The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1869-11-02
/ MIR. GLADSTONE AND HIS PRISONERS.

MIR. GLADSTONE AND HIS PRISONERS.
Prom the Pittsburg Commercial
The foreign telegraph has brought us a
synopsis of letter from Mr. Gladstone, ad-
dressed to the Town Council of Dublin, in
which he returns thanks in his own name and
in that of his colleagues in the Cabinet for
the approval given to the course of the Gov
ernment in regard to Irish affairs. In this
letter the Prime Minister also renders an ac-
count OF the reasons which induced them to
refuse amnesty to the Fenian prisoners.
BY the same despatch we learn that the
Dublin Amnesty Association are as little
satisfied as ever with the refusal of pardon to
the patriots, and that agitation on the subject
is to be kept up. In order to render it more
effective local associations are to be formed
all over the island. One is thus reminded
that Daniel O'Connell once lived and that he,
being dead, his influence is still operative
Agitation was his secret, and by him and his
coadjutorS'its arts were wonderfully deve-
loped and carried to perfection.
Few people in this country feel called upon
to champion England, OF to take her side in
regard to any question in which we are not
ourselves concerned. Still fewer are con-
scious of any temptation to take sides with
England in a case in which Ireland happens
to be her antagonist. American sympathies
almost universally flow out towards the native
island of SO many of our citizens. The effect
is also partly due to the prevalent belief,
surely well founded among us, that the Irish
have been misgoverned and oppressed by the
English.
So strongly indeed do these considerations
appeal to us in behalf of the weak against the
strong, that we sometimes fall into sins of
partiality not very creditable either to our
sense or our sensibility. At one time they
prevent us from seeking correct information
about the matter in dispute; at another time
they operate like cargo of iron upon the
ships compass. In the case of these Fenian
prisoners, for instance, we are afraid the
sympathies and even the prayers of many
good-hearted and rather intelligent people
are misdirected. Happily, we see
no indications at present that
the subject is likely to be a practical
one with us-or that anything more tangible
than sympathy prayers is demanded of
Americans; and it would be quite gratuitous
cruelty in us to demonstrate against such airy
cooperation. But if an attempt were made
to convert these ethereal weapons into others
likely to be more effective: if our Government
were again called upon to assume the charac-
ter of intercessor in behalf of the men now
''pining in British dungeons it would be
well, we think, for the citizens to comprehend
the enormity of the crimes of which these
miscreants were found guilty
1t might also tend to mitigate anxiety, ard
to suggest probabilities Of justice being done
the prisoners, if we recollected the conspicu-
Gus facts in the career of the English Premier
whose letter we referred to above A Tory
and High -churchman in the beginning and
for several years after he entered public life.
he is now liberal minister. The changes
which have brought him into his present posi-
ton were gradually and slowly made, and it
has been manifest to all England, even to his
enemies, that he gave up one stronghold of
prejudice and bigotry after another in obe-
dience to the constraining power of reason
and justice.
Those who can remember few years back,
know that during the troubles in Naples,
when all England was agog and indignant
about the horrible prisons in which the king
kept his enemies, Mr.. Gladstone went to the
place, and by personal inquiry gathered the
| facts which warranted his own Government
| to interfere in behalf of the men confined
| and tortured.
The drift of all this is, we think that when
such man says that he would gladly release
| the incarcerated Fenians if he thought it
expedient to do SO, we on this side of the
Atlantic ought to believe him. We may,
without self-reproach, leave him to deal with
the question.