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Wairarapa Standard, Volume II, Issue 62, 7 March 1868, Page 3

The Times on the Fenian Ourage. —We desire to abstain from any language which could cause an indiscriminatiug and unreflecting feeling- of indignation; but we cannot but observe that this crime removes all doubt as to the nature of the struggle in which we are now enraged. Our path will no longer be obscured by tbe shadow of political considerations. The Fenians have cast the glare of a great moral crime upon tbe debatable ground which separates us, and we can no longer hesitate in what direcction to advance. No man deserving- of tbe name will venture to adduce political discontent in palliation of such an outrage as that of Friday. It excludes all considerations but one, that of protecting by every possible method the elementary rights of humanity. Warfare, however desperate, is is not to he waged hy these means, and if there can he any reasonable and responsable persons still engaged in the Fenian conspiracy, they are as much interested as we ourselves in putting down such atrocities. It is fair to notice that Burke and Casey themselves, when brought up before the policecourt on Saturday, protested their abhorrence of the means which had been employed on their behalf. On the most favourable view, however, they cannot shake off the responsibility of having employed agents who have proved capable of such an outrage. If they are proved to have taken part in organising the Fenian conspiracy-, they cannot escape the guilt or having deliberately let lose on this country a set of wholesale murderers. This is the fact we must now steadily face, and which has been indelibly imprinted on the public mind. We are confronted by a gang ot reckless criminals, who respect no laws, human or Divine. We are far from saying that this is tbe character of all persons who have joined the Fenian movement, or that no other motives are to be taken into account in estimating its origin. But we are justified in saying that this is its practical issue at the present moment. That and nothing better is what it has come to; and we must also add that those who, after this exhibition of the characters who have been called together by tbe conspiracy, continue to belong to it cannot be excused from full responsibility for all its consequences. This outrage is unspeakably horrible; but to what, we must ask, except to something of the same nature, could tbe actions of tbe Fenians tend ? It is impossible to dream of carrying on an open war against rbe English government on their own soil, and if Fenianism is to coerce ns in this country, it must he by isolated acts of violence, more or less murderous, as the occasion prompts. This outrage will at least have the advantage of simplifying the course of the government, and strengthening their hands. They cannot now hesitate in exerting- the utmost vigour of the law, and they will be justified in doing so, not merely in order to punish theperpetrator of the worst crime of modern history, but to crush a conspiracy of which such outrages, we cannot hesitate to say, are the natural fruit.