21 SEPTEMBER 1867, Page 4

TOPICS OF THE DAY.

THE FENIAN MOSQUITO.

THE true annoyance of this Fenian torment, which naturally, though excessively, rouses English impatience, is its entire incalculability. There is no more reason to expect it to break out afresh in one place than in another. We should not feel the smallest surprise in hearing 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 impor- tance, 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 chance of subse- quent 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 hun- dreds of thousands,—possibly half a million of fellow crea- tures, 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 co- herence in it that its object was limited to liberating two Fenian prisoners, which object it successfully effected. No doubt, but Captain Kelly and Captain Deasy were not lurking about Man- chester, with revolvers in their pockets, with any peaceful pur- pose, and it is tolerably certain that the well organized attempt to set them free was but a substitute for some equally well or better organized 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 Fenians 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 Fenians, 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 fellow-men scattered over the earth who are capable not merely of murder from a political motive, bat of murder perfectly capricious, perhaps designedly capricious, in each particular' instance, and this absolutely without relation to the certainty or uncertainty of punishment,—is no doubt, not to Englishmen indeed an intimidating, but a very vexa- tious and fretting sort of consciousness. Scientific men often dwell on the horror the world would present if there were no kind of order in its phenomena, and either the actions of men or the operations of nature were entirely incapable of approxi- mate calculation. This delightful condition of things is, so faf as the power of the Fenians extends, completely realized by their enterprises. Nobody would be astonished to hear 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'ilat originated by Fenians had occurred in New Zealand, or that the Irish Republic had been proclaimed in Sark. If there were only enough Fenians willing to sacrifice themselves in dif- ferent parts of the world every day, it really would be- come a most unpleasant sort of guerrilla war upon society before the half-million or so, said to exist, had been used up. For more than ten years a hundred Englishmen might be suddenly killed every day in different 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 Fenians are not yet quite as reckless and mad as that. But this is the special feature of the torment they inflict,—its perfectly arbitrary and incalculable character. We confess there is something which strikes us as retribu- tive in this sort of torment from 'Ireland. Nothing can be more arbitrary and capricious than the English Government there once was ; and even now all its sins, or rather, all its deficiencies, partake of the same fault. The Irish tenant still complains that he has no security, no guarantee against the caprice of his landlord. The Irish priest complains justly enough that we capriciously apply one rule to the education. of the English people, and another to the education of the Irish. The Irish Establishment itself is one great act of most pernicious caprice. And the Irish politician tells us truly enough that even our petting of Ireland is capricious, that we- deny her the sort. of institutions and government which the genius of the people requires, and give her instead boons, such as immunity from special taxes raised in other parts of the United Kingdom, which are rather bad than good for her.. But such caprice in our Government as now remains is nothing to the caprice of former generations, and it is partly from the consequences of that,—acting, no doubt, on an imaginative tem- perament peculiarly open to irrational impulses,—that we are now suffering. There is, if we only consider it, something,— no doubt verylisheartining, for it ino intangible, so inacces- sible to the influence of ordinary motives,—but still remark- able, and curiously indicative of the warmth of the national temperament, in this strange capacity of the Fenians to believe that they are in some way taking personal revenge for national wrongs by striking at any vulnerable point in the whole British Empire. An English peasant would nourish the deepest vindictiveness against a private enemy, and burn down his rick without hesitation, but he would be wholly unable to see the satisfaction in running the most imminent risk Of his life for the sake of striking at a person of whom he had never heard, in a place where he had never suffered any kind( of wrong, simply because that person and that place were in- vested with the ideal character of a hated national name. We cannot help feeling a vague sort of awe and respect for so. wonderfully idealizing a power of resentment as this. Bat its consequences may be only too dangerous. If the lower- and more ignorant English once get the idea that all Irish are Fenians, and that all Fenians may at any moment attack Englishmen anywhere from mere national spite, we shall have to fear a great deal more from sudden outrages by them upon. the Irish, than from sudden outrages by the Irish on them.. How dangerous and savage are our lowest class- can be on- such emergencies, the recent Birmingham riots alOne show. We trust that the punishment of those convicted of this outrage will be prompt and severe, if only for the sake of the lower Irish themselves. Once let the English mob of places like Manchester or Liverpool get any idea into their heads that these Fenian outrages in England are too leniently dealt with by the law or by the Government of England, and they would be taking the law into their own hands. Indeed, this is, even now the worst consequence to be apprehended from these irritating outbreaks. We should tremble to see the result if those of our great cities in which Irish colonies exist, once got the idea that their peace and security were seriously threatened by Fenian machinations.