The Sun.
London, England, 1867-12-16 00:00:00

SPIRIT OP THE PUBLIC JOURNALS,

This is what the Times says with respect to the fearful
outrage of Friday, an outrage whose memory can never
be erased from the mind of British public opinion :—We
desire to abstain from any language which could cause an
indiscriminating and unreflecting feeling of indignation;
but we cannot but observe that this crime removessil doubt
as to the nature of the struggle in which we are now en-
gaged. Our path will no longer be obscured by the shadow
of political considerations. The Fenians have cast the glare
of a great moral crime upon the debatable ground which
separates us, and we can no longer hesitate in what direc-
tion to advance. No man deserving of the name will ven-
ture to adduce political discontent in palliation of such
an outrage as that of Friday. It excludes all consider-
ations but one, that of protecting by every possible
method the elementary rights of humanity. Warfare,
however desperate, is not to be waged by these means,
and if there can be any reasonable and responsible per-
sons still engaged in the Fenian conspiracy, they are as
much interested as we ourselves in putting down such
atrocities. It is fair to notice that Burke and Casey them-
selves, when brought up before the police-court on Saturday,
protested their abhorrence of the means which had been
employed on their behalf. On the most favourable view,
however, they cannot shake off the responsibility of having
employed agents who have proved capable of such an out-
rage. If they are proved to have taken part in organising
the Fenian conspiracy, they cannot escape the guilt of
having deliberately let loose on this country a set
of wholesale murderers. This is the fact we must now
steadily face, and which has been indelibly imprinted on
the public mind. We are confronted by a gang of reck-
less criminals, who respect, no laws, human or divine.
We are far from saying that this is the character of all
persons who have joined the Fenian movement, or that no
other motives are to be taken into account in estimating
its origin. But we are justified in saying that this is its
practical issue at the present moment. That and
nothing better is what it has come to ; and we must
also add that those who, after this exhibition of the
characters who have been called together by the
conspiracy, continue to belong to it cannot be ex-
cused from full responsibility for all its consequences.
We can have no parley with men in an attitude of menace.
We must crush that at any cost. This is the first con-
dition of political life, and is nowhere so essential or so
justifiable a principle as in a country like our own. We
have free constitutional forms by which all classes are
placed on an equality, and through which all may make
known their wrongs and enforce their rights. To these
forms we refer all appellants, and to these all must be
compelled to submit. This outrage, therefore, will at
least have the advantage of simplifying the course of
the Government, and strengthening their hands. They
cannot now hesitate in exerting the utmost vigour of the
law, and they will be justified in doing so, not merely in
order to punish the perpetrators of the worst crime of
modern English history, but to crush a conspiracy of
which such outrages, we cannot hesitate to say, are the
natural fruit.

The Post, in a leader on the absorbing topic of the day,
speaks of Fenianism as a conspiracy which must now be
dealt with in earnest. Still retaining the semblance of
the self-devotion with which- it started, the unscrupulous
adventurers who head it turn it to other purposes.
Unable to compass their original 'designs, anarchy,
terrorism, and plunder become their object, in the
destruction of all order and civil peace. If this secret
society, which is the
.first of its class we . have expe-
rienced in England, is not at once stopped and trampled
out, we have a future before us such as is not pleasant
to contemplate. Continuous infractions of the law of
the most daring nature, and the consequent gradual intro-
duction of the military and police system of the Continent
into our free institutions, would become unavoidable—the
glory of the nation would have departed. We must, then,
fight this rising danger without hesitation, without fear.
We can afford to deal with Irish grievances without relax-
ing our efforts to drive out Fenian conspiracy. No matter
what Government may be in possession of Downing.
street, its duty is obvious—immediate and careful legisla-
tion for Trish complaints ; certain and swift punishment
for England and Ireland's disturbers.
The Herald trusts that the researches which are now to
be made, the reward -which has been offered, and the
careful examination of the suspected criminals, will soon
enable the Government to put its hand on this nest of
murderers. Upon such men all sympathy will be thrown
away. We will have no funeral processions to com-
memorate their fate. Our business is to crush the nest of
vipers which has warmed itself at our bosc;m, which
from a strange country has imported strange horrors,
which, to win Ireland for the Irish or for the Irish-
Americans, thinks nothing of putting London in
mourning or laying England in ruins. Our Govern-
ment is fully awake at last to the gravity of the crisis.
Fenianism has been dignified as patriotism, and depre-
cated as sedition. We know now that it is but another
name for murder—wholesale murder. The demonstra-
tions which were to be made on Sunday in several towns
of England and Ireland, in memory of the men who
were so justly hanged at Manchester, were very properly
forbidden by the authorities. No " funeral processions"
took place at Liverpool or Leeds, at Killarney or at Cork.
Though the news of the Clerkenwell outrage, if it had
reached those towns, must have suggested a long train
of such processions to come, we are charitable enough to
these misguided sympathisers with a wicked cause to
believe that the criraes of their leaders bad so filled
them with horror that they shrank from a demon-
stration which would have implied their fellowship with
assassins.

While, says the Daily News, it is impossible to exag-
gerate in a political point of view the effect of the recent
Fenian outrages, there is equally no question that they
have a serious bearing upon trade'. Commerce can mpport
and overcome many evils, bat poPular disturbance and
uncertainty are drawbacks that in these days at least are
not easily withstood. No one cares to buy or sell when
the whole current of affairs may be suddenly altered
by some unforeseen event against which it is im-
possible to provide. Probably the present agitators
reckon upon such a result. They must have heard that
trade is one of the vital sources of English prosperity, and
may imagine that the more they can injure it the better
for their cause. A series of movements that may reduce
ball the factories in Lancashire to short time, and propor-
tionally diminish the iron acid coal supply, fOrm a desperate
but an intelligible mode of warfare. It may be said
that Fenian outbreaks are not likely to damage our
internal trade to a very great extent, since there must
always be a certain interchange of commodities. We
wish but cannot believe it. Our foreign commerce, how-
ever, will chiefly suffer. The telegrams that by this time
have conveyed the news of the Clerkenwell prison explo-
sion to nearly every country in the Old and New World
will indirectly affect. the credit of even our most eminent
Linkers and merchants in London. To a foreign mind
the impression conveyed will be simply that there is ar
end to English security.

What may be the secret fancy of the Fenian chiefs in
promoting these deeds is as the Standard says, difficult
to surmise. If they think to frighten the Government or
the nation, they are, of course, simply demented ; if they
think keep a " cause " alive by a series of dastardly
murders, they mistake the times in which they live. This,
however, is hardly the occasion for inquiring into their
motives or hopes. It is a trite thing to say, but it is all
that for the.moment can practically be said, that the vigi-
lance of the Execntive must, both for the sake of dispelling
extravagant alarms, and for that of diminishing the public
danger, be incessant ' • that the authorities must not shrink
from their responsibilities ; that the law must make the,
weight of its hand unmistakeably felt ; and that with the
facts of these atrocities before us we cannot, in any fair.
ness or in common sense, begrudge the Administration any
discretion with which it may be constitutionally invested.
The Government of England has a power and a meaning,
and that power ought not to be brought into contempt, or
that meaning misunderztood. Nor upon either point
does our contemporary entertain the slightest fear.

Is not, asks the Star, the calamity of last Friday one
to give pause to all true and manly Irishmen who may
have felt tempted to lend their countenance to agitation
which begins by law-breaking? Is not any agitation
accursed which developes such crimes ? Perhaps even
Friday's horrors may not be without some com-
pensating result if they compel Irishmen in general
to acknowledge that only in the path of peaceful
progress can anything good for themselves or their
country be obtained. For if Irish rebellion have really
come to this if it is to be carried on by the murder of
women and the mutilation of children, what Irishman is
there with heart or brain who would not-declare himself
for ever on the-side of law and order? Certainly, the pro-
cess of debasement, even in rebellion, must be Wonderfully
rapid to-produce such results as these ! From Wolfe Tone,
captured in honourable fight, sword in hand—from Lord
Edward Fitzgerald, the chivalrous gentleman whom
English statesmen lamented; nay, from Smith O'Brien
and Meagher—what a di%tance must Irish rebellion have
traversed to come down within so short a time to the mis-
creants of Friday's massacre ! Ireland is, indeed, just
row to be pitied. If these are her friends, tell us who
else, are not her enemies. We cannot but believe that this
deed will produce a reaction and a revulsion in the feeling
even of Irish rebels. It would be a sin against human
nature to suppose that there can exist anywhere many
creatures so.utterly. base and wicked as they who planned
and they who perpetrated the crime ewer which now all
England shudders.
The fact of Dr. Kenealy having thrown up his bigot
because he was not certain that Burke did not sympa-
thise with the Clerkenwell outrage, is commented upon
by the Telegraph, which tells the learned counsel that he
was in court as an advocate and not as a judge. Even
supposing Burke's friends to Have been implicated, that
was no reason for withholding legal service from Burke
himself. Because a man's friends may have been suck
villains as to blow down a house and kill several people, that
is no reason why he should be refused the means of freeing
Himself from a criminal charge on another and a totally diffe-
rent matter. But that is precisely what Dr. Kenealy did
refuse, in so far forgetting the etiquette of his profession
as to withhold his legal assistance. Nay, not content with
saying that he would not defend his client, he made a
speech which was more damaging to his client than it
would have been if he had been counsel for the prosecu-
tion. It is amazing that a man of Dr. Kenealy's ability
and experience should have committed such a blunder, and
equally amazing that he should have defended it on such
arounas.