St. Johnsbury Caledonian. [volume] (St. Johnsbury, Vt.) 1867-1919, 1883-05-04
Public Opinion.
A MAN WHO DOESN'T WANT To BE
PRESIDENT.

II. anu llllS Is OHt dluOuS Ills llltluN
recommendations for the high position.
Much smaller men aspire and plan for
the presidency. He is content to be a
senator of the United States n. Y.
Independent.
THE IRISH CONVENTION.
The Irish convention at Philadel-
phia completed its work Friday even
ing and adjourned. The resolutions are
both long and strong, but they bear evi-
dence that the dynamite party was
completely ignored by Their craftsmen.
They present an arraignment of Eng
lish government in Ireland, clothed in
lurld language, some of which might
well have been omitted. For example,
it is declared that the English govern
ment has put venerable priests to the
rack and impaled pulling babes on the
points of its bayOnetS. Unless this has
reference to some barharitieS of the
CrOmwellian period, it must he an eX-
aggeratiOn. The treatment of the Irish
people by modern English governments
has been bad enough III all conscience,
without drawing on the Imagination
for fictitious atrocities, or ranSacking
the annals of the seventeenth century
to thrill the hearts of the nineteenth
with horror. The practical point of
the resolutions is their declaration of
the intention of the new Irish national
league in America to ''suStain the Irish
people in the employment of all legiti-
mate means to substitute for it Eng
lish rule national government"
BY direct implication, though not in
4
the assassins and the dynamite fiends.
though, of course. it is still open for
these monsters to argue that "legiti-
mate means includes the dagger and
the bomb. The substantial grievances
of the Irish people. such as the OPP
pressive land laws, the maintenance of
civil disabilities, their wholesale dis
franchisement, the neglect Of their ed
ucatiOnal needs, and the constant
maintenance of martial law and all the
arbitrary suspensions of personal libeT-
ty which it involves, are fOrcibly re
counted, and form an impeachment of
| English policy which is substantially
just. The new league places itself sol
idly behind Mr.. Parnell, and the judi
ciously moderate tone of the cOnVen-
| ton, and its refusal to cOuntenance the
murder and violence faction, will give
the Irish Parliamentary leader all but
the strongest moral reinforcement
which it is in the power of the Irish
people on this side of the Atlantic tn
afford him. If it had gone Il step fur
ther and boldly denounced the dynam-
lite cOnspirators the moral weight of
the demonstration would have been
greater. Nevertheless, we think the
proceedings of the convention as a
whole amply demonstrate that the
overwhelming majority of the Irish and
Irish-American people of this country
are not i'll sympathy with crimes like
that of Phoenix park or with the Cos
pei of dynamite as preached by Meze-
rolf and recently practiced in London.
This being established, it would seem
to be possible for English statesman
ship, if it will only turn its mind from
a policy of hopeless retaliation to one
of generous redress, to initiate reforms
in Ireland which should result in salts
flying the great mass of rational and
well-disposed Irishmen, and restoring
peace to the distracted island. - Bos-
| ton Traveller.