Kelly, the Fenian who escaped from Manchester, has despatched a
letter to the Universal News, in which he threatens not obscurely that unless Fenians are treated as prisoners of war "reprisals" may be made upon high officials of the Government. He also hints that the Fenians have it in their power if unjustly treated to barn the docks and warehouses in Liverpool, Manchester, and London. Letters of this kind do as much mischief as the recent incitements of the press to lynch the Irishmen—they keep up the most dangerous of all spirits, race hatred. We do not believe that the Fenian leaders, who in the rising treated their captives as prisoners of war, have any plan of political assassination, but letters like this act as incentives to men over whom they have no control. One such act in the present state of English feeling would be followed by a burst of fury which the Irish would feel for a quarter of a century. Let them remember the effect on American opinion of the attack on the negroes in New York.
