THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS. FRIDAY, JULY 18, 1888.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXV, Issue 9105, 13 July 1888, Page 4

THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS. FRIDAY, JULY 18, 1888.

The last mail from Europe brought us the full account of the reception accorded to the Papa) rescript against boycotting and the Plan of Campaign in England and Ireland. The prognostications we ventured to make in our article of May 5 were exactly verified. In the first' place, it is certain that there was no condemnation of the National League as such, nor of the Home Rule movement. Both these are political questions with which the Roman authorities have not meddled in any way. The statement that members of the National League were to be refused absolution turns out to have been an invention of some ingenious London pressman. It is melancholy to j notice the corrupting influence of great cities, and to find that even journalists sometimes yield to the temptations that surround them. But this by the way. The reception accorded to the rescript was just what we anticipated. The National Press naturally tried to wriggle out of the obligations imposed x>n the Catholic members of the Nationalist party, and together with Messrs. Dillon, Davitt, and some others, talked in the usual blustering style about taking their theology from Rome, but that they would rather take their politics from Constantinople. The Daily News, _ the only Home Rule morning paper in London, openly disavowed the Plan of Campaign, and like Mr. Parnell, had " never approved of it." Mr. Parnell himself, in his speech at the dinner of the Eighty Club, was very cautious, and " as an Irish Protestant" declined "to vindicate the freedom in political matters of the Irish Catholics." He said that his experience had taught him " that they know perfectly well how to vindicate themselves, and that they will not allow any body of prelates, however numerous or however high, to dictate to them or to influence them one jot or one iota in their political duty to their country. The thing lias been tried from Rome over and over again." There is no doubt that Mr. Parnell is perfectly correct in his appreciation of the attitude of the Irish people to the Holy See, and it does not appear that any abandonment either of the Plan of Campaign or of boycotting has taken place in consequence of the Pope's action. The penalty of six months' " hard" had much more effect than the Papal rescript. Miss Norah Fitzmaurice, whose father was foully murdered before her eyes by two men, gave evidence against them, and they were convicted and hung. The Catholics of her neighbourhood of course boycotted her, and when she entered the church to attend mass, accompanied by armed policemen, two men gave the signal, and the whole congregation left the church ! The two

men were arrested, and sentenced to six months' each with hard labour. Next Sunday MissFitzmaurice attended ohurch, and the congregation remained. Nothing could more .clearly show the state' of : mind > of these people, who expect a daughter .to abstain from punishing, with the penalty it deserves, the murder of her father. It would appear that a section of the Irish Catholics are in such a frame' of mind that they cannot be influenced by any Papal decree, or.by any appeal to reason, humanity, or Christian morality. They have, -with the most appalling unanimity, agreed to . condone and apologise for the most brutal outrages, not only on men and women, but even on cattle. The murderers, or the Boycotters, or the Moonlighters, have always been represented as patriots and martyrs ; juries have so systematically acquitted them or disagreed in spite of the plainest evidence, that a conviction without packing the jury was impossible. Arid, instead of the official guardians of morality speaking out aloud and denouncing these atrocities, with a very few honourable exceptions (two,only,among the Bishops, and hardly more among the priests), they either apologised for or' applauded these acts. And they have had such a rebuke from Rome as no Catholic hierarchy ever had before. It has been the practice of the Holy Office to decide upon, points of dogma and of morals when such came before them. But . never till now has it been necessary for Rome to interfere by a formal decree on behalf of the Ten Commandments. Never before has it been needful for the Head of the Roman Church to send a circular round to the Bishops of any nation, informing them that theft is forbidden by the religion of Christ., "Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which de'spitefully use you and persecute you," can hardly be reconciled .with boycotting, with shooting men for taking farms from which former tenants have been evicted, with refusing to attend the sick and the dying, with combining ; to deprive the boycotted of the necessaries of life. And yet these are' the . practices which have been looked on. with approval, or passed over in silence, by all the Irish-born bishops and priests in the world. Nay more, we have here in this colony three Roman Catholic 'bishops *' who are Englishmen. * They know that many members of their flock are members of the League which- countenances these practices, and uses them as part of its means of action, yet never have any of them publicly denounced such deeds, or spoken out in vindication of the Papal Decree. At least, if they have, the Press Association must be strangely negligent, for no such action has been reported. The reason of this reticence is perhaps in some cases simple timidity ; in others the fear of losing the contributions of the mora earnest Nationalists among their people in others again just the hope that the whole thing will glide over and be forgotten. '