The Sun.
London, England, 1867-12-14 00:00:00

THE SUN, LONDoN, SATURDAY EVENING, DECEMBER 14, 1857.

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

SPORTING INTELLIG.%NCE.

•
The blowing in of tie prison wall in Clerlcenwell is the
topic of universal comment. The Times calls i a 'crime
of unexampled atrocity. We are, it says, not a sangui-
nary people, and acts of wholesale murder are rare in our
annals. Till yesterday we could not have believed
that there lived among us men capable of planning
such a deed as has just spread destruction over a
whole neighbourhood. The infernal machines of
1800 and. 1835 have been rivalled by the diabolical
device of the Fenian conspirators. In order, as it is
supposed, to rescue two of their accomplices who had
been remanded by a magistrate and had been placed
in the House of Detention at Clerkenwell, it has
entered into the minds of the rebels who arc planning the
overthrow of the Queen's Government in Ireland to destroy
the wall of the prison at the moment the prisoners were
taking exercise, and to carry them off through the gap
which the explosion should create. So far as regards the
effect of the powder, the experiment was horribly
successful. A vast breach has been made in the
out.T wall ; not less than sixty feet have been.
blown away, and the precincts of the prison are
encumbered with the ruins. Never was the tre-
mendous powder of gunpowder more clearly shewn.
If the miscreants who have done this deed are capable of
remorse, they may well be overcome by the thoughts of
their day's work. Burke and Casey are still in confine-
ment. Nothing that their friends can do is now likely to
deliver them from the necessity of answering for their
actions at the bar of justice. The conspirators have to no
purpose committed a crime which will bring down on
themselves and their scheme the execration of the world.
If one of them escapes, all that he will have to look back.
upon is the slaughter of a number of innocent people ; the
burning and mang:ing of women and helpless infants,
the destruction of poor men's homes and poor men's
property. Some forty persons are dead or wounded.
It is terrible to think that there are, no doubt, still
allying us others planning outrages equally dastardly and
deadly, and that any day may bring some disastrous news.
In the Irish outbreak of last March in the attack on the
police-van at Manchester, in this traitorous enterprise at
ClerkenNvell, the Fenians have shewn that they shrink not
from bloodshed, even for a most inadequate end. Their
object is now apparently to create a terror throughout the
United Kingdom, and such is their unscrupulous ferocity
that with a large class of the community they may so far
succeed. If the country, however, can do nothing else, it
can take care that those who actually suffer at the
hands of these public enemies shall not want care in
their sufferings anti compensation for their losses.
As to the Fenian conspiracy itself, it must be evident
that the time is past for clemency and forhearance. With
traitors and assassins such as these there can be but one
course. We desire to say nothing which may aggra-
vate the bitterness of English feeling, or increase
the indignation which will burst fbrth to-day in every
part of the land. We feel that the Fenians have
filled to the full the cup of wrath, and that in
dealing with them public opinion will need rather
to be restrained than instigated. We would im.
press on our readers the duty of looking at these events
with as much calmness as is consistent with human nature,
of remembering that not every Irishman—nay, not even
every processionist and every listener to seditious speeches,
is a Fenian. The conspiracy to which these Clerkenwell
assassins belong is probably directed by a few, and its
active co-operators may be only some thousands in the
whole kingdom. This leaven might, indeed, if left to
itself, soon leaven the whole lump; and it is therefore
necessary to remove it at once.

It is evident to the Post that the Fenians are despera-
does of no common stamp, and will hesitate at the com-
mission of no crime, however monstrous. We have heard
a great deal of clemency and conciliation of late, and have
tried it again and again, but it is manifest that the only
method of dealing with such men is to vindicate the law
sternly and implacably, and to inflict in every case the full
punishment due to their crimes. With men open to the
ordinary feelings of humanity clemency may be fitly used,
and may often produce greater and more lasting effects than
strict justice ; but with wretches like these, capable of whole-
sale assassination of the kind which was perpetrated yester-
day, there is but one course likely to produce any good
result, and that is to smite them swiftly and surely with
the penalty they so richly merit. Henceforth the utmost
rigour in the execution of the law becomes a necessity,
and the blood of the murdered men who now lie the
dead victims of yesterday's diabolical plot would cry aloud
against the extension of grace or favour to any one
of those who ferns part of a conspiracy which is not
only capable of such deeds, but which glories in their
perpetration. It is high time, too, that the police autho-
rities should stir themselves to make the increased exer-
tions which the gravity of the case requires. It is not
sufficient merely to watch "suspicious characters," such
as. were seen congregating around the Clerkenwell Prison,
and to let then. organise and carry out their plots uml,er
the very eyes of authority. If the means of gaining
information are not sufficiently perfect, better means
must be devised, and more rapid and effective measures
must be taken to utilise it.

The Daily News calls it an outrage which in the
diabolical wickedness of its design and in the murderous
consequences attending its execution has scarcely any
parallel or precedent. The feelings of indignation and
horror which this diabolic outrage excites do not need to
be height, nsd, and cannot, indeed, be fittingly and fully
expressed in words. Its wickedness is portentous and
almost superhuman. The mind shrinks from dwelling on
the sights and sounds of distress which the hospital
walls enclose, on the physical tortures of the unhappy
victims of the outrage, and on the mental anguish of
those who discovered there the friends and relatives
they sought for but feared to find. Possibly the
perpetrators of the crime did not know the full force of
the explosive material they used, nor the strength and
resisting power of the wall, and the resulting force of the
aerial rebound that destroyed the Louses on the opposite
side of the way. But they knew that they were deal-
ing with a murderous instrument, and were putting
to hazard uncounted innocent lives. It is time to
ask who and what are these secret and deadly enemies,
who are as reckless of their own lives as of the lives of
their innocent victims? who live in our midst, discharge
for us the menial works of our industry and civilisation,
are our hewers of wood and drawers of water, and who
spring a deadly mine upon us without a moment's notice?
With all the researches of our detective police, we know
little of the inspiring principle and organisation of
Fenianism.

The people of this country, as the Standard well ob.
serves, are law-abiding and peaceful. But a repetition of
such outrages as this may very easily change the feelings
of the populace. There were ominous cries in the crowd
last night for Judge Lynch. There were evidences, which
no observant man could mistake, of a terrible earnestness
in the curses, not loud but deep, that were elicited from
the mob as each mangled victim of Fenian prowess was
borne off to St. Bartholomew's or Gray's-inn Hospital.
God forbid that we should fan the flame. The Go-
vernment is strong enough to protect the public, and
it will do so. But it is plain that the extreme limit of
conciliation, and forbearance has been reached, and that
henceforth there can be no question of leniency to the
designing leaders of this course of murder and outrage, or
to their reckless dupes. We sincerely trust and we have
reason to believe that the perpetrators of this last crime
are by this time in the hands of the police. We know
now what sort of men we have to deal with, and how to
deal with them.

It is a terrible thing, ruminates the Herald., that in the
midst of the metropolis, at this age, a street should be
demolished as if by an enemy ; that detectives should be
on the watch to guard our prison walls from the assaults
of armed strangers ; and that practically something like
civil war should be raging in the very heart of London.
But the 'Very Powerlessness. of Fenianism is proved by its
audacity, and the astonishment of the public is a test
of the absence of real ganger. Still, it will not do to
tamper with the spirit which has grown up amongst
us of late. The time has come—and the temper of the
anxious crowds that gathered round the scene of the cata-
strophe yesterday proves it—when the Government is
bound to exercise all the rigour with which the law en-
trusts it as the guardian of the lives and property of the
nation. There can be but one sentiment amongst all
Englishmen at such a moment, that of a righteous
resentment against the malefactors who are thus openly
at war against society, and of stern determination to pro-
tect its rights.

The Telegraph has no doubt that this latest act of the
secret society will put to flight all that sentimental sym-
pathy which has been lavished on the Fenians in some
quarters. When they conspired in Ireland, when they
made war in Canada, when they took the field in Kerry
and Dublin, they. were treated with a leniency that no
other nation on earth would have shewn. The lives of
their leaders were spared, and the dupes who followed
them were lightly punished. The clemency of the
British people is first rewarded by the murder of a con-
stable in the execution of his duty, and now by an
unprovoked and savage outrage which tu.s scattered
wounds and death among innocent and helpless house-
holds. , Hitherto the Fenian conspiracy has not been
regarded with any feeling much stronger than repugnance,
but the Clerkenwell tragedy has revealed a depth of guilt
that precludes all further mistake. This detestable act of
yesterday has a fearful value of its own, since it plainly►
discloses the true nature of tho league, and the enormities
which spring from it. British civilisation, fully warns
will now wake from its arobv- and take ample rneasu
of pOpemtiop.

SALE OF BLOOD STOCK AT PARIS.

In expectation of an important sale, comp rising 11 well-
known horses from Major Fridolin's stud, sportsmen as-
sembled in rather strong force at Cheri's laF..t Wednesday,
but the majority were doomed to disappoin'Lment, as just
before the commencement of proceedings it was announced
that a protest had arrived from the juLdor partner, which
prevented the sale of all the La Morlaye 1,14. It being as-
signed that a split in the cabinet had tak 311 place relative
to the partnership of the stud, at least that the Eastern
partner wishes to get out of the concerti or to become its
sole master, friendly arbitration has bill 4:1 to bring matters
to a crisis, which may account for this protest, and it is
said that in the course of a few weeks th e subject will in-
terest the lawyers. However, as the horses have boon ad-
vertised for a fortnight., it is a pity that.inatters were not
arranged a little sooner, fur, besides ',tinging down the
whole of the professional element from Chan Lilly and Le
Croix " to be sold," instead of to witness a sale, we noticed
several commissioners from a much longer distance, in-
cluding ono from Belgium and one from the neichbourhood
of Rouen. After the usual sale of hacks an 1 carriage
horses, the following thorough-bred lots were put up and
they realised the prices appended:—