‘An Australian Cynic’ complains of the newspapers and the public at Sydney for not being more interested about a murder of five people which has been committed in the interior. Does he mean to imply that the police are supine in the matter, and need stimulus, or that the existing law is inadequate to meet the case? If not, why ought such a topic to be enlarged upon? Ought all bloodshed to provoke an amount of discussion exactly in proportion to the number of lives lost? Murder, unfortunately, is too old and too common a crime not to have been provided against as far as it is possible to do so. Fenianism, when it assumes the form of a conspiracy for the wholesale assassination of the most prominent persons in the State, is a new crime and requires new precautions. I suppose there must be a sense (since so many hold to the dogma) in which all men may be said to be equal, though I must confess I never could discover any—never yet having seen such a phenomenon as even two men who could in any sense of the word be called equal. But the common sense of all communities acknowledges that the lives of some persons are (to take the lowest ground) infinitely more valuable to the State than those of others, and when for this reason exposed to special danger they require to be specially protected. Political assassination is a new crime in England in our days. But if we go back to the days of Queen Elizabeth, we may be reminded of conspiracies not unlike the worst manifestations of Fenianism, which were met by our ancestors in a spirit not altogether unlike that which has just been shown by their descendants in Australia. XVII. LOYALTY AND CYNICISM. * * * * * Personally I do plead guilty to holding the belief or doctrine to hold which you call ‘veiled cynicism.’ But I beg you will not suppose that I am asserting that the late demonstration of the Australians necessarily implied that _they_ hold it, or that their loyalty as a people was not wider and more comprehensive than any particular phase of it which may specially present itself to me or to any one person. In the following remarks I shall speak only in my own defence, and try to lift my ‘veil,’ so that it may be seen whether what is behind is, or is not, cynicism.