As an Author and Orator.
Archbishop Gibbons is the author of one volume, "The Faith of Our Fathers," which has met with a larger sale than any Catholic book published in America. More than one hundred thousand copies have been sold since its publication in 1877. The work is made up chiefly of simple sermons on the doctrines of Catholicity, delivered while on the mission in North Carolina.
As a pulpit orator, the primate has many superiors in the hierarchy. He has neither an impressive presence nor a good voice. He seldom attempts elaborate discourses. He is at his best in simple appeals to the heart, and to this fact is due his missionary success. Some of his fellow-bishops may have greater power to convince the intellect, but none can touch the feelings more deeply.
The Irish as Conspirators.
In a recent issue of the Nineteenth Century, a magazine published in London, is an article by Mr. Arnold Forster, in which the following statement was used:
"Irishmen were at the bottom of the Mollie Maguire conspiracy in Pennsylvania; Irishmen plotted against the officials and the Chinese in San Francisco; the Tammany ring was largely supported by Irish citizens, and even the Boston police were tampered with by Irish politicians of that city." To controvert this view, and particularly the reflection upon the Boston police, the Republic newspaper of Boston sent a circular letter to a number of prominent men, requesting such denials as they might see fit to furnish. Governor Robinson writes: "I have already taken occasion to contradict emphatically an assertion said to have been recently made in England that the act to establish a board of police for the city of Boston, passed by the legislature of Massachusetts in 1885, was necessitated by the threatening and disorderly character and conduct of the Irish people in Boston. In all the conferences, arguments and declarations about that act, before its introduction, or while it was under consideration in the legislature, no intimation of that kind ever reached me, and I do not believe it to be true. Nor is there, in my opinion, any more foundation for the statement to which you call my attention. Sharp political controversies arise; but happily no question of race or nationality aggravates the differences among our people upon public matters."
Charles A. Dana, editor of New York Sun, says: "I cannot now recall the name of a single citizen of Irish birth who was known as a supporter of the Tammany ring; and it is notorious that the head of it, the late William M. Tweed, was a full-blooded American. At the same time, one of the most conspicuous of its adversaries, the late Charles O'Conor, though born in this country, was thoroughly Irish in heart and sympathy. Another distinguished enemy of Mr. Tweed's ring was his successor as the leader of Tammany Hall, the present Mr. John Kelly, a man of Irish descent, and a more determined foe of every kind of corruption and of public dishonesty has never lived."
Gen. Butler thus replies: "I can certainly give you the most thorough denial of the slanders upon the Irishmen by the article of the Nineteenth Century. I have known the Irish-Americans intimately ever since my boyhood, and they are as good, loyal people as any in the world, and as soldiers among the very best."
Congressman Curtin, of Pennsylvania, speaks relative to the Mollie Maguire conspiracy as follows: "I can speak relative to the Mollie Maguire conspiracy in Pennsylvania. Some of the men engaged in it were Irishmen; some were not. The race to which the criminals belonged had nothing to do with the crime or its punishment; nor should the fact of the existence of the Mollie Maguire conspiracy, which was a crime perpetrated by citizens of Pennsylvania against the good order of that Commonwealth and punished by its officers, have any effect on the aspirations of the Irish people, who were innocent of participation in it, and who had no sympathy with it."