Page:A letter to the Right Hon. Chichester Fortescue, M.P. on the state of Ireland.djvu/8

 Cork and Dublin; and every artifice was used to excite sympathy for the martyrs who had been convicted of murder, and had suffered for their crime.

These unseemly processions were forbidden at Liverpool and in Ireland not a day too soon, and thereupon ceased. They were not public meetings for the purpose of passing resolutions, or agreeing to petitions or addresses; they were simply demonstrations against law, justice, and the Queen's authority.

The murder of men, women, and children, belonging to the working classes, which took place at Clerkenwell prison, is another of these Fenian outrages; and, although disavowed by the Fenian councils both here and in America, is clearly entitled to the same pretended defence as the Manchester murder, that it was perpetrated for a treasonable purpose.

I may add that I was informed, two years ago, by a gentleman who had been present at a Fenian council at New York, that the plan there approved was, a plan not to attempt an open rebellion, but to alarm the British Government by constant surprises and outrages, till the time should come when insurrection might be hopeful.

But it is clear that, if the word be given throughout Great Britain and Ireland that desultory outrages and surprises are to be attempted, no one can pretend to direct the precise course of such crimes; and that it is vain to deny the responsibility of atrocious murders when, by the mistake or inexperience of a volunteer miscreant, the Fenian convicts are not