OLD RAGS.

Westport Times, Volume II, Issue 187, 6 March 1868, Page 3

OLD RAGS.

AVe extract the following sensible article from the Australasian of the Bth ult:

The outrage a couple of months ago at the Protestant-hall, and the strong reasons existing for presuming that young men trained in the colony took part in it, are calculated to awaken fears that some of the worst and most disastrous prejudices of the old world are bchig sedulously imported into this new land. This presents a terribly disheartening prospect. A colonial community, and especially one so remote from the centres of civilisation as this is, has to encounter inconveniences and disadvantages which are patent to every one. Among the counterbalancing benefits of the situation has usually been reckoned freedom from the inherited feuds, which, arising from a mistaken religious or political feeling, produce half the strifes that darken the history of Europe. It is, indeed, a sad evidence of the proclivity of human nature towards evil if, after settling for good or ill in this fair free land, we cannot shake from off our shoulders, or at the worst the shoulders of our children, the rags of superstition and malevolence which, like the robe of Nessus, become the more appaling in their effects the longer they are suffered 1o cling about humanity. It is comparatively little surprising, though miserable enough, that the men brought up in the thick of the insensate struggle should not, oven under such completely changed circumstances, be able at once to free their minds from the thraldom to which they have been accustomed, but that these party and sectarian differences should bo suffered to desceud to the s jcond generation, as recent occurrences would imply to be the case, is too wicked and foolish a thing to be tolerated, we should hope, " by the good sense of most," as Tennyson has it, or as less poetical moralists are wont to term it —public opinion. We might as wisely re-animate the family feuds of the G-uelphs and Grhibelliues, or Capulets aud Montagues, as educate our children in the hatreds and antipathies growing out of persecutions more than two centuries old. Were this 1(>S8, there might be some excuse for training our young men as Orangemen or Jacobites, but in 1868 the whole affair has become too musty for Australian adoption, and may well be left to the old land where ever-recur-ring fresh circumstances serve to give life to the ancient bones of contention and renew the fierce struggle. If it be the case that the youth of Australia are donning the worn-out-vestments of their father's superstitions and follies, it becomes a question whence are they obtaining them ? Is it from the hearth, the school, or the church ? We believe that all are responsible, aud that to a greater extent than is generally supposed. We are far from thinking that many fathers, school-masters, or clergymen directly teach their young charges to hate, despise, aud if possible persecute, a Papist or an Orangeman, as was done commonly enough in the " good old times," but we fear there is far less care displayed in the expression of opinions of this nature before the young than should be evinced wheu it is remembered how susceptible youth is to impressions of this kind, aud how apt to give words a wider scope and meaning than the speakers dream of. Of Australian schools we cannot speak with authority, but in Australian churches and chapels we have heard sermons delivered which have made us shudder for the effect they were calculated to have on young hearers. The mind of a child through its very directness of application takes what, compared with the adult standard, is a distorted view of the arguments presented to it. The moment you begin to inculcate bigotry in youth you must he prepared to take all the consequences which it implies, even if they extend to an active endeavour to remove from the face of the earth the beings whom you denounce. Teach in religion and look for hateful results ; teach love—and, according to the golden rule of Christianity, nothing else shoulders taught—and these horrible old bogies of past strife will soon bo exorcised. It is the unhappy tendency of the bigot t«> perpetuate himself, and even in a >:sh new world bke this to . sow the

seeds of his brutalising doctrines, to bear a crop of bickerings, upbraidings, denunciations, and even murders in the otherwise fair future. But with the determined out-and-out bigot, ou the ono side or the other, we have at present nothing to do. To cast words at him is to assail a rhinoeerous with snowballs. His hide is bullet-proof, aud could ho have his way the light of heaven would shine only on his elect. But to those who protest against intolerance, and yet in many thoughtless ways bring up the young wlio surround them to practise it, we would counsel caution. The old war-cries of English arid Irish sectarianism should be unheard in Australian homes, schools, and churches. Let them be left to the English and Irish. What has young Australia to do with Eenianism or Orangeisin other than as a spectator ? There is ample scope in this wild and fertile land for all the energy that we can muster to unfold itself, without causing ah atom of it to be wasted over these old world profitless struggles. Let young Australia be taught to look to the future, rather than to the past, for its shibboleth, and to its own land for its triumphs. These things we would urge upon the attention of the preacher and the schoolmaster, so that their teachings may be in accordance less with the feelings which their own careers have engendered than with the aspirations and destinies which may fairly present themselves to the mind of the rising generation. "We want to see Australia peopled by united Australians, not by antagonistic sectionsof English, Irish,or other European nationalities.