The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1870-04-06
SPIRIT OF THE PRESS.
Editorial Opinions Of the Leading Journals
upon Current T Topios-Compiled Every
Day for the Evening Telegraph.
THE IRISH POLITICAL PRISONERS.

.
in the MnTseiLIdiSe. and the partial refutation
of it which has been officially communicated
by the Home Secretary to the English news
papers, ought to bring homo to all English
men, and especially to the Liberal party in
England the miserable and reckless folly of
our present law. 1t is probably the defect of
our national temperament--the defect which
of all others most disqualifies us for hearty
sympathy with our Irish fellowship bjects-that
we are rather obtuse and stolid about matters
of feeling, that we often fail to enter heartily
into the most obvious distinctions between
one class of actions and another, that we con-
found, for instance, hostility to the law due
to one motive with hostility to the law due to
quite other motives, and not only trent both
as crimes-which is absolutely essential
but treat both as crimes of the
same kind, and as compelling us
to treat the criminals in the same manner
Now, no one who has done us the honor of
reading our articles on the state of Ireland
during the last few months will imagine that
we are amongst those who can be supposed
for a moment to sanction any disposition to
trihe with the principle of authority We
called upon the Government to refuse the
pardon of the Fenian convicts-demanded
as it was, in spirit of violent and even inso-
lent menace as an absolute right-long before
the refusal actually came. We have not
scrupled to advise that even stern measures
for the repression of outrage, when none
others seemed effectual should accompany
the great remedial measures which Parlia-
ment has taken in hand. We are entirely
clear, then, of any charge of advising or
approving administrative weakness In the
Irish Government. But we feel none the less
strongly, perhaps even the more strongly on
that account, that there is absolutely fatal OBJ
tuseness in the policy of confounding, or ap-
pearing to Ireland to cOnfound, the character
of political crimes, such as those of which
the Feniaps have been guilty, with the ordi-
nary moral crimes for which sentences of
penal servitude are quite rightly inflicted
Nor do we say this with the least intention
of weakening-on the contrary, with the hope
of greatly strengthening-the promptitude
and courage Of the Executive in the repres-
sion of political outbreaks and the restraint
of political offenders If O'Donovan Rosa had
been treated from the first as a political
prisoner is to be treated by the new North
German Code, we should not have scrupled
to defend the Government had he even been
shot dead in any attempt to resist the orders
of his warders or to escape from his prison.
If every political prisoner were at once made
aware that from the moment of his convic-
tlon he was to be treated absolutely
without moral indignity, but with all
the restraints usually deemed necessary
for prisoners OF war or midemeanants
of the first class, and that any
attempt to break through these restraints
would be punished with military rigor, the
Irish political convicts would not only be
quite as safe as they now are, but there would
have been nothing like the same inducements
to the Government to find excuses of some
what slender character for remitting their
punishment, or to evade the prosecution and
conviction of new offenders. 1t is the
reflected consciousness which, in some dim
form, the Irish indignation at their treatment
excites in English politicians breasts, that
there is a real injustice in this system of not
simply restraining and Furnishing, but de-
grading rash and mischievous patriots, that
SO often holds our hands from taking ade-
quate measures to assert the authority of the
law. What, indeed, can be more inconsist-
ent and absurd than the blindness of English
liberals to the great and very just and senti-
mental grievance which this mode of deal
ing with political offenders inficts on the
Irish nation? Here we are all of us ad-
mitting openly that certain amount of at
least passive sympathy with Fenianism
pervades the whole popular spirit of
Ireland, and finding historical excuses
only too good-for that indisputable
fact, and yet allowing it to be published day
by day to the Irish nation that the punish
ment which we infict on the more violent
and active form of the very same feeling is
the punishment not of q firm but generous
enemy, but rather that of the moral contempt
and reprobation which we atfix to mean crimes
and sordid motives. We assert that nothing
could be better calculated to keep alive the
flame of hatred in the Irish people than a
policy which brands the rebellious spirit of
Ireland just as it brands the conduct of the
murderer, the swindler, and the thief. Can
anything be better calculated to stimulate
the popular confusion between agrarian assas-
sinations and patriotic Instructions than the
mere fact that we treat the treason of the
Fenian and the murder of the assassin as if
they belonged to the same order of crime ?
We confess that to us it seems a moral
scandal of the worst kind that the
political prisoners should not be
treated with all the outward respect
though with all the needfu1 rigor and
severity - of open enemies. From all
we can gather, we feel exceedingly little per
sonal sympathy with O'Donovan Rossa, be-
cause we can hardly avoid the conviction thai
he has written the letter published in the
MdTSe5SJGSSe without any of that regard tt
strict veracity which is essential to the honor
of gentleman. But who can imagine for q
moment that the Irish people who put hin
forward as symbol for their wishes ant
hopes in the Tipperary election, will accep
the English Minister'S version of the. facts o
the case in preference to his? OF course the,
will not, and of course every man with
touch of disgust for English rule in hi
breast, and a touch of admiration for tht
Quixotic courage of the Fenian insurrectioI
and how many of the true Irish people ar
there without such touch of feeling?-wil
resent, as if it were "a personal insult, thii
story of degradations such as they deem thC
fitting penalties only of dishonorable crime