Current Topics At HOME AND ABROAD.
New Zealand Tablet, Rōrahi XII, Putanga 47, 13 Poutūterangi 1885, Page 1
Mō tēnei niupepa
Current Topics At HOME AND ABROAD.
Mb. Chambeblain delivered aa address the other A suggestive day to the Reform Club at Ipswich which has exspeech:. cited in some quarters very adverse criticism. The speaker, nevertheless, did not do much more than describe the circumstances of the times pointing out what must necessarily happen and explaining further the steps that seemed to him desirable to ensure the safety and prosperity of the country under the new aspect of affairs. It is evident, for example, as he says that the labourer cannot be expected to remain much longer contented with the miserable position in which he finds himself. — A greater enlightenment with more extended powers will effectually prevent any such continued stagnation, and for our own part we agree, though not in every particular, with the speaker in the approval he bestows upon the necessity he sees for the enlargement of the Liberal party's pro* gramme in this direction. As "to the idea of the Times, who finds much fault with Mr. Chamberlain's aspirations, that the attention of the English artisans will be turned to Imperial Federation v by which freetrade will be secured to them, rather than to what it calls the " Semi-Communistic crusade against owners of property proclaimed by Mr. Chamberlain," it would seem in some way chimerical, and even were the advantage more apparent and less distant than it is, the degree of intelligent patience that should make it preferable in^the eyes of the workman is hardly to be found among the present generatio — at least to such an extent as would make any sensible difference | in the masses. — The privileges of property, moreover, are before the workman's eyes, and their gross injustice in maoy instances must be clear to him.— However the Times may deride or blame thenotion, again the poor man has rights besides those that are sanctioned by the law, and if, indeed there be no such thing as natural rights, why may not the law at any time be altered so as to favour the poor at the expense of the rich. If legislation as expediency demands be the only rule, how can there be an infringement of justice made by any legislature that consults, the public needs ? The legislator who advocates- communism may be as honest as the most strict conservative and the standard to determine the right seems wholly wanting. " Who," asks the Tines " is to define the ' natural rights' by which all legislation and all institutions are to Be measured 7 Every man may have his own conception of what they ought to be, and the confusion would be used to cover not only iniquitous spoliation, but action* paralysing toe vital energies of modern society." But as much, we maintain, may be urged on the opposite side — and the definition which the Times pronounces impossible, though it may be difficult, is absolutely necessary. — Interesting, however, as we have found the greater, portion of Mr. Chamberlain's speech — especially those parts of it dealing with the benefits of local government and the opportunity afforded by it to men able and willing to be of service to their neighbours, and with the desirableness of apportioning local taxation in accordance with the means of the people taxed — the most interesting passage to us was that in which the speaker explained the necessity that exists for altering the land tenure of the country to suit the altered conditions of agriculture, and which shows us how nature itself is proclaiming in favour of a peasant proprietary.—" I suppose " he said, " that almost universally throughout England and Scotland fanning has become a ruinous occupation. The capital of tenants has been very much reduced, or it has disappeared altogether. They are unable to stock their farms properly, and they are unable to find the money to pay the labourers to work them . I noticed the other day that in the last 15 years the number of persons employed on the land has diminished by 800,000 ; and, of course, under these circumstances production tends to fall off and the labourers crowd into the towns to enter into competion with you, to lower the rate of wages, and to huddle population together until .anything like decent and healthful dwellings become impossible. What is to be the remedy for this state of things? Mr, JamesLowtberandhisfriendspropoßethatyouahouldhave
recourse once more to protection. They suggested a short time ago that you might settle everything by a6s d^.M'on corn. But I observe that when Mr: Lowther last addressed a public meeting, he .stated that he had come to the conclusion that ra would, perhaps, hardly be enough. He thought it might be raised *fb |os, and then in a parenthesis, he went on to say, 'or even sojj&iimes 16s.' It is a very curious thing that protection has tnis tenafejlcy to enlarge its demand . It is like quack medicine, the failure of- wnjch is always attributed to the insufficiency of the dose. The ,f antlers will be very foolish indeed if they follow Mr. Lowther after this Will o"the Wisp. If they study history at all they will find that the condition of the farmer was never so hopeless and that the state of the labourer was never so abject as when corn was kept up at a high value by a prohibitive or protective duty, when it was 61s or even rose to 120s a quarter. Even in that time the evidence given before repeated committees of tho House of Commons shows that the state of agriculture was deplorable. The food of the peopje was taxed to raise the rents of the landlord. None of the plunder found its way into the farmer's pockets, and I will tell them that nnless they can secure absolute permanence of occupation, no artificial alteration in the price of wheat will help them one atom. It wonld appear that the Scotch formers at all events, who are rather more shrewd than their English brethren, are alive to this fact. You know that the crofters^small tenants whose condition and whose sufferings deserve our sympathy and consideration — have been for some time past claiming the application of the Irish Land Act to their holdings, and I observe, net altogether without surprise, that some of the chief landowners ,were going to meet them with a view to agreeing to legislation . on that basis. If they go as far as that they will not be able to atop. You cannot draw a line between the very smallest holdings and those which are just above them. Sooner or later if you once let in. the principle .ifr-will be of universal application. I confess that for myself Ido not regard that prospect with alarm. , I am not afraid of the ' three F.V in England, Scotland, or Ireland. But the main obstacle seems to me to be in the farmers themselves. It is, in the first place in the way in which they play into the hands of their landlords and give them their support in propositions which would not be of the slightest advantage to the farmers themselves ; and, in the second place, it is owing to the condition of existing tenancies. Most of our English farmers hold rather large farms. They have not sufficient capital, and they are dependent upon their landlords, sometimes as poor as themselves, for aoy improvements which it way be necessary to effect. As long as that is .the case, fixity of tenure would nob be of the slightest use to the farmer, who would find himself unable to fulfil the obligations which independence of bis landlord would entail. But there is another matter connected with the same branch of the subject. Many people no doubt think that the time has gone by when wheat will ever again be a profitable crop ; but the best authorities are agreed that we every year from £25,000,000 to £30,000,000 of produce, in the shape of butter, egge, cheese, poultry fruit and vegetables which ought to be grown in this country. It is clear, however, that this kind of cultivation will only prosper when it is in. the hands of small cultivators. The tenant or the owner of the land must look after the trade himself, or else he will have no chance of success. And so we come back to what, after all, is the most urgent and pressing need of all — that we shall, as far as may be go back to the old-time freeholds in the land and re-establish the peasants and yeomen." Mr. Chamberlain, nevertheless, did not profess a belief that this was likely to prove the work of a moment. On the contrary, he said that time would be required for it, but that to this end legislation of all kinds must be directed. — The land question, then, in each of the three kingdoms seems to call, with a justice that grows more and more apparent, for one arid the tame solution, and, however that portion of the press which is the organ of existing interests calls out against those who advocate that solution as communists and revolutionists, in it alone will be found also the true and lasting barrier to communism and revolution. We may, meantime, obtain as well from this speech a hint of the reason wny the appointment of Mr. Chamberlain as Chief Secretary for Ireland) which had been at one time mooted was not made, A man with his views on local government and the land question would have been wholly out of his element in the atmosphere of the Castle, arid mutt have worked much mischief there,
Another opportunity of exhibiting themselves in , the MEN of their true colours to the world has been afforded to the FurUBE. those pleasant people who are plotting, and not altogether without reasonable hopes of eventual success, to obtain the mastery of B arope. The occasion was that of the death of Madame Michel mother of Louise Michel, the famous leader amongst the anarchists, and the consequent necessity that arose for burying the corpse. To the funeral there came some thousands of the party in question, notwithstanding that the dead woman had been of anything rather than a friendly disposition towards them and had been wont to try to dissuade her daughter from having anything to do with them, a parcel of fools or some such name as she called them. There were nevertheless the usual speeches made at the grave, from whose side we need hardly say all mention of the life that lies beyond was thrust away, and every vestige of the Christian's hope was absent. And it would be well if those who are at one with these anarchists in their war against the Catholic Church would duly coilsider that by which they replace the ceremonies and prayers they hate so much, co that they may take warning by the display I .' The speeches were of the universal tone to which we have become accustomed of late years and which aeem a special parody invented in iofernal regions on the brotherly love and Christian charity of the Church. One orator, for example, on this occasion declared himself to be neither Parisian nor Frenchman but a man of the earth in general Another at the same time professed himself ready to prove his fraternal love by ripping up a certain brother and all belonging to him, while a third recommended the proletaires to vindicate their common right to property generally by taking a gun and pillaging and killing whenever the need of doing so might seem to arise. — But this is what we might naturally -expect to come of the worship of the crocodile, for as such M. Tame in his last volume on the revolution describes the admiration of that movement, and its apostles. "Ii" he says, referring to the splendid curtain that hid the gods of ancient Egypt, a " worshipper obtained the favour of seeing a corner of the veil lifted, what did he perceive?— soma crocodile snake or other noxious animal wallowiug on a purple carpet !" And he adds that there is no need of going back to ancient Egypt to witness such a worship. "It has survived to this day in the admiration for men who were brutes, and for the principles of 1789 so-called, which did not proceed from the men of 1789, but from the whole company of 18th century philosophers, and in particular from J. J. Rousseau." Behold, then, the giants who ushered in the xeign of light into whose beams it is the constant endeavour of philosophers and all the enemies of religion among ourselves to lead the whole of us whether we will go or not. But it is useful to consider the revolution in its true form as M. Tame exhibits it to us, and we shall, therefore, borrow a longer extract from the review of the work in question which we find in the Times. "M. Taine 's story of how the Revolutionists tried to rule is but a long chronicle of violence. It almost defies analysis because there i 3 no folly which the imagination can conceive that was not perpetrated by the Jacobins, who, as the historian observes, • hela power trembling and multiplied cruelties in order to prove to themselves that they bad power.' At first we dwell with curiosity upon the evidence of the changes that were produced in the public and private life of the provinces by the downfall of the Monarchy ; but the descent into anarchy was so rapid that observations on a ■tate of things that existed here and there for a few months only cannot araest serious attention. While the word ' Liberty ' was being painted over the doors of all public buildings, a man had not even the freedom to eat or dress as he pleased. Marat held all fat men to be suspects. A Parisian, who had gone to the country and returned withfa sucking-pig, saw this animal seized and ' divided among the people,' while he himself was thrown into prison for ' thinking to feast while others 6tarved.' Gold being at such a premium that a louis was worth 15,000 francs of paper money, every man who could be detected with a little hoard of savings became a millionaire-aristocrat. The only ' patriots ' were the gueuas, who had nothing, and who prowled about seeking for something to plunder or to destroy. To look like these fellows professional men — doctors, writers, lawyers dressed themselves like ruffians, generally with • mangy fur caps and fox tails hanging down their faces and shoulders.' In the theatres, where compulsory performances were held, the ' mass of. red bonnets made it appear as if all the convicts of Europe had resorted to the French cities.' Meanwhile the estates of the Church and of the nobles were scrambled for and appropriated at haphazard. Some men paid for their lands in ready money, which never found its way into the public exchequer, because the officials who received it immediately absconded. Others — farmers and peasants— took posses. sion of lauds without any title, and banded themselves with their neighbours to resist anybody who should try to turn them off. Afterwards they bribed or coerced village mayors into giving them titledeeds. The peasants, drawing sustenance from their fields, remained independent during the anarchy, but as paper-money got more and more depreciated they refused to send provisions into the towns, and
a day came under the Directorate when thousands of them had to be arrested, though it was found necessary to release them in a few days for fear of a general rising. The Directorate, which succeeded the Terror, never seems to have thought that it could govern long. Its members saw the nation sick of bloodshed, the women exasperated at the closing of churches, the peasants impatient for a master who could secure to them undisturbed enjoyment, and each of the five directors only thought how he could make terms for himself with the coming slayer of the Republic. Bub who that slayer was to be no man guessed until the very last. M. Tame even acquits Bonaparte of having killed the Republic, as killing is generally understood, for there was no life left in the unclean thing which he suppressed. Like Tiberius, ' it was a monster loaded with crimes, rotten with vices wheezing helpless upon cushions, and the smotheiiug pillows only hastened an end which, must have come soon.' With these disdainful reflections M. Tame closes a volume which will make no friends among those Republicans of to-day who want to keep up the Romance of the Revolution. That he is a faithfnl witness, however, is not to be gainsaid in face of the proofs which he furnishes for every fact advanced in his most ably written but very painful book." — But by these men of the past — these fathers of the more enlightened age, we may legitimately judge of those who are to succeed them in the future — more especially since we have before our eyes the nature of those who at present are plotting with some chance of success to fill their place. — And it is to prepare the way for them that philosophers and secularists generally among ourselves are constantly struggling.
It cannot be said of the Irish people that in any
A noble appeal made by them to their friends abroad they PRESENTATION, are looking for efforts on the part of others of
which they themselves are not willing to take their share, or even the lion's share. The present movement, indeed, has all along been notable for the unselfish part taken in it by those who have given it their support. The common good has been the object sought after, and to secure it men have shrunk from no labour or suffering. The greater number, by far, for example, of those who were imprisoned as Buspects were singled out in no other way from the general crowd, and neither gained in distinction nor in any ■ other way from what they had endured. We hear them claim no privilege now because of what they have borne for the cause, and their only reward is that by their patient, undaunted endurance the general good has been advanced, and the front turned to the enemy has continued unbroken. The latest call, then, made upon Irishmen abroad to come forward in aid of the national cause has been that to which so many of., our fellow-colonists, and especially those on the West Coast, are responding so generously, — the call to subscribe to the Payment of Members' Fund, so that the good will of Irish electors, and the opportunity now offered to the National Party of obtaining a full representation in Parliament, may not be lost by the impossibility of trustworthy and able members' being maintained during the Parliamentary campaign. But, while the appeal has been made to their fellow-countrymen, both in America and these colonies of our own, the Irish people at Home have not taken up a careless attitude, with their pockets buttoned and their purse-strings tied. They have, on the contrary, recognised that they who look for help must also help themselves, and steps have been taken everywhere to do as much as lies in the power of the people to make the necessary provision. Some of the counties have imposed a regular tax upon themselves, and by a unanimous agreement it is cheerfully being paid . It, however, remained for the county that had already distinguished itself in another way to give the most striking marks of the spirit by which it is actuated, and to take the lead in a generosity that is truly noble. We allude to Monagban, which, as it was the first county of Ulster to act the patriot's part and return a Nationalist to Parliament, has now come forward and rewarded the services of its Member, Mr. Healy, in the past, as well as enabled him to continue them in the future without being hindered by anxiety as to pecuniary means, by bestowing on him the liberal sum of £1,000. The Dublin Freeman of January 10 refers to the matter as follows: — {i Le petit caporal of the Irish party, as Mr. T. D. Sullivan wittily christened Mr. Healy, the member for Monaghan, on Tuesday, before his constituents at Carrickmacross, has received a very splendid proof of the confidence of the sterling Northern men in himself and of their steadfast adhesion to the Irish party. Such a demonstration as that over which the Very Rev. Dr. Birmingham presided, his first and very auspicious act as parish priest of the centre of his native place in the historic Barony of Farney, might well cause the Parliamentary ghosts of the Leslies and the Shirleys to walk the land of their old ascendancy wringing their powerless bands, and wailing over the present change. The meeting was io every way worthy of the people, the surroundings, the cause, and the man. The people had quietly and unostentatiously subscribed £1000 as a gift to their young member, in recognition of his substantial services. They assembled on the spot where more than forty years ago their fathers and many of themselves had stood around O'Connell ; their cause was then
a defeated one in their country; it is now a victorious cause, and no man has done more or better to help it to practical and triumphant results than the young Southern to whom they have extended so noble a reward, and who with them has broken down the barriers separating Ulster from the other provinces, and gone far to prove by his victory that there is an undivided and consolidated Ireland at last." The man indeed, who has done this is well worthy of his rewarl, but the man who has not only djne this, but is prepared to continue on the course on which ha his set out is doubly worthy of it, noiy ia fact, and this no doubt his constituents and the members of his party generally feel, could any sum of money adequately reward him. Mr. Healy however is a genuine patriot and a genuine Irishman and his full reward will be in the secured prosperity and freedom of his country. Meantime we see how freely and cheerfully Irishmen abroad may continue their good work of aiding those athome in this struggle, whose issue if successful must be for the credit of the Irish race everywhere. The people athome aij throwing no dead weight upon us abroad but are themselves in every respect doing their best and proving themselves worthy of all the aid their friends abroad can give them.
That Frenchmen however should be worshipers o moee the crocodile seems in some manner to come cbocodile natural to them and we do not find that the only worship. base object of their devotion has been the revolution . Before the revolution, for example, in no part of the world did a more corrupt monarchy secure for itself a more blind idolatry, and afte r the revolution the idol of the nation was in fact one of the basest characters to which history assigns a notable place, That Napoleon should have been taken by the French people as he undoubtedly was, for the incarnation of all that was great and noble is an inscrutable mystery, or perhaps is hindered from being so by the very powers of deception that formed one of his worst features. He was a master of deceit indeed, and the perfection to which he had arrived in employing it, might have put even Lord Chesterfield himself to shame. The following extract for example from a letter written by him to his brother Joseph and published the other day by Captain Bingbam in a translation of the Emperor's letters and despatches, is especially {fine.—" I must say that I wqs not pleased with the preamble of your order for suppressing the monasteries. With regard to all that concerns religion you must use the language of religion, and not that of philosophy. That is the great art of the person who governs. Why speak of the services rendered to art and science by monks ? . . . One supports ill-treatment much more readily from a person who is of your way of thinking than from a person who differs in opinion from you. Your preamble is philosophical and an insult 1o the men you evict. You should have said that the great number of monks rendered tbeir existence difficult, that it was necessary for their dignity ihat they should have enough to live upon, and lience reform was indispensable Men will support misfortune j when it is not accompanied by insult, and when it is not apparent that the blow comes from an euemy to the cloth. Now, the enemies of the monks are men of letters and philosophers. You know that I myself do not like them, for I have destroyed them everywhere." — It is evident, w t re it only from this extract, that Napoleon was capable of acting upon his own belief that '• the masses muse be guided without knowing it," and be certainly guided them in the direction that was most profitable to himself. — He was their hero— almost their demi-god— and the beliefs that lingered among them after his fall partook in some degree of the nature of those connected with the supernatural.-- Waterloo, patent enough to all the rest of the world was to them a fable, they looked upon the Emperor's exile as a volun» tary matter and long expected to see him return from it once more to place himself at the head of a victorious army. — It was frequently reported among Ibem, indeed, that he had actually returned and was but biding his time in some chosen place of concealment.— The glamour, however, that was over the French people in connection with Napoleon showed itself in nothing more than the identification that they made of his tame with the cause of freedom~ and that not only for Prance but for the whole world,— and yet, who than he cared less for freedom, who had iniured and oppressed foreign nations more savagely I—reaching1 — reaching perhaps the height of all that could be done in this way by his ruthless and unexampled plundering of the art treasures of Italy — while he mocked the people whom he had robbed by the command to be thankful that he bad placed tbeir treasures in safety. But of what V«ia method ioP governing F; an ce lit-self must have been we may judge from anotherjextract givea by Captain Bingham from a letter.in which he replied to the Arch- Chancellor who had submitted to him a decree for conceding to the Bar some partial independence. " There is nothing in your decree," he wrote, " which gives the Grand Judge power of controlling the lawyers. I would rather do nothing than deprive myself of the means of taking measures against a heap o* babblers and revolutionists who are almost all inspired by crime and corruption, As long as I wear a sword I will never sign so absurd a
decree. Wbat I want is to be able to cut the tongue oat of any lawyer who uses it against the Government." Nor was this profession of a disregard for human life a vain one. Its truth had abundant proof in Napoleon's career. He describes himself, for example, as, in Egypt, " beheading half-a-dozen Mussulmans a day to keep the rest in respect," and, in France, as '• shooting five or fcix Chouans per diem to frighten the Boyalists. Captain Bingham's work, in short, is full (,£ passages tqat show how just it was that the remains of the Emperor should, infacr, be cast, as they were by the Communists, into an assassins grave, for he is proved guilty of foul murders secretly committed as in the cases of Picbegru, Villeneuve,and the English Captain Wright, besides those for which he wnsaccountable ia the pursuit of his profession, by the frequent bhootingof soldiers for trifling offences and various other arbitrary executions. We do not know whether the lawyers would have thought another of his designs against them almost as bad as that he entertained to cut out their tongues if theydared speak against the Government — but they would probably have held it a most deadly ordinance that prevented them from charging fees in cases that went; against their clients — aimeasure of which the Emperor had at onetime thought. The poet's decision, moreover, that the '• brave deserve the fair " was hardly borne out by the conduct of this great Captain. He was exceptionally rude to ladies ,and in some instances brutally cruel. The Duchess of Chevreuse, for instance, was shut up by him in a madhouse, because she bad written an epigram to his prejudice, and Madame de Stael only escaped his ill-treatment by withdrawing.into Switzerland. In her devotion to Napoleon, therefore, France also proved herself the worshipper of a crocodile—though, perhaps, of one less loathsome than that of the Revolution. But let us at least hope that by the recognition of the true nature of her gods and the consequent disgust at it, she may be aided in returning to a better state of mind and to a devotion worthy of her magnificent traditions and the true, even though the somewhat veiled, greatness of her people.
Is England going to war with Bnssia ? The tele*
war ? grams, at the time we write seem* warlike in their
tone, but we have read as threatening ones, and yet nothing hostile has come to pass. Russia, we have good reason to believe may still delay her match, and unless she knows the time to be fully opportune will bold back her forces from the Afghan fronier a little longer, That she has designs of some kind on India no man of any degree of perception can doubt, and that she has been pursuing those designs for many years with more or less concealment is also plain. She has hardly taken a step in Central Asia the notion of which she had not first repudiated, find in some instances the falsehood of her assurances was as insolent as it was wanton. General Soboleff writes that her hopes are to excite an insurrection in India by means of which she could accomplish her true object of obtaining possession of the Bospborus. But it is far from clear that with England alone rests a desire to oppose her designs in this respect. Germany is also interested ia the power that rules at Constantinople, and it is more than doubtful as to whether she would willingly con- Bent to see Russia occupying such a position. The opinion has long been held by European politicians of experience that the intention of German statesmen is to bring about the extension of Austria towards the east, and to absorb into their own empire the provinces that are Teutonic in the empire ia question. But this is a plan with which the possession of Constantinople by Russia or even her increased influence in the neighbourhood of the Danube and the Balkans would seriously interfere, and we cannot believe that Germany would quietly stand by and witness a contest with England that would if successful, have such au end. — Besides all this we may add that the possession of Constantinople must give to the great power owning it a preponderance in Europe that would be most displeasing as well as injurious to every other power of the continent, and England would hardly be placed in such a position, therefore, as to undertake alone the war excited to bring about such an end.— But as to India, admitting that the object of the Russian Government is to expel the English from that country, and assume the place thus left vacant, is it at all probable that such a design would secure the sympathies of the Indian people ? Lst them detest the yoke of England as they may, fchey must know it still to be lighter than anything that Russia would impose upon them.— They are not ignorant of how she has ever treated the nations that had become her subjects. — There is besides & large section of the Indian people, the Mahommedan section, who look upon her as the timehonoured and especial foe of their religion, and everything seems to prove that disaffection towards England in favour of Russia could never make much headway in the country alluded to. — It may be doubted, moreover, as to whether the Indian masses would be favourably disposed towards a return to the sway of their native rulers.— They are well aware that every evil that has prevailed among them nnder English rule was felt with a ten-fold force under the whips of their native masters, and they know that the withdrawal of the English power would simply mean the renewal of all those evils.— lt was but the other day, for examole that the English uthorities were appealed to against a native prince who had slowly
roasted to death a subject who had in some trifling way or another offended him. — The whipping with English whips of which General SoboleS speaks— and he lifts his voice well in favour of humanity out of the shadow of Russian dungeons and within sight of Poland and Siberia — may he grievous as it is indeed a foul reproach to Fngland, but it is light in comparison with the tortures inflicted by native rulers.-— The worst thing, moreover, that can be said of England and'to her greatest shame is that in some of her methods of Government she approaches those of Russia — but when we say this of England we feel that it may be said not without good fruit for it is uttered of a Government capable of shame and amendment, whereas what is said of the Russian Government falls upon hardened eaTS or those made angry only. We do not, therefore, look with much apprehension to the misunderstanding that now prevails between England and Russia, nor do we expect that it will result in war. Some insistaace on thejpart of English diplomacy! and some concession on the part of that of Russia will most probably bring the matter to an amicable settlement. But Rassia, meantime, will certainly persevere, as hitherto, in advancing, under various pretences and with much falsehood towards the Indian frontier — hop* ing that the time may at length come when she may attain her great object — whether that may be the command of the Bosphorus and possession of Constantinople — or the place now occupied by England in India. Her statesmen, no doubt, discern future possibilities under which they might attain to the end desired by them, although jthey are hidden from the 'common herd, land certainly do not exist at present.
While the howls of the anarchists reach our ears AN INSTRUCTIVE from Paris, testifying to the world as to what is the CONTBABT. true nature of the war against religion that now
under various forms is being so actively carried on, a better testimony to the same effect is also being abundantly borne in many places. Wherever, in. fact, affliction or danger exists, the frnits of religion are seen in the conduct of those whose lives are devoted to its service, and we thus plainly learn what it is against which the self-styled enlightenment of the day is struggling. We are told, for example, that Mr. George Augustus Sala, the famous literary man, when passing through Auckland the other day on his way to Sydney spoke with admiration of the beauty of the Sandwhich Islands; qualifying hiß delight, however, by a mention of the leprosy which exists there as a terrible blot upon the face of nature. The mention of the leprosy meantime reminds us of something called out by it that is more lovely than the face of nature which it spoils, that is the devotion of the Belgian priest who has devoted himself to the service of the lepers, and lives amongst them in their especial island from which he never moves and can never hope to move. The experience of the cholera out-break, again, in Prance and Italy is still before us, and testifies to a like devotion in many priests and nans. Since then, moreover, there occurred the fire in the Brooklyn orphanage and the heroic conduct of the Sister who went back in the face of the flames to make sure that all rhe little children had escaped. And now we find a paragraph to a similar effect clipped from lone "of the most bigoted Protestant paper 3 in the United Kingdom, that is the London Standard. It gives us the latest news concerning those who serve religion : — "They write to us from Malaga," it says, "that the clergy and all the religious bodies have shown great coolness in the midst of the general panic. They have calmed the fears of the people by their solemn processions ; they have traversed the ruined streets, praying with the dying, succoring the wounded, and helping to release the unfortunate people from the midst of the debris of the houses. Many, in truth, have displayed an extreme bravery in the rescue of the victims. A parish priest, at the risk of his life, saved seventeen children, although injured himself by the falling stones." We have on the one hand, therefore, the men whom the enlightenment of the day favours, and to whose condition it would conduct the world. We saw them the other day, in the anarchists' meetings at Paris, and at ithe funeral of Mme. Michel, furious with a murderous excitement, «nd clamoaring for slaughter. We have, on the other hand, those, against whom they rage, braving dissase and death in aiding the unfortunate and serving God. Either sight is one that may teach a lesson of similar meaning, and warn us of what it is that our philosophers, secularists, and pseudo- scientists generally are doing their best to encourage or repress. Bat to men even of common sense alone the choice to he made should be an easy one.
The greatest appetizer, stomach, blood and liver regulator on eatth — Hop Bitters. Look lor and read. '
The World says — The Dish land-owner's lot is not a happy one. A baronet stated in the Westminster Police Court on Saturday that he was not possessed of large means, his property lying in Ireland. The explanation was accepte.d as valid. This reminds me of an incident which happened in a club recently. " What is the right time— l mean the exact Greenwich time ? " asked one of the group. There was no response. " Bless me 1 " continued the searcher after truth, " d'you mean to say none of you chappies has a watch ? " " Not a solitary ticker amongst us," answered the representative of a Hibernian Conservative borough ; " we're all Irish landlords."
