The Dynamiter (Classics To Go)

Excerpt: “Gentlemen—In the volume now in your hands the authors have touched upon that ugly devil of crime with which it is your glory to have contended. It were a waste of ink to do so in a serious spirit. Let us dedicate our horror to acts of a more mingled strain where crime preserves some features of nobility and where reason and humanity can still relish the temptation. Horror in this case is due to Mr. Parnell: he sits before posterity silent Mr. Forster’s appeal echoing down the ages. Horror is due to ourselves in that we have so long coquetted with political crime; not seriously weighing not acutely following it from cause to consequence; but with a generous unfounded heat of sentiment like the schoolboy with the penny tale applauding what was specious. When it touched ourselves (truly in a vile shape) we proved false to the imaginations; discovered in a clap that crime was no less cruel and no less ugly under sounding names; and recoiled from our false deities.