Auspicious of these heavenly benefits, and in witness of our paternal benevolence, we affectionately in the Lord impart to you, and the clergy and people intrusted to your fidelity and vigilance, the Apostolic Benediction.
Given at Rome at St. Peter's the 22d day of December, 1885, of Our Pontificate the Eighth year.
LEO PP. XIII.
A Gallant Soldier Rewarded.—The friends of Colonel John G. Healy, of New Haven, Conn., especially the Irish National element with which the Colonel has been prominently identified for many years, will be gratified to learn of his appointment to a responsible position at Washington. The newly-elected Doorkeeper of the House of Representatives, Colonel Samuel Donelson, of Tennessee, at the instance of his friend, Congressman Mitchell, of New Haven, has appointed Colonel Healy to the position of Superintendent of the Folding Room of the House of Representatives, a place of more responsibility and consequence than any in the House, except alone that of the Doorkeeper. It is very pleasant to see Tennessee thus extending the hand of fellowship to Connecticut, and we are certain that the citizens of Irish birth and extraction feel grateful to Colonel Donelson and to the popular and able Representative of the Second Congressional District of Connecticut for this recognition of a gentleman who has given the best years of his mature life to every patriotic movement for the land of his fathers.
England and Her Enemies.
A FRENCH VIEW OF PERILS ENCOMPASSING THE GREAT BRITISH EMPIRE.
Are the English so strong, so sure of their power, so thoroughly convinced of their superiority that they can afford to display so much disdain toward a great nation? Truly, the sun does not set on the possessions of the Empress of India, who counts millions of subjects in five parts of the world; but is this necessarily a sign of strength? The power of Charles V. encompassed the world, and we all know what became of his vast empire. But we foresee the objection to this comparison. It is that the power of Charles V. and Philip II. was mined by a secret and almost invisible enemy—an idea, a principle—liberty of conscience—and that Queen Victoria is not menaced by any such enemy. Indeed! But a small fact—the assassination of an Irishman of the most ignoble kind—affords ample food for reflection, and cannot fail to inspire grave doubts regarding the solidity of the British Empire. In spite of all the efforts of the English police, Carey, their unworthy protégé, was tracked, seized, and slain by a secret power. The Government of Queen Victoria, with all its resources, was not able to find a corner of the globe, however remote, where the life of the informer could be beyond the reach of the Irish counter-police.
The thing that renders this secret power so dreadful is that it exists wherever the Empress of India has subjects. In every English city, in every English colony, at the Cape, in Australia, in Canada as in India, in China as in America, in France as in Japan, wherever a British tourist travels, wherever an English missionary preaches, wherever an English merchant trades, the secret Irish enemy lurks ready to assassinate if he receives the order. The English may laugh at him or may become exasperated by him; but if England should become engaged in a foreign war could she consider without a shudder the incalculable dangers to which this enemy within might expose her—an enemy that will stop at nothing, that nothing can terrify, for he offers his life as a sacrifice, and that nothing can reconcile, for he is the personification of deadly hatred? For our part we know well that if France held within her borders millions, or even thousands, of men animated by such a spirit we would tremble for the future of our country.