white races by intermarriage. ; Take the social circle in X'ew York which is of most fashionable prominence, and how many of the families in it arc without some of these foreign for-eign strains? Look around the box circle at the opera and count up. How many of the old stock of Xew Yorkers, Dutch or English, do you find among them? Scarcely is there one in which there is not some infusion of this immigrant blood. "Paddy?" He is everywhere. A family of wholly colonial lineage is practically unknown. We also have here in X'ew York more than eight hundred thousand of the German born and their native children, something like seven hundred thousand thou-sand Jews, toward half a million Italians. Look at the faces in the street -cars and you will see comparatively com-paratively few which bear the marks of a long American lineage, and fewer still iycontestably English or "Anglo-Saxon.", Read the names on the mercantile signs. Go down to Wall street, look over the names of the members of the stock ex-. change and of the bankers dominant there, and see what 'you find. The Yankee is only a drop in the bucket in Xew York. Scotch-Irish or Irish-Scotch i We know of no such divisions. They belong to another continent and another political and social system. Here are only Americans, and, as we have said, Americans had better be careful about hitting at any Euro-, pean race lest they strike at some of their own ancestors. Catholic or Protestant? That is not the question ques-tion to ask. Arc you bearing witness in your life to the blessed effects of your religion on you? a 1 |