The Secretary then went on to denounce in the strongest language what he called the infamous conduct of the disloyal Irish. He declared, amid ringing cheers, that the man or woman who sought to shield such a monster as Captain Shannon, or to protect him and his confederates from justice, was nothing less than a murderer in the eyes of God and of man. He informed the House that although the Government had actually framed several important measures which would go far to remove the grievances of which Irishmen were complaining, he for one would, in view of what had taken place, strenuously oppose the consideration at that moment of any measures which had even the appearance of a concession to Irish demands. It was repression, not concession, which must be meted out to traitors and murderers. Within a month after the delivery of this speech all England was horrified by the news of a crime more wantonly wicked than any outrage which had preceded it, a crime which resulted--as its perpetrators must have known it would result--in the wholesale murder of hundreds of inoffensive people against whom--excepting for the fact that they happened to be law-abiding citizens--the followers of Captain Shannon could have no grievance. All that was known was that a respectably dressed young man, carrying what appeared to be about a dozen well-worn volumes from Mudie’s, or some other circulating library, had entered an empty first-class carriage at Aldgate station. These books were held together by a strap--as is usual when sending or taking volumes for exchange to the libraries--and it had occurred to no one to ask to examine them, although the officials at all railway stations had, in view of the recent outrages, been instructed to challenge every passenger carrying a suspicious-looking parcel. The theory which was afterwards put forward was that what appeared to be a parcel of volumes from a circulating library was in reality a case cunningly covered with the backs, bindings, and edges of books, and that this case contained an infernal machine of the most deadly description. It was supposed that the wretch in charge of it had purposely entered an empty carriage that he might the better carry out his infamous plan, and that after setting fire to the fuse he had left the train at the next station. That this theory afforded the most likely explanation of what subsequently took place was generally agreed, although one well-known authority on explosives expressed himself as of opinion that no infernal machine capable of causing what had happened could be concealed in so small a compass as that suggested. But it was pointed out in reply that from arrests and discoveries which had been made in America and on the Continent, it was evident that the manufacture of infernal machines and investigations into the qualities of explosives were being scientifically and systematically carried on.