THE SHEFFIELD OUTRAGES.

Hawke's Bay Weekly Times, Volume 1, Issue 39, 23 September 1867, Page 236

THE SHEFFIELD OUTRAGES.

(From the London Times.)

The complete unravelling of Sheffield mysstery suggests and compels a question of much greater importance than the actual guilt of half a do.zen men whose hands, it appears, had become used to blood, and who had lost all compunction for crime. It is a question in which we have been anticipated by the fanatical yet anxious advocates of Trades’ Unions, who at every stage of this matter have eagerly volunteered extravagant defences. The Unions, these apologists averred, had nothing to do with the Sheffield outrages. They were the private acts of violent men, no one knew whom, upon some provocation or another, no one could say what. Temper and pique would always show themselves in the best of causes. The Union l , it was exultingly pointed out, had challenged inquiry, demanded to be examined on oath, and even offered rewards, through their officers, for the discovery of the assassins. Even now, at the very last, when it has been brought out to the light of day that all these horrors were committed at the suggestion and instigation of Union officers, by Union agents, and with Union money, it has been asserted, as a last resource, that the perpetrators and accomplices were only some half dozen men, who kept their villanies to themselves, whose crimes were only a miserable episode in an otherwise innocent and meritorious organisation, and who had actually to embezzle the funds, and tamperwith the accounts in order to procure means for hiring murderers, and to blind the eyes of their fellow-Unionists. It was yet not only possible, but oven certain, that in this case an immense number of people were contributing the means for the most dreadful atrocities, and deriving a certain advantage from them, withoui knowing anything about them, or having the least reason to suspect their authors. How far apology will go we know not; but the preliminaries of the question are now all before ns There is no longer the least mystery. The Executive of three great organisations, one of them a Society numbering sixty thousand, confesses to a black catalogue of murders and other outrages upon person and property, committed with the utmost deliberation, much counsel, long waiting, and in the most business-like sty e. And now we ask, as it appears to have been surmised long ago that we should have reason to ask, what is the mental and moral attitude of the many thousands of persons repeatedly hearing of the commission of hideous crimes in their supposed interest, to back up the laws of their Union, and to punish “ outlaws ? ”

They could not but perceive a wonderful agreement in the character and obvious intention of these crimes, all of them being as much in a series and on one code as the successive acts by which a regular Government maintains its authority and punishes rebels or other offenders .against its laws.. It was in the general interest of the Union and all its members, that a man was blown up, that a horse was hamstrung, that se r veral men were shot, some killed, others cruelly injured, that houses, engines, and furnaces were blown* up, with whole families in their.beds, or with abortive but still exemplary consequences. These visitations were not at„random, and though.-mysteriou3 in one sense, were by .no means so in another; for they were not inevitable iu that sense which wo intend when we so’ describe the visitations of, Providence This was not a power which confounded the innocent with the guilty. It was not us the bolt of Heaven that falls this day on the murderer, to-morrow on the blameless

peasant at his work,'the day'after oh the bride on her wedding tour, or the village school-girl returning home satchel in hand. Heaven may be. inscrutable, not so the Sheffield power. If it hired its agency, it displayed its system, with all. the emphasis and pretence of a present deity. To the understanding of the simplest Unionist or the merest child there was that which, or there were those who, singled out with unerring discrimination and struck with terrible effect all who refused to- obey the edicts and laws of the Union. Whoever ventured to break its pale or touch its dignity was smitten by its shafts of fire. The canister of powder burst under his bed, the bullet pierced his brain, or the bludgeon rendered him a wreck for life. There was no possible mistake as to the identity of system, of which these were the recurrent manifestations. Then came the fearful question that must have presented itself to every mind, and that must have harrased some with the most painful misgivings. What was this power? Was it simply the wild fire of-casual revenge breaking here and. there, as occasion gave it venr, or as the collision gave out the spark of fire ? Was it an evil organization that had intruded, as a parasite into one that was more healthy, as a disease in the Union ? Was it a Committee of Safety, administering death and destruction from the head-quarters of the Union, like an usurpation in a Free State ? It must have taxed every reasonable Unionist to know what this power was —as sure as prompt, and as successful in its vengeance as any savage ever wished the cruellest fetish to be. The evidence given before the Commission throws some light on the surmises prevalent in this community. It was known there were men ready to do any evil deed, without even the apology of a motive, for money, and with the excuse of obedience to a sovereign authority., It was rumoured that this or that desperado had done it, as a command from above. Whatever that higher power, it worked with the Union, usurped the government, and. possessed the whole body. But the plain truth is, that it matters not what the power may be, whether a conspiracy within the Union or a spirit of vengeance pervading . its members, or whether the governors of the Union were themselves the actual murderers, as in fact they are now proved to have been it is all the same as regards the Unionists. They had come to acquiesce in a system of so-called Protection enforced by outrage. They had come to feel their monopoly of employment dependent upon the ready use of criminal, and atrocious means. They had come to sympathise with the assassin, and exult over his victim. Why, even if in their ignorance they had believed some preternatural power the dealer of summary vengeance by seeming accident, or disease, or stroke of death, on ail offee ders against a purely selfish code, that belief itself would have vitiated and degraded their minds. If this Union —these Unions, we shoulJ rather say, for several were linked in the operations of Broadhead — had indeed believed that a power worked for them from above, or from below—it little matters—its religion and its morality would have been worse than that of Ti mgs, or the vilest known savage. Wliotver believes, worships, and obeys, is as his God; and if these men had ever fancied a Deity working for them in this evil fashion, there would still have been assassins. Of course they had no such belief. They only knew there was some power or other working in a way too concurrent with their interests and their passions. Whatever id was, it did as they wished; they rejoict-d in its crimes, and in heart and soul they identified themselves with it; tiiey reaped its deadly harvest, they divided its booty, and they became what it was one of the most guilty and nideous thiugs ever discovered iu this island.