deprived them of their birthrights as members of the human family. They have been bred in miserable dirty cabins, where they had no means of learning the arts of domestic economy. Their faculties have been, for the most part, devoted to evading by every subterfuge the cruelties of oppressive laws. Fortunately for them, their oppressors are not their own people. They are of another blood and another religion, and this circumstance it is that binds the Irish so closely in the ties of nature, and preserves their affections in such freshness and warmth. "God is love," and affection is the sanative principle in his creatures. By addressing this principle, the poorest of our brethren may be redeemed. The Irish come to us with their habits formed. They require knowledge, energy, and patience on the part of their employers. Some of them may be unteachable and irreclaimable; but, for the most part, do they not repay real disinterested kindness with fidelity and affection? It is very common to say, "There is no use in trying to teach an Irish person." Is an Irish person less docile than any other who has arrived to maturity in ignorance? We know it requires great virtue, conscientiousness, efficiency, and, above all, patience, on the part of the mistress; but let her think of the missionary who abandons her country to carry light to the distant, and bless God who brings the ignorant to the light of her home, and makes that the field of her mission.
