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FENIAN RAID OF ‘66 (Part 1)

EXTRACTS FROM THE TRIBUNE OF FORTY-TWO YEARS AGO, TELLING OF THE NOTED INVASION.

[People's Press, 28 April 1908]

              Mr. Gladstone on Fenianism- Mr. Gladstone, in a recent speech at Liverpool, made the following remarks with regard to Fenianism in British North America: “We are told that Canada and New Brunswick are threatened with fire and slaughter from the revenge of the Fenians for the wrongs inflicted by England upon Ireland; and this I must say that if the men of Canada and New Brunswick, who are wholly  guiltless of these wrongs-be they what they may-who are not entangled in the controversy, who have no more to do with it than the people of the Sandwich Islands, if the Fenians as they call themselves in America, are capable of the abominable wickedness of passing their frontier, and of making their impotent, miserable attempts, which they will be, to carry desolation over these peaceful districts and among harmless colonists, then I say, that so far from your treating the conduct of these men-let them be Americans or whom you like-with humanity or indulgence, no more execrable manifestations of folly or guilt have ever been made in the annals of the human race from the time that it commenced it existence upon the earth. Men who are capable of such proceedings would at once, by their insanity and their guilt, place themselves entirely beyond the sympathy of the whole civilized world. I feel the fullest confidence that these men who inhabit the British provinces of North America and who are governed by principles in the main our own, know well how to defend their homes, their wives and children; and if unhappily, the need arose, there is no resource possessed by this country that she would not fairly spend to assist them in their holy work.”

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