The Birkenhead News and Wirral General Advertiser. — 1883-02-10 (Birkenhead, Merseyside, England)

FENIAN'S LETTER.  "A '65 Fenian," who justifies assassinations by secret societies, on the ground that if the "execution of a soldier for cowardice or treachery is justifiable, asuredly so is that of the member of an orgazization which he voluntarily entered, and the secrets of which; and perhaps the lives of the members, he would as voluntarily betray," has communicated a remarkable letter to the Dublin Daily Express. While he defends a "rough and ready justice" towards traitors, he speaks in terms of the greatest loathing of the agrarian murders which have been perpetrated in Ireland, and presents a formidable bill of indictment against the Land League. " The maimings " he says. "card scrapings, and shootings of poor, harmless men and women, who never injured anyone, who had betrayed no dangerous secrets, and who only wanted to be let live in their own way, were designed i and perpetrated by cowardly devils, upon whom the consideration of even Marwood would be thrown away. I have bad the honour of being a member of the Fenian organization, and the dishonour of being a " suspect," and I shall very briefly show you that it was not the Fenian organization, but the Land League, that was, and is, directly responsible, not only for murder conspiracy, but for many a brutal murder committed outside of Dublin. When Lord Mountmorres was murdered Mr. James Redpath approved of it publicly, both in this country and in America, and afterwards he received a letter from Mr. Michael Devitt appointing him the representative of the Irish National Land League in America. When young Boyd was murdered Mr. Parnell mildly expressed his disapproval, not of the murder, but of the violent  methods adopted where others were at I:•,nd. If I were to point out all the murders indirectly approved of by some , of the Land League leaders, I should ' liave to go through most of the agrarian murders of the last three years. Mr. Michael Davitt, to be sure, earned some cheap laudation for his sham ,lenunciations of outrages ; but where did he denounce them ? Before the ignorant, illiterate Land Leaguers of Cloubur, of Maamtrasna, et Castleisland, or Tulla ? Not at all, but from the safety of London platforms, lau,ihina in his sleeve, no doubt, at the idea of °the Connaught peasants reading the London papers or ever hearing of or heeding his "denunciations." It was my misfortune rather than my fault to have been arrested as a suspect. I was never a Land Leaguer. I had an instinctive feeling that the organization was an organized deceit, and the patriotism of its members was a bastard patriotism, The class of men I met in prison confirmed by belief. I shall not speak of their petty jealousies, their I mean rivalries, or their never-ending I personal squabbles, further than to say • that they were distingUished, and that a • book recently published, purporting to describe the conduct of the suspects while in prison, is a lie from cover to cover. I shall never forget the base callousness evinced by some fifty or sixty suspects in the prison where I was I detained when the murders of the 3 Plicenix Park were announced. If I said that th..ise indefensible and cowardly ) murders appeared to give more satisfaction than displi asure, I would not wrong my conscience, and, certainly, no word of condemnation of them was heard. ' Had any suspect been manly enough to ; express his disapproval, he would have been shunned by his ' brothers' as if • he had the plague. For nights the spectacle of poor Lord Cavendish and ' his hapless companion, mangled, dust' soiled, and blood-stained, haunted me, and for once I hung my head for shame 3 as an Irishman, and felt that it was • indignity indeed tope even suspected of being a Land Leaguer." If Irish " pat, riots" will only go on writing about each other in this exceedingly frank way honest men may hope to soon come by their rights.