OTAGO.

Westport Times, Volume II, Issue 210, 2 April 1868, Page 3

OTAGO.

<(fkom our own correspondent.) Dunedin, March 23. As a loyal subject of our gracious Queen permit mo in the first sentence of this letter to say, that the news brought here by the Rangitoto on Sunday, of the attempted assassination of Prince Alfred by the Fenian miscrcant, O'Farrell, at the Sydney Sailors' Homo pic-nic, has filled with regret and indignation the loyal hearts of Her Majesty's Otagan subjects. Prince Alfred is a young man who not only is understood one of the most amiable members of the Royal Family, -and to a great extent the most popular Prince that England has ever possessed, but he is also in his personal relations to his Royal Mother, his brothers and sisters, and indeed to society generally without exception the most popular Prince that has lived in recent ye irs. Buoyant, generous, manly—without a taint in his sailor-like nature of either artifice or meanness —with a hearty English sympathy, with talent, and a warm compassion for misfortune,; Prince Alfred, if he has presented no grand example, has at least all those traits of character which would win -an Englishman's affections; and for this fine, hearty sort of young man, healthy and broad in his sympathies, full of fun, and above all things, overflowing with good humor, the son of our beloved Queen, the honored guest of the colonies, to have been shot at, struck down by a seditious and revolutionary Fenian miscreant, is hard to realise! Certainly, there would have been a great blank among us, and 'the shadows of a great darkness, if this vile Dublin wretch's aim had been truer. What a lesson does this piece of news, flashed to us along the electric wire, teach to all Victoria's loyal subjects ! What a text for the pulpit, what an argument for the platform ! Such an instance of traitorous lunacy will do more to strangle Fcnianism than a thousand exhortations without this very pregnant fact. If Victoria and Prince Alfred bad been hated instead of loved up to the present time, popular feeling would now sweep round with relentless force in their favour; but always loved, always honored, what will not the nation and the colonists do ? "We have a Queen and a Prince of whom we may well be proud. " Out of evil cometb good." Let acts not words express the nation's and the colonies appreciation of its Sovereign and her Royal Son's Christian goodness. And above and beyond all let us thank the great arbiter of life for O'Farrell's missing aim, which has saved a whole population of Englishmen and Englishwomen in Sydney, from a degradation which 'could hardly be paralleled over the world. There is an item in the telegraphic news which, it is true out of no favor to the assassin, but, yet I am glad to find. It runs thus :—" The sailors would have lynched him (O'Farrell) ; but a strong body of police presented them." So now even dastardly, craven, traitorous Fenians, may see that even the vilest criminal may rely on the jealous protection of British law, but they will also find that when that jealousy was satisfied, law's vengeance, though it may be slow, is very sure.

I owe you an apology for dealing only with this all-engrossing subject in my first letter. I feel so strongly, however, on the matter, that—only I hope for a short interval—l feel myself prohibited from writing on any other. By the next mail I will endeavor to send you a budget of more varied intelligence.