The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1871-01-12
aP1R1T OF THE PRESS.
editorial Opinions ofthe Leading Journals
upon Current Topics-compiIed Every
DAY for the Evening Telegraph
THE FENIAN AMNESTY.

affixed TO their Liberation of the Feniau pri-
soners seems to us to be miserable mistake,
unwise ungenerous and unjust. To claim
credit for it ''as an act of pure clemency," :"
which not even the most malignant enemy of
the Government dare venture to misrepre-
sent, is hardly worthy of Mr.. Gladstone's
keen intelligence and serious character. If
ii be proper to append Queen Victorias name
to an act of amnesty granted to Irish rebels,
it should not be coupled with conditions
which even Louis Napoleon would have been
ashamed to subjoin to an am-
nesty offered to the most
dangerous and unscrupulous of the French
Reds. After all, the condition affixed to the
Liberation of these unhappy men is neither
more nor less than banishment for life. They
are required to leave the United Kingdom,
and to undertake not to return to it. This
sweeping and perpetual sentence is made
applicable to all of them, though there is
wide variety in their degree of guilt, and
also in the terms of imprisonment to which
they are liable. Some of them like Burke
and Mackay, have had sentence of death for
levyiDg war against the Queen commuted to
imprisonment for life-some, like Luby aud
Mulcahy, now five years in gaol have gone
through a great part of the period of punish
ment imposed upon them for writing news
paper articles which the Irish courts eousi-
dered reasonable in the good old time when
Sir Robert Peel, being Chief Secretary, de-
clared that he and Lord Palmerston would
stand or fall with the Irish Church.
and when Mr.. Cardwell solemnly
warned the Irish people that Parliament
would never listen to their demands
for tenant-right. If Parliament has
been wise in the work it has done during the
last two sessions, there was surely some little
excuse for strong writing in those days To
pass fresh sentence of perpetual exile on
such men, and on others whose sentences were
only for spaces of seven and five years. and
who would, therefore, be absolutely entitled
to their liberty after comparatively short pc
riod of further restraint-on men who have in
many cases, suffered so considerable propor-
tion of their sentence as has often sufficed to
let some hardened thief or desperate garroter
loose on our streets with a ticket of leave
on men the degree of whose guilt it would
be impossible to distinguish from that of
their comrades to whom full and uncondi-
tional pardon was given two years ago-to do
this is, we do not hesitate to say, simply,
utterly, and fagrantly unjust.
But apart from this general consideration
of the cese, these unfortunate men are we
venture to assert, entitled to claim their libe-
ration from Mr.. Gladstone, if not as an abso-
Lutte right, still in virtue of an undertaking
on his part, in some degree conditioned by
WulCu very Q6DrlV6
it of the quality of ''an act of pure Gle
mency.' When the Peace Preservation act
was before the House of Commons last March,
the late MIR. Moore, nj. p. for Mayo, had
given notice of his intention to bring the case
of the Irish political prisoners before Parlia-
ment. Such q motion at the moment might
have proved embarrassing. The Government
was, at all events, exceedingly anxious to be-
come possessed, with as little delay as posi-
BILE, of the necessary but formidable weapon
of law then in rapid process of fabrication.
Some communications of the kind usual in
such cases no doubt took place, for Mr..
Gladstone on the 18th of March submitted
to the process of an Interpolation on the
part of Mr.. Moore, the course of which had
evidently been arranged beforehand. GER
tain vague and gloomy amphibology never
theless pervaded Mr.. Gladstone's answer,
which dissatisfied Mr.. Moore, a man of vivid
and precise phrase; and four days afterwards,
when the question came on again, it tran
spired that Mr.. Gladstone. had agreed before
hand to give an answer in terms some what
more distinct. These are the precise terms
which MIR. Moore embodied in his notice of
a second question which he addressed to the
Prime Minister on the 31st of March: -"That
the consideration of this question the liber-
alton of the prisoners must necessarily de-
pend upon the restoration of law and order in
Ireland, and as soon as the disorders now
prevailing in that country are repressed, Mr..
Gladstone trusts that he will be able to give
q very different answer to Mr.. Moore, and to
announce the Liberation of the political pri-
soners.
Mr.. Gladstone said in reply that this was
the very meaning he had intended to convey
ON the previous evening. But what, may we
ask, did Mr.. Gladstone mean by the word
CELEBRATION p Did he mean transportation
for life? We know no case in which politi-
cal amnesty has been 30 interpreted except
that of Poerio and his comrades, who, having
been deported to the United States by the
King of Naples mutinied on the voyage, aud
carried their transport into Cork. But it is
evident that Mr.. Gladstone did not mean to
transport the Irish political prisoners to
America at the time that he gave the answer
to which Mr.. Moore objected as deficient
in clearness and SAVIOR; because in that answer
he spoke of the cruelty it would be to hold
out misleading hopes prematurely to the
friends of the prisoners. If it had been his
intention then to release those prisoners on
Christmas Eve, with the one condition that
they should never see their homes, families,
and friends again, then, we must say, so
much and such ostentatious consideration for
the feelings of their friends and families
might well have been spared Nor need the
whole population of Ireland have been bound
over to keep the peace on public conditions
expressed In Parliament, if such was the sorl
of political amnesty that her Majesty's Minis
teIs ultimately contemplated. It was not
perhaps, wise craftsmanship so to identify the
case of the political prisoners with the con
duct of the general population, that theil
Liberation should be made to depend on the
amount of crime perpetrated during the fol
lowing six months or so. But at all events tn,
peace preservation act appears to have an
swered its purpose. Law and order have been