TOPICS OF THE DAY.

THE AMNESTY AGITATION.

THE Government would make a very fatal mistake in grant- ing at the present moment an amnesty to the Fenian

prisoners,—the fatal mistake of leading the Irish to suppose that they are conceding the great Irish reforms already effected or proposed, not because they are determined to be just, but because they have always been timid. We said years ago, when warmly supporting the suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act for Ireland, that the duties of maintaining order and of redressing grievances were strictly bound up together, and could not properly be separated ; that the duty of repress- ing with a firm hand anarchy in Ireland could only be justly discharged by a Government that should set itself at the same time earnestly to work to remove what it held to be legitimate causes of disaffection. We assert this still, but this time from the opposite point of view. As we believe most sin- cerely that any Government which punishes rebellion and puts off to a more convenient season the redress of grievances, while believing and admitting that serious and unredressed causes of disaffection exist, is false to itself and to the people it governs, we believe quite as firmly that any Govern- ment which, while sincerely and cordially addressing itself to the removal of grievances, does not firmly re- press rebellion, is equally untrue to itself and to the people it governs. The two duties are really indissoluble parts of a single whole,—the duty of removing all temptation to rebellion. If you foster the temptation and punish the crime, you are yourself in some sense an accomplice in the very offence you visit so severely. If you set about removing the temptation but cease to punish the crime, you wilfully mislead the people as to your estimate of the guilt of rebellion, and give colour to libels like that of the Tory Press in asserting that the present Government is willing to punish the loyal in order to conciliate the disloyal. No notion could be more dangerous than that the act of rebellion, so far from being sternly disapproved by Government, is thought the pardonable blunder of oppressed men. 'Whatever, indeed, may be the moral excuse for individual acts of treason, it is impossible to find any excuse for a Government which does not severely punish treason, except in one case and one alone,—where it is pretty certain that the interests of the loyal and orderly multitude will be better consulted by clemency to the dis- loyal and rebellious, than by severity. That such cases occur is obvious enough. It is clear, for instance, that the Emperor in inaugurating a free parliamentary system in France was wise to pardon political offenders,—persons, usually, who had in fact only contended before the time for what he is now convinced that he ought to grant. But in that case the policy of amnesty exactly satisfies our test. It is perfectly certain that it is for the interest of all classes in France—all classes of loyal persons—that the new concession of freedom should be regarded as a genuine measure ; and this it certainly would not be if those who have merely been imprudent at a time when imprudence was a crime, were not to be pardoned. But there is nothing of the kind to be said for a general amnesty at the present moment in Ireland. Let us put aside altogether the question as to the temptation and guilt of the prisoners. Be their temptation ever so great, and their (moral) guilt ever so small, that would be no excuse at all for releas- ing them while there are plenty of others as open to tempta- tion, and as certain to fall into it, if once the penalty were to become less severe and less certain. In the case of treason at least, the main object of penal enactments is not reform, but prevention. We have absolutely no machinery in our prisons for converting the hearts of political enemies, such as we may have for converting the hearts of thieves or murderers. No one ever yet expected the chief, or even the subordinate, officer of a rebellion to come out of prison with a milder feeling towards the Government which imprisoned him than he took into it. To look for this would be simply silly. The sole use of punishment in the case of political crimes is to deter—to deter the sufferer, whenever he again becomes free—to deter those who are disposed to imitate the sufferers, but who dread the risks. For the sake of all orderly persons who lose in every form by rebellion,—by risk to life, by depreciation of property, by widespread mistrust, and by curtailed enjoyments, —we are bound to make the risks of rebellion severely felt, whenever and wherever we find a population who requite leniency by contempt, and by reiterated infractions of order

and peace. The only effect of granting further amnesties now would be to make it generally believed that the Government either does not severely condemn these political conspiracies- against the law, or that if it does, it is afraid to punish what it condemns. In the face of the constantly recurring agrarian murders, and what is still worse, the combination against the- law which renders it so difficult to detect the murderers, it would be simply monstrous to pretend that the popular feeling- in Ireland had been so changed by a policy of justice as to assure us against renewed rebellion. If society is to be pro- tected at all against such outbreaks, it must be at present by the fear of consequences, by the visible strength and firmness of the ruling power, and not certainly by popular disapproba- tion of revolt. How can we possibly show that firmness. except by steadily inflicting punishment on the guilty, at the• same time that we seek earnestly to remove the strength of the temptations which may palliate such guilt ? The Govern- ment which is so steadfastly seeking to remove the last excuse- for rebellion is bound, more than any government, to show that it does not make light of the crime of rebellion. A.

penal law that is not certain in its operation is scarcely better, —especially with a mercurial, sanguine, and chancy people like the Irish,—than no penal law at all. And that is what, as regards rebellion at least, many of these memorialists for amnesty seem to be really asking for.

It may, however, be fairly said that there are times and seasons when a Government which has really gained the heart of the people will do far more for the cause of order by an act of frank and generous pardon than by any legalism, how- ever immutable. And, doubtless, this is the case, but under what conditions ? First, the Government which grants an amnesty must have clearly recovered, or at least completed all. the measures by which it hopes to recover, the popular con- fidence. It must leave no serious controversy with the people still open. An amnesty should be the crowning measure of a. great policy, meant simply to wipe out old scores of resent- ment where the substantial grievances have been cleared away

already. To put it before such measures is to relax the law- during a period of controversy and transition,—to suspend

the Mutiny Act while reorganizing the Army. And as every- body knows that the Irish Church measure, however necessary and right, was not the measure about which the people and

the peasantry care most, to indulge in a flourish of senti-

ment and generosity at the expense of law just before coming to a more critical discussion, would be as foolish as to reduce your police force on the eve of an exciting party procession.

This is, of all times for an amnesty, the worst. The popular reforms have begun, but have, as yet, only gone far enough

to prove to the people that the Government is moving..

Whether the Government is moving from a sentiment of fear or a sentiment of party rivalry, or a sentiment of justice ;- whether it is moving because it is weak, or because it is strong ; whether it needs encouragement or menace ; whether it is master of the situation, or waiting on consequences,.

the Irish do not know ; and they would certainly interpret, and rightly interpret, any wavering in the administration of the law at such a moment as a symptom of weakness, hesitation, and helpless entreaty to the people to be easily satisfied with the next measure.

And in the next place, even if the time were suitable for an amnesty,—which it is not,—the bullying and insolent tone of

those who ask for it should make it absolutely impossible for the Government to grant it. It was weak to pardon even the minor offenders, at the time chosen. But if that were an error, the result of that lamentable experiment is itself sufficient

warning against the extension of it now. The released Fenians only left their prisons to heap contempt and menace on the Government which had released them, and to multiply occa- sions for open treason on the part of all their political friends. Are we to throw more firebrands into Ireland just on the eve of the exciting discussion concerning the land-laws ? No policy could be more imbecile. And look at the speeches of those who demand the release of the Fenians. Are they speeches which promise security for the future, give bail,.

as it were, for the good behaviour of the political criminals I On the contrary, these speeches are as full of loud disaffection and bombastic invective as the speakers dare to make them with- out risking their own personal liberty. Consider the language used by that violent and foolish person Mr. G. H. Moore, the

Member for Mayo. "Generous conciliation and gracious mercy," says this mouthing gentleman, with special reference to Mr. Gladstone's Government, "have been always foreign to the policy of our rulers. Tyrants they were from the beginning, and

'tyrants they seem resolved to be to the end of their baneful domi- nation. Her [?England's] sceptre has been the sword, her diadem has been the black-cap, and her throne has been the gallows for the last 700 years. For more than seven centuries we have been the bondmen of this great Pharisee of nations. England is 'steeped deep in the blood of India, redhanded from the massacre of the women of Jamaica. She exists with the blood of twenty generations of dead Irishmen standing between her and God on high, and with the bones of Irishmen still suffering in her dungeons, she calls upon us to applaud the proud policy of !her Government,"—and so on, through an indefinite quantity of turgid and wicked trash. Is this the sort of tone to which to yield a pardon for the Fenian leaders,—a tone which says, as plainly as it can say, " The first opportunity for successful rebellion ought to be seized, by every true patriot,—and we are going to swagger and bully, in the deep conviction that your cowardice is at least as immeasurable as our insolence, till we get back the men who will lead us in the next outbreak ?" It would be pure insanity to grant an amnesty demanded by these swaggering ranters in terms so rabid, even if the time were as opportune as it is otherwise. As it is, we trust that sonic leading member of the Govern- ment, Mr. Gladstone or Mr. Bright, will declare that they will lend no countenance to the impression that the Government is careless of peace and order because it is earnest for solid justice, and will reprehend in no measured terms the disloyalty .of the men who are thus ranting to their ignorant countrymen about ancient wrongs, while they ignore sedulously the -strenuous sacrifices made by Parliament to expunge the last traces of injustice from the statute-book. Not by such mouths as these can Ireland hope to win a remission of the just punishment of dangerous men. To show mercy, even where there is real regret and repentance for a political sin, is 'not always wisdom. To let it be wrung out of you by vulgar and violent menaces is always folly,—folly so grave as to be a political sin,—folly so mean as to be rejected doubtless with .one consent by such a government as is now in power.