THE EXECUTION OF FENIANS AT MANCHESTER.

Grey River Argus, Volume V, Issue 320, 1 February 1868, Page 3

THE EXECUTION OF FENIANS AT MANCHESTER.

The following article appeared in the London Spectator : — Before these pages are in most of our readers' hands an event will have occurred at Manchester the most painful that has happened for years in the political history of England. Whatever view is taken of the true duty of the Government in the matter of the Fenian convicts — and we wish to express o\ir complete conviction that the Government have discharged their most painful duty under a sincere and overwhelming sense of moral obligation — there is scarcely one wise and thinking man in England who does not feel that the execution of these men, whether he thinks it necessary or not, sends through him a bitter personal pang of regret. The crowds who paraded Birmingham to taunt the Irish with the faith of their convict fellow-countrymen must have been, at best, as silly and ignoraut as the wildest Fenians, with all the brutality of our lowest English nature as well, and should we have to execute some of them one day soon for outrages on the Irish similar to the recent outrage on the police at Manchester, ive will do this much credit to the generosity of one of the most vindictive races in Europe, that we do not believe that there would be any Irish procession of triumph over the executions. Bitterly resentful as they are, the Irish are almost incapable of the brutality of such a proceeding as that. But we may fairly look upon the Birmingham savagery as a sign of an utter degradation of opinion due to an ignorant as well as a violent sectarian iradition. We doubt if throughout what may most probably be called the English nation, there is any sentiment but that of sincere grief in connection with the miserable necessity of this execution. We are slaying to-day not robbers, or, even in the common-place sense, murderers, but passionate dreamers, who have been led by the imaginative fury of their wild aspirations to compass crimes of no common magnitude, and to give such an impulse to the spirit of utter anarchy in the country as it has scarcely received within the memory of living men. And the more thoroughly we enter into the true point of view of these men, the more we shall understand how utterly inconsistent it is with the least hope of preperving order, or the mere outward attitude of respect for law, so long as we refuse to recognise the independence of Ireland. A paper in the new number of Tinsley's Magazine, evidently written by a true Fenian, avows in the most explicit language the unalterable purpose of the Irish conspirators to follow their dream at any cost to English institutions and the peace of English society till their end be attained, and their sincere belief that it is practicable and attainable. They are not even willing to wait till they have a reasonable prospect of success. Their notion appears to be that every rising tends to strengthen the feud between England and Ireland, to enhance the bitterness of those feelings which must end in a divorce, and especially to win the sympathy of foreign nations for the Irish as a down-trodden and enslaved people. They regard the-e uprisings as legal protests put in to prevent adverse possession from establishing any claim on the allegiance of Irishmen— as mere educations of the national patriotism for that grand rising which is to take place whenever England shall be involved in a foreign war, and the Irish are able to find a powerful ally abroad. They believe, says our Fenian Uterateur, that if once a single great town in Ireland could be held for a week against English power, and the news flashed to America, the sea would be covered by a fleet of privateers sailing under the revolutionary flag which would drive English commerce from the Atlantic. They believe that in this case men, money, and arms would flow into Ireland at every preek and bay, and that the Irish nation would soon be making a stand like that of the Hungarians against Austria. And could they once win their independence, they rely on France to preserve it against attack from England, and England to preserve it against attack from France. It is not good or just government that they are seeking, but Ireland for the Irish. They would prefer the worst Irish government that can be conceived, to the best English government that can be conceived, They do not deny that English government is, on the whole, now just and fair. They make light of the supposed Irish Church grievance, and not very much even of the Irish land grievance. They recognise fully the vast improvement in our legislation and administration for Ireland. But they have inherited the feeling of simple hatred for the English foreigner, and they will not be governed by him though he be the very essence of perfection, and though the Irish substitute were as rash, heedless, and unjust, as gay, impulsive, person-respecting Irishmen usually are. Till their dream come true there shall be no peace for England. Conspiracies to seize arms, and fire arsenals, and rescue " political" prisoners shall succeed on« another, in spite of even ignominious failure and defeat, till the great moment comes when England has an enemy of strength in whom the Irish can find an ally. Such is the dream ; and though in Englishmen it would be a very wicked one, though the crime of deliberately initiating a chronic condition of anarchy t— for that is what it means — in a great kingdom, like ours, to continue up to a point of time as distant as the Greek Calends, seems to us precisely the greatest, fts judged by the consequences, which the human imagination can conceive — we are quite willing to admit that the Irish judge nothing by consequences, and this deliberate purpose is consistent in their case with a chivalric, and even, in some respects, heroic tone of mind. . . The proof of any political right to disturb the order of society lies, in the political .power. Without evidence of that, to strike at existing order is a wanton offence, which unsettles the very foundations of life, without advancing a whit the prospects of those who propose a revolution. Let the dreamers who have no chance of success dream in peace and no one will hurt them. Let those who have adequate power to wrench away the pillars of government in the United Kingdom do so with as much success as the Italians, or Hungarians, or Southerens, and they shall be treated with the respect due to adversaries who are, at }f ast, not wanton — who had a foundation

for their hopes.?; But visionaries who can only unsettle everything, and not even begin to put anything in its' place, are the most dangerous anarchs in existence. They bring brute force into fashion, stimulate every chaotic impulse of persons infinitely moro wicked and vioioua than hemselves, and in a word, disseize all the mortar of society without having the force to overthrow its structure. Then they leave it in this its tottering condition, for common and vicious criminals to destroy.