The Sun.
London, England, 1867-11-27 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF LATVLESSNESS.

Respect for law has long been one of England's
most characteristic political virtues. The allusion,
therefore, in the Queen's Speech to the conspiracy
commonly known as " Fenianism," and to its ex-
istence in England " under the form of organized
violence and assassination," sounds strange in
English ears. That organized violence and assas-
sination should exist, in revolutionary Italy we are
not.surprised, since law is openly violated by the
Government itself ; but that the spirit of lawless-
ness should be abroad in England shows that we
are entering upon a new state of things, which it
is difficult at first to realize to ourselves. This
lawlessness in Italy and Ireland is called Gari-
baldianism and Fenianism ; in England it has as
yet no specific name. Its aim, however, is to kindle
a war of classes, and to introduce mob rule. It
takes up with what there is of Fenianism in our
large cities, not out of sympathy with Ireland and
Irishmen, but in order to make use, for its own
ends, of a bold and audacious organization, and of
a cause which has a name. Distress in many parts
.of the country, arising from the dearness of pro-
visions and from the want of employment con-
sequent in no small measure on the recent strikes,
has given those whom Mr. Disraeli well describes
as the " nincompoop of politics," an opportunity
which they are endeavouring to turn to their own
purposes. Insolent demonstrations, such as that
the other day at the Home Office, monster meet-
ings, presentations of petitions by masses of men,
have not so much for their object to save the Fe-
nians condemned to death at Manchester, as to
intimidate our Government, and override the
authority of the law. The Government, in the
Queen's Speech, has appealed to the country for
support in the maintenance of the law, and most
assuredly the vast majority of the country will
uphold the cause of order and authority. The
lawless spirit of the Revolution, fed by the secret
societies of which Fenianism is one, has made its
appearance in our English cities, and has given us
a specimen of its handiwork. What too many of
the leaders of English opinion have approved of
in Italy, they must now perforce condemn in
Manchester. The sight of blood, shed in the
rescue of political prisoners guilty of conspiracy

against public order and public right, has forced
those who applauded the lawless invasion of
Garibaldian bands into the Papal States, to invoke
the highest penalty of the law against the dis-
turbers of public peace and the destroyers of
human life. The Fenians at Manchester have
forfeited their lives to the law ; they have offended
against the highest rights of the State, whose first
duty it is to protect the lives of its citizens. On
the score of justice nothing is to be said in
favour of mitigation of punishment; but the
policy at the present moment of :executing the
four convicted offenders at Manchester is quite
another question. We have already, when last
we wrote on the subject, urged considerations
why the Government should temper justice with
mercy. The truth is, England as a nation has
not clean hands in [the matter of political
crimes ; it has sympathised too long and too
publicly with the Revolution abroad to be alto-
gether guiltless of its excesses at home.

Is this a moment when leaders of public opinion
in England, when English statesmen have been
sympathizing with and supporting the most law-
less of invasions, when even the Speech from the
throne describes the lawless bands who crossed into
the Papal States, pillaging and slaying peaceable
citizens, simply as Italian volunteers—is this a
moment for England to hang four Fenians at Man-
chester? In lawlessness, in immorality, in blood-
guiltiness, Fenianism cannot for a moment be
compared to Garibaldianism. In comparison with
Mazzinian infamy, as yet it is like snow to scarlet.
As long as England as a nation applauds the
murderous deeds of the Revolution in Italy, and
apologizes for the assassinations committed by
Garibaldi, and the sanguinary Triumvirate at
Rome in 1849, so long will it be in a difficulty as
to the punishment of political offenders like the
Fenians condemned to death at Manchester.

Some such uneasiness as to our position in re-
gard to political offenders may be traced, it seems
to us, in the eagerness with which Lord Derby
declared that the Fenian attacks did not come un-
der the category of political offences, but were
cowardly and dastardly outrages, not differing
from murder ordinarily committed.
But is not this begging the question? Are not
the adepts of the Revolution, whether they be
Fenians or Garibaldians, cowardly assassins, who
stab in the dark, outrage women, and blow up un-
armed and unsuspecting men with gunpowder bar-
rels. The characteristics which Lord Derby im-
putes to the Fenians, are just the attributes com-
mon to political offenders of the stamp of Garibaldi.
Organized violence and assassination are the
means which the Revolution, which we have so
applauded in the distance, never fails to make
use of. Assassination is a Revolutionary virtue.
The bombs which Orsini used against Napoleon
did not remove the Italian criminal from the cate-
gory of political offenders.
It is folly, therefore, to infer from the character
of their crime that the Fenians who attacked the
police van at Manchester, and killed Sergeant
Brett, were not political offenders. Fenianism in
all its. ramifications is a political conspiracy as
as the Revolution is in Italy ; but what English
speakers and writers are too apt to forget is that
political offences of this description are great moral
crimes, justly to be visited with the severest pe-
nalties of the law. The point of our argument
only is, that we ought not at the same time to
blow hot and cold, sanction in Italy what we
condemn in Ireland and Manchester ; and then
when we are brought face to face with lawless
conspirators who shed blood, deny, as Lord Derby
does, that they are political offenders.
Admitting, as we do fully, the criminality of Fe-
nianism, granting that there is a spirit of lawless-
ness abroad which is not without danger in the
present state of things in England, upholding the
principle that political crimes are not exempt from
the/extremest penalty of the law, we yet hold that
England, at the present moment, is not so guiltless
of the crime of moral participation in Revolution-
ary acts and schemes as to be able, with a clear
conscience, to execute the Fenians at Manchester.
Not so much for the sake of the unhappy Fenians
—although they, too, are less guilty in England
than in a country where Revolution is regarded
as a crime—as for the sake of England itself, do
we hope that the sentence of death will not be
carried out.— IVestminster Gazette.