Irish Catholic Chronicle And People's News of the Week Dublin, Ireland Saturday, 30 November 1867 THE MANCHESTER TRAGEDY Contrary to our most recent hopes and prayers, those of the Fenian prisoners at Manchester - Allen, Larkin and Gould (or O'Brien) have been put to death, nominally for the murder of Sergeant Brett, but really for the successful rescue of the Fenian leaders Colonel Kelly and Captain Deasy. The political scaffold has thus, after the lapse of half a century, been once more raised in England. It is well understood, and will be dearly remembered hereafter, that these men were put to a horrible death because they were Irishmen and because they strove to the best of their knowledge and power to win their country's independence. Had that country been England - and not Ireland, their reward had been, not the gallows, but the Spectator tells us "something very like admiration and sympathy." It is not a question for discussion - blood is thicker than water, and millions of Irishmen feel that a great public crime has been committed, not the less odious because of its base hypocrisy. Had those men or any others been tried, convicted, and hanged for treason, the curse of the British government, however cruel and unwise, would at all events have been straightforward. But public hypocrisy has ever been a great British talent, and in this case the utmost advantage has been made of it. The common sense of the world will, however, scout with contempt the false pretence that three men were executed for murder. Mankind indeed will be apt to characterise by the foul name of murder, not the casual death of the policeman, but the deliberate and dastardly slaughter of the Fenian victims. At all events Irishmen and have but one feeling regarding this odious crime, and all who have committed, advised, abetted, or rejoined at it. Nor is it a feeling that will quickly pass away. In that miserable five minutes on the scaffold of Manchester a deed was done that has sundered Englishmen and Irishmen for this generation. "There rolls between us a great sea of blood." In one day the political relations between the two countries have retrograded half a century. Ireland cannot forgive that wanton and cruel bloodshed. England must account for the lives of these three men, humble though they were. Millions who know nothing of Fenianism feel for these men as if they were their own kindred foully murdered. God knows we do not exaggerate. Men who resisted with their whole strength the Fenian movement - priests who denounced it from the altar - have shed hot and bitter tears over this deed of blood. Could it be otherwise while they had the hearts of Irishmen in their bosoms? The government have committed a great - a fearful- an irreparable mistake. The problem of Irish disaffection and Irish misery, always difficult, they have made well night hopeless. Cathy Joynt Labath Ireland Old News http://www.IrelandOldNews.com/