Current Topics. AT HOME & ABROAD.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume V, Issue 245, 11 January 1878, Page 1

Current Topics. AT HOME & ABROAD.

§AST October, for the third time in four years, did the Irish Eight win the Elcho Challenge Shield. The fact is suggestive, more particularly now when England to all appearances is on the eve of being engaged in a great war, that it will try all her powers, and call into play all her resources to come out of victoriously. It is indeed a perverse law that forbids the very people, who •— have given such proofs of their aptitude, to handle the weapon in whose use they are calculated to become pre-eminently skilful. Let us hope that the day may not again be destined to dawn upon which an English monarch shall complain with bitterness of the legislation that has deprived him of " such subjects." Rightly considered, it would be a humiliating thought for the Government of England to consider that they had judged it expedient to forbid the formation of volunteer corps in Ireland, lest the rifles, intended to defend the country from an enemy attacking from without, should be turned against the power that rules within. It would be a humiliating thought we say because it would lead to a review of centuries of misrule and tyratmy, sufficient to brand with disgrace and stamp with the foul mark of hypocrisy and falsehood a Government boasting itself the champion of enlightenment and freedom. But tyranny is", after all, a policy as foolish as it is disgraceful. Her oppression of Ireland has brought England no advantage commensurate in any degree with the evils that have resulted to her from it. Whether her need arise now, or at any future time— things remaining as they are —she will find upon her flank a disaffected people, withheld it may be from sympathy with her enemies because of the horror impressed upon them, and from quite other causes, by those enemies, but incapable, by her own misgovernment, of affording her the powerful assistance they might otherwise yield to her. And should the nations opposed to her at any time prove to be any other than those opposed also to the Church and to humanity itself, in all probability she would find in the Irish people an additional foe, no longer contemptible as represented only by peasants " hardly armed and totally undisciplined, but formed into a formidable army by the aid of their kindred, who are citizens of the Great Republic. In any case, then, the policy of the English Government, as this affair of the Elcho Shield reminds us, has deprived them of an all-important contingent. It is quite possible that it has as well prepared for them a powerful enemy. Wordsworth says : — " Alas! the gratitude of men lias oft'iier left me mourning." Their confidence, it appears, is also frequently based upon a very blight foundation, and, by the nature of the individuals in whom it is occasionally reposed, suggests a great want of reliability in the genus homo. They must, indeed, be lavish of their faith who confide in the aljilitieb and political honesty of " Poor Bowen," and, we confess, it ( seems easy to provide them with a satisfactoiy representative. ' The honourable member in question has been rehearsing bis politics in the ears of the worthy electors of Kaiapoi and Rangiora, and has met with votes of thanks' and confidence. Let him keep up a good heart, he has no squeamish constituency to deal with, and all may yet be well with him. It is, as a matter of course, well known that he is a man who has no regard for his word, but in the eyes of the good Protestants and infidels of Rangiora and Kaiapoi that goes for nothing. Truth they know is variable, it depends upon the people with whom one has got to do, and if they happen to be " Papists"— well, as good make them one promise as another ; in their case a man's word is not binding. The supporters of Mr Bowen evidently believe more in parties than principles, and as to the " poor" ex-Minis-ter himself, we fancy he pins his faith to place rather than to either of these. The policy that pays is the policy for him. En passant let us remark that these constituents who are now so confiding will hardly look back upon the situation with like equanimity some fewyears hence, when

the system " Poor Bowen" stands accountable for has corrupted their wholesome boys and girls into hoodlums sLd. the kindred tribes. It can hardly be a pleasant experience to find oneself even the progenitor of gaol-birds. ■ !

Students of Homer will recollect that amongst the devices employed for the purpose of 4 inducing Achilles to relent from his sulkiness and repulse the Trojans from the Greek ships, Phoenix relates a long story of a like huff maintained by a certain Meleager, who refused to fight notwithstanding the ofieis of rich rewards made to him, by the elders of his State ; until, at the eleventh hour, a picture" of the miseries of the vanquished drawn by his wife, prevailed uponhini to change his mind and repel the enemies who threatened destruction to his people. In consequence of this obstinacy, although he succeeded in delivering them, his fellow-citizens refused to reward him, considering doubtless that he deserved nothing of them since he baa acted rather in the interest of his own household than m those of the common safety. This grateful action, ungraciously performed, is recalled to us by the report that there is now an intention on the part of the Imperial Government to release the Fenian prisoners. The deed is one much to be desired, and it has been petitioned for ardently for many years. In vain, however, for, instead of its being granted } a most unnecessary and cruel rigour has been observed towards the unfortunate men concerned. The accounts, such as have been from time to time permitted to reach the public ear, of their condition in prison have been truly heart-rending, and the matter has been the more aggravating, that the Government adopted a line of policy towards these offenders similar to that so loudly condemned throughout England when reported of foreign States, and punished with extraordinary severity in their own subjects a modified form of the treason which the English nation approved of- when seen abroad. If the release, then, be made during the present aspect of affairs, it can only be said that it is a design to conciliate Ireland that prompts it. A conciliation which, now that it is evidently inspired by fear, can not reasonably be supposed to evoke any very warm sentiment of gratitude in those to whom it is granted. For the sake of the unhappy prisoners we trust that the report is well grounded ; to produce anyfavourable effect upon the disposition of the Irish people the concession is made too late.

We should be amongst the last to spread scandalous reports; or to endeavour to bring into disrepute any well-meaning and Godly Christian man, but we fancy we.have discovered a disposition, on the part of a leading minister of this good city of Dunedin, to come straight over to Rome without much further ado. " The Church of the middle ages" has been mentioned by him with approbation, and the Catholic Church commended, because " at the time of the Reformation she did not admit children to confirmation until they could repeat the Creed, the Lord's Prayer, and the Ten Commandments ! " Here is a pretty state of affairs, and a nice look out there seems to be for the orthodoxy of the colony. Some booby or another might, perhaps, take it into his head to ask, why that particular point in the history of the Church when the movement called the " Reformation" took place should be pitched upon for approval, since it is. quite certain that the practice of the Church has never changed in this respect, and that she now requires no less from candidates for confirmation than she did then. But there, you see, is where the shoe pinches, and the precise spot whence we have derived our suspicions, for we ~caunot bring ourselves to believe that a learned and reverend doctor would speak at random and senselessly ; therefore some meaning or another must be attached to his words. Now, it would never do for him to bestow open praise upon the Catholic Church, as she exists at the present day — that would be letting the " cat out of the bag" far too suddenly — so he tries back a few centuries, and insinuates his •misguiding sentiments as covertly as possible. Can it be that he is already a full fledged Jesuit ? They are to be found of all sizes you know, and of every conceivable shape and colour, mental and bodily. And, in confirmation of this startling view, we find on further examination that he manifests a disposition to sap the foundations of his own very conventicle. Listen to this : — " He thought the Church must do what the Church of the middle ages did." An evident attempt to overthrow the Church he professes to guide, and to pervert i its members. Depend upon it a copy of " The Priest in Absolution"

is lying somewhere among his effects'." All this is palpable "Jesuitry." But it may be, after all, that- we are about to have a claim put, in, -for the Protestantism of the Church of the middle j ages. This is quite! possible, since a like accusation is 1 brought against that of the first ages of Christianity, and with quiteas much show of reason. ' *' "

We observe that one of oir. daily contemporaries lthinks* fit to furnish his readers with certain inanities culled from '-a! Cologne -jour- . rial respecting the Jesuits. The Ploly See, it appears, ha&been tricked^ into a complete depcndan.ee upoa the Order, fmanciallyt.by -means of> Peter's Pence, and morally by the Clerical Press.. Itreallyisama'zingi •what rubbish correspondents trying to make oiit a letsel- l wilF seize • #n to fill up the required space, for it is a " Romancorrespondeni"" •jte accountable for this incomprehensible stuff, The^Jesuits have -tore to do with Peter's Pence than any of the other ox clergy of the Church. No 1 doubt* - where circumstances call upon them, they assist in its collection as other priests do, but that is simply all they have to say to it ; and as to the " Clerical Pi-ess," Catholic newspapers naturally defend the Society uf Jesus as they defend any other institution approved by and' connected with the Church. They would be acting a most unjustifiable part were they to hear in silence the many groundless and bitter attacks made upon the order in question, or to treat in any way with disrespect a most zealous and/worthy body of ecclesiastics. As to the next sinister item ' reported, we have been listening to it all our lives. The Order, it seems, is not what it is taken for but is interiorly demoralized. This is rather stale intelligence to publish in an European newspaper and repeat in a colonial daily. It has proved the ground-work of numerous publications that were old when the Dunedin journal that now provides this silly paragraph for its readers came into existence. The interior demoralization spoken of, however, is only apparent to enemies who judge from the outside ; viewed from within, even when deserted, the Order is still spoken of with reverence and admiration. We recollect at present two testimonies to its excellence borne by men who had had opportunities of judging ifc familiarly, and who must be admitted to have passed impartial judgment : one is that of the Jesuit Gressct, dismissed from the Society because of his excessiveaddiction to literature which unfitted him for fulfilling his duties as a member of the Order, and who expressed in eloquent lines his regret at the parting, and his lasting love and veneration for the brethren he had boeii severed from. , The other is that of the apostate, Blanco •White, who, after he had professed himself a member of the Church of England, affirmed that the charges brought against the Jesuits were entirely groundless. On the other hand those works in which the Order is most loudly condemned are frequently grossly immoral, and the reprobation of their authors is most honourable to the fathers, and a powerful witness to their integrity.