The Dorset County Express and Agricultural Gazette.
Dorchester, Dorset, England, 1867-12-17 00:00:00

inset Coutti express
TUESDAY, DECEMBER 17, 1867

NOTES OF THE WEEK.

The portentous wickedness which designed and
Sidputed lb* diabolic °atm, in Clerkenwell on
Friday afternoon, has saMta feelinm' of the moat
intense indignation and alarm &roughest the
errantry. Four deaths have already resulted from
that terrible explosion, whit. (mull lino, on tn.
verge of death, and many have been wounded and
maimed for life. All this death and suffering, and
the destruction of • large amount of property ham
been caused, in order to compass the
tion of Burke and Casey, in custody at Clerkeneell,
charged with being connected with the replan
movement It seems almost incredible, and it h,
high time to ask who and what are thew secret
and deadly enemies, who are as realms of their
own lives as of the lives of their innocent
victim.? who live in our midst, diseharge for us
the menial work, of our industry and civilization,
are our hewers of wood and drawers of water,
and who spring a deadly mine upon as without a
moment's notice? With all the ramarobas of our dome.
ti, police, we know little of the inspiring principle
and organisation of Feuismism. 'rho devotion of
the Irish peasant than hereditary chief, to the
head of his clan, bi a great historic amine, or
to one with who.. be bolds any of the
releriess at fosterage, kw,* no been& For mit a
cais he will do any viotadaine, asoonntor any peril,

endure any lecher But a similar &Regimes to
half-lbeadventiarers, soob as Kelly and
and O'Brien, lea new thing. If a fanatic worhiplail
the came which them ozu are engaged
asimates the Irish mechanic or making him
carries. of his own his and feria= of the innocent
blood he sheds, the problem moor a hopeless one
either to cow by erasures of swore repression or to
win by conciliation then fierce end savegely-inkiened
means. It may be, however, that a greater peril
behind leads men to brave the peril before them, and
to aloes their minds and hearts to all considerations
al their own safety, end to any =moray of
Immanity. The chief organiser of Fenianiant learned
* arts of conspiracy and secret meriation abroad.
Hie may have taken a leaf from the book of the
Oorrenori. If such • man as Allen end the pre-
sumed Whom of the Clerksowell outrage are
soleoted by lot for the murderous work ea=
witted to them, if they are the blind instru-
ments ot • ear= power, end the sure victims in
is. of disobedient= of a secret vengeance, it is
easier to =dirtied their =shrinking and re-
marries sorlacity. We have spoken of Garbo-
aerie= Bet Ponied= did not need to travel
&brood he lemons in the art of secret anmesimition.
The Defenders, the Whitaboys, the Ribbontnen of
Ireland might supply it with all the models it
needed. Should it peeve that Allen and his room.
Ores in the Manchester murder, and the presumed
authors of the Clerkenwell outrage, were volunteers
In a forlorn hope, and not the salected instruments
of a secret power, boned by an O•Ab and subject to •
penalty, the mystery andemharrasementof Fearnism
are greater than it is easy to realise, and he is
magnum who will predict its end.
At some future day, when the Italian unity has
bees consummated, and the Papal sovereignty hes
become a thing of the East, men unprejudiced by the
Party feelings of our day will see in the policy of
Napoleon IIL towards Italy ohs of the most glaring
pieces of political teooneistanoy that ie to be found
detailed in history. If we go beck to the war of
13/30, we find the Emperor an ardent supporter of
independence. He Urn proclaimed that Italy was
to be free "from the Alps to the Adriatic," sad be
gave mach an imports to the national movement that
nothing has linos been able to May its course. It is
well known that his own predtloctions were is favour
of an Italian confederation in which every Italian
sovereign but the Emperor of Austria should hold ,
his pow...ions inter, and the Pope should be the
nominal head bet when the soirene became
impracticable through the north Italian duchies voting
their annexation to Sardinia, Napoleon still
endeavoured to carry out the ides of a
confederation which should unite a Northers
Italian and a Southern Italian kingdom
In one national bond with the Pope's Static
In both of this federative schemes Rome ,
was recognised as an intrinsic and necessary portion
of an Italian state, and of course the Pope's temporal '
authority in his own territory would have been to
some extent overridden bp a netional executive and
Parliament. But after the annexation of the two
Sicilia* to the kingdom of North Italy, and the
seizure of Umbria and the Marches by Victor
Emmanuel, all idea of so Italian confederation was
abandoned, and Italian unity become an acknow-
ledged neosssity. We wereabout to say an acknow-
ledged foot ;bet there were yet two things wanted
to make it so—the promession of Venetia, and, if
not the annexation of Rome, at least some arrange-
ment with the Pope by which Italy ehted
acknowledged as • state, and a national communion
be established between the kingdom and the Pope's
dominions. It is notorious how Napoleon favoured
both the.. objects—how he ran the risk of offending
the Emperor of Austria by advising him to cede
Venetia, and how be has constantly been endeavouring
to reconcile Italy and the Papacy, as the phrase goes.
In short, the Emperor Napoleon has been, from first
to last, either the instigator, or an accomplice before
or after the fact, in every step taken in the national
Italian movement He first made the movement a
practical one and has ever since favoured it—up to
the last stel;, the logical oonsequence of all tame
previously taken. In different ways Napoleon his
acknowledged the right of Italy to Rome as the
national capital • he has recognised the annexation
of Papal territory, and he has acknowledged that
some arrangement for national purposes, between
the Pope and the King of Italy, is absolutely
necessary. Yet now, of a sodden, be ha. turned
round and reverted his policy completely. He,
that wee always talking of the necenity of reforms
In the Government of the Papal Metes, that saw and
proclaimed the necessity of a national bond between
, them and Italy, and left the Pope and the Italian
king to settle matters between themeelveit by the
withdrawal of his troope—lre has now given his
uoqualified support to the Pope, and declared to
Italy that she shall never have Rome. " Never is a
long day," and a longer one than Napoleon
or his dynasty can answer for. The Italian
nation will outlive both, and still be at
the commencement of a noble career the
word "never", then, is simply a piece of pre-
posterous presumptioo, —it declaration which would
be insulting enough to the Italians without it.
Surely, Italy may well complain of the tergiversation
of Nspo'isin. To warn the Italian Government ,
against permitting Garibaldi's enterprise, and to
put it down even with unnecessary bloodshed, was
one thing; but to take the part of tin Pope against
Italy without any retiree or qualification—to
pport what be but oridemne3, and condemn what
be bad supported, was that greatest of faults in
polities, a orierake--a mistake as great as the
Mexican expedition. The Pope is the declared and
uncompromising enemy of Italian unity, of the
Italian King, of the Italian Parliament, and not only
planes the or inertia of his non posromes in Mr
way of completing the Italian national movement,
but actively stroke the kingdom of Italy in every
pomade way. And it is with the Popo, against
Italy, that Napoleon ham now thrown an his lot,
perpetrating the greatest inconsistency and the
mistake in a career that had no further room
t either. In the United States and Germany the
Emperor managed to make poetible cortiess of
Italy he has roads an impossible friend.
Provincial workhottse reform is now having its
turn as a =Weir for agitation, and certainly the
reports of the Lancet commissioners respecting the
=edition of some of our country workhouses must
waken. regret that Mr. Hardy is not still at the
head of the Poor Law Board to continue and seised
his salutary reform.. "But why small these reforms
needed," people may well ask, I"when there has been
a large staff of inspectors paid to see that nothing
went wrong, and yet have declared the greeter
abuses to be ' eatielsotory' r And it will crier to
met men, that these inspectors, who were in the
habit of seeing well-conducted and ill•candosted
workhouses, ought to have learnt the difference
between them, and not to have sonfounded all in
one dead level of approval, time great want seems
to have been the want of • standard issued
on the authority of the Central Board,
by which inspectors might meanie what
they mw. Left to themselves, if they really
" inspected" at all, they seem to have been incapable
of perceiving, that if one style of treatment for
papers was not far too good, another
must be far too bed. London workhouses have
have been weeded of many abuse ; but these institu-
tions are a soil in which a new crop of shames appear
rapidly to spring up. The medical. =Boer of St.
Pamirs had to complain to the guardians the other
day of the employment of an imbecile nurse in the
infirmary, who administered medicines in such a way
as to endanger the lives of the patients; upon whioh
a guardian remarked, "Why, we got her from
Colney Hatch; she had better gb hick?" Fiery,
fetching a perasn out of a madhocas to officiate as
sick.nurse I

Among the charitable efforts of the present day
in London is the Girls' Household Brigade, and it is
gratifying to find that it has suceesded as far as It '
has gone, though that is not far enoegh. Bina* its ,
establishment, a few months ago, eighty.nine girls
have been clothed, partially educated, and trained to
oommon household work. They are necessarily girls
of the poorest class, and the good accomplished is
therefore all the greater. It is a great pity that the I
work cannot be extended. Training schools for
servants at present exist only in theory, with hut
rare excepuents warmly deserving of Doti**. The
lower clam of earvants—the eervants-of•all-work for
the lower middle classes—are still wohdly ignorant,
not only as regards postal education, but especially
in respect to the (ammo's knowledge which is
neoeewy for household work. Thousands of girls
of this cia. know bow to " lay • ghost," but not bow
to lay a fire or lay the table; they know which would
nsoeee.rily be the meet desirable match, pecuniarily
oossideivd, the soldier or the policeman, bat they
weld not solve the oommonaat problem in mental
arithmetic; they can tell their own future or yours
by the grounds in • °Wes cup, but they never see
any grounds for oomplaints respecting their own
stupidity. Training sohoola for aorvanta would be
of immense advantage to society, in giving marassad
employment to girk as servants, for many familia
of tbe lower middle clam now decline the aid of girls
so ignorant and slovenly as to muse more trouble
than they Nava.