THE IRISH PRISONERS WILL NOT BE RELEASED.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume v, Issue 232, 12 October 1877, Page 7

THE IRISH PRISONERS WILL NOT BE RELEASED.

England is still determined to refuse all appeals for the release of her Irish political prisoners. The leaders of the Fenian movement were several years ago set free, but the uneducated soldiers who were induced by them to join in the conspiracy have been made the victims of exceptional seventy. Most of them have now been over eleven years in prison, and ample proof has been given of the terrible severity of the treatment they receive. The men who took part in the Man. Chester rescue in 1867, are also among those whom England is deter, mined to detain in prison. . . . rr J ie Protracted incarceration of these men is the source of much irritation in Ireland, and immense mass meetings have been held, and monster petitions presented asking for their release. On one memorable occasion one hundred members of Parliament signed a petition for amnesty, to which Earl Beaconsfield gave a contemptuous refusal, not knowing that at that very time an Irish-American expedition had struck the bonds off six of the prisoners confined in Western Australia The effect of this event has done more to restore confidence to the revolutionary party than anything which has occured for years In the House of Commons, on the 21st July, Mr. O'Connor Powers motion m favour of the release of the Fenian prisoners was rejected by a vote of 235 to 77. Coming at a time when no man can say how soon England may be involved in a foreign war, this vote is calculated to deepen the irritation in Ireland, and to increase the din. trust in Parliamentary and constitutional means of redreasine grievances.— Exchange. wvo«u* e