MEMOIR OF MATHEW CAREY.
BY HENRY CAREY BAIRD.[[14]]
Mathew Carey, the Philadelphia publisher, was born in the city of Dublin, Ireland, on the 28th of January, 1760. His father, Christopher Carey, at one time in the British navy, was subsequently an extensive contractor for the army, through which means he achieved an independence.
The son early evinced a passion for the acquisition of knowledge, and in addition to some familiarity with Latin, soon became proficient in French, without the assistance of a master. To do this, however, he studied as much as fifteen or sixteen hours a day, hardly allowing himself time for his meals. The peculiar orthography of his Christian name as rendered by himself, “Mathew,” and not “Matthew,” was the result of a philological discussion with one of his brothers, when quite a young man, and his then arriving at a belief that from its derivation this was the correct mode of spelling it.
When about fifteen years of age it became necessary for Mathew to choose a trade. He was decidedly in favor of that of printer and bookseller, which were then generally united. His father had a strong aversion to the trade, and refused to look out a master for him, which he did for himself, and he was accordingly apprenticed to a printer and bookseller of the name of McDonnel. A lameness which took place owing to the carelessness of his nurse when he was about a year old, and which continued throughout life, was a constant drawback to him, and interfered greatly with him in his career.
His first essay as a writer was when he was about seventeen years old, and was on the subject of dueling, which he condemned with great severity—the occasion being the attempt of a bookseller in Dublin to bring about a duel between an apprentice of his own and one of McDonnel’s. As will be seen, however, after he came to the United States, Mr. Carey was himself a principal, and was wounded in a duel.
His next attempt at authorship was one which involved most serious consequences to himself, and drove him into exile. Having directed his attention to the oppressions under which the Irish Catholics stood, and having read every book and pamphlet on the subject which he could procure, and with his mind filled with their sufferings, and his indignation aroused, he, in 1779, wrote a pamphlet entitled The Urgent Necessity of an Immediate Repeal of the whole Penal Code against the Roman Catholics, Candidly Considered; to which is added an inquiry into the prejudices against them; being an appeal to the Roman Catholics of Ireland, exciting them to a just sense of their civil and religious rights as citizens of a free nation.
When nearly ready it was advertised for publication in a few days, with the title page and its mottoes, and the attention of the public was called to it by an address, couched in very strong language, and wherein reference was made to the fact that “America by a desperate effort has nearly emancipated herself from slavery.” It excited considerable alarm. Parliament was then in session, and the advertisement was brought before both houses. The publication was denounced by an association of Roman Catholics, which, as Mr. Carey has asserted, “partook of the general depression and servile spirit, which a long course of oppression uniformly produces.”
This association offered a reward for the apprehension of the author, and engaged lawyers to carry on the prosecution in case of discovery. The authorship having become known to Mr. Carey’s father, was to him a cause of great alarm, and efforts were made to appease the wrath of the committee, and induce them to abandon the prosecution by an offer to destroy the entire edition. This was of no avail, and after being concealed for some days, Mr. Carey got on board of a Holyhead packet and proceeded to Paris.
He carried with him a letter of introduction to a Catholic priest, by whom he was introduced to Dr. Franklin, then the American Minister to the French Court, and who had a small printing office at Passy for the purpose of printing his dispatches from America. In this office Mr. Carey was employed while this work lasted. Afterwards he found a position with the celebrated publisher, Didot, who was then printing some English books. While at Passy he made the acquaintance of the Marquis de Lafayette—whose friendship at a subsequent period became one of the most controlling influences of his future career.
In about twelve months he returned to Dublin, and the remainder of his apprenticeship having been purchased from McDonnel, he engaged for a time as the conductor of a paper called the Freeman’s Journal. Finally, on the 13th of October, 1783, his father furnished him with the means to establish a new paper called the Volunteers’ Journal. For this work, he says, he was “miserably qualified,” although he had “a superabundance of zeal and ardor, and a tolerable knack and facility of scribbling.” He adds: “The paper, as might have been expected, partook largely of the character of its proprietor and editor. Its career was enthusiastic and violent. It suited the temper of the times, exercised a decided influence on public opinion; and, in very short time, had a greater circulation than any other paper in Dublin, except the Evening Post, which had the great merit of calling into existence that glorious band of brothers, the Volunteers of Ireland, whose zeal and determined resolution to assert and defend the rights of country, struck terror into the British cabinet, and forced the ministry to knock off chains that had bound down the nation for centuries.”
“The Volunteers’ Journal, fanning the flame of patriotism which pervaded the land,” says Mr. Carey, “excited the indignation of the government, which formed a determination to put it down, if possible. A prosecution had for a considerable time been contemplated—and, at length, the storm which had so long threatened, burst, in consequence of a publication which appeared on the 5th of April, 1784, in which the Parliament in general, and more particularly the Premier, were severely attacked.”
Accordingly, on the 7th of the same month, a motion was made in the Irish House of Commons, for an address to the Lord Lieutenant, requesting the apprehension of Mathew Carey. He was arrested on the 11th, and on the 19th was taken before the House of Commons, when certain interrogatories were put to him, which he positively refused to answer, on the ground that he was arrested by the civil power, and being under prosecution for the supposed libel of the Premier, he was not amenable to another tribunal. He preferred charges against the Sergeant-at-Arms in whose custody he was. An exciting debate arose; the Sergeant-at-Arms was justified by a large majority, and Mr. Carey was committed to Newgate jail, Dublin, where he remained until the 14th of May, when Parliament having adjourned, he was liberated by the Lord Mayor. “During my stay there,” says Mr. Carey, “I had lived joyously—companies of gentlemen occasionally dining with me on the choicest luxuries the markets afforded.”
Although thus freed from the clutches of Parliament, the criminal prosecution for libel of the Premier still stood suspended over his head. In the then inflamed state of the public mind it would have been impossible to procure a grand jury to find a true bill against him; but the attorney-general filed a bill ex-officio which dispensed with the interposition of the grand jury. Mr. Carey’s means were, in a great measure, exhausted; and, dreading the consequences of the prosecution and a heavy fine and imprisonment, his friends thought it best for him to leave his native country; and, “accordingly, on the 7th of September, 1784,” he says, “when I had not reached my 25th year, my pen drove me a second time into exile.” He embarked on board the America, Captain Keiler, and landed in Philadelphia on the 1st of November. He was induced to select Philadelphia as his new home for the reason that he had seen notices of his examination before the Irish House of Commons in two Philadelphia papers. There his case was therefore known, and would probably make him friends.
He had sold out his paper to his brother for £500, to be remitted as soon as practicable, and he landed in Philadelphia with about a dozen guineas in his pocket, without a relation or a friend, or even an acquaintance, except those of the America. A most unlooked for circumstance soon occurred which gave a new direction to his views and changed the course of his future life. A fellow passenger of his had brought letters of recommendation to General Washington, and having gone to Mount Vernon to deliver them, he there met the Marquis de Lafayette.
The conversation turning upon the affairs of Ireland, the Marquis said he had seen in the Philadelphia papers an account of Mr. Carey’s troubles with the Parliament, and inquired what had become of the poor persecuted Dublin printer, when he was informed that he was then in Philadelphia. On the arrival of the Marquis in that city, he wrote to Mr. Carey requesting him to call upon him. Mr. Carey then told him that upon receipt of funds from home he proposed to establish a newspaper in Philadelphia. Of this the Marquis approved, and promised to recommend him to his friend, Robert Morris, and others. The next morning Mr. Carey was greatly surprised at receiving a letter from the Marquis containing $400. “This was the more extraordinary and liberal,” says Mr. Carey, “as not a word had passed between us on the subject of giving or receiving, borrowing or lending money.”
Nor was there a word in the letter about the inclosure. Mr. Carey went to the lodgings of the Marquis, but found that he had left the city. He wrote to him at New York expressing his gratitude in the strongest of terms, and received a kind and friendly answer. “I have more than once assumed, and I now repeat,” says Mr. Carey, “that I doubt whether in the whole life of this (I had almost said) unparalleled man, there is to be found anything which, all the circumstances of the case considered, more highly elevates his character.”
Although this sum was in every sense of the word a gift, Mr. Carey always considered it as a loan, payable to the Marquis’ countrymen, according to the exalted sentiment of Dr. Franklin, who, when he gave a bill for ten pounds to an Irish clergymen in distress in Paris, told him to “pay the sum to any Americans he might find in distress, and thus let good offices go round.” Mr. Carey paid the debt in full to Frenchmen in want, and subsequently in addition discharged it to the Marquis; the latter only accepting it upon the urgent solicitation of the former.
On receiving this money, Mr. Carey at once issued proposals for the publication of the Pennsylvania Evening Herald, and the first number was accordingly published January 25, 1785. He received but £50 from the sale of the Volunteers’ Journal, in Dublin, his brother having been ruined partly by the persecutions of the government, and partly by the establishment of an opposition paper of the same name under government patronage. The success of the Evening Herald was not very great, and the means of the publisher being small, on the 25th of March he took two partners, and enlarged the paper. It, however, made but poor progress until Mr. Carey, in August following, commenced the publication of the Debates in the House of Assembly, a great novelty and innovation which gave the Herald an advantage over all its contemporaries.
Party feeling in Pennsylvania ran very high at the time, and in the course of a political controversy, he became involved in a quarrel with Col. Eleazer Oswald, who had been an officer of artillery during the Revolutionary War; and this difficulty resulted in a duel which took place in January, 1786, in New Jersey, opposite to Philadelphia, in which Mr. Carey was wounded in the thigh, from the effects of which he did not entirely recover for many months. He, subsequently to the duel, greatly disgusted his second and others, by performing, as he says, “a gratuitous act of justice, which was probably one of the best acts of my life”—that of publishing a card retracting the charges he had made against Colonel Oswald.
In October, 1786, in partnership with five others, he commenced the publication of the Columbian Magazine, to the first number of which he contributed four pieces, one of which, “A Philosophical Dream,” was an anticipation of the state of the country in 1850, in which, strange as these predictions must have seemed at the time, are now quite remarkable in their realization. In December, 1786, owing to the difficulty of realizing profits from so many partners and other causes, he withdrew. In January, 1787, he issued the first number of the American Museum, a magazine intended to preserve the fugitive essays that appeared in the newspapers. This publication, sets of which, in 12 volumes, 8vo, now exist in a number of public and private libraries, is one of great value, and presents a graphic and truthful record of the times. It was issued for six years, and brought to a close in December, 1792, after a hard struggle for life.
About this time he married Miss Bridget Flahavan, the daughter of a highly respectable citizen of Philadelphia who had been ruined by the Revolution. Mr. Carey’s wife was an industrious, prudent, economical woman, with, as he says, a large fund of good sense, but, equally with himself, without means. The match was, as he acknowledges, imprudent; but he and his wife determined to indulge in no unnecessary expense, and they carried out this resolution faithfully, even when he was doing a business of $40,000 to $50,000 per annum, and with the happiest results.
When he relinquished the American Museum, he commenced bookselling and printing on a small scale. His store, or rather shop, was of very moderate dimensions; but, small as it was, he had not full-bound books enough to fill the shelves—a considerable portion of them being filled with spelling books. He procured a credit at bank, which enabled him to extend his business; and by care, indefatigable industry, the most rigid punctuality and frugality, he gradually advanced in the world. For twenty-five years, winter and summer, he was always present at the opening of his store.
In 1793 he was a member of the Committee of Health, appointed for the relief of the sick by yellow fever, and of the orphans made such by it. The duties of this position were faithfully and calmly fulfilled, “and his whole life,” says Prof. R. E. Thompson, “corresponded to the promise of that year.” He subsequently wrote a full account of this epidemic, of which four editions were published. Stephen Girard, who was one of the members of this committee, as Mr. Carey says, “to the inexpressible delight” of the members, volunteered his services, and became superintendent of the yellow fever hospital on Bush Hill.
In 1792, or ’93, feeling for the sufferings and wretchedness of the numerous Irish immigrants who arrived in Philadelphia, he called a meeting, at the Coffee House, of a number of the most influential and prominent Irishmen, and submitted to the meeting a constitution, which he had prepared, and which was adopted, and thus was formed “The Hibernian Society for the Relief of Emigrants from Ireland.” This society exists at the present day in a highly flourishing condition. In 1796 he zealously engaged with a few other citizens in the formation of a Sunday-school Society, of which Bishop White became president.
Between 1796 and ’98 he became involved in a very acrimonious controversy with William Cobbett, which was not of his seeking, but which he conducted with unflinching courage and ability. In addition to a considerable correspondence between them, the war became one of pamphlets and newspapers—Cobbett using his Porcupine Gazette. Mr. Carey issued a pamphlet entitled A Plum Pudding for Peter Porcupine, in which he says he “handled him with great severity.” He next published The Porcupiniad, a Hudibrastic Poem, in which he turned some of Cobbett’s own paragraphs into Hudibrastic verse, and “it is wonderful,” he says, “how smoothly they ran, in many instances, with the alteration of a single word or two.” Cobbett made no reply, and never after had Mr. Carey’s name in his paper but once or twice incidentally. This ended the controversy, and subsequently they became very good friends.
His publishing business was pushed with wonderful energy, and for those days on a grand scale. He has stated that for many years he was involved in such financial difficulties and embarrassments that he was “oppressed and brought to the verge of bankruptcy,” which “nothing but the most untiring efforts and indefatigable industry and energy could have enabled me to wade through.” These difficulties were brought about, he says, by his own folly in over-trading. A few figures in regard to his publications will give an idea how these difficulties arose. For instance, he printed 2,500 copies of Guthrie’s Geography, 4to, with a folio atlas of 40 or 50 maps, price, $12; 3,000 Goldsmith’s Animated Nature, 4 volumes, 8vo, illustrated with a large number of plates, price $10. In 1801 he published 3,000 copies of a 4to edition of the Bible, with additional references, for which he paid an editor $1,000. This book was prepared by the collation of eighteen different editions of the Bible, in which the most extraordinary number of discrepancies were detected. Soon after the publication of this edition, the success of which was very great, he embarked in the preparation of a standing edition of the 4to Bible. Stereotyping had not been invented, and for this volume he purchased the entire type which was kept permanently standing. About this time he purchased, for $7,000, a school Bible, and also a large house in Market Street, in which he lived for many years. In 1802 he was elected by the Senate of Pennsylvania a director in the Bank of Pennsylvania, which added greatly to his financial resources.
In 1801, induced by the advantages to literature which had resulted from the fairs of Frankfort and Leipsic, he formed the project of establishing a literary fair in this country, to meet alternately at New York and Philadelphia. He accordingly issued a circular dated December, 1801, inviting all publishers and booksellers to meet in New York on the 1st of June, 1802, for the purpose of buying, selling and exchanging their publications. He wrote out a constitution, which was adopted, and a society formed with Hugh Gaine, the oldest bookseller in the United States, as president. The plan worked well for a year or two, but it was found that country booksellers published inferior editions of popular works, with which, by means of exchanges, they flooded the country. It was therefore abandoned.
In 1806, being then a member of the Select Council of the City of Philadelphia, he united with Stephen Girard and others to relieve real estate of a portion of its taxes, by transferring it to personal property, when he published a pamphlet on examination of the existing system of taxation in that city, but with no results. In 1810, when the question of the renewal of the charter of the Bank of the United States, which was to expire on the following March, came up, he took an active and earnest part in its favor, neglecting his business for three months, and publishing a series of essays on the subject. Nearly all the Democrats of the city were opposed to this, and he made himself hosts of enemies by his course.
The publication of The Olive Branch, which was made at a critical period in the history of the country, proved to be one of the most successful books up to that time ever issued from the American press, and he regarded its preparation as one of the most important events in his life. The War of 1812–’15, between the United States and Great Britain, had developed such an acrimonious state of feeling between parties in the country, as to appear to forebode civil war. In September, 1814, Mr. Carey, in a “moment of ardent zeal and enthusiasm, was seized with a desire to make an effort by a candid publication of the numerous errors and follies on both sides to allay the public effervescence, and calm the embittered feelings of the parties.”
Hence, he began the preparation of The Olive Branch, September 18, and the book was through the press November 6th, and was published on the 8th. It was a volume of 252 pages, 12mo. The edition of 500 copies was sold within a few weeks, and it was revised and enlarged from time to time, and in three and a half years ten editions were sold, amounting to 10,000 copies. “A greater sale probably,” as he has said, “than any book ever had in this country, except some religious ones,” up to that time. He gave permission to several parties to print the book, without payment of copyright, and editions were printed at Boston, Mass., Middlebury, Vt., and Winchester, Va.
In 1818 he set laboriously and seriously to work to prepare a vindication of Ireland. Accordingly, in the following year, he published Vindiciæ Hibernicæ; or, Ireland Vindicated, of which a second edition was published in 1823. This is a large 8vo volume involving great research.
Early in 1819, struck with the prevailing condition of the United States, he commenced writing on political economy, investigating the causes, and pointing out the necessity for protecting our industries against foreign competition. Few men ever enlisted in any public cause with more enthusiasm, few ever worked with more energy and industry in such a cause. He was one of the founders of the Philadelphia Society for the Promotion of National Industry; he attended conventions in various parts of the country, and he made more extensive contributions to the literature of the subject than any other man had then done on this continent.
Some idea may be formed of the extent of this work when it is stated that between 1819 and 1833 his books and pamphlets on this question reached an aggregate of 2,322 pages. To no other man, not in public life, was the first protective tariff of 1824, as well as that more protective one of 1828, due. These were results which would have exerted a permanent influence on the country but for the nullification movement of South Carolina and Georgia.
This latter movement produced Clay’s Compromise Tariff Act of 1833, which was only abandoned in 1842 in the midst of a bankruptcy so widespread and universal that it involved not merely individuals and banks and other corporations, but state governments, and even the government of the United States itself. Mr. Carey was much discouraged by the illiberal conduct of manufacturers and others who had much at stake in the cause, and he ever after believed that to this illiberality and supineness was due the triumph of nullification, for it did triumph in the enactment of the Compromise Tariff, Act of 1833.
However, amid these discouragements, he derived some consolation from a recognition of his services by a portion of his fellow countrymen. In 1821 he was presented by citizens of Wilmington, Del., with a handsome piece of silver plate bearing the following inscription: “A tribute of gratitude to Mathew Carey, Esq., in approbation of his writings on political economy; presented by some friends of National Industry, in Wilmington, Del., and its vicinity, April, 1821.” In 1834 he was presented with a service of plate by citizens of Philadelphia and others, “as a testimonial of their respect for his public conduct and their esteem for his private virtues”; who deemed his “whole career in life an encouraging example, by the imitation of which, without the aid of official station or political power, every private citizen may become a public benefactor.” Sometime previously he received two silver pitchers from other citizens of Philadelphia.
In 1824 he was instrumental in reviving and carrying through the project for the construction of the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal, which had lain dormant from 1805. This undertaking involved weeks of labor, and of personal solicitations for subscriptions.
In 1825 he retired permanently from business on a well-earned competency, and the remaining years of his life were devoted to public and philanthropic work, with an energy that never tired. Among his correspondents were Washington, Franklin, Lafayette, Hamilton, John Adams, Jefferson, Madison, Henry Clay, and hosts of others in public and private life, during a period covering more than half a century. His writings, a tolerably complete set of which is in possession of The Library Company of Philadelphia, make nine large 8vo volumes.
He died in the city of Philadelphia on the 16th of September, 1839, in the eightieth year of his age, universally respected, and his death was mourned as a public loss. His remains were followed to the grave by thousands of his fellow citizens. A venerable and distinguished journalist, who had known him long and well, announced his death in the following terms: “The friend of mankind is no more. Long and sincerely will he be lamented, not in high places only, amid the pomp and circumstance of grief, but in the solitary corner of the poor and the friendless. Upon his grave honest tears will be shed. The orphan and the widow will wander there, and, in the heart’s deepest accents, implore the blessings of Heaven upon his departed soul.”
He was buried in St. Mary’s churchyard, Fourth Street, above Spruce, Philadelphia. Mr. and Mrs. Carey had nine children, three of whom died young. The remaining six were:
Maria, who died unmarried.
Henry Charles, who married, but died without issue.
Eliza Catharine, who married Thomas James Baird, a graduate of West Point, who was lieutenant of artillery in the War of 1812.
Susan M., who died unmarried.
Frances A., who married Isaac Lea.
Edward L., who died unmarried.
Mathew Carey’s will mentions his sister, Margaret Burke, and his deceased brother, John Carey. In Father Finotti’s work on Catholic American Bibliography is given a list, somewhat incomplete, of Mathew Carey’s works.
REVIEW OF THE YEAR.
Leading Events in the Career of the Society, for 1905, or of Special Interest to the Members.
Jan. 2. Among the mayors inaugurated in Massachusetts cities today were the following: Hon. Augustine J. Daly, Cambridge; Hon. James B. Casey, Lowell; Hon. Cornelius B. Lynch, Lawrence; Hon. John T. Coughlin, Fall River; Hon. M. F. Dwyer, Medford; Hon. Lawrence P. Reade, Woburn; and Hon. T. M. Connor, Northampton. Jan. 2. The following mayors, among others, were inaugurated in Rhode Island cities today: Hon. Patrick J. Boyle, Newport; Hon. James H. Higgins, Pawtucket; and Hon. Thomas H. McNally, Central Falls. Jan. 12. A meeting of the Council of the Society is held at the Hotel Manhattan, 42d Street and Madison Avenue, New York City. Jan. 12. Thomas D. O’Brien, St. Paul, Minn., is today appointed insurance commissioner of Minnesota by Governor Johnson. Jan. 16. Hon. Thomas H. Carter, a member of the Society, is today again elected United States senator from Montana. Jan. 24. The annual meeting and dinner of the Society takes place at the Hotel Manhattan, New York City. Jan. 24. Died today in Dorchester (Boston), Mass., Mary, the widow of Thomas O’Neil, a veteran of the Mexican and Civil wars. In view of the death of his widow, a few words regarding O’Neil will be of interest. He served bravely in the Mexican War, during which he distinguished himself by saving Franklin Pierce, afterwards president of the United States. Pierce was badly wounded, when O’Neil rescued him and taking him on his own horse, dashed away with him to a place of safety. In the home of Mrs. McFarlane, her daughter, where Mrs. O’Neil spent the latter part of her life, are two interesting testimonials of the bravery of O’Neil during the war. One is a Bible, the gift of President Pierce, with this inscription: “For the children of Sergeant Thomas O’Neil, who was in my military family during the war with Mexico, and by his courage and fidelity earning my confidence and affectionate regard. Franklin Pierce. Washington, D. C., May 22, 1853.” The other is a beautiful silk Mexican flag, finely worked and colored, which O’Neil captured. It was made in a convent. It now hangs over his portrait in the parlor. O’Neil promptly responded to Lincoln’s call for volunteers when the Civil War broke out. He received the distinction of being offered in one day two commissions, one from Governor Andrew of Massachusetts, as captain, and one from New York. He accepted the latter and as captain recruited and went to the front with a regiment which afterwards became part of Meagher’s Irish brigade. For his distinguished services on the field of battle he was promoted to the rank of major. He resigned in 1862, with the intention of returning to Boston to raise another company for the war, but a few days afterwards fell from his horse and died of his injuries. Jan. 28. Dr. Patrick J. McGrath, a member of a prominent family in Dublin, Ireland, died today at Bellevue Hospital, New York. He sailed on one of the Peary expeditions to the Polar regions, as medical adviser; enlisted in a volunteer regiment during the war with Spain, and also served throughout the Philippine campaign. Shortly before his death he had received from Washington, D. C., an appointment as surgeon in the canal zone in Panama. Jan. 28. The Irish-American, New York City, of this date, has the following: “President Roosevelt in sending some details of his Irish pedigree to the American-Irish Historical Society ... has made known some information not generally current, though often desired. To his credit be it said, that he always was proud of his Irish blood, and from the very outset of his public career, years ago, vaunted it as one of his most cherished possessions. He has been following this up by the nomination to public office of candidates with decidedly Hibernian patronymics. W. D. Murphy of this city, it is said, is to be the new Assistant Secretary of the Treasury, and a diplomat named O’Brien, from the Northwest, is to be sent as Minister to Denmark. ‘Think of old Brian, war’s mighty lion,’ who smote the Danes at Clontarf and drove them into the sea, looking down from his celestial mansion above and seeing one of his descendants made ambassador to his old enemies from the greatest nation of the world, a nation to the prosperity and prestige of which his countrymen have contributed so much! Mr. Roosevelt in his genealogical list included the O’Briens. He must have had some idea of the poetical and historical retributions of the case when he thought of one of the great Munster families for the Republic’s representative to Denmark.” Jan. 30. Hon. Anthony M. Keiley, formerly chief justice of the International Court of Appeals at Cairo, Egypt, died on or about this date in France. He was a native of New Jersey and was about 69 years old. He was educated at the Randolph-Macon College in Virginia. After graduation he founded the Norfolk Virginian and was also editor of the Petersburg Index and News. He first became prominent in the politics of Virginia in the campaign of 1881, when he was chairman of the Democratic state committee. He was also mayor of Richmond for one term and then became city attorney. It was while holding this office, in 1885, that he attracted the attention of President Cleveland, who appointed him minister to Italy to succeed William Waldorf Astor. The Italian government objected, however, to the appointment and it was cancelled. The president then appointed Mr. Keiley minister to Austria, but the government of that country also declared him persona non grata on the ground that he held ultramontane views, which were offensive to a friendly government. This objection was not well received either in official circles here or among a large and influential class in Austria. The Austrian government then raised other objections. Secretary of State Bayard addressed a note to the Austrian government in which he spoke plainly on the unreasonableness of race and religious distinctions. He said that the appointment would be allowed to stand even though it resulted in a rupture of diplomatic relations between Austria and the United States. Mr. Keiley, however, saved the administration from further embarrassment by resigning. Afterward, President Cleveland appointed him to the International Court at Cairo, of which he became chief justice. His wife died in 1902, and he was so greatly distressed over her loss that he resigned from the court and sought relief in travel. Mr. Keiley served twelve years as president of the Irish Catholic Benevolent Union. Feb. 3. John C. Foley, a veteran of the Civil War, died today in Charleston, S. C., while on a business tour. His residence for some years past had been in New Orleans, La. He belonged to an old and widely respected Irish family favorably known in Kilkenny and Tipperary, members of which emigrated to this country in the early fifties and settled in South Brooklyn, N. Y., where some of them still reside. On the breaking out of the Civil War the deceased joined the Eighty-eighth Regiment, New York Volunteers, of Meagher’s Brigade, in which he was commissioned as first lieutenant in the company of which the late Maj. P. K. Horgan was then captain. He served with his command through all the engagements in which it participated, down to Burnside’s disastrous assault on the fortified lines of the Confederates at Fredericksburg, in which the Irish brigade, in the assault on Marye’s Heights, was so cut up that after the fight the New York regiments originally comprised in it could only muster, all told, between two and three hundred unwounded men. General Meagher applied to the war department to have the brigade temporarily relieved in order that its decimated ranks might be again recruited; but the reply of the secretary of that time,—who had never regarded the Irish organizations with favor,—was an order relieving Meagher of his command, consolidating the regiments into four companies, under a lieutenant-colonel, and mustering out the other surviving officers as supernumeraries. Feb. 6. Michael Hicks, a member of the Society, died today at his residence in New York City. Feb. 7. James A. Walsh died today in Lewiston, Me. He was a member of the Society. Feb. 9. Hon. Carlton McCarthy, mayor of Richmond, Va., writes today, expressing his appreciation of “The great value and importance of the work” in which the Society is engaged. Feb. 11. Rear Admiral John McGowan, U.S.N. (retired), is today admitted as a Life member of the Society. His father was born in Philadelphia, Pa., but his grandfather was born in Ireland. Feb. 11. Brig.-Gen. Michael Cooney, U.S.A. (retired), is admitted to membership in the Society. Feb. 11. Brig.-Gen. Peter Leary, Jr., U.S.A. (retired), writes expressing his appreciation of the work in which the Society is engaged. Feb. 16. It is announced from Dublin, Ireland, that President Roosevelt has sent to Lady Gregory a contribution toward the purchase of Irish pictures for the Gallery of Modern Art which it is proposed to establish in Dublin. Lady Gregory has been appealing to Americans to assist in buying pictures lately exhibited at the Royal Hibernian Academy, and President Roosevelt, who sent the contribution “with great pleasure,” has written to her as follows: “I cordially sympathize with you in your efforts to keep such a collection of pictures in Dublin. It would be an important step toward giving Dublin the position it by right should have.” Feb. 19. Gen. John M. Brennan, a well-known lawyer of Providence, R. I., died. He served on the staff of Governor Davis of Rhode Island as judge advocate general. Feb. 21. Eugene M. O’Neill of Pittsburg, Pa., is admitted to the Society as a Life member. Feb. 22. John T. Gibbons of New Orleans, La., is admitted to the Society as a Life member.