The Feilding Star. SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 7, 1885 Assassination

Feilding Star, Volume VI, Issue 100, 7 February 1885, Page 2

The Feilding Star. SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 7, 1885 Assassination

We condemn private assassination, or murder, under whatever name it may suit the perpetrators to call it. Whether by duelling, dynamite, or the shot from behind a hedge, or any other mode popular among the cowardly ruffians who satisfy their brutish instincts by the slaughter of inoffensive persons, in the noble name of Patriotism. An archplotter, who has assisted and directed in many schemes for the shedding of blood and the destruction of property, is an Irishman (unworthy of the title) known as O'Doxxovak Rossa. He early got into trouble in Ireland, and migrated to a safe rof uge in America, for protection from the laws he had outraged, where he has for some years subsisted on the contributions of his warm hearted and impulsive countrymen, who have been silly enough to believe that by providing means to maintain in luxury and idleness, a blatant demagogue, they were aiding in the cause of "justice for Ireland." To keep up the excitement — and the remittances — this man connected himself on every available opportunity, with all plots and conspiracies which could give him notoriety without risking his own precious skin. If he had nothing whatever to do with an assassination or dynamite explosion, he made a point of claiming to be a "prime mover and director " sooner than allow his deluded admirers to lose faith in him by supposing he was inactive. It seems that a sort of retributive justice h.is at last overtaken him, and it was almost with a feeling of pleasure that we read the telegram received from New York a few days ago, that a woman — a hospital nurse — had taken upon herself the task of shooting this wretch, and giving him a taste of the bitter cup he had held out to others. It is said she is of unsound mind. But this has not the same significance in the United States of America as with us. It is generally — in that free countiy — applied to persons who have either committed — what is there considered — a justifiable homicide, or where a murder is so utterly cold-blooded and objectless that only madness could instigate the crime — or, more properly speaking; killing. If she be mad, "there is method in her madness," for she has exhibited a desire to rid the world of a monster who, in order that his miserable appetites might be satisfied, would lay palaces desolate, and give up to a bloody death hundreds, or even thousands, of innocent victims. The name of the poor hospital nurse, Dudley, ought and perhaps will be, quite as celebrated as that of Charlotte Corday, who killed one of France's tyrants, to her great honor. The cases are somewhat parallel. Neither Marat nor Rossa ever so exposed themselves as to be actually within the clutches of the law. They both had the same firm belief that "self-preservation is the first law of nature." We feel that we

almost dishonor Marat by the comparison with the more contemptible scoundrel. Marat was not a man who would consent to exist on the results of the labors of others. He was a worker. O'Donnovan Rossa has always been a beggar, craving for the money of his hard working countrymen and women. • History has done Marat all the justice he deserved ; he has been palled even a great criminal. Rossa has not the .courage to be that ; nor is he yet historical: It seoms almost incredible -that;in. this.nine- :- teenth century, with all our boasted

civilization, the punishment of dynamitards should apparently be almost an impossibility, and that "the reward of iniquity " in the case we are now considering should have to be doled out by a weak woman. But that punishment follows crime in every instance we have a firm belief, and there is a satisfaction in thinking that these cowardly murderers, who are called dynamitards, will suffer some time or other, even if we remain ignorant of the time and nature of their punishment.