Denton and Haughton Examiner, etc. — 1880-10-30 (Denton, Greater Manchester, England)

THE STATE PROSECUTIONS.  THERE is a general belief or understand• ing, partly confirmed by the arrest of Mr Timothy Martin Healy, secretary to Mr Parnell, that the Government intend prosecuting all the leaders of the Land League agitation, though no authoritative announcement to that effect has yet appeared This belief has been strengthened by a statement which came from the lips of Mr Herbert Gladstone, as it is thought he would not have referred to the subject at all unless he had received some offical inspiration. If the proverb embodied in the words "what everybody says must be true" invariably held good, assurance would then be doubly sure. This consensus of belief may at least be regarded as a clear indication of the direction in which public opinion points with regard to the present alarming aspect of affairs in Ireland. Of course there are individual opinions differing from the general opinion, just as we see eddies whirling round and round in the set of the strongest tide; but if the Government have been waiting, anxiously and patiently to learn the true feeling of the country, they i need hardly hesitate any longer as to the course they ought to take. It is impossible that anything really effective could be done to put a stop to the revolting outrages which cause shudders of indignation horror, and disgust if Mr Parnell and his accomplices were to be allowed to continue to incite the people, as they are now doing, to set the authority of the law at open defiance In the very height of the Repeal of the II Union agitation, Daniel O'Connell—who could wield the wills of his countrymen as the wind sways the trees of the forest— always abjured his hearers to respect the law and to abstain from violence. But the land lea .uers have not the same loyalty to law and order as D'Connell had. They are men of a different stamp and inferior cast. Murderous threats against landlords have peen shouted out at some of their meetings without calling forth from the platform a single word of reprobation Indeed it has seemed sometimes as if there had been a pre-arrangement that utterance should be 'given to bloodthirsty threats in order to make the meetings produce a profounder effect upon an excitable population If the platform agitators had decisively checked any such ruffianly excla,..ations at the commencement of their movement, it is not likely they would have been repeated nor the country disgraced by such atrocious outrages as have been taking place for months past. Mr Parnell and Mr O'Conor have no right to complain, though they have ventured to do so in some of their speeches, that they are unjustly accused of indirectly encouraging these atrocites. Have they ever stigmatised by their proper names the miscreants who perpetrate such cruel and cowardly actions as the houghing of cattle and sheep at treagclare ? The land leaguers have seen the outrages increasing in number all round them as they went on with their agitation, and yet they did not, on that account, abate in the slightest degree their fierce denunciation of landlords and landlordism. It might almost be thought, from the way in which they continue to speak and act, that they regard the atrooites as evidences that tueir words, calling upon the people to put an end at once and for ever to an infamous land I system, have not been spoken in vain. Let Mr Parnell and his friends openly denounce , the perpetrators of agrarian outrages—the I salmi who lurk behind hedges with loaded  Olerka and others who are °oasts. ntly engaged In writing would do well to try Macnivan and Cameron'e oelobrated pens, as we are convinced that there are none better. one trial is sufficient to prove their excellence. A sample box may be had et the offiee of this paper.