3 SEPTEMBER 1881, Page 2

O'Donovan Rossa, in the United Irishman, declares that it will

not be safe to travel in English vessels after the present date, for fear of the dynamite preparations which they and their friends have been making to blow up the said vessels, and drive the mercantile navy of England from the sea. At the same time, they are, it is said, assigning secretly particular lines of ships in which the initiated. may safely sail. Most likely, these threats are all boast, intended to make Englishmen uncomfortable on the sea,—which they will hardly succeed in doing,—and not corresponding to anything more than talk,— talk of doing what even Fenians would be ashamed to do, and almost all Fenian agents would be afraid to do. Sincerely do we hope that it is so. Any catastrophe of the ' Doterel ' kind, which could be traced home to a deliberate Fenian plot, would excite a feeling of blind rage in this country which it would be very difficult to restrain, though England has shown lately more self-restraint than she was wont to do. A wickeder and madder conception than this of destroying crews and passengers who never probably had any voice at all in any Irish question, by way of revenge on the English Parliament and constituencies, hardly ever entered a human brain.