A CATHOLIC ARCHBISHOP

Oamaru Mail, Volume XXIV, Issue 7690, 6 December 1899, Page 3

A CATHOLIC ARCHBISHOP

ON TIIE PEOPLE AND TEMPERANCE. A POWERFUL ADDRESS. GREAT MEETING IN CORK. From tua Catholic Times, London.

(Published by Arrangement.)

Ilis Grace, Archbishop Ireland, says the Catholic Times oti the evening of Wednesday, July 19, delivered a lecture entitled " The "People and Temperance," in the Theatre, Cork. The Times quotes from the Cork Examiner's report that every part of the house was crowded, while the enthusiastic reception accorded his Grace reflected his popularity not alone as an eminent dignitary of the Church, but as a powerful and eloquent lecturer. He held the close interest of his audience from tho opening to the closing aentonce of his address. Amongst those present were the Most Rev. Dr Brown, Bishop of Cloyno ; tho City High Sheriff (Mr A. M. Coyle, T. 0.); Right Reverend Monsignor M'Swecney, P.P., V G., St. Patrick's; and Right Reverend Monsignor Nugent (Liverpool). In hia opening remarks the Archbishop said: I have come back to Cork, the city where Father Mathew began his labor; I have come back to pay reverence to the shrires where ministered the Apoßtle of total abstinence, I have stood with reverence and devotion near the statue on Patrick's street. I am certain that his memory lives nob only in word, but in sentiment. lam iirmly couvinced that you are ready to repeat every day the words inscribed on his statue, ''From a grateful people.' Father Mathew has honored Cork ; he has honored Ireland ; lie has honored the Irish race throughout the world ; lie has honored the church of which he was a child and a priest, and I feel with deepest conviction that Father Mathew was indeed a benefactor of the Irish race, and all that is needed to place the Irish race upon the high pedestal of prosperity, honor, and glory is that they carry out loyally and continuously theinjunctions of the !r!ev. Theobald Mathew.

IllELAVI) SOl'.f.R WOULD BE IRELAND FREE. There iu oue word thai; tolls emphatically the vital condition which ir,usfc attend all oth-:r efforts towards social elevation, whit must be done if you would succeed in any measure for the betterment of the people, and the word—l pronounce it with love and reverence-God grant that wa may hail it with the devotion it deserves 'l—the word is "sobriety." A great patriot —A. M. SulliVlk u e'iid a few years ago, " Ireland sober is Ireland free " Ireland sober i 3 Ireland happy and contented ; Ireland sober is ireland uo strong that no power of oppression can keep her down or prevent her people from leading in all the works of civilisation, intelligence, and social advancement. For nearly"4o years I have worked among the Irish people as Priest and Bishop. I know their wishes and I know their faults, and because I love them with every fibre of my heart I am prepared to speak to them wherever they arc—-in licland or America —with absolute frankness. lam prepared to tell them of the one obstacle in their pathway to happiness, in the firm hope that something may bo done to remove that obstacle, and place the Irish people on the heights were God intended them to live In many of the cities you find too many of our people who are miserable, and you find them too m>iny- oh, God, why should ever the sons of Erin be in such places I—you find them in Asylums and poorhouses, although in America chey live in the land of plenty, in the land of the fulleso opportunity. THE ARCHBISHOP'S OATH. I have studied their career from the Aulantic to the Pacific. I have asked the cause, and everywhere it was said to me, there is but one cause—drink. I say it with the deepest conviction, after a ministry of 40 years spent in America, that, if Irish emigranos coming to us had brought with them the pledgo of Father Mathcw, and had adhered to it, there would bo now in America no element of the population more powerful, more wealthy, more respected than the Irish-American people. And when I recall these things—when I remember what ought to have been, and thon remember what was the cause of misery, I feel the strongest indignation arising in my soul, and because of my lovo for the Irish people I speak forth anithema to intoxicating drink, and I awear before the living God, so long a3 my hand can bo raised it shall be raised in opposition to intoxicating drink. (Applause.) And so long ub my tongue can move it Bhall be moved in praise of sobriety and in cursing intoxicating liquor. LIQUOR BARS ACCURSED VESTIBULES OF HELL. 'l'hero are to-day in Ireland 19,000 publichouses —that is, one publichouse for every 23G souls, men, women and children included. But subtract from these 236 the children who cannot drink, and a large number of men and women who, thank God, don't drink, or drink with the greatest sobrioty—and then see how few there are to support each one of these publichouses, and how consistently these few must spend the fruits of their labor to Bupport these vestibules of hell. In your city of Cork—one licensed house for every 126 souls in your population, and deduct from 126, again, the children and those who don't drink, and you have a very small number of slaves to Cork in the Bweat of their brow to maintain each one of those accursed publichouses.

WUERB POVERTY ANE ORIME COME FROM. And of these 576 licensed houses 417 are what you would call tied houses—set up by the wholesale trade, and I know that last year in Ireland,not including the amount of foroign spirits and foreign wines there were consumed in Ireland, not made in Ireland, but retained for home consumption, spirits to tho valuo of L 11,526,588 sterling. In a population of a little over four millions thero are spent for beer and spirits nearly 1.12,000,000, and, what is fearful, theße figures show an increase of L 167,000 over tho previous year, and yet we talk of tho poverty and misery to which so many of our people are doomed. Oh, let us first keep in our pockets this 12 millions of pounds, and thon, if there is occasion, let us take to bewailing poverty. 11 here were committed to tho prisons of Ireland during 1896 23,000 males and 11,113 females. Now we are roady to explain and say, " Oh, all the crimo was drunkenness; otherwise our people aro as good as any, and better than any." Of oourae, they are an good as any.

EVERY LOVES OF IRELAND SHOULD PUT DOWif THE ACCURSED EVIL,

In God's name why do you not take the matter in hand and blot out from the fair face of Erin that stigma that attaches to it before the nations of the world. Now, I am certain that if you examine closely the ea 'ees that led to this number of arrests you will find that, directly or indirectly, 90 per cent can bo brought home to intemperance. When I hear of so many arrests for one year in Ireland, remembering that they are due to intemperance, I am ready to call cpon every lover of Ireland and every lover of religion to labor with all the energy of soul and body to put down that one accursed evil. One public-house in Ireland to every 236 souls; and how the traffic is fastened upon the poor people ! From north to south of your country I found signs of improve ment, but I found towering above evsr other edifice, breweries and distilleries, covering whole squares. I found, as in no other country in the world, whisky advertised as it is in your own. Oh, it would seem as if the demon of drink' were afraid that some poor fellow would not know where to find him, and takes good care to obtrude himself everywhere before the eye of adult or child. And then those distilleries and those breweries are, as I understand, companies, the Bhares of which are held by men and women high and low, so that it has been worked to this, thab a great number of our people are interested in the success of breweries and distilleries (loud cheers and a voice: f ' tChia is the whole evil.") And these breweries and distilleries take upon themselves —each ona—hundreds of houses, and control your politics, so that men putting themselves forth foi* election are afraid to fight the liquor traffic. Men in that position are afraid to lift their arm against it.

THE FRUITS OF INTEMPERANCE ARB poverty, ignorance, sin, ill-health of body, destruction of valued weal. What is the use of providing work for the multitude if, when a few shillings or a few pounds are earned, they are brought to fill the till of tho publichouse ? Never, surely, was negro servitude in America equal to the servitude of the laborer— man or woman—who works under this curse. Intemperance is a despot, and man, and woman as well, is the slave. POLITICS DEGRADED BY DRINK. Laws to promote the social welfare of the people are all in vain if they still drink. If the voters of the land are politically corrupt, they will vote for the interests of the saloon; and with such a constituency, good God, what of the nation 2 PRACTICAL EXPERIENCE. In America I could bring you to one of the Irish settlements, thirty or forty miles in length, and twenty in breadth, and throughout it you would not find one public-house, and not one man who would taint his lips with intoxicating liquors. I visited a settlement some time ago, and some men gathering arour.d me said to me in gleeful play, " .archbishop, you had some trouble some years ago to get us to take the pledge. Well, you would have much more trouble now to get us back to where the devil had us." I could tell you city after city where rarely you would find over a whisky shop a Celtic name. Celtic names, they say, are made for better things. We have laws prohibiting the opening of saloons within very locg distances from churches or schools. We say to the traffic: "You cannot come noP>r the schoolhouse. Your breath smells of hell, and it must not taint the you.h of the land." We say : " You must get away from the churches. The devil cannot walk side by side with Almighty God." And what has been done in America may be done anywhere, and indeed this fight against alcoholism is going the round of the world.

THE EVIL IS TERRIFIC j Therefore the uprising againso it must be | terrific. It is to-day a question of life or death to the people, of life and death to tens of thousands of souls. It is a question of national honor, of national life, u.he one ■ question for the Irish people at home and abroad is sobriety. TIIE LIQUOR TRAFFIC IS THE DEATH-K.NELL OF LIBERTY. Men say, "I wish to have my liberty." What is liberty ? It is the protection of man's property, it is the protection of the woman and the child, it i 3 the protection of the poorest in the community. Liberty is the death of despots everywhere, and the man who fattens on the wages of miserable, idiotic men and women must be pub down in the name of liberby. Well, now, what musb you do 1 Do something, in God's name ; let Ireland rise up as one man and say from the summits of your authorities temporal and spiritual, down to the poorest of the poor say, "We shall put down intemperance ia the name of God and in the name of country," and then you will £?ain the enjoyment of the fullesb liberty. Can nothing be done because so much is needed to be done 1 What is needed 2 Personal total abstinence. And who will dare say he is nob capable of that little sacrifice for the sake of Ireland, for tho sake of Holy Church, for the sake of humanity, and for the sake of God 2 I appeal to the Irish people at home and abroad. What I care for is the social elevation of Ireland. As one loving her. as one ready to bow down in deepest sacrifice for Ireland, as one who has bub one object in life, to serve her people, I bid her in God's name to renew the work of Father Mathew. I bid her to have organisations, and bid her people to be Eoldiers of the cause, and I appeal, from the depths of my hearb, to those whose office gives them influence and power, to those to whose words are ever listened to by the Irish people—l appeal to them to Re SEW THE SriRIT, THE WORK OF FATHER Mathew, that Ireland Sober may tie Ireland Free.