The Sun.
London, England, 1867-09-24 00:00:00

IRISH-AMERICANS.

The audacity of the Fenian rescue at Manchester
has excited the greatest astonishment, not unmixed
with consternation, throughout England. The
freedom with which the attacking party used their
revolvers on the Queen's highway at mid-day, in the
vicinity of the second largest city in England, has
produced an uneasy feeling that a conspiracy
backed and upheld by such; desperate agents must
have extensive ramifications. What has caused the
most surprise is that England, not Ireland, should
be the stage of the greatest Fenian enterprises.
Nothing so audacious was attempted in the Emerald
Isle as the attack on Chester ; nothing so fatal as
the rescue at Manchester. The accounts show that
a man, named WILLIAM O'MARA ALLEN, headed
a gang of about fifty men, a large proportion of
whom had pistols, while others were supplied with
hatchets, hammers, and stones. The spot selected
for the attack showed judgment. The plan was
carried into effect skilfully and unfalteringly ; the
horses were shot, the police driven from the con-
veyance, the panels of the door burst open, and
on the refusal of Sergeant BRETT to deliver up the
key, ALLEN did not hesitate to shoot the policeman
through the head, thereby in a few hours causing
his death, when he deliberately forced open the com-
partments, and liberated the prisoners. Having
released the [lead Centres, who were handcuffed,
ALLEN devoted himself to saving KELLY and a man
named LARKIN to DEASEY. Both these desperadoes
aided their handcuffed chiefs over hedges and
ditches, and only separating from them on the pur-
suit becoming too hot, when ALLEN was heard to
say to KELLY "I will die for you." ALLEN and
MICHAEL LARKIN were captured, while KELLY and
DEASEY have, at least so far, escaped. It is idle
to disguise that there is something in this rescue
which displays a certain nobility of spirit. Both
ALLEN and LARKIN have devoted themselves to
almost certain death in their efforts to secure the
liberation of their leaders. Men who can thus act
must have strong faith in their cause, and find in
the society in which they move a deep sympathy
which could alone prompt the self-sacrifice. Brutal
outrages, such as those lately exposed in Trades'
Unions, are dangerous from the wicked depth of
immorality they indicate ; but the hateful character
of such villainy is in itself an antidote to the
poison, as publicity stigmatises both the acts and
the actors. ALLEN'S and LARKIN'S affair is of a
totally different kind. There are scores of thousands
who will regard these men and their fellow-con-
spirators as heroes, and even if they died on the
gallows will continue to regard them as martyrs to
a noble cause. This is the great difficulty of deal-
ing with such crimes. A more deliberate murder
than that alleged against ALLEN could scarcely
have been committed. He shot a brave and
unarmed officer when in the honest execu-
tion of his duty. He fired at and wounded
unarmed men, and be can scarcely com-
plain of his fate if the law, on such acts being
proved against him, should consign him inexorably
to the gallows. In all classes of English society
there ii a horror of such outrages. The employ-
ment of deadly weapons in Great Britain is almost
unknown. The policeman is but armed with his
baton, and the soldier when off duty is deprived
even of his side arms. The military some years
ago wore either swords or bayonets, but to prevent
the chance of such weapons being used in a fray, an
order was issued that they should be laid aside.
The free use of such arms as revolvers was un-
known in Great Britain till lately introduced by
a class who appear to be assuming a distinct type,
under the name of Irish Americans. The
thing an Englishman most abhors is the un-
fairness in a quarrel, of an armed man using his
weapon against an unarmed adversary. He re-
gards it as treacherous, cowardly, and cruel—to
be resorted to only in the most desperate extre-
mity of self-defence. It is on this principle that a
strong feeling of indignation has been excited against
the attacking party in the Fenian rescue. Yet
the rescue could not have been effected except by
the employment of such weapons. Even then the
crowd but waited till they thought the barrels were
empty to rush on the assailants. It is fortunate
that the spirit of suppressing the use of deadly wea-
pons exists so strongly, that the Government
will be aided by all classes in their strenuous
efforts to crush the vile habit of secreting
arms on the person which the Irish-Americans have
introduced. If the statistics of the United States
included the lives lost in paltry brawls, by having
revolvers ever at band, the number would show
what a price American citizens pay for the privilege.
Like other vicious customs, it becomes a neces-
sity. The one fearing to be anticipated by the other,
and knowing that his life may depend ou shooting
first, is urged at the commencement of the quarrel
to murder his antagonist. Witness the case at the
Union Hotel, Saratoga, where a drunken man in-
sulted a sober one, and stepping back, made a move-
ment as if to put his hand into the pocket where an
American usually carries his revolver, which com-
pelled the sober man to anticipate him at once by
shooting him dead. Thus a murder was forced on
him for an assault, he would otherwise probably
have treated with contempt as a drunken brawl.
Such an appeal favours the most vicious and un-
scrupulous, placing the best men at the mercy of
the worst, without even the small modicum of
nobility of fair play that characterised the exploded
system of duelling. The Irish in England will we fear,
if such outrages be continued, create a feeling of

intense dislike, which they will find easier to raise
than to allay, and which may hereafter be produc-
tive of great suffering among them. The injury
the Irish-Americans have done to Ireland is best
shown by more than one answer given to a gentle-
man who wished to introduce this newspaper when
travelling in that island. "An American paper !"
exclaimed one, who associated Americans with the
Irish specimens who claim the dignity of citizenship,
" if I had my way I would hang them all—they
have ruined this country."—Anglo-Amertcan limes.

THE PEACE CONGRESS OF GENEVA AND
THE PAN-ANGLICAN SYNOD.

This is a year of Congresses. Not now to speak
of the grand gathering of the bishops of the
world-500 in number, who at the feet of the
successor of St. Peter, declared that " they believed
and taught whatever he believed and taught, and
rejected as error whatever he condemned,"—we
have just witnessed two Catholic Congresses, each
of which, in the addresses which they presented
to the Pope, made a similar unanimous profession
of faith. At Malines, upwards of five thousand
persons took part in the Congress ; and at Inns-
bruck, more than two thousand of clergy and laity
attended at the general meeting of the Catholic
" Unions "of Germany ; and in these vast gather-
ings there was nothing to disturb the unity of
their faith, or to interfere with their profound
submission to the Holy See. They opened their
proceedings with the sanction of the Pope, and
concluded them by seeking the Pontifical blessing.
But outside the unity of the Catholic Church, there
is danger in such gatherings convoked for the sDcial
or religious guidance of society. They either
degenerate into mere solemn shams which excite
contempt, or break out into violent dissensions.
In imitation of Catholic associations, Protestantism,
Socialism, and the Revolution have been convoking
their Congresses, Councils, and Synods at Lau-
sanne, at Geneva, at Amsterdam and Lambeth.
Under the name of an International Peace
Congress, the European Revolution met in Synod
at Geneva. Many of its notabilities were present,
and many more were invited. Prim, whether or
no an invited guest, hastened fresh from his revo-
lutionary and sanguinary work in Spain to the city
of the Peace Congress, but Garibaldi was the real
hero and spokesman. Universal peace was to be
inaugurated by a general war, to overthrow exist-
ing dynasties ; to re-arrange the boundaries of
kingdoms ; and to alter the public law of Europe.
Implacable hostility was declared before all things
against the Papacy ; blasphemies were uttered
against the name of Christ ; and religion was at-
tacked with the ferocity common to the Revolution.
But the anti-Christian, Socialistic, and Revolu-
tionary doctrines avowed in this Congress excited
the indignation of the Catholics and of the peace-
able citizens of Geneva to such an extent, as to
lead to the sudden departure of Garibaldi, " alone
like a dog," as it is described, and to the tumultuous
breaking up of the " Peace Congress."
The former stronghold of Calvinism resents the
insults offered to the Papacy, and demurs to the
presence within its walls of the godless Revolution.
The Revolution was in earnest about its business,
and has paid the penalty of belief in its own
principles and doctrines by the irrevocable break-
up of its Congress. Has Protestantism the same
belief in its principles, or in the truths which it
ostensibly holds, and will it venture to bring them
to the test of public discussion, even in so solemn
and select an assembly as the Pan-Anglican Synod ?
It is pitiable to see the timidity which the Angli-
can bishops display in their programme of dis-
cussion, and to note the manifest avoidance of any
attempt to grapple with the real difficulties, the
deep dissensions, which are tearing their commu-
nions to shreds and bringing such scandal and dis-
credit on the Christian name. Unlike the Synod
of the Revolution—terrible in its godless earnest-
ness—the Pan-Anglican Synod threatens to be
nothing more than a solemn and rather unctions
farce. In an assembly in which so many bishops
of the Anglican Church, and of Churches which
the English race have set up in the various coun-
tries it has populated—countries of English blood,
language, and religion--in such an assembly ques-
tions in dispute as to the essential doctrines of the
Christian faith are to be carefully eliminated.
What is known to all the world cannot be unknown
to the dignitaries of the Anglican Church about
to assemble in Lambeth Palace, namely, the failing
faith in revealed religion among the intellectual
classes, the looseness of interpretation by which the
members of their Church explain away the funda-
mental doctrines of Christianity, the errors against
the Christian creed which Anglican clergymen, not
to speak of bishops, propagate without let or
hindrance, and which laymen adopt without
reproach—all this is known, and yet the Anglican
Church assembled in Synod does not venture to
define even one Christian dogma in clearer terms,
to speak a good word in favour of the Bible, so
long its sole standard of faith, or to pronounce an
anathema against the errors which are sweeping
away the remnants of the Christian faith yet pre-
served in its formularies.

What will be the verdict pronounced upon the
Anglican Church as represented by its bishops—
not by Catholics, for their verdict has been pro-
nounced more than three hundred years ago—not
by Tractarians and Ritualists, whose grief and
shame at the falling away of their Church is not
disguised—but by the vigilant and thoughtful
leaders of intellectual opinion in England, by the
enemies of revealed religion ? Can we doubt that
such a spectacle as the Pan-Anglican Synod pro-
mises to afford of interior feebleness and of out-
ward pomposity, of words without deeds, of the
profession without the fruits of faith—as shown in
earnest action against recognized evils—will not
be turned on every occasion into a most powerful
means of attack—effective ridicule against all
Church authority? For the faults of its counter-
feit in England, the Catholic Church will have to
suffer, if even the name of Christ be not alto-
gether lost in the land by the cowardice and
faithlessness of a false teacher.

Already in the intellectual press a mocking
anti-Christian tone— which was unknown in Eng-
land twenty years ago—is making itself heard.
The Times ridicules the pretensions of the Anglican
bishops, and vaticinates on the but too certain
results of their mock Synod. It denounces
Ritualism and Sacerdotalism, and demands a
reasonable worship in harmony with the spirit of
the age and of the English nation. The Pall Mall
Gazette more gravely argues that the Church of
England is not " an institution divinely set up for
the purpose of teaching mankind certain truths,
and conferring upon them certain supernatural
benefits, by means divinely appointed for that
purpose," but that " it is to be regarded as the
most important branch of the public service " for
religious purposes--that it is to conform itself to
truths as they are brought to light at different
periods, and not to set itself in opposition to the
spirit of the age.
All this, the Pall Mall Gazette acknowledges, is
utterly inconsistent with the fundamental ideas of
Sacerdotalism. " Great changes of all sorts would
no doubt be required," it continues, " to bring
this about—better discipline—much greater free-
dom of thought—reconsideration of the theory and
gradual modification of the practice of public
worship."
The Pan-Anglican Synod, by avoiding the
affirmation of the primal truths of Christianity,
so gravely and so openly repudiated by members
of its own communion, by the intellectual guides
and leaders of the nation, and by restricting its
attention to the discussion of three resolutions on
matters of minor importance, has already exposed
itself and the cause of religion, which it ought to
defend, to the scoff of the unbeliever. The Pall
Mall Gazette repeats the reproach which has so
often been cast on the Anglican Church, that it
was " dying of decency," and condemns the Pan-
Anglican Synod as being busy only on matters of
comparative detail at a juncture when, according
to the conviction implied by Dr. Pusey in his recent
letter to the Times, a considerable part of the edu-
cated classes in the present day required "to be
converted to the true belief as to Almighty God."
The Pall .314 Gazette gives the l'au-Anglican

Synod the cynical advice to reconsider the whole
position of their Church—to make it give lIP
" playing at a variety of antiquarian ecclesiastical
games "—and "to accept the position of the first
branch of the public service," and become in verity
a national Church in harmony with the faith and
sentiments of educated Englishmen in the nine-
teenth century.

This Gospel of the nineteenth century
is the
new religion announced by Mazzini, and approved
of by the Saturday Review, as expressing in sub-
stance, though in an Italian form, the belief of the
educated classes in England ; but if it be in har-
mony with the spirit of the age, it is in direct
antagonism to the first principles of Christianity,
as well as to the belief in a personal God.
On this new religion, which is gaining so inani
disciples in the Anglican Church, the Pan-Anglican
Synod—on account of the uncertainty and weak-
ness of its own divided faith—will, according to
its own programme, be as silent as the grave
.--
Westminster Gazette.