THE FENIANS.

Dunstan Times, Issue 770, 19 January 1877, Page 3

THE FENIANS.

—o—■ The precautions which have lately been taken at Portland and elsewhere against any attempt to rescue the Fenian prisoners were deemed necessary, we understand, in conserpicnoc of certain information received from New York respecting the operations of O’Donovan Rossa. It was this man who obtained the money which was spent in effecting the rescue of the Fenian prisoners in Australia, and for »somo time past he has again been receiving money at the rate of about LfiO per week for “ a skirmishing fund,” to be employed, as is understood, in some secret assaults in this country. The money comes to Rossa in small sums from men and women who presumably earn it by hard work. One sum of Ll7 came from the Irish factory girls at St. Laurence, Massachusetts. Some of the contributors have of late become rather impatient, and Rossa has addressed them a letter in which ho says Wo notice that several of our friends wish us to go to work immediately and strike a skirmishing strike, and we will say that wo are ns anxious for the fray ourselves as any of those who would spur ns on. This skirmishing fund is not a fund to be preserved ; it is a fund to bo used, and used actively,

and if our friends will have a little patience and keep collecting, we have every hope that in duo time they will have their duo share of satisfaction. One thing they may bo sura of that every dollar of their money ■is safe, that it will bo applied to strike tho enemy, and that such a scare lias already seized England in connection with it and tho release of tho Australian prisoners that she is shivering in her skin lest all her prisons and all her public places may be blown to smithereens some lino night. The San Francisco News Letter thus alludes to the patriotic celebrity : Some weeks ago we paid our respects to O’Donovan Rossa in this column, much to tire disgust of his admirers hero. The Town Crier poked unlimited fnn at the absurdity of receiving that windy fraud with a regiment of militia, to say nothing of the board of supervisors, though that body’s aberrations of intellect have ceased to cause any surprise. Wo called down Milesian thunder ou our head bylihtimating that the O’Donovan was one of those loud and ready demagogues that fattened on tho hardearned pennies of Biddy and Mick, and that there would never be any invasion of England so loiw as the ‘Skirmishing Fund’ permitted him to tokinttish around tho country, and live at live-dollar hotels—to revel as it were, on the oppressed but succulent mutton-chop, and to drink the downtrodden but inspiring Heidseick. Well, today the wires tell us that this pattern patriot is a defaulter, the 1 Skirmishing Fund ’ has gone skirmishing for good. Now wail and tear tho hair on your simple head, oh ! Biddy, and get ready for the next patriotic sneak thief.