Waterbury evening Democrat., 1888-01-12

pelled to pick oakum in prison under his sentence for violation of the new Coercion Act. His fingers have been made sore by the s'agreesble'' process and he is subjected to indignity because of ina bility to work His wife, Lady Blount, is not per l mitted to see him. Sir William Blount's ofense was mild speech made in favor of the National | League at meeting in County Galway. This l last phase of Balfour's brutality to Englishman of rank will stir up opinion in England
 This item was in the latest telegrams of our issue last evening. Do our readers, or any of them, know what the delectable prison process of picking oakum meansa We hope not practically, for their sakes; and wish we could say that the knowledge did not live in our souls in bitter memory. But no. There is something in the mem- ory to give whet to the keen pursuit of the ideal of lifetime; and persecution is, perhaps, necessary to the vitality of an ac- tive patriotism. It is crime that's disgrace ful and not the punishment.
 But this picking oakum is as degrading punishment as there is included in Brit ish prison rules. Imagine strong man, a man of culture, intellect and ranks like Sir Wilfred Blount seated on a three-legged stool without any appliance for back sup- port-not even the cell wall permitted as a rest-with a quantity of old ship ropes tarred into solid mass before him, and with the sole operation of his fingers and finger nails breaking up the mass, disen- tangling the strands and reducing the whole to it's old fbrous condition of scutched flax before the spinning jenny had been called into action. Woe to the prisoner who leaves taint of tar on the fbres-woe for the neglect that permits the strings to cling together. One time the nails are rent to the quick-another the flesh is cut to the bone-and all the time 8 brutal warden stands as overlooker, crying out occasionally, "Attend to your work, you fellows!"
 This is what educated gentlemen-what | Irishmen of every class-have to submit to Castle; for appropriately enough, the conceiver and concocter of the infamous Coercion Act is made it's chief administra- tor as secretary to the Lord Lieutenant This is the penalty for love of country pro- claimed and practiced against legislators and lawyers and editors; this is how the attributes that in other countries lead to fame and favor are rewarded by an alien government, and by the native scoundrels who, as magistrates, constitute the English l o,,l oI, ic+o To not according to law, but at the dictates of their masters.
 What will our people of Connecticut think of all this-the people of State whose Constitution gives them the inalien- able right of discussing political questions in public meeting assembled? And for simply having done this, the Lord Mayor of Dublin is prisoner; Editor O'Brien is in the same position, but with super added cruelties; and members of Parliament in ened with it. All these things might have been borne, with the equanimity which dis tance and indifference suggests, in Eng land; but when the tyranny is exercised in | simply of entertaining and expressing sympathy for a suffering and struggling nation, the British people who, as people as contradistinguished from British gov vernment, are sound at heart in their ideas of popular liberty, will come to see that there is something in it.' Sir Wilfred Blount picking oakum because he dared to express opinion for Ireland, will grate on their notions of the Magma Charta and Bill of Rights; and the refusal to permit Lady Blount to visit her imprisoned hus- band will find an indignant protest in every Briton's home. Perhaps, after all, it was well that Balfour tried his hand in perse- cution of the English baronet. The in dividual suffering of this man of title and rank may serve to put an end to the system under which men as delicate of mind and as pure of principle as he have been
 doomed to the felon's fate.
 IN another article we refer to the vicis-
 situdes of imperialism in France as illus trated by the Bonaparte dynasty. But : there was another instance in which French king sought an asylum and found a grave in the much hated England Louis Philippe-the citizen king had te , take flight in presence of the revolutionary
 pressure of 1948; he escaped to England as plain MT. Smith-to England, the ''per fide Albion still of French sentiment; but
 the "refugium" of all French state offend
 CTS. "Abiit evasit, erupit effugit" was said of the absconding monarch; but al Iriah poet made the king himself account , for his departure in letter to Queen Vic . toria:
 My darling Vic, said he
 I've cut my stick, said he
 For was in dread said he
 That I'd lose my head said he And if lost that said he
 hoxo yolo for, hok,co "a