HEAVY INCREASE OF PAUPERISM IN NEW ZEALAND—LIBERALISM.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume II, Issue 110, 5 June 1875, Page 8

HEAVY INCREASE OF PAUPERISM IN NEW ZEALAND— LIBERALISM.

In spite of our boasted prosperity, cheap living, and high wages in this Colony, it appears that in some of our Provinces — Auckland to wit — pauperism is rapidly and steadily increasing. In proportion to our population, New Zealand will ere long overtake England in that respect. Some eight years ago it was shown, by official returns that England — that " happy land" and model country — contained upwards of one million of paupers, 157,000 prisoners, 100,000 criminal and destitute children on the streets, 600,000 habitual drunkards, and one million and a half "occasional" drunkards ; and according to a recent charge of Mr. Seymour Digby, England has a criminal population amounting to half a million. This is a frightful army of sin and misery. To keep it in order it requires a police force of corresponding magnitude. In London alone there is a policeman for every 636 of the population. Yet there are upwards of 5000 houses to which thieves resort. "Was there ever such a country as England ? How well it must be governed in the interests of the humbler orders of society. Yet Englishmen — the English press in particular — are never weary of extolling their system of government, and deprecating the government of other States. We in New Zealand are anxious to tread in the footsteps of England, and we are doing so thus far, that our Government and ruling classes are becoming yearly more wealthy, while our poorer classes are becoming pauperised more and more, as the relieving officer's report shows — in the Province of Auckland at least. Is this a desirable state of things ? If not, how is it to be remedied? Will our proposed "Constitutional Reforms' 3 do it ? I fear not. Evils like these cannot be cured by any system of " purely secular" legislation. Their causes lie deep, and can only be reached, with a view to a remedy, by searching spiritual influences, such as the Catholic Church alone can supply. But English and New Zealand society in the mass look on the Catholic Church with disdain and ill-concealed hatred. We often hear of an iron age and a golden age. But the present is preeminently an age of selfishness and greed. The rapid " progress" in science and material wealth has tended to make it so — in England and her colonies and America more especially. It is the object of the Catholic Church to destroy selfishness, and put avarice out of countenance. No wonder, then, that so formidable an army is now arrayed against her, headed by the Bismarcka and writers of the " liberal" journals and " advanced" aavans in all parts of the world. Mr. Froude tells us that some 600 years ago, when the Catholic Church was in the ascendant, she taught, and the great ones of the earth learnt of her, the virtues of disinterestedness, piety, and humility. That was before the birth of "Liberalism." By the way, talking of Liberalism, my opinion is that in its modern political sense it is the embodiment of insubordination, pride, and selfishness, and at times, hypocrisy too. The truly "liberal" man is the charitable Christian — Catholic Christian. Liberalism, falsely so called, is a system which places truth and error, justice and injustice, on the same footing, and defends them indiscriminately, according to circumstances — or expediency. The modern " Liberal" must regard Christ and his apostles, and the Catholic Church after them, as the very incarnation of illiberality, seeing they teach that

without faith it is impossible to please God — that we must obey God rather than man, and that the subject must in civil matters submit to "the powers that be," even when these are not all they should be, but "froward" and violent, instead of just and good and gentle. They did not, like our modern school of Liberals, teach *' the samred duty of insurrection," and even " assassination," at a pinch. The judicial assassination of our first Charles and of Louis the Sixteenth would not have been sanctioned by theser— however much these acts may have been in accordance with modern Liberalism. Liberals, like Masons, must be the irreconcilable enemies of the true, that is the Catholic Church, and of Christ. In this sense, a liberal Catholic is a contradiction in terms. The New Zealand Herald, in commenting on the increase of pauperism here, made a very just remark. He considered our system of Government relief — in other words, the " English poor law system" — a means of increasing pauperism, and leading to a waste of the public money. He advocated the relief of the honest poor by private agency. To supply the wants of the destitute is a religious duty. As such, it ought to be undertaken by religious bodies — aided of course by lay co-operation. This is the Catholic system, and the present system of Government relief is the Protestant system. In this, as in everything else, the Protestant system is " bankrupt" — a dead failure — and Bhould be " wound up." Liberalism, Protestanism, and revolution are convertible terms. Each involves the other. Auckland, 14th May. Laic.