Current Topics

New Zealand Tablet, Volume 26, Issue 349, 26 December 1879, Page 1

Current Topics

AT ROME AND ABB O AD.

NO MEBBY CHRISTMAS.

knapsacks. If it were a time for merriment, their tatterdemallion burlesque of a harvest, their fugitive morsels of greenish oats, prostrated to the ground, in the midst of brown deserts of bulrushes and heather; their potato fields, with gigantic rocks cumbering the middle of the beds and streams of bog- water com sing lazily down between the furrows ; their potatoes of the size of black marbles ; their turnips also of most diminutive size ; their meadows poisonous fungi, and tillage plots where nothing blooms except the ill-omened poppy— might seem to be a mauvaise plaisanterw, rather than the recompense for which the husbandman endures merciless rents and more than the labour and less than the feeding of beasts. I cannot bring myself to speak with patience of the little caricatured crops I saw withering about me ; the hay simply so much poison ; the very oats unfit for animal food; the ears filled with clammy pulp where they are filled at all; the potatoes blackened to death as under the touch of a destroying angel." He then goes on to suggest such measures as he considers needful for the people, and thus describes the causes of their accustomed poverty and suffering. "It is not the act of God which sentences the people of Connemara to the pangs of chronic semi-starvation. There are many thousand acres scattered here, there, and everywhere, which are quite as capable of reclamation as the patches which have been reclaimed. It is not the industry to reclaim them that is lacking, for those peasants labour harder for a guerdon of yellow stirabout than misers do for gold ; nor the capital, for it is in their stout right arms. It is not agitation that has debauched them, for the mule whose back bows under bis master's ingots is not more dumb and uncomplaining than they. It is that the product of their industry is devoured by a cormorant land system, whose monstrous appetite grows with what it feeds upon. They dare not improve. Bad as it is to be poor, it is worse still to appear rich. Their only security is to have nothing worth securing. As iv a laud infested with banditti their best protection is indigence. But even poverty like theirs, for ever hovering on the border of hunger, is not too lowly game for the scent of your smaller breed of trafficker in Irish land. It is one of the melancholy reflections which have dogged me at every stage of this investigation that here again, where a peasant ne\ er fired a gun nor uttercl a threat in anger, his poverty has been recognised, aud his submission rewarded by exactions infinitely more intolerable, mutatis unit an/lit, than have ever been attempted against his fellow-countrymen iv richer and more tuibulent latitudes. I mark this trait of all mean despotisms here in the perfect confidence that a people who have humbly kissed the rod in days when despair was their only counsellor will not be stung from their beautiful and sinless trust in Providence now, when, I hope, the lawful power of national opinion is awakening to their rescue." He tells us that all the country once formed the estate of the Martins, of Ballinahinch, in whose ruin the tenantry were also involved. " First, an English Insurance Company fastened upon those magnificent estates. Then they became the spoil of various speculators, English and lush, three ut' whom at this moment divide their fairest slices. You may form buruo judgment of the quality of the soil we are dealing with when I tell you that the I'wilaw valuation of the 153,000 acres which fell to one. of tucbC genti.y (an opulent London tradesman) is, as nearly as I cau calculate, TW. per acre, and that of another division njo:e favourably situated is. Hd. ; and I believe if there is anything satisfactorily settled about Sir Richard Griffith's valuation, it is that, although the crazing trade was at that date in its infancy, and pasture lands esca pi d proportionately lightly, plots of mountain tillage were estimated nt their full, if not an exaggerated, value. Need I repeat the miserable tale which might stand in stereotype for a hundred letters from a hundred different corners of It eland— how famine aud consolidation, like fond twin brothers, went hand-in-hand to reap their merry hai vest— how those swarming tenantry were huddled into tho cboleia-pits and fever-ships-how ' the clearances' finished w hat this half-hcai ted famine bad left unslain— how uhole villages totteml. fell, and were buried out of sight— how a few »i asters and their herd* mamod lordlily over the silenced hills— how the new pioprietors leaint. iho luxury of rack-icnting— how the new agent came burning with ingenious patents for doubling rents and taming tenants— how whatever reran aut of the old tenantry had htru<_^letl through the jaws of doitb ami eviction f.-uudthcrnHhi'v only v.],:i M ml i,.i tin- hi^h. their I.odie»

weakened, their spirits cowed, their rents doubled, trebled, sometimes quadrupled, the potato-crop which had been their main-stay doomed to an incurable disease, until it seemed scarcely a mercy that they had survived to be bled and tortured instead of resting under the tender grassy shroud beneath which their kith and kin slept their untroubled sleep." He collected, he says, the statistics of many villages that had formerly been populous, but now were almost wholly swept away. " But the ruin of dead tenants is less to the point than the ruin of living ones. There is hardly a miserable holding for miles aiouud that has not been wrenched up to twice its valuation. The increases were effected by the process known in Connaught as 'striping the lands" — that is to say, fields which were parcelled out in donbtful divisions among the members of the little communities, as in the vineyards of Champagne, were cut up into separate lots and erected into separate tenancies at enormously increased rents upon the pretext of enlarged holdings. And so what upon the surface would teem to be a judicious way of determining the tenant's rights and putting an end to litigation became by due legerdemain a cruel instrument of oppression. One townland which passed through this subtle crucible went in with a rental of £60 a year, and came out with a rental of £217 ; and the turbary (right of cutting turf for fuel,) and mountain pasture which used to be thrown in with the £60 had been shorn away in the process. Another which was once yielding £15 a year was with skilful manipulation milked for £70. Gold was wrung out of the very bogs. Upon one estate tenants who once enjoyed a free range of turbary were charged 2s 6d per house for their fuel (which in the matter of eight or nine hundred houses, became an exceedingly handsome feather in the agent's cap). Upon another estate the unfortunate turf-banks were rack-rented from Is to 4s per man's day's cutting. A man was paying a rent of £7 ; he reclaimed an acre of bog, and his rent was in consequence raised to £14. A holding on the outskirts of Oughterard which is valued to poor-rates at 15s is rented at £12. One of the most improving tenants in the district, whose holding was rented at £16 10s, was mad enough to build a farmhouse and expend £300 on fencing and draining ; his reward is a rent of £40 ss, instead of £16 10s. Not to pester you with cases which have a ghastly family likeness, I will be content with setting down twelve instances taken at random from four different estates, premising merely that the particular are at the service of whoever shall question them :— -

I have searched in vain for materials to lighten this picture of pitiless extortion. The ouly laud-owner in the neighbourhood of whom I can honestly say a praisful word is Mr. W. D. Griffith, whose lands are let often below and seldom above the valuation, and who, like merciful landlo'-ds all the country over, has been first and alone among his neighbours to recognise the pressure of the times by reducing his rents all round to the level of the valuation. You may judge of the contrast between him and his mightier brethren frooi the fact that one man, who holds a farm from him at £19, the valuation being £18, holds a becond farm of piecisely the same quality at the other side of the ditch, from another proprietor, to whom he pays £15 14s, on a valuation of £7 10s ; and while this man is relieved of a substantial share of his moderate rent by the beneficent landlord, the answer to his appeal to the other proprietor, to whom he has for years been paying 100 per cent over the valuation, is that he wni sell out the whole property rather tluiu give a reduction of a penny. Apait altogether from tho misery wrought by sordid üburiousness, I could wring the hearts of your readers with talcs of the sufferings heaped upon peasants by the sallies of mere wanton caprice and intoxicated power. I could tell of an old man of high respectability, whose son quarrelled with the agent ; how father and son were flung on the roadside together ; how the sheriffs myimidons tore down the roof tree ; how the old man clung to the roofless walls, and haunted them nicrht and day until reason forsook him, and the poor oM maniac caught a disease which meicifully kill-id him ; how his stalwaiL pon was driven across the Atlantic, and his five you^/ children into the Onghterard pooi house. I could tell of another old gentleman (gentleman none the less for his rough coat of f lioze) who-^ deathbed was rudely disturbed by the thieat that upon his decease those whom he left after him should dwell theie no more. I could nnm. 1 the tenants of a townland who are at this moment undrr notice to quit under penalty of paying doubled rents, for no otheT i- >is>on in (he world than that their little pastures are coveted by a neighbouring jjinzii'i. Ruf need 1 add another bitter sentence to convince the

world that, if the people of Connemara are kept for ever suspended over a gulf of ruin, and are at this very hour in danger of toppling in, it is not by the will of God, but by the will of heartless and devouring men ?" But it may, perhaps, be said that we present here only gloomy Christmas thoughts to our readers. Still if our fellowcountrymen at home are forced to suffer such things, we may well endure to think of them. There is, however, one consideration connected with them that is fall of consolation ; it ie that we may be convinced many amongst those who are suffering thus piteously this Christmas time are, notwithstanding, comforted, and made able patiently to endure whatever has befallen them by the holy thoughts the season renews, and the faith that cherishes them.

JUDGE BATHGATE Al HOME.

EOME CATHOLIC SCHOOLS

everywhere, and everywhere they have resulted in success moro than might have been expected. Our columns cow contain, or have already contained reports of such examinations held in Donedin aud Wellington, and the details of the progress evidenced one most cheering to read. Some of the schools to which we allude have been long established, and already thers have gone out from them into many homes influences fully capable of raising their tone and spreading culture and refinement largely abroad throughout the colony. Such schoels are those, for example, of the Sisters of Mercy at Wellington, and, though not so long established the schools of the Dominican Sisters in Dunedin may also claim a part in the happy results that have been thus brought about. This year, however, our reports include one of a kind published by us for the first time, that of the Jesuits' College at Waikari, and we feel that we should be guilty of ao unpardonable omission were we to allow the occasion to pass by without attending especially to it. The college has been established one year only, but that year has been sufficient to stamp it with the mar* of superiority borne, so far as we ever heard, without exception by the colleges conducted by members of the renowned society. The Jesuits have from their foundation been remarkable not only for the eminent men in every branch of art or science who have belonged to the Order, but for the brilliancy of their pupils, many of whom have left undying names inscribed upon the role of fame. " Forth from thier new college of Lafleche," says Father Prout, " camejtheir pupil Descartes to disturb the existing theories of astronomy and metaphysics, and start new and unexampled inquiries. Science until then had wandered a captive in the labyrinth of the schools ; but the Cartesian Daedalus fashioned wings for himself and for her, and boldly soared amoung the clouds. Tutored in the college of Fayenza (near Rimini), the immortal Torricelli, reflected honour on his intelligent instructors by the invention of the barometer, A.D. 1620. Of the the education of Tasso they may well be proud. Justus Lipsius, trained in their earliest academies, did good service to the cause of criticism, and cleared off the cobwebs of the commentators and grammarians. Soon after, Gassini rose from the benches of their tuition to preside over the newly established Obtervatoire in the metropolis of France ; while the illustrious Tournefort issued from their halls to carry a searching scrutiny into the department of botanical science, then in its infancy. The Jesuit Kircher meantime astonished his contemporaries by his untiring energy and sagacious mind, equally conspicuous in its most sublime as in its trifling efforts. Whether he predicted with precision the eruption of a volcano, or invented that ingenious plaything the " Magic Lantern." Father Boscovich shone subsequently with equal lustre ; and it was a novel scene, in 1759, to find a London Koyal Society preparing to send out a Jesuit to observe the transit of Venus in California. His panegyric, from the pen of the great Lalande, fills the Journal des Sarans, February, 1792. To Father Riccioli and De Billy science is also deeply indebted. Forth from their college of Dijon, in Burgundy, came Bossuet to raise his mitred front at the court of a despot, and to fling the bolts of his tremendous oratory among a crowd of elegant voluptuaries. Meantime the tragic muse of Corneille was cradled in their College of Rouen ; and, under the classic guidance of the fathers who taught at the College de Clermont, in Paris, Moliere grew up to be the most exquisite of comic writers. The lyric poetry of Jean Baptiste Rousseau was nurtured by them in their college of Louis le Grand. And in that college the wondrous talent of young " Francois Arouet " was also cultivated by these holy men, who little dreamt to what purpose tbe subsequent " Voltaire " would convert his abilities. " Non hew quajsitum munus in usus." D'Olivet, Fonteuelle, Crebillon, Le Franc de Pompignan — there is scarcely a name known to literature during the Seventeenth Century which does not bear testimony to their prowess in the province of education — no profession for which they did not adapt their scholars. For the bar, they tutored the illustrious Lamoignon (the Maecenas of Racine and Boileau). It was they wbo taught the vigorous ideas of D' Argenson how to shoot ; they who breathed into the young Montesquieu his " Esprit ;" they who reared those ornaments of French juribprudence, Nicoliii, Mole, Beguier, aud Amclot. Their disciples could wield the sword. Was the great Cond6 deficient in warlike Bpirit lor having studied among them 1 was 1'.,"- Villars a discreditable pupil ? Need I give the list of the; >t .• '■scholars ? De Grammont, De Baufflers, De Rohar, ; • losac, De Etreee, De Soubise, De Crequi, De Luxembourg,- -laucc aloue. Great names these no doubt ; but literature ia the . . c: .his pnper, and to that I would principally advert as the favoi .-^ and peculiar department of their excellence. True the society devoted itself most to church hi&tory and ecclesiastical learning, &ucn being the proper purs'jitr of a sacerdotal body ; and success in thi3, as in every other study, waited on their industry. The archaiologist is familiar with the works of Father Petavius, whom Grotius calls his friend ; with the labours of Fathers Sirmond, Bolland, Hardouin, Labbe, Parennin, and Tournemine. The admirers of polemics (if there be any such at this time of day) is acquainted with Bellflrmin, Menochius, Buarez, Totet, Bec»n, Sbeffmaker, and (l*st though not least) O ! Cornelius &.

Lapide, with thee ? But in classic lore, as well as in legendary, the Jesaits excelled. Who can pretend to the character of a literary man that has not read Tiraboschi and his " Storia della Letteratura d' Italia ;" Bouhours on the " Manniere de bien penser ;" Brumoy on the "Theeatre des Grecs;" Vavassour, "de Ludicra Dictione ; Rapin's poem on the " Art of Gardening " (the model of those by Dr. Darwin and Abbe Delille) ; Vaniere's " Prsedium Rusticum ; Tursellin's "de Particulis Latini Sermonis," and Casimix Sarbievi's Latin Odes, the nearest approach to Horace in modern times? What shall I say of Poree (Voltaire's master), of Sanadon, of Desbillons, Sidronius, Jouvency, and the "Journalistes de Trevoux?" They have won in France, Italy, and Bpain, the palm of pulpit eloquence. . . . They wooed and won the muse of history, sacred and profane. . . . They shone in art as well as in science. Father Pozzi was one of Rome's best painters. A Jesuit was employed in the drainage of the Pontine marshes ; another to devise plans for sustaining the dome of St. Peter's, when it threatened to crush its massive supports. In naval tact { c 8(a subject estranged from sacerdotal researches) the earliest work on the strategy proper to ships of the line was written by Pere le Hoste, known to middies as " the Jesuit's book," its French title being " Traite des Evolutions Navales." The first hint of aerial navigation came from Padre Lana, in his work " JDe Arte Prodrome, Milan." Newton acknowledges his debt to Father Grimaldi, de Lumine Coloribus et Iridc, Bononiae, 1665. for his notions on the inflexion of light. The best edition of Newton's, Principia, was brought out at Geneva, 1739-60, by the Jesuits Lesueurand Jacquier, in 3 vols. In their missions through Greece, Asia Minor, and the islands of the Archipelago, they were the best antiquaries, botanists, and mineralogists. They became watchmakers, as well as mandarins, in China ; they were astronomers on the " Plateau "of Thibet ; they taught husbandry and mechanics in Canada ; while in their own celebrated and peculiar conquest (since fallen into the hands of Doctor Francia) on the plains of Paraguay, they taught the theory and practice of civil architecture, civil economy, farming, tailoring, and all the trades of civilized life." Such is the testimony to what the Jesuits have accomplished in the past, and it is in nothing exaggerated. For what they accomplish in the present we have the witness of the European press, which is frequent in chronicling the success of their pupils, as, for example, the other day, when the principal places in the French law examinations were gained by them. It is but natural, then, to expect that any educational institution conducted by them must excel in all points, and we were not surprised in the least to find that their college near Dunedin had accomplished a great deal within the compass of its year of existence. Therefore, while we feel that the Fathers are to be congratulated on the accustomed result of their labours, we are convinced that the Catholics of New Zealand are much more to be congratulated on having such an institution within eaey reach of them, and we trust that the approaching year will witness a large increase iv the attendance. We know that there is abroad a notion — a mistaken notion— that the higher education is not needed for boys who are intended ior trade or business pursuits of any kind. This notion we very decidedly condemn. Culture and extended knowledge can injure no man ; they may not, indeed, be absolutely necessary to enable him to earn a decent living by handicraft, but he niast be a poor man who is content with this. Is the mind not '.vorth cultivation iv itself, and is it not advisable to enoble the humdrum avocations of ordinary life by the elevation of the man who conducts them ? But besides this, what is the object in putting a boy into a business life or that of a trade ? Is it not that he may make for himself an independent position ; and if so, is it not desirable to fit him to till such a place when he has risen to it ? In a country like this there is no position to which any man may not aspire, but should fortune favour bis efforts otherwise, defective education may of itself keep him back. We have no sympathy with the folly of merely fitting a boy for handicraft woik and bidding him be content with that. Bhoi'ld the opportunity oiler, he shoold be so educated as to be prepared to hold with credit any position to which, in any way, he may attain. A cultivated nih.il v, ill enable him to perform the humblest duties with a due disposition, and will fit him for the highest. The Catholics of New Zealand uuvc now an opportunity of securing such an education for their boye, and wa trust they will not neglect it.

HONEST TESTIMONY

' We have always affirmed that the chief object of secularism was the destruction of the Catholic faith. 60 patent, indeed, has this fact alwayß appeared to us that, although we have ever desired to accredit all men with sincerity whin it was poebible for us to do 60, we have found it extremely difficult to refrain from accusing of ■wilful falsehood those who have asserted the contrary. We bare maintained that secularists not only were the enemies of the Catholic Church, which knowingly they wished to destroy, but also of society generally, whose welfaie they would endanger by tearing away the rwtraints aui auidance that rclisnon cxercisca over the lives and cou-

duct of Catholics. There is Nothing, then, to emprise us in the following testimony borne lately at a conference of the English National Education Union, by the Rev. A. J. Kennedy, an inspector of schools as well as a Protestant minister. It is but what we have frequently ourselves advanced, and what we cannot understand any ore's sincerely denying :—": — " I speak of my own personal knowledge when I say further that some of the zealous promoters of free schools aim especially at dealing a death blow to Roman Catholic schools. How far this feeling extends Ido not know. Now, nobody can be more thoroughly Protestant than I am, but I deprecate this result. Our Roman Catholic population it a great fact. You can't get rid of it. Facts are stubborn things. Will you make better men *.nd better citizens of them in Board schools and secular schools 1 Not ao ; quite the reverse. I have lived for thirty years in the most Roman Catholic towns in England ; and I, as a Protestant clergyman, have for some years examined Roman Catholic schools and / found that thete schools spared no pains to turn a very poor and dangcrovs population into enlightened, humanized, Ood-fearing people. Liverpool especially owes a debt of gratitude to the managers and teachers of Roman Catholic schools ; and I should be very much surprised if the able men, Mr. Bushell and Mr. Ratbbone, who have been Chairmen of ttic Liverpool School Board, would not endorse what I now say."

1 2 3 i 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 Old Kent. £ s. d. ... 30 0 0 ... 42 15 0 ... 11 0 0 ... 23 0 0 ... 20 0 0 ... 48 0 0 ... 36 0 0 ... 20 0 0 ... 60 0 0 ... H 0 0 ... 60 0 0 ... 120 0 0 Increased Rent. £ s. d. 55 0 0 81 13 6 34 0 0 80 0 0 36 0 0 G8 0 0 81 0 0 50 0 0 300 0 0 G2 0 0 105 0 -0 206 0 0 Poor Law Valuation. £ s. d. 25 10 0 48 10 0 14 5 0 52 8 0 16 10 0 37 5 0 33 15 0 17 10 0 95 16 0 25 15 0 42 10 0 114 5 0