The New York herald. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1840-1920, 1873-03-18

That Irishmen who have thrown off the
shackles of the British subject and taken to
themselves the easy yoke OF American citizen
ship should yet fondly remember red-letter
day in the calendar of their mother land is
not very astonishing. The naturalized Irish
man, in ninety-nine cases out of hundred,
has nothing in the government of his native
land, either in it's form or its administration,
to cause him a single regret in accepting
allegiance to the Republic. He becomes q
fervent lover Of the new government and the
new land because he never considered the
British government as morally his and because
its laws combined to make him stranger on
his own soil. But his nature is of the most
conservative in its affections and dislikes.
Under the outward feeling Of bitterness to all
things English there lives profound love for
his olden land, its outlawed nationality,
its faith, which England has contrived
to identify with that nationality, and
the dear domestic ties that blossomed perhaps
in hunger, cold and misery. He has no great
national day in the secular sense, for that
would surely be identified with some triumph
of the government he most hates. He falls back,
then, on St Patrick's Day, because, though
nominally o religious festival, it carries his
mind far back through the troubled centuries
to the time when Granua Allie was mother and
queen of his green island, and no strangers,
save the pilgrims Of learning were said to be
found upon the islands breast. 1t is the only
day in all the year which, as the festival Of
Christian nation, has survived the wreck of
relics of the old fire worship of the pagan
times. st. Patrick's Day is Christian, and goes
back centuries before the incursions and par
tial expulsion of the Norsemen, and, of
course, long before Strongbow came from
England at the call of the Irish chief McMur-
Patrick's Day can be duly found, it is not as q
religious festival that it is most revered, but as
sentimental embodiment of old, deep-hearted
love and old, tenacious hope for the nation
atty so long crushed and shattered.
The professions of thousands and thousands
Of adopted citizens of Irish birth, which have
annually for SO many years past paraded our
streets, are gathered together under this link
of common and beautiful sentiment. 1t is
easy to sneer at sentiment, particularly when
it is of the dreamy order and INDUCED in by
thousands of stalwart men; but sneer in
America cannot be expected by the most
egotistic cynic to destroy what centuries of
bitter persecution across the Atlantic failed to
stamp out. Yesterdays demonstration was
very large and orderly, and we congratulate
our Irish fellow citizens on the latter. When
we remember how differently some years ago
these parades eventuated we are especially
glad Of the improvement. There were no
collisions anywhere on the line of march, and
the detection from the usual route, in COM
pliance with the wishes Of the police, caused
considerably less interference with ordinary
traffic than heretofore.
In the evening the various Irish societies,
who affect banquet instead of parade, met
and dined and wined in hearty good humor,
and overhowed with love of the old land and
loyalty to the new. The chronicling of oil
the events will be found elsewhere. May the
shamrock never have less pleasant memory
twined in its mystic leaflets than yesterday s
celebration of St. Patricks Day in New York
The South AND GENERAL GRANTS SECOND
TERM-The Ashville IN. c. Erpositor does
not share in the impression that the South
will receive better treatment under the new
administration of General Grant than hereto
fore, and fears that 'the South has not yet
seen the end of her humiliation and suffer-
ing" We hardly think there is lower deep
to that lowest depth of humiliation witnessed
in the Louisiana wrong and usurpation, and