NEWS BY THE MAIL.

West Coast Times, Issue 677, 25 November 1867, Page 3

NEWS BY THE MAIL.

We collate from various sources the following details of Home news, a brief telegraphic summary of which has already been published. THE FENIAN* MOVEMENT IN ENGLAND, (FEOJr THE 2TELBOtrE>*E AGE COHEESPONDEXT.) The news of the month, par excellence, is the new outbreak of Fenianism. Not in Kerry, nor in Cork, nor even in "Dublin's fair city," this time, but in the steadygoing, cotton-spinning city of Manchester. In broad daylight, on the 18th of this month, 1 two notorious Fenians were rescued from the police- van, in which they were being conveyed to prison, by a band of their confederates, armed with revolvers, hatchets, hammers, and other weapons of offence. The prisoners were " Colonel" Kelly and " Captain" Deasy — the former the chief of the Fenian organi. salion in England. He is the man who planned and effected Steven s's escape • from Mountjoy Prison, in Dublin, and he had himself baffled the police, who had warrants for his apprehension since March last, till a few days before the incident, which I prefer to give you in the following extract from the "Pall Mall Gazette." The two men had been arrested while loitering suspiciously in the streets at night ; and on the 18th they were a second time remanded by the magistrates. " The justice room was densely crowded, and a mob also filled the narrow passage by whidh tho prisoners are conducted to and from the Courthouse.Whether or not the police were able to detect a decided Fenian element in this gathering, at least one incident occurred to put them, on their guard. Two men of soldierly appearance were noticed lounging about the court in a suspicious manner all the morning, and it occurred to one of the superintendents that it would be well to secure them. As soon as the constables appi*oached with this object, one of the couple made off, and the other, after some desperate play with, a bowie-knife, w.as overpowered. A double row of constables lined the passage from the court-house to the prison van ; and four following in a cab. With one exception none of the constables carried any arms save their truncheons ; the exception was Brett, the turnkey of the van, who rode inside and carried a cutlass. On tho way to the gaol, the van had to pass under a railway arch in Hyde-road. Lurking in the shadow of the arch was a body of men, who suddenly came outinto the openroad as the van reached this point, and contested its passage. It is computed that there were forty or fifty men in the band, and for the most part they seemed to be somewhat better dressed than ordinary workmen. Many of them had pistols ; others were equipped with hatchets^ hammers, and stones. It was evident from their movements that they were acting as an organised force, and one among them — since identified as O'Meara Allen — appeared to be in command. It was Allen who shouted to the driver to, stop the van, and who fired the first shot at the police. This was the signal for a volley of pistol-shot and stones from the ranks of the assailants. Overwhelmed by the suddenness and -rigor of the attack, the police seem to have been at once beaten oft. Both horses were shot. The driver was knocked from the box by a heavy stone. Other constables were more or less wounded. The attacking party, left in possession of the van, now surrounded it, one section forming an outer guard to resist the ineffectual rushes which the police every now andagain made upon them, while those in the inner ring applied themselves to the opening of the van. The roof was battered in with stones. The lock of the door, not yielding readily ta the same process, was smashed by thcrepeated discharge of a revolver. Allen was the leader in this work of destruction. When the door was at. last bur.=-t open, Allen called upon Brett to give up his keys, that the various compartments might be unlocked, and on Brett's refusal shot him through the head. Allen then released his friends, several women who were in the van escaping at the same time,' and there was a general retreat of the Fenians. Kelly and Deasy both got clear off, Allen was caught, and was severely battered while struggling with his captors." Since this occurrence rewards have been offered by ..the Corporation of Manchester, and by . ' the Government for the re-arrest of Kelly ' and Deasy ; but although the men have been traced to a suburb of Manchester, where they got rid of their handcuffs, they had not yet been captured. Nearly fifty persons nave been arrested in various parts of the country for active complicity in the affair, and a special commission is to be issued to try the prisoners at an early date. * This incident has familiarised the second city in the North of England with a state of things never known in that part of the United Kingdom, but common enough in Ireland. Is it possible to those of you who cherish the remembrance of Old England, as of a land where the law was •

held in honor, and each man's love of freedom led llini to support justice, and where the army was regarded as the nation's preservative against foreign wrongs, and not as the Government's preservative against the passions of the people, to imagine such a condition of affairs in one of our largest and best ordered cities, as this :— " The Manchester police are now armed with Colt's revolvers. The gaol is under a guard of infantry, and the prisoners after their remand on Thursday evening wei;e accompanied by a strong military escort. The procession was headed by an advance guard of three mounted hussars, who were -followed by an omnibus full of infantry. Twenty hussars with drawn swords rode next, and after them came the Salford prison van, guarded on each side by hussars, and followed by a troop of the same arm. The Manchester police van, containing more prisoners, came next, guarded in the .same manner; and the rear was brought up by another omnibus load of infantry. The mob hooted the prisoners." The last sentence in this descriptive paragraph is the only redeeming feature of the whole scene ; and it is as true as the rest. "The mob"— crowding the streets, covering the house-tops, swarming at the .windows and doorways, in tens of thousands— " hooted the prisoners," as heartily as Kerry, Cork, and Dublin mobs, at Cahirciveen, Rathfarlines, and elsewhere, have to their sorrow, cheered the misguided victims of these very men, whose rescue at Manchester had so bloody and tragic an issue. Were Ito try to tell you how public bodies and crowds of citizens attended the funeral of poor Sergeant Brett, how the country has been scoured, railway stations and steamboat depots watched, in search of Kelly and Deasy, how even the women released from the prison van ran frightened to the gaol, to seek refuge for themselves,and give evidence against the rescuers ; how the pblice in Liverpool (where Fenianism in England took its rise), and in Manchester, havo been armed to the teeth ; how the London detective force has been scattered over the country ; how Dover has been alarmed by the advent of a body of Yankec-tongucd strangers, and has taken to arms to preserve the armory of tho Castle ; how county Cork has rejoiced, lit bonfires on its hills by night, and made triumphal processions through the streets of the towns and the couDtry lanes— all because of the daring Manchester outrage — I should have no room in which to .narrate the many events of this eventful month. One result of this agitation is, however, sufficiently marked to deserve notice. There has arisen, throughout the country ," a determination to deal no longer leniently with the leaders of this sedition. O'Meara Allen will, if half be proved on his trial that is now on oath against him, expiate his share in the transactions of the 18th upon the scaffold ; and one or two other prisoners will share his fate. A notion has got abroad that the Government has been dealing much too lightly with the traitors and the murderers who were tried in Ireland ; and this feeling had a curious and suggestive illustration tiie other day at Barnsley. A company of laborers being met together, one of the number proclaimed himself a Fenian ; whereupon — after the example of the famous Judge Lynch — the party extemporised a jury, tried the self-accused Fenian, convicted him, and straightway hanged him by the neck till he was black" in the face ; for which each of the enthusiasts was fined next day by the police magistrate.