PARTIZANSHIP AND ITS EVILS.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume III, Issue 153, 7 April 1876, Page 12

PARTIZANSHIP AND ITS EVILS.

Auckland, March 31. No impartial roader of history, no one who has studied history in the writings of high Protestant and Catholic authors of different countries and ages, can fail to be struck with the variety and gravity of those charges which have been so often brought against the Catholic Church and individuals of note professing the Catholic faith ; or with the different character and position of the assailants, p-nd the slender proof on which such charges are often based ; some of them bping plainly false, or grossly mis-stated and aggravated. Sir Walter Scott, in one of his novels, observes that in the reign of Charles 11., Catholics of undoubted probity were basely charged with the most base crimes, and often condemned to suffer for them on the testimony of the vilest of mankind, '• the very refuse of the jails and the whipping-post." Men of higher position and pretensions in an intellectual and moral point of view, were not innocent of encouraging these false accusations. This unchristian disposition towards Kornan Catholics and their creed has not quite departed from the Protestant mind of England — even in our day. It will be no fault of Mr. Gladstone, and many of his sympathisers in the press, if this odious feeling 1 be not again revived and intensified. Some of the members of the press, even in this Colony, are by indirect, if not direct, means working in that line, from a sense of duty n* doubt, noteably the ' Evening Star ' and 'New Zealand Herald.' But for the influence of the press, the Protestant pulpit, and platform — those false accusers, to whom Sir W. Scott alludes, would never have been credited, and the innocent victims of their avarice or malice would never have suffered. But we have this security against a repetition of these wrongs now. A large portion of the metropolitan press of England is becoming year by year less hostile to us in spite of the 'Times' and the national jester ' Punch.' lam no apologist of wrong doers, whatever their creed or party, either in the past or present. Justice knows no distinction of creed or party, but only of virtue and vice, of innocence and guilt. But to do justice is often no easy matter. This we must all admit, however, that to vindicate the innocent is even a nobler task than to censure and condemn the guilty. No one can do justice between Catholics and Protestants who^confines

his reading to one side only. Journalists are " contemporary historians/ and responsible for the temper of the public mind for good or bad to a great ext3nt. The religious feelings of the great English nation are at this moment deeply moved ; and are likely soon to be more so. One striking evidence of this is seen in the fact of such a journal as the 'London Telegraph' admitting into its pages letters from an English nobleman of high political position and Cardinal Manning discussing a point of dogmatic theology but vitally affecting the spiritual authority, and indirectly the political position of the Established Church of England. It is not possible, even were it desirable to separate, the great fundamental principles of Christianity from those affecting important questions of Civil Government. The Civil Government of a Christian State, let it try ever so much, cannot shake itself entirely clear of all official connection -with the religion of Christ. In this Colony the attempt to do so is being made to the great injury, as it seems to me, of the best interests of the people. The people naturally regard with indifference what they see their Government care nothing about. Hence that religious indifference among the people now, which is so incompatible with any very high, or even with a respectable standard of public morals ; a religious indifference which, I think, is growing year by year, and which the Government schools of the Colony tend much to foster. England has a State Church, a church under the direction of the civil power. We do not want that here or anywhere. But were the Established Church of England abolished to-morrow, the Government would still be in official connection with Christianity — by its connection with all the Christian schools of the country. The " Birmingham League" representing our "secularist party in this Colony have more than once tried to sever the government from the Christian schools in England, but in vain. Both Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Disraeli refused to sanction any such measure. Mr. Gladstone, who, in spite of all his whims and faults, and his craze about "Vaticanism," is a. great Christian statesman — took his stand on this principle — that any general scheme of education in a Christian country must make in some way provision for the religious upbringing of the rising generation. If the coming Minister in New Zealand were wise, he would take his stand on Mr. Gladstone's educational platform, at any risk to his popularity. That he would encounter strong opposition cannot be doubted ; but his moral courage should be equal to the occasion. Talking of partizan historians, Mr. Froude seems to me the most remarkable of the class. His very impartiality is partial, To my thinking he exhibits a strange mixture of apparent impartiality, and the most inveterate prejudicej udice in his history. It is hardly possible to read with anything like patience his labored attempts to extenuate by all the arts af a skilful special pleader the blackest, and most pitiless crimes of Henry VIII., and even prove them to be something like virtues. What a strange moral sense Mr. Froude must possess. I doubt if he will ever get the unsophisticated portion of mankind to believe that Henry was anything else but a monster of cruelty and lust — a dishonor to human nation, or according to the old verdict, " one who never spared man in his anger, nor woman in Ms lust."