ANGLO CELT -- June 9, 1853 ------------------------------------------- Spirit of the Journals. ---- (From the Dundalk Democrat). ---- THE PRISONER IN CAVAN GAOL. About ten months since there was an election struggle in the county Clare, and while a number of liberal voters were being conveyed to a polling booth to vote contrary to their wishes, six or seven persons were shot by some soldiers of the 31st regiment. Loud was the indignation from one end of Ireland to the other at the conduct of the military, and the national press called the affair a bloody tragedy. An inquiry was instituted before a coroner into the cause of the death of the victims, and a jury, sworn to find a verdict according to the evidence, found a verdict of wilful murder against certain parties engaged in the affray at Six-mile-bridge. But the spring assizes came and the relatives of the slaughtered found that the law or the law officers were powerless in their efforts to inflict punishment on those the coroner's jury had pronounced guilty. All the actors in the bloody drama walk abroad. They have endured no punishment, suffered no penalty for their conduct. We are not going to make any remarks on this part of the transaction, because we cannot see that our doing so would be productive of good. We allude to the affair and its results merely for the purpose of stating that there is but one victim suffering in connexion with the Six-mile-bridge tragedy ; and, strange to say, he is an inhabitant of Cavan, and at present a prisoner in Cavan gaol. Mr. Zachariah WALLACE is the proprietor of the Anglo-Celt newspaper, and in a short article he commented on the conduct of the military, and called them murderers, and accused them of cowardice. He was not present at the affray ; he neither threw stones at the military, nor excited the people to rescue the voters. his only offence was, that, in an unguarded moment, he called the soldiers murderers and accused them of cowardice. But although he retracted these charges, and apologised to the military officers when he found himself in error, the law officers pursued him till they had him ! convicted and consigned to the care of the governor of Cavan gaol. We confess we cannot understand what service the government have rendered to "law and order" buy hunting down Mr. Wallace in this manner. He committed no heinous crime ; and, for what he was guilty of, he, in a manly manner, made all the atonement it was in his power to make. Certainly the government would have done as much good to society by forgiving after they had convicted ; and we hope they will now see the necessity of restoring Mr. Wallace to liberty. If they do not we trust the people of Cavan will ask them to liberate him. Mr. Wallace's health is sinking under confinement. The anxieties and cares brought on by his trial have undermined his constitution, and to continue him in prison for some months more would likely lead to his death. The people of Cavan should address the executive on the subject, and request to have their local journalist relieved from the horrors of a prison. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- IMPERIAL PARLIAMENT. ------ HOUSE OF COMMONS -- TUESDAY MAY 31. ECCLESIASTICAL REVENUES OF IRELAND. Mr. Moore said that the question he was about to bring under the consideration of the house was no new one. It was a grievance which had tormented the legislature almost as the people who endured it. He trusted he should not be supposed guilty of treating the national character with disrespect when he said that no people on the earth except the English would consent to bear this Irish grievance for the mere luxury of obstinancy in wrong. If the house would only reflect that, in order to save their Irish brethern from the doctrine of purgatory in the next world, they condemned themselves to something very like purgatory, in this they might possibly arrive at the conclusion that it would not be an unprofitable compromise to get rid of Irish wrong and Irish discussion together. The form, if not the substance of the discussion might be varied if honourable members would sweep away the hypocrises with which some were reluctant to part. It had been the habit of those who advo! cated the just rights of the Catholic people of Ireland in this matter to speak of them as amongst the most loyal subjects of the Queen. -- Now, the Catholic population of Ireland was not loyal, and he was not a loyal and true man who said that they were. It was because it was his earnest hope and prayer, not only that he himself might live and die a loyal subject of the Queen, but that he might see all his countrymen, before he died, as loyal in Ireland as they were in America and every other country but their own, that he deemed it his duty to state the truth in a matter in which he believed both England and Ireland were deeply concerned. Then, he repeated, the Irish population was not loyal. There was scarcely a part of the Irish coast where, if a flight were to take place off it between an English and an American vessel, a very large majority of the lookers-on would not wish the Americans to win. These were truths which it was not the fashion to speak in that house ;! but in his mind it was necessary that, in that house at least the truth should be told. The state of feeling existing among (transcriber's note: this article ends at this point, alas.) ==================================================== County Cavan Newspaper Transcription Project