AN EXTRAORDINARY STATEMENT.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume VII, Issue 342, 7 November 1879, Page 14

AN EXTRAORDINARY STATEMENT.

According to the report of the proceedings of the Anglican Synod of Dunedin, Mr. Ashcroft made the following statement :—": — " Denominationalists, as he understood their wishes, asked that a certain sum of money should be handed over to them to do what they liked with. (No, no.) That was the position taken up by the Roman Catholics if the Tablet was the guide in the matter ; and they would not accept a payment by results system." It is not polite to tell a man he knows nothing about the subject on which he talks. But when a man publicly states as a fact what is notoriously not a fact, such a course is justifiable. In this statement made by Mr. Ashcroft in the Anglican Synod, so far as Roman Catholics are concerned, and so far as the Tablet is concerned, there is not one word of truth. Roman Catholics never demanded a sum of money from the Government to be handed over to them to do what they like with it. The Tablet never made any such demand, and there is not the slightest grounds lor saying that the Roman Catholics and the Tablet would not accept a payment by results system. Mr. Ashcroft is one of our most determined opponents. He is, if we are rightly informed, the chief editor of the Otago Daily Times, which is rabidly bigoted against justice to Catholic schools. But the value of this opposition may be estimated from the profound ignorance of the subject displayed by one of its principal agents. Mr. Ashcroft would make the public believe that he is thoroughly acquainted with the views of Denominationalists and the teaching and principles of the Tablet. But a mere tyro can now see that he labours under the profoundest ignorance in reference to both. Such as he aie the men who stand in the way of justice being done to a large portion of the community, and help to maintain a godless and demoralising system of education at the expense of the community at large, and to the exclusion of Christianity from the schools of a Christian people. We now call upon Mr. Ashoroft to produce from the columns of the Tablet even one passage stating that Denominationalists demand " that a certain sum of money should be handed over to them to do what they like with " ; or any passage in which it is declared that, " Catholics would not accept a payment-by-results system."