ROMAN CATHOLICS IN AMERICA.
THE annual meeting of the Catholic Union of Great Britain was held in London, June 27. Archbishop Ireland, of St. Paul, was present, representing American Catholics. There were strong expressions of approval of friendship and union between the two great English-speaking nations on the part of both Cardinal Vaughan (represented by letter) and Archbishop Ireland. Speaking of the Catholic Church in America, the archbishop said:— "Thank Providence, the position of the church in the United States to-day is most encouraging. We have received accessions from every country in the world. Ireland, Germany, all have sent us their millions. But, with all these various nationalities, we do not present a disunited, a divided Catholicism. America has the gift of assimilating all the different peoples that come to her, and so making out of them a great race for the future. To-day I believe we number thirteen to fifteen millions, exclusive of our new brethren from the West Indies. What is most remarkable for the last ten or fifteen years in the church of America, is the way Catholics are making their influence felt in all civil and social affairs. Necessarily in the past we suffered from great disadvantages; and the prejudice did arise to some extent that Catholics were not properly Americans. But we went to work and showed ourselves so American, that now all say that the best Americans, in peace and in war, are Catholics. I render this tribute to my non-Catholic American fellow-citizens—that they are fair-minded and honorable in their dealings; and this prejudice of the past has almost totally disappeared, certainly has totally disappeared, in public life. Catholics are well represented throughout all our public life to-day."