THOMAS M. MULVY, ESQ.,
President of the Emigrant Industrial Savings Bank of New York.
A Member of the Society.
I was very much impressed by the last speaker, Judge Fitzgerald, when he emphasized the fact that whether we are Irish-Americans or American-Irish, we are part and parcel of this great country. It reminded me of what I had heard a great thinker in our own city say a few years ago (the late Mr. Edward Atkinson) upon the subject of restricted immigration. He, with two other very representative men, discussed this question of restricted immigration before the Beacon Society of Boston. His opening salutation was: “Fellow Immigrants, the Beacon Society of Boston.” It is needless to say they were surprised at this unexpected and novel introduction. It was sufficiently explained, however, when he said: “Some of your forefathers may have come over in the ‘Mayflower,’ some of them fifteen generations ago, some of them ten, some of them perhaps not more than three or four; but you must remember that the space of time between the landing of the first immigrant and those of today marks but a short period in the lifetime of a nation, and therefore we are a nation of immigrants. We have no more right to say today to the immigrant landing on our shores that he must not land, than your forefathers and mine had to forbid the landing of the immigrants of their day.”
I believe, Mr. President, that it would be well for us to appreciate Mr. Atkinson’s statement that this is virtually a new country, a land of immigrants, and that we are all Americans. As Americans, we are interested in everything that concerns the well-being of this great and glorious republic, being mindful at the same time of the priceless inheritance it is to every man of our blood to sacredly treasure what has been accomplished by the people of our race in the history and development of this new world. I am glad that these papers are to be published in order that they may be preserved as a fruitful means of inspiration for future generations. It shows the great field of endeavor that is open to this worthy association.
Mr. Martin I. J. Griffin: Mr. President, as these papers are to be published, it is essential that no known errors should appear in them, that is, in the papers published in the name of the Society.
In the last paper read, it was stated that James Logan was more tolerant than William Penn in the matter of the celebration of Mass in Philadelphia. I know that not to be a fact. The speaker has misinterpreted what he alleges to be a fact. William Penn did not object to Mass being celebrated in Philadelphia, and therefore James Logan was not more tolerant in allowing it.
The Episcopalians objected to the public celebration of Mass in Philadelphia. William Penn was in London at the time, and was notified by the English government of the fact that Mass had been celebrated. Thereupon Penn wrote to James Logan, his agent, to send him the fact of the matter. He did not say anything about the “scandal of the Mass,” but that Mass was celebrated in a “scandalous manner.”
William Penn was the Father of Religious Liberty in America, and it was founded in Philadelphia, not elsewhere.
But a more important statement which is common belief among us Irish and is constantly repeated, but which has no foundation in fact, is that one-half of the Revolutionary Army was Irish, and Joseph Galloway is quoted as proof of that.
Dr. Sullivan has only to go to the library and get a copy of the Examination of Joseph Galloway by a Committee of the House of Commons, and he will find that, upon his making the statement the Doctor has recited, Galloway was asked how he knew that. His reply was, “By the deserters that came in.”