Ex-Mayor Palmer, of Boston, thus defends our police force: "Mr. Forster accuses the Boston police of being corrupted by Irish politicians. It is sufficient to say of this that no Bostonian charges it, or believes it. Boston is proud of her police force, and boasts of it too strongly and too frequently, our neighbors think, for good taste. But whatever may be thought of our egotism in this respect, it is well known and understood by our sister cities that Boston claims to have the best police force in the world. The Irish-American in Boston is a loyal citizen, proud of the city, proud of the State, and proud of the whole country; and his heart's desire and prayer to God is, that his motherland may become as free and prosperous and happy as these United States. The trouble with Mr. Forster, as he shows himself in the Nineteenth Century, is that Parnell is on top, and Forster is afraid he will stay there. Gladstone wants to give Ireland land reform and home government. Herein he believes is true statesmanship. In this way he knows that every interest of the empire, even its integrity, would be best subserved. But the Queen and the Tories oppose him and may defeat him. Let us hope that the hypocritical lament of Arnold Forster in the Nineteenth Century is the last wail of a lost cause. Or will he tell us next that ten thousand howling Englishmen in Trafalgar Square is another Irish conspiracy?"
Congressman Lovering writes: "The wholesale charges against Irishmen in America will fall flat here as an exaggeration, and a distortion of facts, in a vain attempt to charge against the Irish race the misdoings of individuals, who may have chanced to have been Irishmen, and the effort is entitled to all the contempt it deserves."
Police Commissioner Osborne says: "Knowing very little about the force before I became a member of the board of police, I can only speak of the time during service, and will say most emphatically that no interference, or tampering, with our force by politicians of any nationality has come to my knowledge. And from what I have seen and know I firmly believe that our force is equal to, if not superior to, the police force in any city in the United States." To which Chairman Whiting of the board adds: "I am happy to say that I have no knowledge whatever of any tampering with the Boston police, as stated in said clipping or otherwise."
New York Irish-American: In eliciting such valuable expressions of opinion, The Republic has done a very good work; though, at this period of their connection with the United States, our people, as a component element of the population, do not need to produce certificates of character before any tribunal to which an honest appeal may be made. They have wrought out an excellent and enduring character for themselves by their purity of life in private, and their labors and sacrifices in every field of public duty, and stamped it so indelibly on the history of the Republic, that no hostile or malign influence can ever erase its strong and well-defined impression. To connect this work, however, with the refutation of such a paltry scribbler as this Arnold Forster, appears to us a waste of labor,—like crushing a ciaróg with a battering-ram. The Englishman was only following his low, natural instincts when he ambitiously engaged in the task to which so many of his countrymen before him, like Froude, have devoted themselves, since the time of that arch-falsifier of history, "Giraldus Cambrensis," and, as his original stock of knowledge of our people (especially here in the United States), must have been practically nil, he was compelled to draw on the store of old, worn-out libels against us, that have so often been refuted both by historical facts and direct evidence; but which are as persistently revamped and repeated by every scribbler who desires to vent his spleen, and exhibit his ignorance with regard to a race, that all fair-minded students of humanity admit has held its own with any other on earth, through centuries of adverse circumstances. The fellow is even worse than a libeller, for he began his attacks on the Irish people as an anonymous letter-writer in the columns of the English Whig and Tory organs, professing to give statements with regard to events in America that were within his own knowledge. The trained professional acumen of the leaders of the Irish Party quickly fixed the identity of the hidden assailant; and about the same time that "Buckshot" Forster himself was cowering before the assembled Commons of England, under the scorching invective of Parnell, this same Arnold Forster—his putative son and secretary—was being dragged into the light of public criticism, and exposed in his true character as a base defamer of men whose shoes he is not worthy to touch. In revenge for this double punishment he has since collected the slanders he first peddled at retail, and in this Nineteenth Century brochure has flung them, in globo, at his chastisers. But he is not worthy of notice; his plane of thought and idea is too low for even contempt to reach him; and argument with him would be wasted. Le jeu n'en vaut pas la chandelle—"The game is not worth the candle."
Boston Daily Globe:—It was in some respects a fortunate thing that Mr. Arnold Forster uttered his recent malicious slander upon the Irish race. It has given opportunity for banishing, by the production of undeniable facts refuting some of Mr. Forster's specific statements, the vague innuendoes ever and anon set afloat by those who imagine that all who oppose British oppression must be wrong, because "it's English, you know."
Rev. Father Cronan, editor of the Buffalo Catholic Union, among others, vigorously replies to Mr. Forster, and in a vein somewhat different from any we have yet noticed in connection with the discussion. Says Father Cronan in the Union:
"Mr. Arnold Forster told more truth than he suspected, and paid a compliment he never intended, when he wrote in the Century that Irishmen were 'born conspirators.' Divesting the expression of the stupid sting and insult intended by its misuse, it simply means that Irishmen are born inspired with a love of justice, and that this inspiration, being brutally thwarted by seven centuries of English misrule, becomes a conspiration (that is the true word, Mr. Forster) of all Irishmen to effect the ends of freedom and self-preservation. Show us a born bondsman and we will show you 'a born conspirator,' or, a born fool, if he be not a conspirator, in the sense we have explained. Let the nations who rule by might instead of right learn at last that they are the creators and perpetuators of conspiracy. If there is shame in the sound, it is their shame. If ruin and riot in the result, it is their handiwork. The day has gone by, long ago, when suffering peoples are to be awed into silence and submission to injustice by the silly outcries of salaried soothsayers. There is no reason on earth, or in heaven, why people should submit to be slaves. If they cannot boldly burst the bonds that encircle them, they will triturate them to dust by friction against the granite hearts of their masters."
Americans who revere the memory of Jefferson and Adams and Patrick Henry and their fellow "conspirators" will agree with Father Cronan, that "conspiracy" by Irishmen for the freedom of their native land is a noble thing. Mr. Forster belongs to the class which considered Sam Adams the arch-conspirator of his day. Every attempt to bribe him or to frighten him was met with disdain. Because he could not be bought, England applied to him the meanest of epithets. So, to-day, England slanders the Irish leaders and the Irish race because they cannot be coaxed or driven into desertion of their country's cause.
But England found that misrepresenting the character of the Americans was a costly proceeding. She made them the more determined and at the same time deceived herself. A like effect will be caused by this latest attack upon the Irish race.