The Express. — 1867-12-16 (London, England)

THE FERIAS OUTRAGE.  The Times observes with satisfaction that the persona already apprehended on suspicion of participation of the above outrage have been charged with wilful murder ; and, if this charge should be ultimately substantiated on legal grounds, it will receive the fullest sanction from the moral sense of the community. The crime removes all doubt as to the nature of the struggle in which we are now engaged. Our path will no longer be obscured by the shadow of political considerations. We are confronted by a gang of reckless criminals, who respect no laws, human or Divine, and the government cannot now hesitate in exerting the utmost vigour of the law. In another article the Times instances the cessation yesterday of the funeral demonstrations as a proof that the instinct of order has not yet died out of the national mind. We are painfully made to feel, says the Daily News, that between us and the people who do these things there is no bond to restrain the impulses of a malignant fanaticism. They march straight to their goal, showing no concern for their own lives, and none for us and our children, when we come in their path. The disregard of consequences to themselves is a perplexing element in the situation, for it disappoints the hope that an exemplary act of severity would teach them a lesson they would never forget. Already people are remarking that Caleraft's heroic remedy is a failure. We "hall of course continue to administer it until we find something better to do ; but confidence in its sovereign efficacy is gone. No measures the government can take can be too strong which are directed to the detection of the guilty and the diffusion of a general sense of ease and safety ; but before proposing measures abrogating our ordinary constitutional securities it will be well to inquire whether the best use is at present being made of the powers already at the disposal of the government. At present we are compelled to ' doubt it. If the reports which have been published are true, this explosion, with all its terrible consequences, might have been prevented by a little more vigilance on the part of the police. Meanwhile there is no fear that a fitting penalty will not be meted out to the authors of this crime ; and with regard to a provision for the innocent victims, the Daily New: takes leave to suggest that the peculiar origin of this calamity marks it as an occasion when the government itself ought to become the organ of the national feeling. The Herald trusts the researches which are now to be made will bring to light the persons in the background who pay the cost of enterprises of this kind. There must be a secret committee in London or elsewhere, a band of conspirators with considerable funds at their disposal, to instigate these outrages from what they imagine to be a position of security. The Telegraph looks to the catholic clergy for a useful alliance, and says it will be a great blunder if we give thew at this moment any offence. It would also be unworthy of the English nation if its anger against Fenianisin should render it deaf to the just discontent of the Irish people against wrongs that English legislation still sustains—an alien church, the creature of conquest, and the living memorial of the penal laws ; and a lead system that makes Irish agriculture miserably poor. We may hang convicted Fenian" with a gcod conscience, but we should also thoroughly redress these evils distinctly due to English policy, and still supported by English power. The Post dwells on the fresh evidence which has been given of the incompetence of the London police to deal with the Fenian conspirators. The Star cannot bat believe that this deed will produce a reaction and a revulsion in the feeling even of Irish rebels. It would be a sin against human nature to suppose that there can exist anywhere many creatures so utterly Mee and wicked as they who planned and they who perpetrated the crime over which now all England shudders.