The Central Glamorgan Gazette, and General, Commercial, and Agricultural Advertiser. — 1867-09-27 (Bridgend, Mid Glamorgan, Wales)

DIE FENIAN MOSQUITO.  The true annoyance of the Fenian torment consists in Its entire incalculability. There is no more reason to expect it to break out afresh in one place more than in another. We should not feel the smallest eurprise in bearing of a Fenian outrage at Vancouver's Island or Hong. Kong. That would be just as wise and just as useful to the Fenian cause as attacks on Canada, on Chester Castle, or on Manchester police. It is just like mosquito bites. The bite is of no great importance, and so long as you ensconce yourself in a mosquito curtain you are safe. But the business of life cannot be done ensconced in a mosquito curtain, and whenever you leave it you are liable to the attack, and this without any reference to the creature's chence of subsequent escape, which we have every reason to believe it does not condescend to calculate. Now nothing can be more vexatious than the constant presence of this sort of irrational danger, the extent and imminence of which no laws of either motive or apparent result appear in any degree to affect. It is really a consideration of no light moment that some hundreds of thousands— possiblylhalf a million of fellowcreatures, if we include the American Irish are capable at least of attacking their fellow-countrymen at any point on the globe where Englishmen are to be found, without the slightest reference to the chances of either military or political success. With regard, no doubt, to this Fenian assault on the prisoners' van at Manchester, it will be said that there was thus much coherence in it that its object was limited to liberating two Fenian prisoners— which object it successfully effected. No doubt; but Colonel Kelly and Captain Deasey were not lurking about Manchester, with revolvers in their pockets, with any peaceful purpose, and it is tolerably certain that the well-organised attempt to set them free was but a substitute for some equally well or better organised attempt, headed by themselves, had they been free to inflict a minute injury, a sort of physical prick, on the commercial capital of England. The truth obviously is that we are equally liable—and this is probably what the Feilians wish to make us feel—to suffer suddenly, anywhere all over the world, and without the slightest power of discovering why any particular place is selected for inflicting the puncture. The Fenian,, like fluids, press equally in all directions." Pure caprice--or the design to make us feel as if it were pure caprice, as if the whole thing were utterly incalculable and beyond the range of law or reason—alone determines these attacks. And to be conscious of the existence of, it may be, half a million of fellow-men scattered over the earth who are capable not merely of murder from h political motive, but of murder perfectly capricious, perhaps designedly capricious, in each particular in• stance, and this absolutely without relation to the certainty or uncertainty of punishment —is no doubt, not to Englishmen indeed an intimidating, but a very vexatious and fretting sort of consciousness. Scientifl, men often dwell on the horror the world would present if there were no kind of order in its phenomena, atm either the actions of men or the operations of nature were entirely incapable of approximate calculation This delightful condition of things is, so far as tlo. power of the Fenians extends, completely realised Iv their enterprises. Nobody would be astonished to bear of an attempt on Balmoral, or that Mr. Disraeli had been seized at Hughenden Manor, and spirited away from amongst his devoted farmers and labourers, or that a coup d'elat originated by Feniani had occurred in New Zealand, or that the Irish Republic hail been proclaimed in Sark. If there were only enough Fenians willing to sacrifice themselves in different parts of the world every day, it really would become a most unpleasant sort of guerilla war upon society before the half-million or so, said to exist, hail been used up. For mom than ten years a hundred Englishmen might be suddenly killed every day in ditterent portions of the empire, and it would be quite Impossible to take any precautions against a mode of attack in which no individual assailant would care to count on success or escape. Of course, even Feniana are not quite as reckless and mita as that. But this is the special feature of the torment they inflict—its perfectly arbitrary and incalculable character.—Speetafor.