FENIANISM IN ITS ECONOMIC ASPECT.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 1943, 23 March 1868, Page 5

FENIANISM IN ITS ECONOMIC ASPECT.

(From the Economvtt.) I\ would be diHicult, or oven impossible, to exaggerate the importance of Fenianism as a new offence, but it is quite possible to exaggerate the political and economic effect. That wo should have in England a horde, or even a group, of men banded together to secure an impossible object by attacks on property, order, and the triumphs of civilisation, is, no doubt, a mortifying or even a disheartening reflection, but it is not ono which ought to affect public confidence either in tho security of our finances, the success of our commerce, or the ultimate stability of our institutions. Phenomena like Fenianiam are always by their very nature temporary and exceptional, and this for two unanswerable reasons. "No men not supported by a very great or a very holy principle will ever undergo for long terms the terrible penalties involved in warfare with society. The übiquitous and undying force of the nation invariably puts other opponents down, with more or less of sacrifice or effort, but still effectually. Such a strength of principle may, no'doubt, be credited to a -few of those led away by Fenian plans, bnt then those few will be the first to shrink from the appalling mischiefs war with civilisation inflicts upon th'j innocent. The deaths of children, in the Clerkenwell outrage have impressed men who previously sympathised with Fenians; and really dangerous Revolutionists, men like Lord "Edward Fitz- ! Gerald, are as hostile tcv assassination as is the party of order. No successful po- ! Key waa ever based u^on crime, and the killing of the^innocent is clearly crime. Secondly, auch attacks invariably

end in an immense, usually in an undue, increase of strength to the Executive. Even the Septoratriseurs, a faction indefinitely stronger than the Fenians, only succeeded in establishing military rule. No police i» so strong aa society when roused to do police work, and such attempts always in the end rouse society. At this moment Government in Great Britain is indefinitely stronger, more likely to get its revenue, to pay its debt, to maintain external order, than it was a fortnight ago. Even if the Fenians should sue ceed in causing some great public calamity, such as the burning of a dockyard, the effect would be the same; the nation woxild be more strenuously bound together, and the loes would bo a money loss, like the fall of a great firm, and the injury only temporary. The great sources of English prosperity can no more be affected by such attempts than the prosperity of India could be affected by the rise of Thuggee, the most formidable secret society, perhaps, ever known, but which, nevertheless, was crushed. Fire raising, with a view of alarming Government, is an experiment which has been often tried, once, at least, on an enormous scale, and it has always j failed, because for one man intimidated ten are maddened by undeserved suffering.

We do not know that it is necessary to point out these facts to Englishmen, but some of our foreign friends Reom to believo that Fenianism being in one sense a political offence, its audacities threaten to shake the Government itself. Acknowledging the argument about society, they ask whether the Fenian spirit does not indicate an increased possibility of rebellion in Ireland, or even a vague- chance,of the ultimate loss of that country. We may dismiss the last idea in a very few words. It is our moral duty to keep Ireland ; but our economic interest is by no means strong on that side. li*elands costs as much or more than she brings, and her independence as a completely separate State would be no moro a danger for us than the independence of Franco, which, with sixty times her power, is just one-fourth her distance off. An Irish Channel licet would not cost what the garrison of Ireland costs oven in cash, and we should be without her a homogeneous peoplo of twenty-five millions, ten millions more than we were in 1805. We, of course, merely state this to exhaust the subject, not aa a serious consideration, but it is one our foreign friends can thoroughly understand. The question of rebellion is more immediate, and wo reply that it is because rebellion in Ireland is so hopeless that it is being tried in England—that every desperado who, in London, asks a prayer for his soul because ho is going to be blown up, is an instrument of revolution the less in Ireland itself. It is not when the Red are in Geneva that Paris is dangerous to Napoleon. In Ireland, these English outrages, so far from weakening the State, only serve to justify its attitude of repression in the eyes of men, who might otherwise hold repression needless or severe. So far, then, from the Clerkenwell outrage being an excuse for want of confidence in Great Britain, it ought to strengthen that confidence, as tending to increase the best ground of commercial trust, the readiness and the competence of the Government to maintain external order. As a commercial question, the riot in Hyde Park, of last year, which did not cost a life, but did weaken authority, was a hundred times its dangerous as this one, which has already cost us ten lives, but has strengthened authority tenfold.