Denton and Haughton Examiner, etc. — 1880-09-25 (Denton, Greater Manchester, England)

SECRET SOCIETIES.  MERE is good cause for publio uneasiness when events or outrages, suggestive of conspiracy, occur in town or country, without the police being able to obtain any clue to the perpetrators. Notwithstanding the vigilance of detectives and the Government offer of a reward, no light haß yet been thrown upon the late distardly attempt to blow up with dynamite a train on the London and North-Western Railway, and the police are equally at fault in regard to the discovery of the three men who attempted to murder William Stephens, the Irish labourer, whom they shot in Sheffield more than a week ago. From the circumstance that the wounded man, who must have known his assailants, positively declines to give any information that would lead to arrests, the inference may be drawn, with some degree of certainty, that he was a member of a Secret Society, and that for some offence or short coming it had been resolved to compass his death. Indeed it has been aseettained beyond doubt that Stephens was connected with a society known as "The Hibernians"—a name which is sufficiently suggestive of Fenian organisation and aims, though it may also have been borne, in other times and places, innocently enough by Irish convivial clubs. The belief is that the would-be massing escaped from town the same evening, and in doing so they were the less likely to attract observation, as the stations were crowded with the traffic attendant on the Doncaster race meeting. Sundry indicatione—such as the night raid for firearms made upon a ship in Cork Harbour, and an attempted murder in Dublin very similar to the outrage in Sheffield—have made it apparent that a Fenian revival is trying to keep pace with the land agitation in Ireland During its quiescent state Fenianism has ' been kept alive on both sides of the St. I George's Channel by Secret Societies, which are believed to be as merciless to their own members at the Tebmgericht of the Middle Ages when their murderous behests are not obeyed. Though the existence of a Fenian secret society, called "The Ifibernians." has come to the knowledge of the Sheffield police, it may yet baffle them to find out its members or to get on the right track of the three who escaped from the town. About the railway outrage—the attempt to blow up a train—great mystery still hangs, ind the probability is that we shall continue to hear less and lees about it until it slips out of the official and the public mind. It is attributed, not to Fenians, but to expatriated Nihiliets, who were desirous of assassinating the Grand Duke Constantine when on his journey from London to Glasgow, whither he was going to inspect the Czar's now completed grand yacht. It is averred that the Grand Duke was warned of the plot against his , life, and that in consequence, changing his intended route at the eleventh hour, he journed to Scotland by the Great Northern line, and thus succeeded in reaching his destination in safety. There is an air of probability about this report, helping as it does to account for an atrocious attempt to commit wholesale murder which would otherwise have been inexplicable. Assuming the report to be true, in what a hideous character does it cause the Nihilists to appear! It show, them to be possessed of a pernicious spirit of spiteful revengefulness because they failed in their diabolical designs to kill the Czar when travelling  between Moscow and St Petersburg and between Moscow and Livadia. But what business have these infamous wretehes to transfer their cowardly and cruel attempts upon life from Russian to British soil? By doing so, they are only outraging the hospitality which has hitherto protected them since the time when they forsook their own oonntry to save their necks or escape exile iza