The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1866-11-24 00:00:00

THE FENIANS IN AMERICA.

The Daily Net...correspondent, writing from New York,
makes the folloarirg remarks :

The Fenian excitement continues, but has ixode.
rated, as the expectation gaina ground that the
sentences recently pronounced in Canada will not he
carried out. I think it would be very bad policy indeed
on the part of the Canadian authorities to hang either
of the men. Nobody doubts the fairntss of the trial,
and nobody questions the gravity of the offence. The
Fenians who fought the battle of Lime Ridge were, no
doubt, legally brigands, and as such might in strict
justice be put to death. But there is, also, no ivies-
tins that the whole of the Irish here look on their
offence in a very different light, and regard them
as heroes and martyrs. And the American public,
much as it ridicules and condemns them, is aatiated
also that the Irish have solid grounds of complaint
against England, such as would justify them in fight-
ing for her overthrow; and though they regard the
expedition against Canada as crazy and criminal,
al well as ridiculous, they do not regard the men en-
gaged in it as mere robbers and murderers, and if the
mass of them would hardly be sorry to see a batch of
them hanged, none would venture to approve of it
openly. It ought also to be observed that the Cana-
dians are hardly in a position to hang men for a crime
of this sort owing to their conduct in the St. Alban's
matter, and their bearing all through the war towards
the Confederate rowdies who made Montreal and
Toronto their head-quarters. It is this which steels
the hearts of the American public against their present
sufferings, and gives the Fenians whatever amount of en-
couragement or sympathy they receive from all hut the
professional politicians. At the Name time I airs bound
to add that most of the best newspapers warn the
Feinting that threats of rescue, or of fresh invasion, can
have no other effect than to drive the Canadian autho.
rities into executing the sentences pronounced on the
condemned, which, if let alone, they may not do, and
warn the Irish that the United States government can-
not he expected to interfere to prevent the enforce.
meet of Canadian laws against offenders taken fla-
grante deliceo on Canadian soil.

On the subject of Feniantim, the Dally Telegraph, In •
leading article, makes the following remarks :
It is painful to note signs of the revival of Fenianiam
in Ireland and elsewhere. Of course, having to deal
with a secret society, we must be prepared for wild
exaggerations; it is so easy to invent, and so difficult
to disprove when we have little data and few facts.
All we know for certain is, that there would really
have been a rising in Ireland this year had not the
Habeas Corpus Act been suspended. Many who have ,
known what Ireland was of old, with its frequent and
frothy agitations, with its lip service patriotism, its
incorruptible orators holding out for a higher price, ;
and its popular gatherings of mere shouting mobs,
may naturally disbelieve in the possibility of any
actual fighting by Irish rebels. Men who remember
how '43 and '4B purled over with much smoke aid
little fire are naturally prone to adopt that " short
way with the Irish" tteating them with con-
tempt. But there is no doubt that our unfintu-
nate fellow countrymen have imported from America
a practical power of organisation and a daredevil
readiness to descend into the streets ; and whether
we call it American rowdyism naturabsed in Ireland,
or the old green wood of Irish sedition tipped with the
steel of Yankee ability in a free fight, it is an awkward
practical fact with which this country has to deal.
We understand that the authorities in Ireland are
steadily snaking preparations in all their barracks and
in every garrison town, and it is now nail that suspi-
cious detachments of returned emigrants land weekly
at Irish ports. Everything is possible to Hibernian
faith in an old though ,ftea detested cause ; every-
thing is passible to Hibernian folly. Stephens may
be a systematic madman, and his followers fearless
fanatics ; for, of all insane enterprises, a popular in-
surrection in the Oepth of winter would be the gloom-
iest. The great hope of any rebellion would be the
power of the rebels to camp out or traverse the wilder
parts of the country, where neither artillery nor
cavalry could follow but this they could do only in
summer or autumn if attempted in winter, we might
trust to General January to give sedition its coup de
grace. On the other band, a rising in the streets of
the towns, where the artisans anti shopboys are
Fenian by the thousand, is possible, even at this
season of the year ; lint then the insitrge nte would
have to face on the instant artillery, infantry, and
dragoons.
There is a painful and perplexing monotony in this
recurrence, again and again, of the sam
einternal
Irish grievance and discontent. Are we never to hear
the end of it? Austria has her Hungary, but the is
making daily efforts to adjust the old quarrel. Russia
has Poland, but the country of Sobieski is so held down
by troops that there is no chance of a new rising. In
Ireland there has been neither complete conquest nor
complete conciliation. "Thorough," as our old had
work seemed in the time of the penal laws, it was not
thorough enough. Liberal as Catholic emancipation
appeared in its day, it was only a half measure. NVe
stilt halt between two opinions. We do not dare to be
just and generous, and we do not dare to be reckless
and fierce. We hold down Ireland with our left arm;
but we allow her full liberty to struggle and complain,
to vex the ear of Europe and fill the heart of America
with her wrongs; we neither win her by fair words
nor silence her by brute force. Yet every line
of her history shows that nothing is more easy
than to attach the Irish even to the long-hated
English rule. Of old it was said that pains were
taken not to win their love, but 'to wring them into
undutifulness." When Fenianisun raged rampant
amongst the artisans and employes of Dublin, there
were particular employers—Protestants, too—who
had full and perfect confidence in the large bodies of
men they employed, and the Government ascertained
through their detectives, that in these cantos the confi-
dence was juat. It is also remarkable that the Irish
constabulary, recruited from amongst the people
themselves, and nine-tenths of them Romano
Catholics, Were staunch to a man during the
prevalence of sedition; and the frada People
admitted that the police were the greatest enemies
of the popular cause. What has been done as regards
such bodies of men may be done, we fully believe, as
regards the rest of the people—we may win them over
to positive affection for English iule. It may take
years to do so—years of concession, conciliation, and
justice ; years of discouragement to bigots; years of
fair play to the Roman Catholic ( 'hurch and popula-
tion, which are still socially discouraged by a Protes•
.Lord Lisulenant, and nociallyi harassed by a