The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1870-04-29
THE FENIAN MUDDLE.
From the NJ Y. World.

Mr. Hallam, in speaking of the tenure of
Irish gavelkind, remarks, with ponderous
humor, that mo better method could be ie-
visod for perpetual supply of those quarres
in which the Irish are supposed to place so
large part of their enjoyment. What Mr..
Hallam said of gavelkind might be said with
equal justice of the Fenian Brotherhood. In
stead of concentrating it's noble rage in
torrent of armed men upon the Saxon, that
body disperses it in rills of objurgation upon
its own members. Who does not remember
the fierce factions into which it divided when
the great OMahony was basking in the splen-
dors of the ''Moffat Mansion" the noble
Roberts was welding his terrors in the
Bowery, and the escaped Stephens was re-
volving about the continent like the wander
ing and Hibernian ''head- of a comet
with nebulous tail of adherents?
This Celtic Cerberus, thus employing his
three heads in loud antiphonal ululation and
Intellectual swapping each at the other, was
naturally not very successful in his assaults
upon the British Hercules. In fact, success
was not predicable of him. But at last his
heads were amalgamated. Stephens fell into
sWart eclipse; O'Mahony sank into dim and
unrecorded, but, his enemies said, not unre-
munerative, disgrace; and the blackness of
darkness enshrouded Roberts. The six angry
jaws no longer bayed each other and the
moon, and Fenianism fell out of the news
papers and the general talk of men. Possibly
it was this ominous silence, and the further
fact that the Fenians were known to be led in
council by the only man who had ever led
them in war, that alarmed the Canadian mind
to the dreadful din of preparation which was
so lately chronicled in these columns
The design of the Fenian commanders, ac-
cording to the reports of their own familiars,
seems at present to be the peculiarly Fenian
and feasible one of "co-operating with Rel, :"
and striking Great Britain lethal blow,
which shall secure the liberation of Ireland,
in that vital portion of her organism known
as the Winnipeg region, where now Riel
surrounded by O few score of half-breeds,
maintains an unequal war against the rigor
of the climate and the tedium of otherwise
unbroken and primeval solitude.
But at this juncture interposes the
'Senate" to stay the blow, and proclaim the
treachery of O'Neill and it's own exceeding
virtue and wisdom 1t issues one of those
extraordinary and eloquent manifestoes so
dear TO the Fenian heart, and, alas, hitherto
so fatal to the Fenian cause. This body points
out how it, by its prompt action and un.
hinching integrity" "saved the Irish race in
America from the infamy of being identified
with the Moffat Mansion frauds" proclaims
O'Neills an insincere, madly ambitious, and
otherwise disagreeable person; and accuses
him of having E'trampled on" various things
''defed" various other things, and ''intro
duced discord and faction into the brother
hood"
After a brief interval of forcible repression
thus does the Fenian gunpowder fizzle itsel
in squibs. The time of action has gone by
The time of talking has come. The fierce
beaver ano the savage muskrat of ''the Win
| nipeg region" may rest in security and the
aldermen of Toronto sleep undisturbed; fo
the house of their Fenian foes is divideC
| against itself