The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1885-02-07 00:00:00

THE ARCH-DYNADIITARD.

THE message from across the Atlantic which I
flashed to our shores the intelligence that
O'Donovan Rossa had fallen in the streets of
New York before the revolver of a young
Englishwoman, roused feelings of deepest
regret in every true British heart—regret
that the avenging shot had not at once put
an end to the existence of one who by his
acts has come to be associated by lovers of
law and order here with all that is fiendlike
in crime-stained human nature. Not that
Englishmen are at all unjust or vengeful in
temperament, not that they applaud the
unlovely and unwomanly spirits of the
Charlotte Corday and Madame Clovis
Hughes order, who do not hesitate to strike
with horiable calmness at the lives of
wretches too vile for earth. Not that the
savage law of retaliation of patriarchal
days has lingering bold in the hearts of
Englishmen in their thoughtful mood. This
strange countrywoman of ours, who sought
to rid the world of as unscrupulous and
despicable a being as ever had the effrontery
to hide his face behind the banner of patriot-
ism, will have no apologists here, whether
her motive were thirst for revenge for
wrongs to herself or to her land. English-
men would have authority alone wield the
avenging sword of Justice. Bat outrage
after outrage against innocent life, directed
by a coward knave out of danger's way
himself, whese minions and fellow-plotters
and brother murclere-s somehow always
contrive to escape the hangman's rope, have
roused the land to an overpowering desire
to stamp out the spirit of slaughter which
hides in our midst. Canning suggestive of
the father of evil has kept the tools of sedi-
tion and outrage beyond the reach of the
punishment which waits them; while we
have long had to look on and witness a few
arch-plotters standing afar off and keeping
their mysterious dupes actively engaged in
their execrable work. Secure themselves,
they have planned the murders and the
mischief, gloated on the havoc they have
compassed, and grown fat on the earnings
of their ignorant and deluded supporters.
They have seta the worst enemies of the
poor fools who have believed in them, and
emphatically have constituted the greatest
curse and the vilest wrong under which
Ireland has suffered. And the most repul-
sive personification of all that is loathsome
in this plague spot which is eating out the
life and honour of the Sister Isle, is that
which rises before the mental eye at mention
of the name of O'Donovan Rossa. Small
wonder that when news came of a bullet
striking home where the lash of the law
had failed to reach, an outraged nation
coeld scarcely suppress the satisfaction it
felt to find the murder-moTlger mangled in
his own unhallowed machinery. Retribu-
tion, however irregular and questionable
its shape, was for once welcomed, even at
the expense of temporary oversight of strict
justice : there seemed to be a momentary
forgetfulness that the vilest criminal has his
right of trial before sentence and execution.
Truth to tell, Rossa has long been found
guilty and condemned to death at the bar
of public opinion. There are few, indeed,
among us but have often regretted that the
amnesty of Irish pcilitical prisoners in 1869
set this conspirator at liberty to beguile from
his abiding place in America the coppers of
the bluid error-stricken sons of Hibernia osten-
sibly- for their country's cause, but really in
order that he might pursue his licentious
life and wield the poisoned arrows of hate
against constitutional rule, for aught of
good evoked the enmity and hatred of his
black and depraved heart. It was only a
few hours previous to the coming of the
news of the shooting down of Rossa that
his sedition propagating sheet had been
officially suppressed in Ireland for teachings
even more infamoas than the wild and blas-
phemous ravings which have so long shocked
all right-minded people. And not many
weeks had passed since one of his miserable
tools had been hacked almost to death in
the renegade Irishman's office and carried a
bleeding heap to a hotpital, because it was
suspected he was hardly villain enough to
keep the fearful oath of the impious gang.
Strange "how the whirligig of Time brings
in his revenges." Rossa was fated soon to
lie on a bed of torture in the same ward
that gave shelter to his victim Phelan—for
few doubt that the hand that all but slew
this less notorious conspirator was prompted
by the Arch-dynarnitard. There is a Power
higher than that of man which moves at
times to punish those deeds at which human
nature revolts in horror. For some purpose
beyond our ken such scourges of the earth
as Marat and Rossa seem to have an unac
countable immunity from the consequences
of their unspeakable wickedness for a weary
while but in the end the day of reckoning
comes for hem, and the retribution is often
a ttrrible one. Then mankind stands off in
shuddering amaze to see the avenging stroke
and sympathy is silenced when the iron
enters the guilty wretch's soul. Such an
unscrupulous braggart as Rossa who has for
years dared to threaten England, and plot
against our cherished institutions and. the
lives of our innocent countrymen for no in-
telligible purpose other than his own blood
bought indulgences, has reached the lowest
depths of vileness of which vitiated humanity
is capable. His brutal instincts were disclosed
in his treason trial, and those who once
thought him an honest agitator were then
undeceived; but his mercenary and blood
thirsty spirit has shown itself at its horrible
worst in his later action as the author of the
so-called " Skirmishing Fund," and re-
puted chief of the dynamite plotters.
Even his own confederates in sin and con-
spiracy against good and right have learned
to distrust and dissever themselves from the
wretched creature whose malice and cup-
idity and cunning, were all turned in the
direction of scraping together the contribu-
tions ot his dupes that he might indulge in
debauchery. It was only the power which
that same possession of the purse gave him
which le't't Rossa with any personal follow-
ing, for all felt that he was ready to sacri-
fice them to his own ends without one pang
of remorse. Hence it is that in his hour of
direst extremity there is not one to mani-
fest regret for his fall or pity his miserable
fate : and that the only sorrow felt at hear-
ing of the attempt on his life was sorrow
that the stroke fell short of success.

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