a murderous temperature, the wonder grows that the cities and towns of America were not oftener scenes of murders and demolitions, which, intended for the Old World, boiled over, or went off at half-cock, before they left the New. The little murderous incidents at and near Mr O'Donovan Rossa's office have, however, supplied proofs that the volcanic action may prove dangerous even in the cradle of vengeance; and one may hope to hear shortly that the gangs and their arsenals have been hunted out and dispersed.
We think the Americans were very inconsiderate and very callous, not to say very spiteful, in allowing Rossa and his villanous gang to go on so long unchecked and even unreproved. We can see plainly enough what ought to be done when we are in danger ourselves. But how did we act when the French made against us exactly the same kind of complaint that we have since been making against the Americans? Gangs of miscreants were endeavouring to assassinate the French Emperor and to create anarchy in France. They dared not hatch their plots and devise their murders on the other side of the Channel, so they came to England to plot and prepare. Louis Napoleon knew this, and remonstrated with our Government. Lord Palmerston, then Prime Minister, saw that our hospitality was being abused, and that we were lending ourselves as a convenience to the agents of crime and confusion. He accordingly introduced into the House of Commons a bill making the practices of these desperadoes penal – a very moderate, reasonable bill, such as we should much like the Americans to enact on our behalf now. But our Commons had no patience at all with the proposal – they being in this instance not the objects but the shelter of the criminals. They grandly threw out the bill, and along with it they turned out Lord Palmerston. That way of dealing with such a proposal seemed to them at that time the right, honourable, and truly English one. We see things differently when our own withers are wrung. It was not, however, against the Americans that we sinned; and they, fortunately, are now likely to act towards us in a spirit more liberal than formerly. There is also a little improvement in our mode of dealing with these wholesale destroyers at home. There seems to be a growing conviction that the "cat" may be justly and beneficially applied to the backs of these dynamitard villains; and our lawyers have discovered that we may, without fresh legislation, make many of the explosions capital offences. One or two hangings and one or two floggings may be expected to produce very deterrent effects on our conspirators. I only trust that when any of them come to be hanged, the finishers of the law will be able to turn them off, and will really make a finish. It is too scandalous that, in this mechanical age, an abandoned scoundrel should escape from "edge of penny cord" because the drop on which he was perched would not answer to the hangman's efforts.
PENALTIES AND ASSIZE GOSSIP; WITH A LOOK AT THE CLOCK.
Though, as I have said, the wisdom seems to be perceived among us of sentencing workers in dynamite to the lash and to the cord,
