GENERAL NEWS.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume II, Issue 75, 3 October 1874, Page 10

GENERAL NEWS.

Speaking of Sir Charles Gavan Duffy's visit, the London ' Tablet '" s«ys : — ', This popular and esteemed Irishman has not yet moved from London to Tisit tiie old cod, so dear to him, upon which ho has notstood for nine yeurs. It is fondly hoped that he may now remain at; home, and give the benefit of his ripe wisdom and experience to hiscountry, of which she stands in sore need. In two years more he can enjoy his State pension here, while the portion ef his property that ho has sold lms realized £70,000. * Dr. W. Maziere Brudy, nephew to thfl lato Sir Mazier© Bradr Lord High Chancellor of Ireland, hag been appointed one of the Cam* arieri Segreti to the Pope. The New York 'Independent,' (of which Ilenry Ward Beocher is tlieeditoi), recently Rive the following Catholic statistics of the United Status* : — The priests are 5000, the churches count 4800 and the general instructions are put down at 14*2, of which 800 are parochial schools. But the great point is the number of Catholics in the country. Allowing 2500 for each priest, the Catholics count twelve millions and a half of people ; and allowing n thousand seats for each church, and giving each church three worships or " Masses," each Sunday, they make the great multitude of 14,000,000. The Catholics lave these two ways for counting their own ranks, but all such estimates are obviously untrustworthy. It is not likely that the children of the Pope in this country exceed 9,000,000, and certainly it is a vast multitude. Mr Whalley, M.P., at a Welsh Eisteddfod, delivered what the ' Liverpool Mercury ' calls an eccentric speech. His praise of theWelsh language was more extreme than would have been employed by the most enthusiastic of Welshmen, bin the audience declined to hear him, and he was continually interrupted. He claimed to bo of Welsh descent, but explained his own want of knowledge of the Welsh language by the fact that he had been a wanderer from the land of hisfather* »• for some generations." Mr John Pope Heuuessy, Governor of the Bahamas, has arrived in Cork, where he is on a visit to Lord and Lady Fermoy, at Trabolgan. General Mariano J. Parado, the former president of Peru, and thehero of the of the famous combat of May 2, 1866, when the Spanish, fleet was driven off by the improvised batteries of Callao, has been appointed Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary of theliepublicof Peru to tbe British Court. The Prince of the Asturias has successtully passed his final exam, ination at the Theresa Gyronitium, Vienna." At the end of threeyears he will proceed either <o Munich or England to attend a military school. "The brutality of uneducated human nature," writes the 'Daily Telegraph,' "is, after all, unfathomable." Ihis sentiment -was uttered at the close of some comments upon the following fact, the truth of" which was attested by the • Telegraph's' Commissioner in the Black Country (Staffordshire) : — A pit was carefully prepared, and » powerful bulldog was chained to the post in one corner of it, and to the post in the other a man. When — much as in tho arena of old Rome, whereman used to be pitted against beast — the dog with his teeth, and the man with no other weapons than his bare fists, were allowed and encouraged to " fight it out," till victory declared in favor of the man. Ifr is not the want of education, but the want of religion, that gives rise tosuch scenes, far froei being uncommon, of barbarity. In Hungary, among a population of fifteen millions, the Catholics are in a majority of nine millions, yet they arc much more limited in the practice of their rights than people belonging to another creed. Protestants, non- united Greeks, and Jews, manage their own fund* without interference from the State; only the fnnds of Catholic institutions are superintended by the Government, though they belong to the Church, and are indisputable as to their origin and destination. These funds have been formerly the property of the Jesuit colleges, but after the abolition of thia order in Austria, under the reign of Maria Theresa, they were fixed upon for the support of the Catholic public schools. These funds amouuted to a sum of 6,360,000 florins, besides properties of 59,000 acres of land. — Vienna Cor. of London ".Register." Mi»a Braddon, the popular author of " Lady Audley's Secret," and a host of other equally popular and successful novels, on June 1, paid u> visit to the grave of our distinguished countryman, Gerald Griffin, whose celebrated novel, " The Collegians," is said to have given its literary bent to Miss Braddou's genius. As Brother Joseph, tlio late Gerald Griffin taughfc day after day und month after month the poor children of our poorest citizens who attended the North Monastery Schools of the Christinn Brothers, in the yeurs 1839-40. His great novel, dramatised under the title of "The Colleen Bawu," hus been a fortune to Mr JLuon Boucicuult, and is a source of attraction at most theatres throughout tbe world. — ' Cork i£xamiuer.' Apart from the persecution inflicted on the heads o£ the Prussian dioceses, the legislation of this year contains an attempt ak the suppression of the entire Catholic hierarchy by giving parishes the power of electing their own priests in those cases in which the bisuop does not institute men who are not agreeable to the government. The clauseof the law snys that upon the demand of ten householders a general, meeting of tho Catholics of the locality may be culled together, and that the votes of one half of those present at the meeting shall besufficient to render the election of a priest invalid. The ' Germunia* shows that by tho very wording of this clutue Catholics have it in their power to deieafc tho object of the entire law. There is nothing in the laws of the Church to prevent them from attending such a meeting by whomsoever it may be convened. Let those who attend but vote to a man against the election : in that event no felon priest could obtain a majority, and none could be elected. " By this means Falck's dastardly attempt, at the introduction of household suffrage within the Catholic Church would remain a stillborn child, aud he would be beaten with his own weapons. An organiiation hus been set on foot for carrying out this plan, v?hic!i has always proved a signal success.