RELIGIOUS RIOTS IN LANCASHIRE.

Evening Post, Volume IV, Issue 132, 17 July 1868, Page 2

RELIGIOUS RIOTS IN LANCASHIRE.

During the whole of last week a war instigated by religious animosity was raging in some of the laige Lancashire towns. Last mouth Wigan and its neighbourhood was the scene of desolating conflicts between the colliers and the civil and military authorities, "arising from trade disputes. Scarcely were these tumults appeased, by the arrest of the ringleaders and the infliction of severe punishment upon them, than Ashton, Staleyhridge, and Bury were panic-stricken for a time by tierce outbreaks of religious fanaticism. The disturbances are fomented by. the notorious Murphy, the Anti-Popery lecrarer, and his zealous disciples, who have lately regulcirly organised themselves for the^purpose of making war upon the Irish-.^The riots commenced on Sunday, the 10th, and were renewed from day to day. the combatants bein^ armed with pistols, guns, swoids, axes, bludgeons, anil other implements of offence. Scores of persons jin the conflicts that took place were wounded, iwme of them dangerously, and one poor

woman was . trampled to death ; Catholic chapels have been sacked and plundered ; whole streets inhabited by the Irish have been devasted, and the property of the victims consumed in huge bonfires, and hundreds of sufferers have been cast houseless upon the charity of -the benovelent. It was nut till the military arrived in force that order was restored. At Rochdale ;j, 800 copies of Murphy's pamphlet on "the Confessional" were destroyed, -j&K immoral and ob6CGiiu publications. A'"Tarye number of suresla have been made.- It i 3, strange that the arch-agitator cannot be put in a safe place. A wonderful thing in this boasted English liberty of ours !