The American Fenians have published a long and very stilted
address to the English people, addressing them by the " most endearing title which the sons of men can apply in their inter- course with each other," to wit, as " the liberty-loving people of England." " Gratitude," they say, " that feeling to which the race we represent have never been insensible, prompts us to recog- nize an indissoluble bond of union between you and us, in the sympathy which you have expressed " [we suppose the reference is to the Reform League] " with the efforts of our people to obtain that freedom for the enjoyment of which the Almighty evidently designed,"—and so on. The Feniaus go on to remark that the "rapine and the robbery" of which Ireland has been the object have only strengthened " the aristocratic element which to-day monopolizes the power and the substance of your own land," and which makes the English labourers "helots," and " spurns their demand for the rights and privileges of freemen ;" and so on, a whole waste of tawdry words about " infamy," and " robbery," and "land-tyrants," and "rods of steel," and " wealth wrung from sweat," and other rubbish. The circular goes on to promise that the struggle shall be " unsullied by any act at which a freeman could blush." It is dated New York, December 12th. On the following day the Clerkenwell plot exploded. Did the Fenian freemen blush or not when they heard of that noble transaction ?
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