Current Topics.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume V, Issue 266, 7 June 1878, Page 1

Current Topics.

tHILST Cardinal Pecci's pastoral for '77, and of which ■we gave an abstract in our last issue, has been, calliiag the attention of the world to the solicitude of the Church, for the welfare of the working classes, to her anxiety that labour should occupy its proper place, that the labourer sbotild be regarded as honourable, and duly honoured, and that by no means should he be forced to become the mere instrument by "which a fortunate few should attain to luxury, his head bowed down and his bddyTßjfttnpled beneath the feet of those whom Ms strength, or skill had enriched, until the remark made touching the ancient world might with justice be repeated of our own times, — that the human race lived only for the amusement of a few citizens ; a very different protest has been uttered by a voice that grows daily stronger and more formidable. It is that of socialism. — "' After abortive attempts made in two preceding elections," says the Berlin correspondent of the Times, " the Socialists in 1871 succeeded in collecting 120,000 votes and returning two members to thfe German Parliament. In IS7I they had 3i0,000 votes, and nine members; in 1877 they registered 497,000 votes, deputing 12 members to the National Legislature. The importance of these figures will be apparent from a comparison with the number of voters. In 1877 the total of the enfranchised electors in the German Empire amounted to 5,943,000. Of these 5,557,700, or about CO per cent., having voted, it follows that nearly one-tenth of all the votes given -were Socialistic, an extraordinary result for a movement not twenty years old, and in a House having only 398 seats. The Socialistic societies, who are the tangible representatives of the property partition programme, are only 100,000 (strong, but derive pecuniary support from many hundred thousands more. The money spent in the agitation is believed to amount annually to over £ 15,000. Their journals, six in number in 1569, are now about 50, in addition to which almanacks, pamphlets, and flying bheets are circulated by hundreds of thousands. A cause wliich has pressed forward with such giant strides deserves the serious attention of politicians." It is evident from this that the civilisation which has broken off from the Church, asserting its light to a liberty that is nothing else than license, has created, instead of the progress and prosperity it pretended to seek, a danger in which all its extravagant pretensions must perish. If Society refuses to hear the voice from above that would guide it safe over moderate and healthy paths, the time will come when it must hear the hoarse tones from below that will shout in its cars a word of command to which it cannot be deaf. If, shaking itself free from the trammels of religion, society forgets its duty to the working man, and virtually turns him into a slave, revelling in the fruits of his industry, and leaving him to starve, the working man will learn Ms power, and direct it, by the hatred which has . hecn-bred in his heart, against the society which has oppressed him. h lis eye is not so dim but that he can read the meanings of things. He is not so dull as not to see, as they lately proclaimed at their Berlin meetings, the injustice as well as the " misery of artisans living upon a crumb when young and strong, and reduced to beggary when old and weak." He is not so mere a clod as not to overflow with bitterness when he contrasts " The lady baroness, luxuriously driving along upon gutta-percha wheels, with the bricklayer's wife carrying a scanty meal to her lmsband on the scaffolding." Nor is lie to be deceived by the false cry of patriotism, " Why should we love our country ? " asks a Socialist newspaper, " In what way are we benefited by our country 1 Arc we to be grateful for the military service enjoined upon us— that military service in which an officer when he beats a private gets only a few days arrest in his room, while the private for laying sacreligious hands on his officer is sentenced to life-long imprisonment in a fortress ? Or are we to thank our country for permitting us to eat our bread when we have any, and sending us to the workhouse y.vh Qn we have not ? Or are we to faU down qq in adoratwn because there are courts to vindicate the law, provided we can pay the judge ? Or is it %>sc neatly printed tax-gatherers' receipts that are to make us love and cherish Fatherland ? No, in-

fatuation alone can speak of country and patriotism nowadays. Have proletarians a Fatherland who have no Fatherhouse ? Do we possess even a hand's breadth of land to plant a tree or grow a flower in ? . . . . This modern patriotism is nothing but a means, cunningly resorted to by the ruling classes, to hound race agaimt race, and bleed the dangerous mob from time to time. Eeal patriotism can only find a soil where all are equal and admitted to share and share alike in life's enjoyments." Such are the sentiments that animate this power that is growing in Europe. This power that an anti-Christian Society has bred, by its mockery of religion, and nurtured by the heartless conduct and riotous living of the irreligious. It is a power that force will be iinable to repress, and that must grow and prevail unless some means be found more efficacious than force. One means only do we know of by which the evil may be overcome ; it lies with the Church. All along we knew that the Church omly might combat the evil, but now we have had explained to us hex plan of action. Let the laboiu'er assume the honourable place the Church has assigned to him : for the time he has lost it ; a corrupt Society has stripped him of it, and regards him only as a " machine" valuable in proportion as he is " productive" and, when he is no longer so, worthy only to be imprisoned in the workhouse, he so reasonably dreads. Let Society awake from its sleep upon the volcano where it now rests, and learn its duty and perform it. There is a voice at Eome that Las power to teach men their duty most lucidly. There is an eye there that has looked into the -very depths of all this wretchedness, and seen the roots of the disease and its cure. There is yet time for Society to recover itself. When the bricklayer's wife carries to hex husband on the scaffolding a sufficiency of good food, she will not envy the baroness in her carriage ; when the artisan is no longer forced to see his youth and strength betrayed by want to premature old age, and that destitute of a shelter, he will brood no more over his misery ; and when a Christian Society does its duty by the proletarian, the proletarian will reawaken to patriotic feelings. " There is no feeling," says Macaulay, " which more certainly develops itself in the minds of men living under tolerably good government than that of patriotism. Since the beginning of the world there never was any nation, or any large portion of any nation not cruelly oppressed, which was wholly destitute of that feeling." The safety of society lies in Borne and in Rome only.

JBdge Kbogh is to be congratulated inasmuch as ill a ievf years' he has lived down his evil reputation. We remember the time h<2 was elevated to the judicial bench ; we had then an opportunity of knowing what the feeling of respectable Protestants was towards him, and we know they considered the bench disgraced by his being seated upon it. Some of them called him a low demagogue, atld some' of the bigotted sort called him a low " popish " demagogue ; but all were agreed that the Irish Judges could no longer be regarded as the 1 honourable body of men they had hitherto been looked upon as being» That was only about twenty years ago, and now, instead of " that fellow Keogh," or "that scoundrel Kcogh," we have "eminent" Judge Keogh, and "distinguished" Judge Keogh, and "worthy" Judge Keogh, and Her Majesty's " highly valued servant ; " he has certainly played his cards well. But it came natural to him to play the hand he has played. He has but allowed free scope to the baseness of his nature, and is no more to be accredited with extraordinary abilities for having charmed bigots by doing so than was Tony Lumpkin for the change in sentiment displayed towards him by the lover of Constance Neville. " Ay, now it's clear friend, noblo "squire. Just now it was all idiot, cub, and run me through the guts." He is "distinguished " Judge Keogh, and all the rest of it now, because his natural inclinations have led him to pander to tyranny and bigotry ; and he is a living comment on the English Government in Ireland. A Government that scruples to support its masked tyranny by no degree of corruption, now bribing the informer amongst the lower strata of society, now rewarding in the upper, the sycophant and lick-spittle. We alluded last week to Judge Keogh's latest outbreak, but circumstances did not admit of our entering into details concerning it. This is how the matter occurred. This "highly valued servant" of Her Majesty's— it's a pity that fliuiltcy is not parliamentary—on coming into Deny in March last, and observing the preparations made there for the celebration of St. Patrick's Day, seized upon the. occasion to insult the faith of the Catholic people of Ireland*

and delivered the charge, from which we have already given an .extract, to the Grand Jury. Mr. Sullivan took the matter up in Parliament and gave notice of a question to the House, and immediately our "distinguished" Judge writes an explanatory letter, which is read by Mr. Lowther, and which for cunning, can hardly be surpassed. He had never thought of St. Patrick's Day — perhaps he had never heard of St. Patrick. He had seen arches across the streets, " the inscriptions on them proclaiming the intention of the processionists to celebrate the memory of the so-called ' Manchester martyrs/ the portraits of Lord Edward Fitzgerald and Robert Emmet, the 'I. R. 8., being the initials of the late suppressed Fenian conspiracy, ' Ireland for the Irish,' ' The Harp without the Crown/ the French flag fastened against a house- wall, whilst the flag of England was not allowed to be seen." This is what he had seen, and it had so inflamed Ms loyal heart that he incontinently called out against the disgrace o^ it. But, putting St. Patrick altogether out of the question, where is the disgrace? The rescue of the Manchester prisoners was by no means disgraceful, it was a most plucky exploit, and, though we deplore the death of the unfortunate constable, we really cannot see that the affair deserves undying obloquy unless all political risings are to be so stigmatised. Had some Garibaldian brigand been thus rescued from a Papal prison, Englishmen would have chronicled the names of his liberators as those of heroes. Neither can we recognise as disgraceful the portraits of Lord Edward or Robert Emmet ; we never yet heard an Irishman, Protestant or Catholic, speak' of either of these men without reverence and pride, and we never expect to do so, unless it be some creature who wants to be Lord Chancellor, or Chief Justice, or something else according to his calling, and who will craAvl on. to his end even though he be over head and ears in sewage. But we arc un able to go through with the list. Judge Keogh says he thought it all disgraceful, so he rushed off and told the Orangemen that only for them he would not be able " to think or speak as he chose." In which we find a truth that is anything hut laudatory of the cause established, amongst the rest, by the deliverance of Deny, for what can be more shameful than to have fovmded the system which has produced the informers, the sycophants, and Judge Kcogh. His free thoughts and words are, indeed, a satire of the bitterest on that which has nourished them. Mr. Sullivan, however, was not to be hoodwinked or silenced. He accused Judge Keogh of equivocating and proved him to have done so by referring to the report in the Dcrry Sentinel — " Mr. Justice Keogh," said he, " refers in that report to the commemoration of St. Patrick, in which he stated that there was nothing to commemorate but disgrace, and he referred to other commemorations with glowing pride and euloghvm, and said they were noble and good. Those to which he referred with praise were commemorations of the spilling of blood, perhaps most justly, against the English people. They were deeds of war, bloodshed, and struggle, whereas the national festival of Ireland, then being celebrated, which he calls nothing but one of disgrace, was the commemoration of tho conversion of our country to the Gospel and the truths of Christianity. Those are remarks which we do not intend to suffer to pass without notice, and the House will have an opportunity of saying whether it is conducive to the respect that ought to be paid to law in Ireland that from the Judge's seat the anniversary of the death of the saint who converted our country to Christianity is to be spoken of as a disgrace (cheers). The attempt to put a new colour upon the statement in the latter is irrecortcileablc with the remarks of the learned judge on the bench, and they are an evasion of the accurate truth of the case."' This discussion took place on the night of Monday, March 25th, and the following night Mr. Sullivan asked the Chief Secretary " if he would lay upon the table and move that it bboultl be printed— (l) Copy of a letter from Mr. Justice Kcogh which he read to the House on the 25th inst. ; and (2) copy of the charge of Mr. Justice Kcogh, reported in the Berry Sentinel, as referred to in said letter ?:l? :l Mr. Lowther replied that he would be happy to do so.

Punch has lately given in his columns certain questions and answers in geography which arc supposed to describe the state of Europe in a few years to come. The pupil, in reply to the question what are the boundaries of Russia, says, in effect, Eussia is bounded on the north by the Arctic Ocean ; on the south by the Mediterranean Sea ; on the west by part of Ireland, and so on. There is a pleasant gentleman at present in the North Island who seems to have made up his mind to do a, little in a similar line. History, however, is the subject which he has taken up, and of all histories he has pitched upon that of Ireland wherewith to exercise his faculties. He told his audience at Grahamstown the other night that St. Patrick had been a true-blue Protestant — nothing at all of the Roman about him — a follower of John Wesley he was of course. Well, that we must admit : we have the word of Father Tom Burke for it. He, Father Tom, confessed to a ccitain parson a little time ago that he knew, beyond all controversy, that the saint was a Protestant, and what's more, said he, Lot's wife and Oliver Cromwell, if we recollect aright, were amongst bis congregation on the Hill of Tara. Will our lecturer remember this little addition to the facts* narrated by him when next

he lectures ? It will delight his audience, and they'll find, on inquiry, to their f urtlier edification that there are just as good grounds for it as for the greater part of the information given them. The Irish, it seems, have all along been in a manner involuntary " Papists." They would not have rebelled against Queen Elizabeth if they had only known that she meant to give them back the religion professed by them during the sixth and seyenth centuries, which religion, however, as is acknowledged even by Dr. Todd (Monograph on St. Patricit) differed in nothing from the creed professed everywhere else at the time by the Catholic Church, and they who will maintain that that had'anything to say to the doctrines of the " Ecformation," will main ■• tain anything whatsoever, and be fully qualified, no doubt, like this Rev. Mr. Hazlcton, to lecture on matters that they know nothing on earth about. It is wonderful the learning that is going in the air now-aM days. There are lots of people everywhere to be encountered tha™ can write a treatise or deliver an address without ever baviiig studied a morsel of the subject they undertake to treat of. It is a kind of spontaneous combustion of the mental powers that produces a most extraordinarily brilliant illumination. There are people in this colony that dont like to sec the Irish coming here ; they are tinder the impression that we are nothing but a mob of poor benighted mischievous " Papists." They never were, more mistaken in all their lives ; we arc the makings of as brave a crowd of Wesleyan Methodists as ever they clapped eyes upon. Mr. Hazlcton says that there is not a house in Ireland that has not a Bible in ifc, or that,.afc all events does not know something of the contents of the Bible, and in consequence, Protestantism is about to break out, like the measles or tlae hooping cough we conclude, all over the land. If our Irish friends only knew it, every man Jack of them is a bouncing Protestant, a Wesleyan, in disguise, and some day when he tries to whistle a jig or hum Garryowen, he'll find it will be a Methodist hymn that comes out of his"niouth. Then his eyes will be opened to the truth, and Tie will sec that, unknown to himself, he has been converted from the error of his ways ; this is very consoling. There were two choirs assembled to sing an anthem Avhcn this lecturer had finished, and certainly his "yarn" deserved a strong Hallelujah, which we nope i received.

The aspect of the world in general just now is very far from cheerful. Turn where you will some horrifying or threatening spectacle meets the eye. The famine in India, they say appears likely to be succeeded, if not by such intense want as that lately experienced there, at least by a severe scarcity arising from the destruction of crops by a plague of insects. In China the horrors witnessed amongst seventy millions of starving people are too fearful for the imagination to grasp. In Abyssinia there is also famine, which cannot hope for relief at any period earlier than eight months to come, and in Forth Brazil a like condition of things prevails. Ecuador, lately a pattern republic under the benign rule of Garcia Moreno, is now a prey to the ruffianism of Veintimilla and his bravos. The Caffre war has disturbed South Africa ; and Europe and Asia, even if peace be restored there, bid fair to become terrible sufferers from disease engendered by the carnage on the Danube and in Ameuia. Men and horses in countless numbers lie half-buried or totally exposed, and infecting the air as they rot, and there seems scarcely any possibility of an escape from some wide-spread aud deadly pestilence. Already indeed ouch a scourge is extending its influence. Several of the Asiatic towns are cruelly afflicted with typhus fever, and a more terrible form of disease still, a combination of typhus with small-pox, is devastating Bulgaria and parts of' Russia. The prospect for the hot months of summer in the northern hemisphere, which are now about to begin, is indeed alarming, and who shall say where the mischief is to find an end. But is there an immei diate prospect of peace, is the Cougvess to prove the settling point A^ all these complications. We fear not. "We hold it to he extremely^ probable that the assembling of the conference will but make it clear how impossible it is for this Eastern Question to be settled without further fighting, and that more widely extended, and far more deadly than any we have as yet witnessed. The Tunes has declared that it will be impossible for England to consent to the cession of Bessarabia to Russia, but that the Czar has determinedly set his mind on this, believing that in obtaining it he will honour his father's memory aud wipe outthe disgrace of the Crimean war. Who is to yield then, England or Russia ? Our patriots will answer that certainly England must not yield, and they who know how largely fanaticism enters into the character of the Russians, and of how obstinate a nature are the family oE the Romanoffs, will predict that the concession will not come from Alexander. What further points of variance there arc to be reconciled remaius to be seen, but here is one, at least, that appears in-e-concileablc.

A school master teaching at the Waibi Bush School in Cauter*

bury, was changed at Geraldine, ou Thursday week lasc before A. Le G. Campbell, Esq.. with disgraceful conduct towards certain of the female pupils of the school. It appeared, however, that there was not sufficient evidence to make out a case, and that, moreover, there had been a conspiracy amongst the girls to get this master dismissed. It Hardly requires any comment to point out how desirable a school that at Waihi Bush must bo for the training of children. If such be the tactics employed by mere school-girls to get rid of a teacher, what are they being brought up for ? Such a plot would be considered disgraceful to the lowest outcasts of society after years of degradation. The. Melbourne "gods" themselves would be safer associates for decent children than wretches capable of such a. plot. Our secular system is progressing under flying colours. It is not yet six months • existence, and already we have had occasion to record two infamous cases in connection with it. This school at Waihi Bush is certainly a choice institution to which one might be obliged by the law to confide an innocent-minded child. They had better give their Education Act its true name and call it at once an Act to expedite the demoralisation of children. But it seems the children aie not to be the only sufferers from the contaminated atmosphere of these schools — the teachers had better also beware. Their characters are perilously at stake, and when they believe themselves safely engaged in teaching harmless children, they may be the intended victims of creatures prematurely aged by vice. Such at least is the lesson the decision of the magistrate at Geraldine seems to convey. A special Providence appears to be stripping scularism of its veil.

What is Plon-plon about now ? We are anxious to see that article of his in the Revue des Deux Mondes which, they say, has created such an excitement in France. The catastrophe of '70 he aflirms was due to the clericals. What is he trying to strain at now over a popular movement against the Church ? He is a through-bred patriot, we know, and a man of honour in all his bearings. M. Victor Hugo, in his " Histoire d'wv Crime," just published, tells an anecdote of a Prince of the House of Bonaparte who came to him secretly about the time of the conj) d'etat, and begged of him to have the President arrested, as he contemplated a treason, which would injure the State, but above all would destroy the reputation of the Bonaparte family. This it was that his kinsman could not endure. M. Hugo does not tell his visitor's name — Prince Rouge he called himself— but it is not beyond the possibility of guessing. Who so fit to replace the Prince President as the man to whom honour was so dear that he was ready to sacrifice the family advancement to preserve it, and who so fit to replace McMahon, and rival Gambetta, as the man who points out to Prance the true enemy that betrayed her to the Germans. There is a species of depth that strangely resembles shallowness.

The loss of a German ironclad off Folkestone, reported by cable, will add to the sad recollections of the English coast already this year stored up. Over six hundred lives have now been lost. Nearly two hundred and fifty drowned now, and nearly four hundred lost in the Eurydice, off the Isle of Wight in March last. The Suez mail brought us the particulars of the latter catastrophe, and they are very sad. The Eurydice was a training ship, and had been sent in November, '77, on a cruise to the West Indies. She was returning thence with over three hundred and sixty souls on board, and on March 23rd last, had .arrived close under the Isle of Wight. She was well in shore and sheltered by the Downs, until when she rounded Dunnose j Head, and lost the shelter of the land, a squall and snowstorm, which hud been threatening for hours, but which, by the length of time they had been gathering, seem to have allayed the suspicion of the sailors) s>f ?ly struck her and in a moment she was capsized. The coastg!W .a on shore at Bonchurch, and the crew of a schooner, named the Emma, further than she was out at sea, had seen her speeding along full sail, and then came the darkness of the snowstorm and nothing more was seen of her. Her fate recalls to us Dante's description of Ulysses' Shipwreck, thus translated by Longfellow — " For out of the new land a whirl-wind rose, And sßiote upon the forepart of the ship. Three times it made her whirl with all the waters. At the fourth time it made the stem uplif t, And fhe prow downward go, as pleased Another, Until the sea above us closed again." After the sky had cleared the master of the Emma saw something floating on the water, and cries were also heard by him. He steered for the place and found five men there, but, taking them on board, three of them proved to be lifeless. Out of all on board the Eurydice only two survived.

A late number of the Wananga contains a bitter complaint from a Maori at Mataikono, who says that an European went to his pah in the evening of April 30th last, and staid there -until midnight. n the morning it was found that the object of his visit had been to oison the dogs owned by the natives, and, in attempting thiß, he had

recklessly scattered poisoned meat about, so that a child picked up a piece and was about to eat it, when fortunately an elder boy interfered, and thus prevented a more serious death than those of the four dogs and two cats that were poisoned. This appears to us to have been a heinous action, and if it be proved true, and the European alluded to be identified, he should receive a very severe punishment. Had the offence come from the Maoris, we should have hardly considered them excused by the circumstances of their condition. Originating with a white man it is wholly inexcusable.

There appears to be a superabundance of fun at present in the province of Auckland. Besides that amusing lecturer whose extravagancies we have already chronicled, there is a most witty gentleman to he found there. His wit,, in fact, is so strong that he seems unable to repress it, and we find it breaking out under the most unfavourable circumstances. He is not yet engaged on a newspaper, and that is a thousand pities, for, as funny man, he would double the circulation of any journal fortunate enough to secure his services. We can fancy him recording the deaths of the locality with an exquisite strain of joviality, and at every accident that occurred for miles around he would make his readers split their sides. He is indeed a most " agreeable rattle," or, as Artemus "Ward would more happily express it, " a gay and festive etiss." He at present fills a dry position, however, for fate has made him chairman of the Hamilton Highway Board. . Here is a specimen of his wit, which we take from a contemporary. A settler in the district in question who had met with an accident owing to the dangerous state oE a certain bridge, wrote to this gentleman on the subject, and the following is his reply :—": — " Sir } in reference to your letter of the 10th instant, respecting an injury that occurred to your horse near the bridge at McNicholl's, this board wishes me to express their regret that an accident should have happened to such a worthy settler — more especially the bruise on your shoulder. They exceedingly deplore the accident to your horse, which you value at £16, and which I consider cheap ; lam aware that you always keep a good stud of them. They also desire me to say that they consider 5s per day for loss of valuable time, very reasonable. With regard to the valuable testimony of Messrs. McNicholl, Burke and McCabe — in corroboration of your statement — there is not the slightest necessity for the same, as the Board has every reliance on your veracity. Mnally, " old man," we must again express our regret at the accident happening at this particular bridge, because "it is not in this district," and, therefore, we cannot comply with your application . — I am, &c, Samuel Steele." Is it not refreshing to find the official communications of the colony beginning to take this charming tone of badinage ?