South Canterbury Times. MONDAY, JUNE 30, 1884.

South Canterbury Times, Issue 3505, 30 June 1884, Page 2

South Canterbury Times. MONDAY, JUNE 30, 1884.

Living, happily, remote from the scene of the atrocities, we cannot see all the bearings of the case, or venture to express an authoritative opinion on the subject of the dynamite explosions in London, but judging from the news that reaches us, and taking into consideration such circumstances as we are acquainted with, we do not regard the situation as anything like so hopeless and alarming as it appears at the first glance. That the respectable portion of Irish society approve the action of the hidden miscreants who in the name of Irish freedom commit such fearful acts, we refuse to believe. There are numbers of Irishmen (a rapidly increasing number) who want Horae Buie, to whom the utter subjection in which they consider their country now lies at the feet of England, is distasteful, and who are determined to employ every constitutional means and continual agitation, for the purpose of obtaining freedom for Ireland, but to whom the idea of assassination must always be repulsive in the extreme. We refuse to believe for a moment that Irishmen of spirit and sense and human feelings have any sympathy with the treacherous and dastardly scoundrels who are doing their best to ruin the cause of Ireland in the estimation of all civilised people. We believe (for it would be shockingly unjust to doubt) that if the freedom of Ireland' could only be purchased by assassination and indiscriminate murder, these persons would shirk from joining in any such schemes. And we include among these, many persons who are absolutely disloyal, who are even ripe for rebellion. We believe they would go to great lengths, and that they are simply in rebellion. But we do not for a moment believe they are responsible for the dynamite outrages. They may not be altogether so warm in denouncing them as we are—they may even reason that England is getting no more than her deserts. But there they stop. The outrages are not their work. They are the work of certain, violent and unscrupulous and ruffianly scoundrels, who belong to one or other of those infernal brotherhoods which always spring up in a disturbed and excited state of society. It is at these that blows should be struck with an unsparing hand by the authorities. It is these which we call upon our American cousins, and our own British Government to eradicate. For organisations are concerns that eat into and destroy the sound heart of the nation. When we said we did not regard the outlook as hopeless, we meant that these rings and brotherhoods would not be long in surrendering to the ascendency of law and order. America is sick of them already, and only tolerated them at all for electioneering purposes. England, though she may sustain a severe shock when her capital is threatened by dynamitards, is not going to fall into collapse at the bidding of a handful of miscreants, and though she does not resort to Bisraarkian or Eussian severity in repressing treason, she will not long endure a reign of terror such as the dynamitards desire to establish. Public feeling will be too powerful for these creatures, for people cannot long pursue a course in defiance of that, and without moral support any cause must die, as plants die without water. Under a mild and merciful Government, which truly desires the reform of abuses, such a brutal threat as this which is wafted across the Atlantic, “ Gladstone had better mind himself,” sounds horribly out of place, and to any Irishman who knows his country’s interest more especially. Why, if a hair of Mr Gladstone’s head was injured by any agency set in motion in the name of Ireland, the blackest day would dawn that ever dawned for that country. To say nothing of the shocking results that would inevitably follow, the bitterness between the two races that would be aroused, —look at the loss to Ireland ! No man living would have the ability or the desire to do justice to her as he has striven to do, and we predict that when the Prime Minister vacates his office, the Irish people will have reason to mourn the event as they have never mourned before.