The letter from Mr. John O'Leary, the well-known Fenian, which
was published in. Monday's newspapers, is of special interest at a moment when the Irish struggle is being centred in New Tipperary. He was asked to attend a meeting in that place held to protest against the treatment of John Daly and his fellow-prisoners, and in answer, he declares that it was "a piece of pure impertinence" to invite him to any meeting "in the so-called New Tipperary." "It must be well known," he says, "to all my fellow-townsmen that the cruel and cowardly attempt (God grant that it may not altogether succeed !) on the part of Mr. William O'Brien and Co. to ruin Tipperary by the creation of such a place could not receive the slightest countenance, direct or indirect, from me In the carrying out of this new and most nefarious develop- ment of the Plan of Campaign,' my fellow-townsmen have been forced into doing that to me which the English Govern- ment some five-and-twenty years ago could, but did not do— confiscate my property." With regard to the object of the meeting, Mr. O'Leary declares that he would do nothing to promote it. " Dynamitards and Invincibles are not political prisoners any more than Moonlighters or the like." "I sin- cerely hope," he adds, "that some of the men now in Chatham and elsewhere are guiltless of the crimes of which they have been convicted ; but that consideration has no bearing upon the question of the criminality of the acts themselves." The letter written by a man who bore a long imprisonment without flinching or complaint, is in strange contrast to the speeches of the men who shriek the moment the Government attempts to enforce the law on Members of Parliament.
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