New Zealand Tablet Fiat Justitia. SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 14, 1874. AN ABSURD TELEGRAM.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume II, Issue 81, 14 November 1874, Page 5

New Zealand Tablet Fiat Justitia. SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 14, 1874. AN ABSURD TELEGRAM.

The morning papers of Tuesday last published a telegram stating that " The British Representative at the Vatican has been withdrawn " This is a canard with a vengeance. For the last three hundred years there has never been a British representative at the Vatican. Such being the case, it is impossible that an official bearing that character could have been lately withdrawn. Some years ago an effort was made by a Prime Minister of England to induce the British Nation to send a representative to the Papal Court, but the project was defeated by the bigotry and intolerance of Parliament, acting in. accordance with the of public opinion. Occasionally in the past, the English Minister at Florence acted in an unofficial capacity in the transaction of British business with the Government of the Holt Father ; and lately Sir Alfred Paget in succession to Lord Odo Russell, held an unrecognised position in relation to the Holy See. But neither could, at any time be called, even in a remote sense, a British Representative. The British nation did not in any way recognise him as Buch, neither did the Holy See. But the position held by these gentlemen, such as it was, enabled them and their predecessors to do much mischief to the Holy See ; and to their dishonour, it must be said, they were not slow to avail themselves of their opportunities to give effect to the promptings oC their national and religious prejudices. If it be true that Sir Alfred Pag*.t has been withdrawn from Rome, all British Catholics will rejoice exceedingly. It is always better to have to contend against an open foe than an insidious enemy, particularly when that enemy is in the garb of a friend, who is in reality at once false and treacherous.

"We shall rejoice, therefore, on hearing for certain that the Holy See has at last been spared the humiliation of being compelled to endur6 the presence of a man secretly sent by England for the purpose of protecting the interests British subjects, but who has ever been in reality, if not the chief, one of the chief agents in forwarding projects against both the temporal and spiritual interests of the Church. Our joy would, however, be still more complete were it announced to us that the British Minister accredited to the usurping Italian Government was withdrawn from Home. This official is supposed to be there for the purpose of seeing justice done to such of Her Majesty's sub. jects as may be sojourning, or may hare interests, in Italy. But so far as the interests of British Catholics as such are concerned, this supposition is a mere supposition destitute of almost every particle of reality. Por example — and this is only one of hundreds of similar instances — the other day, the usurping Italian G-overnment, iv defiance of the protest of the ownprs, sold property belonging to Propoganda. The property of Propoganda belongs to British Catholics in common with the Catholics of the United States and other foreign countries. Even we here in New Zealand have a personal and pecuniary interest in that property; and yet what protection did Her Majesty's Ambassador to Victor Emmanuei, give to our interests ? Did be protest against tlxeir being sacrificed? Did he adopt any measures whatever to prevent our being plundered ? No ; but on the contrary, there is ev&ry reason to believe that he even went no far in the opposite direction as even to encourage the Italian Grovernment to plunder his Catholic fellow-subjects.

Tor the honor of British diplomacy and the British name, it is to be lamented that the representatives of our country at foreign Courts should "be so generally found in league with the enemies of British Catholics, and conspiring with the revolutionists and communists of Europe in undermining even the pecuniary interests of their Catholic fellow-subjects, for the ostensible protection of which they have been accredited to foreign nations, and paid out of the taxes to which Catholics have contributed their share. Catholics are compelled to pay men whose chief business and highest ambition it seems to be to insiilt and ignore their pay-masters and employers, albeit unwilling paymasters and employers. ~W$ are glad that the hypocritical

British agent who so long played the spy on the Papal Government, and who never did anything we know or ever heard of, except mischief, has ceased to exist, if indeed such be the case. The residence of this British?ag'ent at Rome has, ever since 1830, been the centre of conspiracy against the Church and her temporal sovereignty, and the rendezvous of the enemies of both. The telegram spoken of above is, nevertheless, an absurdity, inasmuch as a British representative at the Vatican, who had no tence, could not be withdrawn.