The Sun. — 1867-11-09 (London, England)

MIDDLESEX SESSIONS.  How far also Allen and his accomplices are morally guilty of murder is a question not so easily answered. It was not proved on the trial that Allen intentionally killed the poor man Brett who was inside the prison van. Allen fired his pistol into the lock for the purpose of forcing open the door of the van and Brett was killed. His death was not a deliberate killing, though it was an incidental result of the criminal enterprise in which Allen and his accomplices were wickedly engaged. None of the others had any hand in his killing, nor any intention to commit murder. 'There was no evidence that any but Allen had pistols. It is evident from this fact that the object and intention of the conspiracy was to liberate the prisoners, not to commit murder. Death, however. resulted from the lawless assault on the police van, and the penalty for this attack and its consequences is death by the hands of the law. Fenianism in its secret conspiracy as well as in its violent manifestations, in its principles as well as in its acts, has been condemned and denounced in the most explicit terms, by the bishops of Ireland and of England, as immoral, as contrary to the laws of God and of man, and as being in contravention to the persistent teaching in every age and country of the Catholic Church. Catholics, therefore, as a body, are guiltless of having given any encouragement whatsoever to Feniauism or to the Revolution in any of its aspects either at home or abroad. Is the Government, is the nation, is English public opinion guiltless of having set an example to the Fenians of Ireland ? Are we not, as a nation, open to the terrible reproach of having preached sedition, nationalism, revolution, in almost every country on the continent? What with no niggard hand we have planted in foreign countries has sprung up, to our surprise and scandal, on our own soil. In Fenianism we are beginning to recognise, to our horror, though as yet in a mitigated form, something of the freemasonry of Revolution which has more than once convulsed France to its centre, which has Sled to sanguinary civil wars, which has overthrown altars and set aside dynasties in so many countries, and which is now, not as a spent wave but in full vigour, overrunning Italy from end to end. Against this destructive and impious Jacobinism, there was once no more determined and successful antagonist than England. But those times are long past ; for many a day, wherever our influence extended and our tongue reached, we have preached and propagated Revolution. In this one term are comprised, we must remember to our shame, all the impious movements and conspiracies against social order and religion, from the sanguinary Jacobinism of 1792 to the Fenianism which has just shed blood in Manchester. England, to-day, has to answer to her own conscience this serious question—How far has her public conduct encouraged Fenianism in Ireland ? Have not the speeches of her foremost statesmen, more especially those of the Liberal school—have not the newspapers of either party applauded, in Italy and Spain, deeds of revolutionary violence ; and have they not everywhere maintained, except indeed at home, the theory of nationalities, and the right of insurrection ? And did not all classes of the people of England combine to do supreme homage to Garibaldi, the sanguinary head-centre of Italian revolution ? And what have the Fenians in Manchester done which Garibaldi has not done? In his lawless invasion of the Roman States—in his reign of terror at Rome in 1849—he shed the blood, not of one, but of hundreds of men standing up in defence of their Sovereign and. their country ; he is a public blasphemer ; he is a man who sets himself above the laws ; he is a mutinous soldier thrice imprisoned by his own Sovereign, and yet no words of praise which the English language affords but have been lavished on this public misdemeanant. Who then shall say that the praise and the public honour bestowed by England upon 1 a man who has proclaimed the right of oppressed  (Before the Assistant-Judge.)