THE DYNAMITE EXPLOSIONS.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XIII, Issue 16, 7 August 1885, Page 9

THE DYNAMITE EXPLOSIONS.

(Dublin Ereeman, May £3.) The trial of Cunningham and Burton on a charge of treason-felony, arising out at the dynamite explosions in London, terminated <jn Mondayi The prisoners were convicted and sentenced to the extreme penalty of the '48 statute — penal servitude for life. Although the trial extended over a full week, the evidence being, minute and voluminous, the jury appear to have had very little difficulty in making up their minds, being absent only fifteen minutes from the time they left the box until they handed down their verdict. With the justice of the verdict Judge Hawkins expressed bis entire concurrence, but those who have carefully followed the evidence, no matter bow muga and naturally incensed against dynamiters, must have been struck with the absence of anything in the shape of direct testimony of the complicity of the two men in the cowardly outrages with which they were charged. The evidence was altogether circumstantial, and Burton, who seems to be a man of more than ordinary intelligence, cleverly enough observed before sentence, that although from the moment the explosions occurred the whole weight of the ftorerp* ment and that of the United States was brought to bear, yet there w.s nothing but circumstantial evidence adduced at the trial. The Attorney-General in opening the case set out with the allegation that the prisoners belonged to a vast conspiracy formed to levy war against the Queen, bat as Mr. Little, the counsel for Burton, remarked in his speech for the defence, no proofs were forthcoming of the allegation ; there was no evidence of a vast conspiracy, and no corroboration of the statement that Cunningham and Burton belonged to any such body, Strong suspicion unquestionably attached to the conduct of the two prisontrs. Burton's passages to and from America, the coat he wore on board the ship, and which subsequently turned up in one of the infernal machines, his possession of the boxes with delators — these were incidents which created uprima facie case agaiast him. But his explanation, made with the permission of the court, before his counsel spoke to the evidence, was at least plausible, and in one or two points suggested the extreme danger of quickly accepting the evidence against him. So, too, in Cunningham's case. An alias is always an element to be reckoned dead against the pris ncr, and rightly too. When a man conceals his name, it is something more than &jresu>nptio juris that he is concealing something else. But he also, to a certain extent, disentangled the net which ihe Crown wove about him, and there was something in the point that ii he contemplated the blowiug up of the Tower he would be unlikely to remain there while the experiment was in operation. Cunningham, it will be remembered, was found with the other visitors on the occasion in the Tower, and was detained by the police. Speculation upon the evidence is now, however, lruitless, and, whatever doubts we entertain, we sincerely trust the Crown has convicted the rigbt men. The authors of the nearly simultaneous explosions at the Tower and at Westminister were foul and miserable dastards, whose presence among men was a peat to society. If their insane object was merely to blow up public buildings, the effect ot their plans was to place in imminent jeopardy the lives of women and children and of perfectly harmless tourists. Indeed, the whole terrible series of dynamite outrages in England call, by their utter brutality and savagery, for the vigilant co-operation with the authorities of every respectable member 3t' the community in ridding society of its most ferocious enemy. It will have been observed that throughout the trial of Cunningham and Burton not even an atttmpt was made to identify them with this country aud with its people.