s no more respectable body of men in the United States than the
Hibernian Society of Philadelphia. This society was instituted in 1771,
five years before the declaration of American Independence. It is a
charitable and social organisation only, with no political object or
colour. It is made up of men of character and substance. Its custom has
always been to celebrate St. Patrick's Day by a banquet, to which the
most distinguished men of the country have repeatedly been bidden.
Immediately after the inauguration of Mr. Cleveland as President, on
the 4th of March 1885, Mr. Bayard, the new Secretary of State of the
United States, was invited by this Society to attend its one hundred and
fourteenth banquet. It will be remembered that, on the 30th of May 1884,
London had been startled and shocked by an explosion of dynamite in St.
James's Square, which shattered many houses and inflicted cruel injuries
upon several innocent people. It was not so fatal to life as that
explosion at the Salford Barracks, which Mr. Parnell treated as a
"practical joke." But it excited lively indignation on both sides of the
Atlantic, and Mr. Bayard, who at that time was a Senator of the United
States, sternly denounced it and its authors on the floor of the
American Senate. What he had said as a Senator he thought it right to
repeat as the Foreign Secretary of the United States in his reply to the
invitation of the Hibernian Society in March 1885. This reply ran as
follows:--

"WASHINGTON, D.C., _March_ 9, 1885.

"NICHOLAS J. GRIFFIN, Esq., _Secretary of the Hibernian Society of
Philadelphia._

"Dear Sir,--I have your personal note accompanying the card of
invitation to dine with your ancient and honourable Society on their
one hundred and fourteenth anniversary, St. Patrick's Day, and I
sincerely regret that I cannot accept it. The obvious and many
duties of my public office here speak for themselves, and to none
with more force than to American citizens of Irish blood or birth
who are honestly endeavouring to secure liberty by maintaining a
government of laws, and who realise the constant attention that is
needful.

"In the midst of anarchical demonstrations which we witness in other
lands, and the echoes of which we can detect even here in our own
free country, where base and silly individuals seek to stain the
name of Ireland by associating the honest struggle for just