THE FENIAN PRESS AND THE O'SULLIVAN PROSECUTION.

Tuapeka Times, Volume II, Issue 80, 21 August 1869, Page 5

THE FENIAN PRESS AND THE O'SULLIVAN PROSECUTION.

Articles in the "National" journals of Saturday defend the Mayor of Cork in vehement terms. The "News" affirms that in his person " the last and most sacred vestige of popular liberty in Ireland is being struck down," and speaks of the Disability Bill as " another of those invasions of popular rights which mark in dark repulsive lines the course of British rule in Ireland." " We see nothing in Mr O'Sullivan's words," it adds, " calling for censure or reprobation; we cannot for the life of us see anything in the remotest degree savouring of culpability in the expression of an opinion that the miserable man who attempted the life of the Duke of Edinburgh in New South "Wales might possibly have had his moral perceptions so hideously perverted as to believe he was doing a praiseworthy and justifiable act." The " News" " looks to the citizens of Cork for a firm and strong pronouncement of public opinion" against " an act on which the boldest of Continental despots would hardly venture.," The "Irishman" is of opinion that the Mayor is being condemned "in the frenzy of a puerile panic," "on an abstract question of politics, a topic of metaphysical inquiry." "Are we to tolerate," continues the writer, "that bills of pains and penalties — and penal law — shall be passed without protest? Twice fifty thousand Corkmen and a hundred times fifty thousand Irishmen declare that first they shall know the reason why." The indictment, the " Irishman " adds will become " a certificate of honour to the Mayor of Cork." It complains that " a swarm of ascendency offenders, of far deeper dye," are allowed to go scot free. The " Nation" asserts that " this man of the people" "is grasped for vengance by a Power that never spared man of his name that dared to cross its path* Be it so. He will confront despotic oppression with calm and resolute defiance. The English Grovernment have this week conferred on him an honour to which no Irishman has attained for centuries." The " Flag of Ireland " believes that the mayor "may well rest content with the orations he has received from his fellow-citizens." "No emphatic condemnation was passed" in England "upon the killing of Count Rossi, the Premier of the Pope. We do not justify anything like assassination, but will some one tell us why, after such an historical instance, there is such an outcry against the qualified statements of the j Mayor of Cork?"