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Hawke's Bay Times, Volume XIII, Issue 570, 20 April 1868, Page 3

The Late Mejcdeb in Canteet'ry.— From our Southern tiles we learn that Swaile, who was sentenced to death for the murder of his partner Rankin by fire, has confessed the erinie. He states that he had long meditated the arson, though not the murder.

The SupEEiXTExonscr of Canterbury. —A rumor is current to the effect that Mr Moorhouse is about to rcsiij ti:o ctuce ofj Superintendent. The name' of Air Charles] Bowen is mentioned as a probable eamli--date for the cflleo. A few hours will pro- 1 bably serve to eouGnn or dhpet both these 1 rumors.—Lyttelton Times, 7th April. |

Miss Rye. —lt is stated that Miss Rye. in consequence of the stoppage of supplies from Victoria, for female emigration, intends leaving England, in May, for Canada, with one hundred young women, there being a grout want of servants in that colony. Toronto alone, it is said, can absorb oOdO, and the Fast of London makes it very desirable that this work which Miss Rye has commenced should be continued.

Gin and Poi-mcAi, Economy.— The following letter appears in a recent issue of the New Zealand H crald, addressed to the editor Sir, —1 am doubtful whether gin can be classified under the head of Political Economy, but from what you have said in the hollowing passage of a paragraph which appears in your paper of this day, I am inclined to believe that you think it ought to be so described '“ Dis-i tillation from malt is taking place us u;i industry in Victoria. We wish wo could say as much for New Zealand.” A iam Smith and J ohn Smart Mill describe po laical economy to be the creation of capital '■ut of labour, and of making (he income pins the expenditure. Can such he said of gin F Will th o manufacture and consumption of that article leave in the wake a surplus of capital? We do not want to YBiei- to th - Gin Lane of Hogarth, nor to the Lottie Imp of CVaickshank, to convince ns that the balance would be fearfully against the com-inner s.s well as against public morals. Try it by the common rulej of daily experience, and then see whdherj the costs which it entails do not greatly' exceed the benefits (r) that it confers upon: mankind. Bring to its debit the charges! affected upon society, by crime in all its various ramifications, by lunacy, by poverty, and by premature death, and then ask yourself the question whether the manufacture of gin should be encouraged as one of our desirable local industries ? 1 admire your efforts to induce our people to help themselves by the creation of the necessaries of life, but really gin is not one of them. Better that it. were banished entirely from amongst us, rather than men and women should ally themselves to sucli an enemy to our common nature.—l am &c.—Anti-Bacchus.”

CArniCES or Fashion. —The old saying, “ What is sport to some is death to others,” is illustrated anew in the sad tale which reaches us from the great centre of the! straw-plait trade, Luton—a town which,; till lately, has been in a very flourishing; condition. In ISol it was calculated that the yearly returns of the trade were about £900,000, and (ho persons employed in it about 70,000. For twenty miles round the women and the children in the cottages, as well as in a more organised manner, have earned, if not a living, at any rate a very material aid to it, by the occupation of straw-plaiting. Xow the ladies have adopted a very u’diculous custom of ceasing to wear hats of decent size, and, instead of them, snow on the top of their heads a little ornamental patch of gauze, or lace, or ribbons. Consequently on Luton and the adjacent district great distress has fallen, il.any thousands of bauds arc- out of employ, and are suffering the extremes! privation. lu Lutou alone, out of a population of 20,000, more than one-third scarcely bare bread to eat: and the poor rate and the board of health rates hare risen to more j than 10? in the pound. Thousands of; persons can scarcely earn Is a week, where in good seasons they could gain 7s to 10s for six days’ Tabor. Some of the largest manufacturers in Luton, Dunstable, and other pars, hare closed their warehouses.

“English Tidies,” says Erasmus “are divinely pretty, and too good-natured.

■ hoy have an excellent custom among Hum that wherever you go the girls kiss you a! intervening opportunities and their lips are soft, warm, and delicious.” Pretty well that for a piiest.

'UIE SEGUEf iu.-iTOlii OF FENLCN’iSM. (IT'im tho Times.) Before us lies a pamnhlet, the contents of winch at this rime will be found of some interest. It was published with considerable reserve &i I-ullauel •

phia, and was not easily procurable even in the United States. It is manifesto of Fenianism at a time when tlie organisation was considered to be in its most hopeful condition, and it ■introduces us, with as much accuracy i as was to be expected, to the history | of the conspiracy in 1803 and loof ;and its prospects at the beginng of the (year 1805. We may as well remind jthe reader that Feuiauism, though its i most active agents appear in the cha Iracter ot disbanded soldiers from the : American armies, is of an origin earlier | than the civil war in the United States. iAIr James Stephens, who assumes, and is allowed, the credit of setting the whole movement on foot, began the work in 1858, three years before the Southern States proclaimed their secession from the Union, lie had been engaged in the rebellion of 1818 with I Smith O’Brien, had escaped to the i Continent, had improved his education |iu the foreign school of revolution, and j turned his acquirements to account in j hatching a new rebellion of his own. The characteristic of this conspiracy consisted in its American domicile. Instead of organising an insurrection 'in Ireland, Mr Stephens conceived the .idea of establishing it amongst the Irish population of the United States. This was quite a novelty, and it would be unjust to the inventor to deny the ■merits of the conception. It is from j Fenianism in America that Fenianisra | in the British Islands lias derived such I | vitality and power as it may he thought ;to have displayed. j j Although, however, Fenians were j not called into existence by the milij tary experience of the civil war, it is 1 i certain that until the second year of; | that war the organisation had assumed i Ino consistence. Such form as it took! jwas of a military character. The! Americans, long before the wars wore giving to soldiering, and a certain number of American Irish did a little soldiering on their own account under die denomination of Fenians. When hostilities actually commenced the Fenians engaged freely in the strife, sometimes taking service by companies together, and losing as they (ell us, a great many of their members in battle. Such, in fact, was the mortality among them that it was considered in the Fc ideral army “unlucky to be a Fenian;" but up to the year 1883 Mr James Stephens had done little more than supply the American Government with willing recruits. Very few persons, even in the United States, except the Fenians themselves, knew anything about Feuiauism; in Ireland, as we shall presently explain, there was noj organisation at all. I

In the month, however, of November 1863, a singular resolution was! adopted. The “Fenian Brotherhood,”! as the conspirators then styled thom-| selves, determined on giving their body 1 a civil constitution and shape. In-| stead of being a small private army,! they decided upon becoming a species of civil power. Mr John O'Mahoney, if we are to take his own word for the fact, was the originator of this new idea, which consisted briefly in establishing a Fenian Republic within the Republic of the United States, one of these institutions being the exact counterpart of the other. The disadvantages, says the head-centre of the early mililitary organisation of the brotherhood “ were such as to force upon me the conviction that the organisation; should he reconstituted after the model | of the free institutions of this country." Accordingly the officers of a regular republic were elected, and a “ congress ” met at Chicago in November. 1863.

The proceedings at this curious meeting show distinctly what Fenianistn at that moment actually was, and what it intended to become. It was so little understood even in the United States that a declaration of its nature and objects, for the information of the American public, was the first thing resolved upon, and the Fenians thus in congress assembled professed themselves to be “ for the most part citizens of the United States of America of Irish birth or descent,” though they proclaimed their readiness to welcome! the co-operation of “ other dwellers on the American continent.” The object of the association was the national

■jlreeuom of Ireland, or, as it was morej J precisely defined, the “resurrection of! | lreland to independent nationhood.”! lit is obvious, also, that the Fenians ofi it.'int nay were halt afraid ot being cal-| j!ed to account by the American Go ivernment for breaches of international! Jaw and greatly discouraged by the j | hostility ot the Boman Catholic priest-j ihood. So, to meet these uiillculties,( |they first passed a resolution of dutiful! j obedience *to the laws of the union I qualified, however, by a second resolution to the effect that under the laws Fiey were fully entitled to do what they chose—and then attempting to disarm jthe opposition of the clergy by declarjing that they were not a “secret, joath-bound, or illegal” society. It is remarkable that nothing, even now,! was salt! about any Fenian organisation! in Ireland, the whole movement being distinctly identified with the Irish population of America, who, it was said, held at that time “ a more powerful position amongthe peoples of the earth, in point of numbers, political privileges, social influence, and military strength, jtnaa was ever held before ” by the exiled portion of any nation iu the world.

Two years later a secoiul “National Congress ” was held in Cincinatti. This assembly met on the 17th January, 1865, and the alteration in its tone is remarkable. The conspirators though si ill suspicions of the priests, no longer appear to dread interruption 1 from the Government. On the contrary, they anticipate immediate wav between Great Britain and America, and reckon confidently on the facilities which would thus be given for their designs. For the first time, too, they include Ireland itself, and not only! Ireland, but England and its depen-1 dencios, in the sphere of their opera-! fions. Their “ constitution ” was! amended so as to extend the establish-1 ment of the brotherhood beyond thej united States to “the provinces of the! British Empire wherever situated.”! Yet even at this time—that is, at the 1 beginning of the year before last, therewas no regular Fenian organisation iu ; Ireland. “This American institution! called the Fenian Brotherhood does not exist in Ireland as an organised hocty.” Those are the words the President addressed to the Congress, and, from them we may learn that Fenian-! ism, when this country first began to i hear of it, was just beginning to assume! x substantive form in Ireland itself.; Up to this time it was a purely Ame-j rican creation—a movement set on! foot and maintained by Irishmen in the United States. Shortly afterwards | came the actual termination of the! civil war, and then the military ele-' ment of the rebellion appeared in Ire-1 land, and Irish Fenianism acquired | an active vitality. It had been deter-1 mined at Cincinatti that what Ireland needed was “pre-organisation,” and that accordingly it should be “ pre-or-ganised,” This explains the title of “organisers” assumed by Fenian emissaries, and other notions borrowed from America were introduced at the same time. The United States, it was assumed, would gladly recognise the Fenian insurgents as “ belligerents,” and proclaim their own “ neutrality and therefore the Fenian organisers quietly spoke of the “ Irish Republic virtually established ” at a time when the chief conspirators confess that no Fenian organs ition in Ireland existed at all. Mr Stephei s and his friend, however, proceeded to “ organise ” with great zeal, and according to their own belief, xviih great success. The ■autumn of 1865 was, we have been recently toll, the time when Fenianism in Ireland was strongest, but we now wish to indicate to the public certain tacts which have hardly received proper appreciation. In January, 1565, the real, substantive organisation of Fenianism in Ireland had not cminienccJ, and yet on the 15th September of that year the first blow was struck at the | plot by the arrest of the chief conspirators, including Mr Stephens himself in Dublin. There was, therefore, very little delay or inactivity to be charged against the government. It will be seen, too, that the ignominous col laps of that conspiracy is easily accounted for. Fenianism was not a plant ol

seven years’ growth in Ireland, though it was in America. In Ireland very little was accomplished except in the distempered visions id .Mr J. Stephens. His paper armies made no show in the field, and were scattered as easily as

I the " circle over which he preslWhatever substance there was iii the couspiracy was imported from abroad.