The Express.
London, England, 1868-02-11 00:00:00

HIGH HAT= AT LONDON. BRIDOL

DAt —Morning, 4h. ram.. —.Afternoon, 4h. 2.5 a.
fo-Ilor.tow—Mornlag, 4h. 47m— _ „Altarnoon, Sn.

LONDON, TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 11.

THE capture of Captain MACKAY is an event of
some importance. The Government is laying its
hand one by one upon the presumed instigators

and leaders of Fanianism. It is patiently tracking
them out and running them down. It has tho

chief of them now in hold. Unless the strong
circumstances of suspicion which have led to the
arrest and committal of the prisoners in England

and Ireland be rebutted or involved in reasonable

doubt on trial, the hope maybe entertained that the
worst is over, and that Mr. Secretary HARDY will

soon be able to lay aside the involuntary character
of Chief Commissioner of Police, and reassume his
proper functions of Secretary of State for Home
Affairs. Nevertheless, it will he well not to be
toe sanguine. The lower political as well as the
lower animal organisations have a strange vita-
lity. There are reptiles whose heads may be cut
off, and whose bodies will develop new heads ;
which may be divided into fragments, and each
fragment will grow into a complete animal. The
Fenian Circles are the reptiles of the political
world. When the chief of a great cause falls, the
calamity may be irreparable. What Italy has lost
in CAVOUR, what America has lost in ABRAHAM
LINCOLN, no one can tell. But the qualities need-

fel to make a Fenian leader are as common as the

spirit of criminal violence and reckless adventure.
In every haunt of desperate men, in the dens of
our great cities, and by the river side of all great
ports, there are HIM in scores who have every
quality for Fenian command. The Government
will do well not to remit its vigilance ;
nor to fancy that the conspiracy is
slain when its heads for the time being are
arrested. This miserable and degrading conflict
between the power of England and a handful

of Irish and Irish-American adventurers re-

semblcs nothing so much as the contest of some
majestic animal with a swarm of poisonous in-
serts which bu :z and sting. We may hope that
it is drawing to an end. But over-confidence
would invite a renewal of the danger.
If the person arrested in Cork as Captain
111Ao l ry price to be the man ho is taken for, and
if thu acts of which he is accused or suspected be
brought home to I —points which it is fair
formally to reserve—his capture is the most im-
portant that has recently been made. Thu man
appears to be the type of the Fenian leader. Mr.
MILL and Mr. ltfarritrw Aitxot.o have expressed
in terms nearly identical their opinion that the ,
qualities of the Celtic and of the Saxon
races are especially fitted to correct and
supplement each other, and to form a moral
compound more valuable than either of its sepa-
rate ingredients. It may be so with respect to
their better elements. In the Irish-American, as Fe-
nianism shows him to us, we have unfortunately an
amalgam of the worst qualities of the two races.
The lawlessness of the filibuster and the lawlessness
of the secret-society man are united in his person.
The character formed in the conflict with wild
beasts and Red Indians and with the outlaws from
civilization in the Far West of America, amid
the anti-social violence of the lately Slave
States, in Nicaragua raids, and in the bush-
thwacking of the late civil war, blends with the
character formed in Ribbon and Whiteboy lodges,
and by agrarian outrages. The adventurous and
daring ruffianism o.f a new civilisation meets the
crafty and conspiring criminality which is engen-
dered out of the vices of an old society. The
result is Fenianism, as it exhibits itself in the
persons of its military leaders.
It is deplorable, but it is, we fear, true that in
the character of Captain .MACKAY, as it was de-
scribed by our Cork Correspondent yesterday, and
as it is exhibited in the exploits attributed to him,
there are elements likely to fascinate the lower
and more excitable Of the Irish population. Bold-
ness and secrecy, the skill which can for many
months out-wit and baffle, and the audacity which
can brave and defy, an übiquitous and over
power, are likely to be appreciated by
them above their value. The sort of sympathy
with which clioolboys who have got hold of
" Jack Sheppard" or " Paul Clifford" read of
the daring adventures of Lord Lerrox's or Mr.
ArNsworeries interesting burglars and highwaymen,
is likely to be roused among the poorer Irish
by a career such as Captain MacKaY's. To
penetrate into the very strongholds of the law, to
defy detect' in the very face of day and under
the eyes of the Isdice, to devise ingenious strata-
gems, to accomplish bold strokes, and to effect
hair-breadth escapes, are achievements likely to
impress the imagination of a wonder-loving
people. The fact that Captain MACKAY, having
once been allowed to draw his head out
of the lion's jaws, should have deliberately
placed it there again, and that a second escape
should be followed by a second return to the
post of danger—will be looked upon by them
rather as proofs of a noble and self-sacrificing
courage, than as signs of a reckless foolhardi-
ness. The boldness and success of the attempt on
the Martello Tower at Foaty, and of the plunder
of Mr. ALLPORT'S shop in Cork ; the audacity of
the assault on the Lallyknockarie Barracks, and of
the projected attack on the Ilacroon Castle ; the
skill which Mac Kay displayed in concealment and
disguise, the circumstances attending his seizure
and the violence of his resistance, furnish inci-
dents which an imaginative and excitable people
can easily convert into a romance. The blend-
ing of dare-devilry and a kind of humour in
some of MACK &Y 3 exploits, set off by a
spurious patriotism, will appeal strongly to Irish
sympathies. The demeanour of the crowd at the
time of his arrest showed that it did so. Nothing
can tend so much to break the charm which at-
tracts excitable and foolish people to a character
and career of this kind as that which has taken