“But there is a deeper claim than mere name on my part to be one of you, since going back over my whole life from the time when I sat as a boy learning to read out of a primer, down to this night, I can look back to nothing of joy or sorrow, of success or failure, where some Irish American friend did not stand near me aiding in the realization or accomplishment of the one or sustaining and supporting in submission to the other.
“When the French Republic was born some one asked a great French orator to prove its existence. He said: ‘The Republic is like the sun; blind is he who sees it not.’ And so tonight I shall not attempt to recount the many and priceless services from the days of the Revolution to this time which the Irish American has rendered to the upbuilding of this great and free country which we possess and enjoy. Why should this be done, since their services shine down the pathway of our national life with an effulgence so bright that blind indeed must he be who sees them not.
“The question which I ask myself, therefore, is not the superfluous one of what the Irish Americans have done for our country, but what they owe it. By what means were they enabled to render the great services which they have rendered? The answer is clear. Their possibilities arose from the wise, the free institutions which our forefathers founded and under the shelter of which the Irish Americans were enabled here to seek a haven and to establish their new homes, thus affording them the opportunity of rendering the services which they have rendered to the expansion and preservation of our institutions.
“This being true, I ask myself the question, and I ask of each one of you, how best can we honor them? How best can we show our appreciation of the great work which they have done? The answer comes spontaneously to the mind: By preserving and perpetuating those institutions which have blessed them so much and which they have in return so helped to establish and preserve.
“As I look, Mr. President, at present conditions in our country, there are indications to my mind of great danger to our institutions. It seems to me I observe a tendency in the minds of the people to forget how vital to their perpetuation is the preservation of all the wise limitations which our forefathers ordained. It seems to me that there is a growing forgetfulness of the fact that the liberty which our fathers founded was not license but a liberty restrained by law; that the government which they established was one of limited powers and divided authority, national and local, each fulfilling their separate functions and each intended to move in their allotted sphere like the orbs of the Sidereal universe, thus securing the plenitude of local rights whilst at the same time obtaining national power and authority, not unlimited, but confined to its allotted orbit.
“I say that it seems to me there is a tendency to forget these things because it is observable at the present time that wherever an evil obtains which needs remedying the tendency of the public mind is to attribute the evil, not to a mistaken administration, but to the existence of some one of those great safeguards upon the preservation of which our institutions depend. So also it seems to me it is observable that there is a great tendency in the public mind, whenever it is deemed that a wrong requires remedy, to grow restive under the restraints imposed by constitutional limitations, to regard them as antiquated or obsolete, and thus seek to redress the wrong without regard to those limitations, forgetful of the great truth that whatever may be the temporary good to be accomplished by a disregard of the fundamental limitations of our Constitution, such good is insignificant in comparison with the untold harm which must result from overthrowing the very foundations upon which our government rests and by the adhering to which alone it can endure.
“Again, it seems to me that this tendency in the mind of the people generally finds manifestation in the exertion of the powers of government. There seems to me to be a growing tendency to chafe at the limitations on power which the Constitution imposes; to seek to accomplish some temporary good by means deemed to be the most direct, wholly without reference to the question whether the resort to such means will conflict with or set at naught those essential limitations upon power which the Constitution was expressly adopted to secure.
“With this danger confronting us may I not say that if we would honor and reverence the memory of the Irish Americans who have done so much for the upbuilding of our institutions, that we may best do it by seeing to it that the institutions which they have helped to build up shall be preserved in all of their integrity. Ah, then, if we would perform the duty of honoring those who have gone before, let us each and all fix in our hearts the enduring purpose to see to it that these evil tendencies are corrected and thereby renew and revivify our resolution to preserve and perpetuate our institutions.
HON. VICTOR J. DOWLING.
Justice of the Supreme Court of the State of New York.
Jurist, Author and Historian.