The Portland daily press., 1867-12-04

Wednesday Morning, Deoember q, 1857,
The Man with Three Countries.
PORTLAND.

Ihe NuHu Win Ahfee COumtrsea.
The condition of a man, ifsuch there lives.
by whom the protecting @gis OF no country
can be claimed for refuge, is indeed pitiful.
Equally so is that OF him whose allegiance is
divided,-who recognizes two co-existent
powers, each having claims to his fealty.
Worse still is his whose situation superadds
10 the difficulties of the second contingency
we have mentioned, claim Of yet thiId
jeets the claim with profound aversion. A fa-
tai confusion of ideas arose among the people
OF the Southern States growing out Of the
teachings of Calhoun ON the subject of tie
paramount sovereignty OF individual States
over their own citizens. Garibaldis case
presents another phase of the difficulty. He
is subject of the Italian King and member
OF the Italian legislative body; he is also
naturalized citizen of the United States, and,
when arrested by his own government, de-
mands the privilege of a subject of a foreign
state But the most complicated case is that
of the Irish Fenian. He Is, in the first place,
naturalized citizen of the United States; in
the second place, he chooses to regard himself
as owing his first and most sacred allegiance
to an ideal Republic, which is not recognized
as government either de facto or de jure by
any other power in the world, but which has
such potent sway over the hearts and i'm
agnations OF its subjects that they die with
rare heroism, exultant and defiant, for its
sake; in the thild place, England, recogniz-
ing his citizenship in neither the Irish nor
the American Republic, requires submission
to herself alone, and hangs him in pursuance
of her own conception Of the case, if he vio-
lates her laws. So it happens that between
his real American citizenship, which he is only
half satisfied with and proposes to regard
as mere provisional arrangement, the citi-
zenship which he feigns, and that which is i'm
posed upan him sorely against his will, the
Irshmar. is in strait which would drive an
intellect less sanguine and hopeful than the
Hibernian's to the verge of distraction.
Fenianism is not by any means dead, and
that it may never die till the green flag waves
over free Irish commonwealth all lovers of
liberty and justice are bound to hope. 1t has
suffered a decline in activity and efficiency On
this side OF the Atlantic, no doubt. Its true
field of operations was not here, where it
could make no movement without involving
a country which had kindly sheltered and
adopted the lost children of Erin, in embar-
rassing complications. In Ireland, too, the
rigorous measures Of the British government
have not been without their effect in sup
pressing general outbreaks and warding off
hostile attacks from invading forces. But in
Englan4 itself, the Pecksniff that moums for
Crete and snivels over Italy while itself for
long years persists in a blacker iniquity, Fe-
nianism is more annoying and dangerous
than ii has been elsewhere. 1t menaces even
royalty itself and compels the government to
guard the Queen at Windsor Castle. 1t Is sac-
tive and aggressive in Liverpool and in all the
great manufacturing towns OF England
1t keeps the local police forces con-
stantly on the alert. No man can tell
what will happen next, and government and
people find themselves in extreme perplexity
to imagine how the efforts OF the formidable
organization can be baffied. In the speech
at the opening OF Parliament-that oracular,
nor-eommittal production, which is by an
absurd fiction styled the Queen's speech
Feniansm is waved aside in a manner which
is the perfection of 'Podsnappery." "The
treason able conspiracy commonly knorn as
Fenidnism," says the Queens minister, "baf-
fed and repressed in Ireland, has assumed in
England the form of organized violence and
assassination. These outrages require to be
vigorously put down; and l rely for their
elfectual suppression upon the firm admins
tration of the law and the loyalty OF the great
mass of my subjec.s." Thus Mrs. Podsnap,
as the medium of some invisible Mr.. Podsnap
behind the throne. Meanwhile the ''organiz-
ed violence continues to work in a way that
Lord Derby, the visible Mr.. Podsnap, is pleas
ed to call 'cowardly." Occasionally some or
the people "comMonly known as Fenians'
are arrested and brought to trial This only
increases the difficulty. The Irish patriots
are willing to be martyrs so long as thousands
OF avengers rise from their blood. 1t would
have been lar better for England to have fur
nished Larkn, Allen and O'Brien with free
tickets to America rather than to have hung
them at Manchester the other day, as witness
the threatening thousands that assemble todo
honor to their memory in London, Manches-
ter, Dublin and Cork. On the whole, this
English phase of Fenianism is more formida-
able than any which has precs ded it, ami
threatens to involve Mrs. Psdsnap, Mr.. Pod
snap and the whole Podsnap family in more
serious difficulties than they have ever before
lives. 4G