Mr. Seward, wanting the Fenian vote for his master, took
it upon himself last October to ask for a record of the Fenian trials in Canada, couching the demand in words which implied that as the buccaneers had come out of the Union he intended to see fair play. The Canadian Government, though deeply irri- tated, resolved to commute the sentence of death to twenty years' penal servitude, and Lord Carnarvon on November 24 approved the resolution. He repudiates in language far too weak any claim of the United States to " supervise" the action of British Courts, characterizes the invasion as a " wanton and lawless attack," de- clares that the idle threats employed by the Fenians have not made mercy easier, and warns all intending filibusters that in future they will be visited with the extreme penalty of the law. It is not a plea- sant despatch for Englishmen to read. It would, of course be horri- bly unjust to hang men who otherwise would not have been hanged, because Mr. Johnson had bought votes by impertinence to Great Britain, but that impertinence should either have been ignored, or much more indignantly and curtly repelled.
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