We are glad to learn that Mr. Brian Dillon, one
of the Fenian prisoners, who was too ill to cross the Atlantic, and had, therefore, refused the pardon conditional on his not returning to Ireland, has been liberated with permission to live in Ireland, —so long as he may hope to live at all,—under a licence quite different in form from that given to the ordinary thieves and criminals. The licence is withdrawable at the Queen's pleasure, and makes it a con- dition that Mr. Dillon shall present himself on•the 1st of January in- every year at the time and place to be named by the Home Secretary or the Lord-Lieutenant, but it is in no other respect the licence given to ordinary criminals. This is a change in the right direction, and if for the future an entirely separate prison and separate regulations could be drawn up for political offenders, our law might punish treason as severely as it ought, without inspir- ing that bitter hatred which a sense of undeserved shame inevitably leaves behind it.
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