South Canterbury Times. WEDNESDAY, MAY 31, 1882.

South Canterbury Times, Issue 2865, 31 May 1882, Page 2

South Canterbury Times. WEDNESDAY, MAY 31, 1882.

The recent murders in the Phccnix Park, Dublin, have sent a* thrill of horror through the world. Even here, at the antipodes, where the political strife of the old world is borne to us in spent waves, men blush that in this century such things should 'occur; the most violent partisans denounce the deed as shameful and dastardly in itself, and as a political mistake. Two persons whose career can have given no offence to any party in Ireland, who were certainly not sent there for any purposes of oppression, are • set upon and foully, horribly murdered in a public place in the metropolis. Their bodies lie, mute evidences of a frightful crime, and there is no clue to the perpetrators. As a natural consequence, considering the state of the country, the murder is widely.regarded as the act of the party whose opposition to English rule has been so marked. The Land League is duly credited with it. It follows, further, that the whole nation bears a stigma. The very name of Ireland becomes a by-word everywhere. Numbers of persons at once denounce the League as responsible for the murder. Others look upon it atf the outcome of a demoralised and disorganized condition of the people, and think that surely a country in which it is necessary to keep 100,000 men under arms, and in which assassination appears to prevail, wants far severer measures of repression. # The public mind, not unnaturally, puts all these things together and acquires a sort of exasperation against a land in which such deeds are possible. We no less feel that so long as this purely innocent blood cries aloud for vengeance, Ireland is put to shame. But in our hottest indignation we must be true to the traditions of England and be just. This murder cannot have been committed for robbery. It is quite improbable that it was dictated by personal spite. It must therefore have been committed for political purposes. By whom, then, could it have been committed ? By Land Leaguers, Landlordists, or Fenians. One of the three is responsible for it, we feel sure. As for the Land League, their outrages appear always to have been provoked ones, bad enough in all conscience, but always provoked. In this case there was no act committed or impending, of the murdered men or their parly which could have '■ led to their death at the hands of the League. Lord Cavendish regarded even as of the landlord race, represented one of the most benevolent and beloved families in England, and as to his political mission to Ireland —well he was there as the ambassador of peace. The Dand League never committed that crime or authorised it. We quite understand the grief sustained by the leaders of that movement : for they know how terribly its reputation and prospects must suffer from even the suspicion of being implicated in so foul a deed. It has been suggested, on the other hand, that the landlord party, .looking forward to Lord Cavendish’s administration as likely to cripple their power "and invade their interests, have crowned their long career of selfish indulgence and cruelty, with murder. There is here a possibility, but it is not more than *a possibility ; and that a somewhat remote one. The class we are referring to would not be likely to combine for such a purpose as this. Assassination is not the resort of persons of that order. It is either the oppressed or the altogether vicious who employ this means. There remains, then, the secret society, the Fenians, whose creed is hatred to England and everything English ; whose blood is inflamed with the passion of fiends; whose mouths foam; whose means arc the most dastardly ; who employ the most cowardly weapons. Those men, probably the vilest specimens of humanity extant, arc chargeable, wo venture to say, with the innocent blood that has just been shed. The members of that hellish brotherhood are not oppressed peasantry, with wrongs to redress; they arc np starving creatures, working hard for scarcely a pittance, suffer-

ing eviction and persecution. They are vagabonds with no love of work ; who, finding tbeir way across tbe Atlantic, obtained in tbe great Eepublic, space in which to indulge their , vile passions and mouth their vile ravings. Fenianism makes but little' headway in Ireland. The questions there agitating the mind of the people arc real wrongs and seiious grievances. One hope, one purpose, inspires them. Those who are rebels but no patriots, have passed over from their country in her need, and sought another home. Thence they "indulge their horrible hatred of England, and seek, not to benefit Ireland, hut to injure England. For a while, and for political .purposes, while the Irish vote was useful in Presidential contests, the United States affected to back them up in their schemes against England. But soon the same horror lay at the door of America herself. Her own'President, a blameless, noble man, fell, by the hand of an assassin, andJAtnerican citizens came to see that they were nursing a viper which might inflict deadly wounds upon themselves. Then, America extended no more sympathy to Fenianism, On the supposition that this murder is tbe work of American Fenians, the United States Government is taking every precaution—even going the length of intercepting the steamers before they reach port to search for the assassins. Whether they succeecj or not, they are on the right track, we feel sure ; and succeed or fail, if America joins heartily with England in stamping-out this horrible curse to humanity, wc believe it will yet disappear from the face of the earth.