Widnes Examiner. — 1882-05-20 (Widnes, Cheshire, England)

HALTON PARISH CHURCH.  On Sunday, hymns and music suited to . the occasion, notably the hymn, .  _ God moves in a mysterious way His wonders to perform, were sung, and the special prayer for immunity from wars and tumults was used. The Vicar preached on the subject of the Phcenix Park tragedies both morning and evening. In the morning he took his text from Genesis iv, 8., "Where is Abel thy brother? The voice of thy brother's blood crieth unto me from the ground," upon which he remarked how the passions of men inclined them to deviate from the path of duty. At the close of his sermon the preachet said: And here I must conclude with a few remarks as to the cause of my having chosen the subject of the sixth commandment this morning. Saturday, the 6th of May, 1882, will ever be marked in the annals of the British Empire as the day which witnessed a crime absolutely unparalleled, even in the present blood-stained age. The news which the wire brought from Dublin last night week, and which had been authenticated beyond all question on Sunday morning last, when peaceful English folk were going to church, was so thoroughly startling that it was almost beyond belief, and yet in its issue it was found to be exact in all its ghastly details, and the lifeless bodies of Lord Frederick Cavendish, second son of the Duke of Devonshire, and Mr. Burke, who was a member of the Roman Catholic Church, of ancient family, and heir to a baronetcy, lying in the Chief Secretary's Lodge, were the sad vouchers of the truth of the story with which we are now only too sadly familiar. The character of the crime, its audacity, its hideous cruelty, and its far-reaching and unknown circumstances; the noble sacrifice of the two victims, the one literally grey in the service of Ireland, and the other taking up a post of danger and difficulty at a critical moment, simply from a desire to save the ill-fated country from further exhibitions of a revolutionary spirit. I must not, however, said the Vicar, enter into particulars, for newspapers of the past week have already supplied you with them, but there is one aspect of the awful calamity which it seems to us ought not to be left out of sight, and it is, that although in this case public officials of high rank have been cruelly murdered yet the act is only a repetition of that which has been permitted to go unpunished month after month, week after week, with wearisome iteration, for now nearly two years. We must not—we cannot—be blind to the fact that such murders of those of Lord Montmorres and Mrs. Smythe were, in cold blooded cruelty, as foul as the crime on Saturday, and that the fate which has so unfortunately overtaken Lord Frederick and Mr. Burke is, in reality, only the natural sequence of the, let us say, apparent forgetfulness by the Government of a long chain of murderous deeds, to which this only adds another link. The blow has at last come home to the Government, and it has been felt again and again in many a desolated home, from which cries for retribution and justice have gone up; but only to be answered by official expressions of regret. The bring in a bill for the prevention of a repetition of such crimes is, of course, nothing more than the circumstances of the case require and demand; but the ruined homes and bereaved families of numberless persons, less exalted, perhaps, but not the less worthy of national sympathy and protection, have too long called, yet called in vain for some such legislation until now. The TicaT urged his hearers to unite in the national expression of sincere sympathy with the bereaved ones, and again to pray, "That it may please Thee to succour, help, and comfort all that are in tribulation," and especially those who are so through this dire calamity.