Mr. Goldwin Smith, in an interesting though rhetorical letter, published
in the Times of Tuesday, expresses his belief that Americans are growing tired of their political submissive- ness to the Irish. This submissiveness, he says, has extended from the politicians to the Press, until no journal ventures either to deny or expose Irish misrepresentations. Puck, the best comic journal of the Union, has, however, at last spoken out, and has drawn an Irishman seated on the throne, with all American politicians grovelling before him. The journal declares that the Irish have built up a nation within a nation in the United States, and that all Americans forget, when they incite Ireland to rebel against England, how they resented the favour shown by Englishmen towards the South. Mr. Goldwin Smith sees in this utterance, and in the advancing organisation of the British vote, signs of an approaching emancipation of American opinion. We hope he may be right, but we give reasons elsewhere for believing him too sanguine. Washington never yielded more submissively to Irish pressure than it does just at present.
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