BEARDING THE DYNAMITERS.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume VIII, Issue 2355, 24 July 1886, Page 1 (Supplement)

BEARDING THE DYNAMITERS.

The Times is evidently bent on waging war to the knife with the Fenians. A few years ago there was not a newspaper in all England which dared boldly to denounce the Fenian organisations or to say of them what would have been said in the most' emphatic terms of any other public evil of equal magnitude. The ; struggle upon Irish questions which Mr Gladstone precipitated by his alliance with Mr Parnel on the Home Rule Bill, however, has changed all that, and the Times attacks the Fenians now with quite as much condour and with infinitely more etTuct than the most rabid Irish paper ever attacked.the British Government with. The Times not only insists that the Fenians are a pack of miscreants, to sympathise with whom is to declare one-self an> enemy of society; hut it affirms,. and goes to great pains to demonstrate; that they are as impotent, cowardly, and ridiculous as they are bloodthirsty. In a most remarkable article on the 26th April, entitled "The Dynamite Party, Past and Present," the Times takes the Fenians in hand in a fashion which is not less novel than refreshing. It begins thus:— "In view of the great crisis

in which the country now fiuds itself, and the fr«.quent references '. .made on ono side and i;lte other to the proceedings of tha Dynamite party i it.iii advisable that the public should have accurate information with regard to the past and ph'smic activity of that , •party, and.'as we-are in jiossossion of such information wh think it. right to , place it before our readers. The facts and details, that '.vie are aHoitt to nar.'rate be.. absolutely rMied upon." It then proceeds to'give a particular account of the eternal economy of tie Dynamite party, giving tho name (with till their alliases, fis : far as they can be ascertained) of tho pi'icipal; pers&ns con cerned, and, of their agents and accessories':;,and, i'u a word, turus the dynamite 1 scare inside out with us much Bangfroid&s\V\i were merely reporting " a horrible accident to an aged female" or " a terrific conflagration at a boot and Stioe shop." It, traces every one o£ the dynamite explosions to its propel source, and shows concju-1 sively, not only that snuiety need not he the least afraid of the dvnamile party, but that practically the only result of the efforts of that party has been to destroy themselves The most interesting part of the whole artiole is the hiatory of the attempt to blow up London Bridge and of its splendid failure, all of which is given in the minutest detail, as if of a matter about which there is no doubt whatsoever. The Times avers that the police had warning of the attempt on London Bridge long before it was made; that they knew it was to hn done by dynamite placed iu cuvaties in the piers below water-mark; , that they bad protec'ed these cavities by massive gratings, and that this precaution caused the failure of the attempt. The dynamiters, who, were two in number, and one of whom, Mackay Lomasuey, alias Mackay, was quite well known—; or rather very badly known, as an old J 1 convict—hired a boat at Queenhithe stairs on the evening of the 4th of December, 1884, and rowed in the darkness to London Bridge, where they 'laid the dynamite charge in the pier—the grating preventing them' from putting it where they had intended. When tbey fired it, instead of blowing up the bridge, it blew them and their boats to bits, and nothing has ever • since been heard of them or the boat they hired at Qaeenhithe. The Times • declares that all-other attempts were equally futile; and it concludes its article thus:—"These, then, are a few of the most important facts connected • with the most desperate conspiracy ■ against the peace and the welfare of i Great Britain, which has of late years i neon proceeding among the American i Irish. We have judged it well to bring them together and to publish them at I the present time, partly because there is I nothing that those gentlemen like '. so ■ little as publicity at the wrong moment, i and partly because the net results of i the' wtiole business are not disoouragi ing to the friends of order, Two of i the dynamite criminals, as we have - said, perished by their own crime, Of ; the rest, 25 have received sentences.of I penal servitude, two thirds of them life sentences, which all bat two are now i undergoing.