GENERAL NEWS.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume II, Issue 88, 2 January 1875, Page 11

GENERAL NEWS.

Eeligious persecutions seems to have taken new life in Turkey. Not only is the observance of the Mahommedan ritual made obligatory on the Turks, but it has recently been decreed that Christians shall no longer live in the Turkish quarter cf Constantinople. The police have ejected a great many Christians from Stamboul in a very brutal manner and without the least ceremony. They were turned out of their houses without warning, and their furniture thrown into the streets. It is to be observed that several German residents have been the victims of this highly disagreeable procedure. According to a degree published in 1840, the law prohibiting Christians living in the Turkish part of the city was repealed. M. Bismarck, who rejoices in persecuting Catholics and Protestants alike, does nob seem to have deigned hitherto to inquire into this matter.

Whatever propriety there may be in the first part or the title selected for his newspaper, nobody can deny that Parson Talmage is very hard "at work " in it. The labor he must undergo in the production of his facts alone would suffice to weaken the most muscular of " Christians." He has just been obliged, in the conscientious performance of his arduous duties, to make Dr. Ddllinger's friend, the Count Von Arnim, an " Ultramontane" and " a leader of the reactionary and Ultramontane movement." His congregation should give Mr Talmage some little time for needed relaxation. He will hardly be able to bear much longer the brunt of the manufacture of so many new " facts" as his emergencies seem to call for. So far as he is concerned, his readers still believe that the Jesuits burned Joan of Arc, and that Pope Pius IX. reigned a thoutand or more years ago, and denied the immortality of the soul. And now he says that Von Arnim is "an Uultramontane ! " Mr Bergh will be compelled to interfere soon in the interests of this overworked .

The ' Germania ' gives the following account of the manner in which the priests imprisoned at Neuweid are treated. It must be remembered that their only crime is that of performing their priestly duties, and refusing to disobey the laws of the Church. : — "On their arrival in prison each priest was closely searched. He was stripped of coat, waistcoat, and shoes, and minutely examined, They felt his breast, back, legs, even his toes. Then a door was opened for each of them, and he was left in solitary captivity. The cells are twelve feet by six, containing only a bench and a stool. A little semi-circular window lets in a scanty light through eighteen iron bars. In the day time there was not even a palliasse in the room ; for the bed, consisting only of palliasse, straw pillow, sheet, and one blanket, was brought in at night and removed in the morn; ing. Until the priests were permitted to board themselves, they were compelled to live on bread and water, with a little potato soup for dinner, and twice a week three or four ounces of meat. They could never see each other, and their hour's walk in the court yard was in solitude. Their reading was subject to the strictest scrutiny ; three or four days each one of them was without books or paper, and two of them were deprived of their breviaries for three days. They were not only deprived of saying mass, but even from hearing it. Such is actually the treatment of those priests who will not break their oath to their Church and their Bishops. In spite of all, their courage and cheerfulness never fail. Signor Eosa, whom the London ' Times' calls "a great archaeologist," and who has been commissioned by the Italian Government to superintend the excavations at present in progress in the Roman Colosseum, has been guilty of telling a great untruth. Signor Eosa was formerly a servant in the family of Prince Boghese. He quitted the service of the Borghese to enter that of Napoleon 111., who appointed him superintendent of the excavations he had undertaken in the Palatine in the palace of the Caesars. Up to 1870 he always pretended to be exceeding Catholic in his sympathies, and paid obsequious court to the different bishops and prelates. Since that unhappy date he has been the devoted friend and servant of King Victor Emmanuel and his Ministers^ and has been raised by them to a very conspicuous position. The other day Cardinal de Bonnechose was in Home, and visited the Colosseum. He had scarcely been in the building ten minutes before Signor Kosa came up to him, and politely offered to escort him around the buildings. But his Eminence, with equal civility, declined the honor. Eosa persisted, and at last, to get rid of him, the Cardinal turned round and said sharply* " Sir, you have, to the regret of the Christian world and myself, profaned the Colosseum. You have taken away the great cross and the stations before which we used to pray. I have the honor of saluting you." Signor Eosa,. not in the least abashed, still persisted in following his Eminence, and took the opportunity to explain away the fact of his having removed the stations and cross, by assuring him that they were to be replaced immediately. The next day ' FanfulT published an article dictated by Eosa, in which a very glowing description was made of the Cardinal's visits to the Colosseum in company of Eosa,' and asserting' his approval of all the prof anations which that gentleman had been guilty of. His Eminence, in consequence, thought fit to contradict this falsehood, and explained the matter as above. "In Canada," says the Independent, "the Eoinan Catholics are in the majority, and they have a vast amount of money invested in Church property. The Protestants of that Dominion are, therefore, by no means averse to taxing churches. 'It is to be trusted,' says the Montreal • Witness,' ' that all Protestant bodies will be of one voice as to the righteousness of making churches and Church property bear their share of taxation.' Doubtless that is a just sentiment, but it is pitiful to think that our Protestants in the States would see its justice much more clearly than they do

if they were in the minority." Canada, if the ' Independent ' would but reflect upon it, offers yet another humiliating illustration of the fact that justice, with the average Protestant, seems to be a mere matter of arithmetic — a thing to be clamored for when he is in the minority, to be denied when he is in the majority. In Canada the majority, being Catholic, voted that the Protestant minority should have separate schools, and not be taxed to support those wherein the majority wished to have their children brought up, according to the Wise King, "in the way they should go." In " the States" and in New Brunswick, where the C'Btholics are in a minority, they are taxed to support a school system they cannot conscientiously use, in the face of reiterated protests and manifest injustice. The recall of the Orenoque has produced an exceedingly painful feeling in France. It was universally considered an act of weakness on the part of MacMahon, of which few thought him capable. His Holiness received the news with his usual equanimity. He thanked the French nation for a generosity of which he would never have availed himself, and added that he would have been deeply pained had that country been subjected to any humiliation from the continuance of the vessel in the harbor of Civita Vecchia. He sent his benediction to the officers and sailors of the ship. M. de Courcelles, on whom devolved the "painful duty of apprising the Pope of the obligatory departure of the vessel, was much more disconcerted and distressed than was the Holy Father, who seemed to consider the matter as unavoidable, though very disagreeable,

An American exchange has the following : — There -were about fifty persons injured by the wild Texan steers yesterday during the raid through the streets. The herd was being driven to Buffalo, and the drivers were careless, allowing the animals to scatter in the lower parts of the city. Many persons were badly hurt internally, and others were disfigured for life, -while not a few will probably die. The shouts of men and boys maddened them, and caused them to rush in every direction, attacking every one they could reach. There was indescribable excitement in the streets, pistols and knives being brought out, but the holders of the weapons swords' seemed paralysed, they not knowing what to do first. The police appeared to beas much demoralised as the citizens. The bulls dashed down the streets, tossing, goring, and trampling everyone in the way, and nto store windows — anywhere to escape the excited crowds surrounding and following them. Pistols were fired carelessly or so badly aimed that several persons were badly injured by shots.

Catholic Public School, Kensington. — In February, 1873, this school, for the sons of gentlemen, was founded by the Bight Bey. Mgr. Capel, with the approbation of His Grace the Archbishop of Westminister. It began with six boys, and there was no formal opening. Last Monday, September 28, work was resumed after the vacation. The boys, who now number forty, assembled at nine o'clock; at the Pro-Cathedral, where the Mass of the Holy Spirit was said by the Bight Bey. Mgr. Capel, who afterwards preached a boys' sermon. The object of this school is to re-establish the old Catholic plan of home education in connection with school life. The boys live with their parents, or in families, or with tutors. Each tutor receives but a limited number, in order that the idea of family life may be carried out. The studies pursued include English, Modern Languages, Classics, Mathematics, Science, and drawing. The masters are graduates of English or Continental Universities. The Head Master is J. Bussell Maden, Esq., M.A., Oxon.

Probable Conversions. — We read as follows in the ' Church Herald' of Wednesday hist: — "The 'John Bull' tells us truly enough that another ' Liberal' convert from Mr Gladstone's Government is likewise about to follow Lord Bipon's example ; while, from our own information, we hear of Several impending secessions from the Tory ranks. If Mr Gladstone has lost some, Mr Disraeli may lose others, for there are as honest men on the side of the latter as was Lord Bobert Montagu ; and honest men can scarcely submit tamely to having their ' faith and practice ' manipulated and newly-defined by a mongrel Parliament of all creeds and none." A report is current that a wealthy nobleman of the highest rank, and of Conservative policy, has been within the last few days received into the Church.

Thb Pkikcb op Wales' Debts. — We are glad to find in the * Times ' an article putting an extinguisher on the absurd rumors re■pecting the Prince of Wales' debts. £100,090 a year is nothing at all when compared to the money of several private peers, and if the Prince's expenditure has exceeded his income by £10,000, or even £20,000 a year, everybody knows the exceptional duties of representation which have been thrown upon him. And the announcement that this deficit has been met out of the Duchy of Cornwall accumulations, which are the Prince's private property, ought to suffice to •ilence all the murmurs which have been industriously circulated.

It is reported that preparations are being made in Borne for the introduction of the cause of the beatification of King Louis XIV. of France. Pius VI., in his consistorial allocution of June 17, 1793, asserted that " Louis XVI. was a martyr." This allocution was pronounced upon the subject of that unfortunate sovereign's death, and it is worthy of note that it is the only Papal allocution printed in the ' Bullarium Bonianuni' in the French language. It appears there in Latin and French,

G-AINI2JG A Loss. — An American paper states that a wager was offered recently by one of the workmen in a steam planing-mill in "West Chester, Pennsylvania, that none of their number could remain in the drying-rcom of the mill, which has a constant temperature of about 1406 teg., for the period of one hour. One of the men accepted the bet ; the stakes, which were only 1 dol. a side, were placed in the hands of a shopmate, the heated apartment \mder the mill was entered, and the test of endurance began. The fellow won the dollar, remaining for the stipulated time ; but the lean, gaunt, emaciated figure that came from out of the furnace required more than a dollar's worth of provender to supply his loss of flesh.