CURIOUS.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume VII, Issue 361, 19 March 1880, Page 14

CURIOUS.

Some days ago our contemporary the Morning Herald commenced a leader by stating that, while Presbyterians and Catholics were tearing one another in the name of religion another body had been doing good work in the cause of humanity. We have nothing to say in reference to the second part of the Herald's statement. But we utterly deny the truth of the first so far as Catholics are concerned. It is true, indeed, that a not inconsiderable number of Presbvtcrians spent about a fortnight piously and religiously calumniating and insulting Catholics, and so acting in the name of religion as to disgrace religion. But Catholics took no part in these unseemly proceedings. This is notorious, and yet the Morning Herald so writes as to make people at a distance, who are unacquainted with the real state of the case, believe that Catholics took up the gauntlet thrown down by Presbyterian Protestants, and joined in a wretched wrangle with them. Such is not the case. On the contrary, Catholics, notwithstanding the greatest provocation and moral persecution, studiously abstained from taking any notice whatever of these Presbyterian doings ; and neither by word nor act, showed the least irritation under the shocking insults unsparingly heaped upon them in the profaned name of Grod, and under the sanction of prayer impiously addressed to heaven by calumniating tongues. But we may here remark that no one contributed more to intensify the evil scornfully complained of by the Morning Herald than the Morning Herald itself. It was the only daily paper in Dunedin which had the atrocious taste to publish untrue and injurious statements concerning a considerable body of its fellow-citizens. No one did more to provoke the very thing he complains of than the editor of the Morning Herald himself; and it seems exceedingly strange that he, aftor having egregiously failed to make Catholics wrangle with Presbyterians, should have the audacity, in the face of a pulilic well acquainted with the facts, to state that Catholics and Presbyterians were tearing one another to pieces in the name of religion. Why did not the editor of the Morning Herald confine his censure to those who deserved it ? why lug in Catholics and endeavour to make the world believe that Presbyterians, whose conduct has been most reprehensible and unchristian', were after all no worse than Catholics, from whom better things were to be expected ? The reason, of course, is the Editor's secret ; but outsiders will not be at a loss for a very probable reason for the conduct of our contemporary.