Current Topics

New Zealand Tablet, Volume VII, Issue 385, 3 September 1880, Page 1

Current Topics

AT HOME AND ABROAD.

ANB now it has broken out in our law-courts. This cowfusion. is pleasant news for the litigants and offenders of ... t . . tbe colonies : Jurymen also will know what it is to deliver their verdicts in a state of frenzy, and we only hope that felo «p te may not set in amongst our judges and magistrates. But with toe lawyers argmng about philosophy what may we not expect to •X* « Rhadamanthtts hi *nself could not stand it. Lord Lytton m My Novel » makes one of his characters call the philosophers of •be day ingenious lunatics," but amongst ourselves welperceive they •Mare attained only to the lunacy-the ingenuity is yet to be evolved, tod hence it is that we are filled with alarm. It will, however, be an additional motive for us to keep out of the hands of the policeman. S!? •" It the -*>«% n** of the 26th nit, tells us there took IZ Ji ? w P f mC Ct>Urt ' Dunedin » 1««* week .—"Mr. Chapman fmn^T WlttedMr - Stout with in commenting upon the StT? ° f Mr * *** Cited Herberfc S P en eer. Mr. Stout SSS TT qUOted Herbert S P encer ' when Mr - Denniston interjected, 'Oh don t say that; you know you are always quoting ti^i !° that what lie had done when moving for hfaSST-f^ qUOteM ' Tame on the theory of ' a fixed idea ;' and =SS£KS« - Mi 2T= » 5 WW W fVii el t W '° r br ° Ught Under ite influence in any wav^ Ifth^vtl V , Wb / ther hC iS «***"* On S head or his beefs must J<SL° m' l^' We S6e the Clearesfc ? roof of things SwhTt : Chapman ' f ° r inßtance ' Cvidentl * not underwt a i?Mt U ? ntt ° 6ay - He bought his learned brother SL q sf?lf ? VBpeDCer'V BpeDCer ' WheD ' ifc £ccm ' he was quoting M. Tame all the Uns. This is a fair indication of how things are to go on; on^ HW M \ 6t ° Ut ' 88 ÜBUa1 ' Wkin * and ta^> and no one on earth able to make out what it is he wants to talk about. But SZfcfeT T163T 163 t0 the foUDdation of a d^tinct school must S,« * c miSUnderstood at fi «t by theprofanum wlgus .. he is in advance of his age and future generations alone can be expected Mriw C r prehend his meanin &- This is, perhaps, the case with Mr. Stout for his reading of philosophy is something quits original and in which he differs most remarkably from some of the other authoS: Sr^ T t eXample hiS dedsiOn ' g -e-ome weeks d^i Tr;^, 01 a P ° Sitivist ' cx P laiQS his doct ™* of the idea implicated mall natural phenomena in a way very different t o °^ v"" BrtifiCer Setting t0 W ° rk U P° n his "iteS, ?" ode conTdeT I>UrPOSe ' HC argUeS b ° th '' lSainst the -Eiiitunlirt who conddera cause as a distinct being or entity, intangible incoiporeal, mvisible, different from, but sustaining tl c visible^alpZe and extended world; as also against the P<£itivisr, who cons.deS causes to be beyond the reach of science; so that the Spirituali *££*»;• G) T nt&mS & * against the Spiritualist, that the of things is m the things themselves, and that it is not neces! ejry to suppose the existence of a spiritual world in order to explain the existence of this, and as against the Positivist, that the world of oTatrtv m 7T OUS aDd J —^le-that causes are red D ciWc to laws, types, or dominant qualities, observable directly in their objects, and implicated in them, so that «fa lot de la jJanZaZ Jan. Ist, 69, p. 242.) This is evidently the philosophy of an ultra'

materialist. It is true the Keviewer does not say in distinct terms, gent neonlp 8 -? matenallßt P™<*opher,» but, as he wrote for intelliSnlS P l ' T 8 D ° m ° re necea£aI 7 should do 89 than, for example it would have been for Paul de la Roche to hive written o U r D ? er M- P £ Ure ° f the Death ° f Elizabeth< " Thisisan oM wlman » " These^ 8 "T",, 18 If 6 lab6lled the " Eoll Cal *" with the words, These are soldiers," There might, of course, be people who would Sist of an rf ° n hey W ° Uld be hard * th « of folk an artist of any kind would keep in view. Another periodical, however, also of high reputation, does in plain terms speak of M. Tail's materialism It fa accountable for the following :_« Sainte-Beuve, however, m his articles on M. Tame or M. Descbanel, takes care to make clear how far he stops short of the materialist principles of these writers M. Tame with bis famous theory by which he makes hterary talent to be a combined product of the race, the m il ieit , and the mvnent, attempts through it to construct the brain of an author, tJL'f ,6, 6 aDd "I 1 by CelL 6iven the mce > the -««. a * d «>e moment, md jso much phosphorus for the brain, so much phosphate of lime for the bones, and so much carbon for the body, and your fSS r^ COD f UCted for y° U '" C Edinburgh Xevie,v,July 1870, I' I ° VV T £ ° rCed t0 conclude ' th en, that the man who tells us he has read MTaine's works and from them drawn the conclusion that their author is not a materialist philosopher either has not understood one word of what he has read, or is in advance of his age and ZspTh % mto « iSCem meaniDeS hidden from the criti c« of the present day. Mr. Stout is certainly entitled to the benefit of the doubt, and we may therefore believe that posterity will build up hia monument. In this case, moreover, it is to be attributed to the backward condition of the present generation, if he be found somewhat dull, as well as a little amusing.

It strikes us that there is one thing at least conPOKE- nected with genius for which M. Taine's receipt shadowed, for its construction is wholly incapable of ac counting, that is its universality. A trae work of genius must belong to all time, and all men, it must be always frrsh and applicable. But how then can the genius whence it emanates be the mere production of any particular race, position and period ? M. Tame speaks of La Fontaine as the peculiar production of the Gallic race, the country of Champagne, and the reign of Louis XIV and thus accounts for his poetic powers, and the existence of his fable But if we take MoUere, as much may be said for him ; he alto was the production of his race, position, and time, and how then do«s it come that we find him write for us to-day as freshly as he wrote for the Grande Monarqve and his court ? His genius was undoubtedly modified by his race, position, and period, but it was nevertheless universal, and we have our share in it as well as bad the France of his life time. We have no abler baud to diavr for us the hypocrite the pedant, the false scientist ; cvciy move they give recalls to us some motion of Tartvfe, the Fcmmes Sarante*. or the doctors. And these-for Moliere drew from life, were they also the production of their race, period, and time, or do they not run through all the centuries as ludicrous to-day as they were two hundred years ago 7 As to Tartufe, we see him every day with his shallow cant, of liberality as well as religion, and his deep deceit ; and we find the pedants, too, with their parade of small knowledge, tueir unbounded conceit, and intolcrence for all whom they consider to outrage " Vaugelas," and we recognise the false scientists, the doctors with their learned jargon, and nostrums to kill instead of cure-but all with a strict devotion to " science." The woist of it, however, is that we are brought face to faco with the real Simon Pure ; we reco-nise him in Moliere's characters, but we do not find him gilded °with Moliere's wit. In all the nakedness of his unmitigated condition we are obliged to endure him.

There is one scene of BloKere's of which we bare oh no they been especially i eminded by recent occurrences here kbvbe ! It is that in which M. Jourdain's " Maitre de Philosophic I ' an ives during the fracas between the fencing, dancing, and music masters. The ambitious bourgeois hails bis arrival gratefully, " You are come in the nick of time" he says

" with your philosophy," and he'invites him to make peace among the combatants. The philosopher is, of course, persuaded of his ability to do so ; he is eminently conscious of his own superiority, and the depth and efficacy of his learning to accomplish all things. It is the simplest thing in the world for him to make a learned address on the Bhamefulness of anger, in which he quotes Seneca, for Herbert Spencer had not yet been, born or even thought of, and he was, therefore, dependent on a lesser light. But, alas for the stability of theoretic wisdom, the upshot of the matter is that when the antagonists turn round upon him, his philosophy flies before his hot temper, and he himself is the first to set the example of fisticuffs ; while, as for his language, nothing worse can be found — •' Fripons, gvcvx, traitrcs, imposteurs /" he cries. There is a master of philosophy here amongst us also engaged in making perfect in " science " an aspiring citizen or two, whose parents neglected their " prose" in days gone by, but who have been fortunate in finding so apt a professor to instruct them in it. He threw up his hands and eyes a few weeks ago, and demanded in a tone of indignant remonstrance tinctured with conscious innocence, whether Freethinkers like him were ever known to cast reflections on the morals of those opposed to them. We made bold at the time to say they were ; we gave a couple of instances in which they had done so, and we might have gone further and given one instance, at least, in which they would continue to do so. For, lo and behold, our JUaitre de PhilosopMe himself, not able to endure a touch here and there on the raw, has not ceased ever since to attack the morals of Catholics, to whom he is opposed, and has completely stultified himself accordingly ; that is if it, indeed, still remained for him to do so, and such had not already been un fait accompli. But this is an excellent example of the honesty and consistency of Freethought. There is no more hypocritical system on the face of the earth, and everything it blames so loudly in others we find it performs itself without a blush. It comes down on the creeds for attacking morals, but, when the opportunity offers, it is anxious itself to make just such an attack ; it waxes furious against intolerance and tyranny, but it is itself ever foremost in tyranny and intolerance. It rails against persecution, and seeks back to by-gone ages for long-exploded calumnies against the Church, but it passes over in silence its own hideous orgies, such, for example, as those performed by it before the eyes of all Europe nine years ago in Paris, when it tortured and murdered, in the midst of outrage and unspeakable abominations, by the hands of its membeis the Communists — advr need Freethinkers all oE them, and since it is the glory of Freethought that it owns no standard of correct thought, that no Freethinker is bound by the opinions of any other Freethinker, these are Freethinkers who must not be restrained, and who are at liberty to regard with contempt as the "muffs" of their order, those who are still co much under the influences of the Christian centuries as unconBciously to continue by custom to prefer the lives of moral citizens. Meantime, how comas it, on M. Taine's principle, that a genius, the sole product of certain circumstances obtaining in Europe two hundred years ago, has so vividly painted for us a true representative of what we find amongst ourselves to-day in the antipodes — of our Maitre de Philosophic ?

In the Revue des Deux llondcs for May 15th, M. A FORMIDABLE George Picot gives a review of a work by SaintPOWER. Simon the author oE the •' Memoirs," which has recently been found in manuscript amongst certain SSite papers in Paris. It is entitled Parallele entre Henri I V., Louis XIII., et Louis XIV., and its object is the exhibition in his true light of King Louis XIII., whom the writer represents as a prince whose virtues as a Christian were only equalled by his abilities as a soldier and a statesman, and whom he asserts to have been the mas f er and guide of the great Minister, Richelieu, rather than governed by him as if. has been supposed. There are, however, one or two quotations> io this review which we find of especial interest, and the first of them is tbat in which Saint-Simon dascribes the condition of the Huguenots at the time of the issuing of the edict of Nantes by Henry°lV. The writer is eminently trustworthy, and religious prejudices by no means find a place in his wort. As it will be seen further on he treats the Huguenots with the utmost consideration, and we may receive without suspicion the following account he gives of them : — They were so long accustomed, he says, to obtain everything that they could not make up their minds to suffer a falling off under a king from whom they considered they had a right to aspire at all things and to gain possession of all things, because he had been brought up amongst them ; whose sole effectivT existence had been long that of their chief, and whom they had largely contributed to make king, Besides these reasons common to all their party, they also had their leaguers, their support amongst the Protestants of all Europe, with whom it was Henry's powerful interest not to embroil himself. They had their factious members who only longed for a renewal of taking up arms and the election of loaders, such as Marshal de Bouillon, who was consumed by a fiery zeal to put himself openly at the head of a party, thus to treat with tie king on equal terms, and whose private end was to place hia patty under the protection of a Protestant

sovereign, whose lieutenant-general Bouillon should be, whose authority he should fully exercise, and whom, with the other Protestants, he should have at his back. He would thus erect a state within a state, and become, in some sort, the equal of the king, since they would each find himself the chief of a party equal to the other in numbers and strength, but unequal in support, for the Huguenot party would be secured by the power of its foreign protector and the other Protestants, whilst Henry could not rely npon the feeble temporal power of the Popo nor on the jealousy and infidelity of the Houses of Austria and Savoy. The writer adds that it was no small proof of the abilities of King Henry that he succeeded in persuading the Huguenots to accept the edict he proposed to them. Such then was the difficult nature of these people, and their dangerous attitude even to a king whom thty must have regarded as most friendly to them, and we can thus easily understand how they could have been consied as formidable enemies without the introduction of the religious question into the matter. It is not difficult, therefore, to see a purely secular foundation for the massacre of St. Bartholomew.

But still more interested ar« we in the account of detestable the persecution of the Huguenots by King Louis doings duly XIV. ot which we also find a description in this detested. work of Saint-Simon's. It exhibits the matter in a very different light from that in which it is viewed by those who lay it as a heavy crime at the door of the Church. A crime, nevertheless, we recognise it to have been, but a far heavier crime committed against the Church than even against the unfortunate Protestants who so grievously suffered from it. That the wretched transaction may, however, be more clearly understood it will be necessary for us to say a few words as to the relations of Louis XIV. towards the Pope before we quote from Saint-Simon, To set out, then, this king had n^ sooner himself assumed the reins of government than he began to seek occasions to humiliate the Holy See. There was, for example, the " affair of the Corsican Guard," in which certain hangers-on of the French embassy at Borne attacked the Pontifical soldiers, and which led to the invasion of Avignon, to the sending of an army into Italy, and to the proposal of several insulting and unjust conditions by the king to be accepted by the Pope, before he would condescend so much as to treat with him, — the conditions being refused by the Pope, and peace only made two years afterwards through the intercession of Spain and Venice, but with teritorial loss and humiliation to the Holy See, There was also the affair of the Regale, in which the king strove to extend to ail the bishoprics and benefices in France the right which the kings of France possessed over certain bishoprics and benefices founded by their ancestors and whose revenues, when they became vacant, fell in to the crown. In this matter, strange to say, the bishops sided with the king and against the Pope — a fact to be remembered when we read of the part taken by the greater number of these bishops in the persecution o£ the Huguenots as described by Saint-Simon. Again, there was the matter o£ the four Articles, directed especially against the Pope's influence in France, but also capable of a wider and mare sinister interpretation, and in which more than a third of the bishops were with the king. There is much more which we might advance in illustration of Louis' unfriendly relations with Rome, but this is enough for the purpose, as well as to show how the bishops, presented to their bishoprics by the king, were for the most part his majesty's obsequious servants rather than the faithful shepherds of their flocks aid subjects o£ the Holy See. They were, in fact, to a large extent men chosen for advancement by the policy of Mazarin in gaining over the nobility of the Fronde, or, perhaps, still worse appointments made by Colbert and Le Tellier, from their own creatures or relations, and their piety or fitness for the episcopacy had been the last thing thought of in connection with them. It was under such circumstances that the king undertook his bitter persecution of the Protestants. Saint-Simon writes of it to the following effect : — The whole plot was conducted by Louvois and Madame de Maintenon, unknown to every one else. . . . Louvois, who only too well understood the consequences, found a double advantage in it, because the execution he thought of could only be performed by troops, and consequently by himself, who would thus be brought into continual relationship with the king, which peace had made rarer, and because such an event would long alienate all the Protestants of Europe, and urge them to a war that he desired most ardently, and these two reasons drew him on to bring about all the horrors of the execution. Colbert, the only man he could have feared in the participation of the secret, and ccrtaiuly staunch, and resolute when in opposition, had been dead for two years. Thus, perfectly free, he egged on the kingf^. to the glory of exterminating people, who, leagued together and supported by the foreign powers belonging to their communion, had oppose! a firm front to all his predecessors, from the time of Francis 1., and, however subdued they might find themselves, would never lose the hope of raising themselves up again, nor that of succeeding in establishing a State within the State, with all the independence and forms to which they had always aspired. Thus glory, authority, policy, religion, all was put forward without contradiction, and

without the king, who was charmed by so fine a proposition, making the least difficulty. Immediately, then, they set their hands to the j task. With the revocation of the Edict of Nantes there appeared a crowd of proclamations which, each more cruel than another, followed in succession ; the piovinces were filled with dragoons, who were quartered at will in the Huguenot houses of all conditions, and who united torture^ with the destruction of which many died between the hands of these executioners. Flight was punished like obstinacy in heresy, and the galleys were filled with the most respectable and well-disposed men, as were the prisons with their wives and daughters. A great number redeemed themselves from tyranny by counterfeited abjurations ; tho dragoons who destroyed and tortured them, to-morrow brought them to Mass, where they made their abjuration, and confessed and communicated at once, without for the most part waiting until the next day. The greater part of the bishops lent themselves to this abomination, at which the intendants of provinces presided ; each one vied as to who should the most distinguish himself. The king every minute received lists of abjurations and communions by thousands from all parts of the different dioceses. He showed them to the courtiers with a cheerfulness. He swam in these thousands of Bacrileges as the effect of his piety and authority, without any one daring to testify as to what he thought of it, and every one on the contrary distinguishing himself as highly as possible by praisss, applause and admiration ; whilst each was pierced with grief and compassion, and the good lisliops groaned with all their hearts to tee the orthodox imitating against heretics what tlie pagan and heretical tyrants had done against the truth, the confessors and the martyrs ; they Kept bitterly over this immensity of sacrileges and perjuries, and all the good Catholics with them could not be comforted for the enduring and irremediable odium that, such detestable means were spreading upon the true religion. The king thought himself an apostle, he fancied he was bringing back apostolic days when baptism was given to thousands at one time, and this intoxication sustained by endless eulogies in prose and in verse, in harangues and all sorts of eloquence, held his eyes hermetically sealed against the gospel, and the incomparable difference between his manner of preaching and converting, and that of Jesus Christ and His apostles. Nevertheless the time came when he could not but see and feel the sad effects of so many horrors. The revocation of the edict of Nantes, without the least pretext or any need, immediately followed by proscriptions, punishments, the galleys without distinction of age or condition, the long pillage of the dragoons authorised everywhere, tore families asunder, armed relations against relations to gain their property, and leave them to die of hunger, depopulated the kingdom, and transported our manufactures and almost all our commerce amongst our neighbours, and further away still, made their states flourish, filled their countries with new towns and dwellings, and afforded to all Europe the frightful spectacle of so vast a number of people proscribed, fugitive, naked, wandering, without any crime, seeking an asylum far away from their native land. . . . We Bhall soon see that to the immense interior wound which was the bitter fruit of so pernicious a council, there was joined a great war as Louvois had promised himself, and that from this year was prepared the famous league of Angsburg. . . . Innocent XL, Benedict Odescalchi, who then occupied the Holy See, ?vas not the dupe of this action that pretended to he so religious, lie only saw its s7iam policy and detested its sacrileges and horrors. Such then is the description of the revocation of the Edict of Nantes and its attendant persecution as we have it from a Catholic nobleman who was an eye witness of it. Could even one of the persecuted Huguenots themselves have shown more contempt and horror at the treatment of his people ? Meantime how splendid is the testimony we find borne against the calumny that accuses the Church of a disposition to persecute ; these drayonnades have constantly been cast in her teeth, as her proper fruits, whereas they were loathsome to her sincere children, and detested by the Pope as sacrilege and horror.

The Saturday Review in the course of an apology AN outspoken for atheists speaks as follows :—": — " We may at least philosopher, remark that some atheists have done their best to provoke and justify the feeling of antagonism. It becomes at any rate intelligible when a French atheist writer of the day blandly assures us that ' virtue and vice are the results of a current of electricity, and are natural products in just the same way as sugar and vitriol ;' while a German writer of the same school, Hetwald, points out the moral of such teaching in the cynically frank avowal that the object of science is to destroy all ideals, and to show that belh.? ,in God is a fraud, that morality, equality, freedom, love, and the rights of man, are lies." But this is the glory of Freethought that every man should think exactly what it pleases him to think and owe an accout of his thought to no one. The French atheist, then, must not be called to answer for his opinion, and if he acts upon it, nobody can restrain him without incurring the odium of persecution. The German, Hetwald, too, must be allowed to carry out his theory into practico. He may teach his Bystem, which we

have no doubt he is able to base upon grounds that will seem rational to many, and that are as rational as those upon which men less advanced than he base other systems of which we bear so much. His system has, moreover, at least the advantage of honesty. It is the true system of Freethought, that upon which it has acted on those occasions when it reigned untrammelled, and in tho persons of its professors wholly walking unaided by Church-crutches, mocked a the existence of God, and set totally at defiance, although under tha hypocritical banner of liberty, fraternity, equality, " morality, equality, freedom, love, and the rights of man." All this it has done, now and again, notably during the Reign of Terror, and again with equal ferocity, although necessarily to a less extent, under the Commune in '71. Hetwald's system is, undoubtedly, the true issue of Freethought, and that at which it is abundantly proved that it arrives in practice whenever the opportunity offers.

Extremes meet, we again learn, and this time we A JUST find arrived at the point of meeting the kingdom comparison, which boasts itself the most elevated in the world, and the empire that is probably the most degraded ; that is, England and Turkey. We clip the following from the telegrams via San Franciaco :—": — " In conversation with Mr. Gosehen, Abeddin Pacha, referring to the reform of Asia Minor, said : • You know what difficulties the Government have had in Ireland, and how long it has taken to overcome them. In Asia Minor we have 15 Irelands to deal with.' " The parallel is not ill imagined, Asia Minor has been reduced to its deplorable condition by tyranny and misgovernment, and such also has been the fate of Ireland. Of the two, indeed, there is reason to believe that Ireland has been the worst used, for no other country in the world can point to such a sum o£ horrors as those inflicted upon her. The sword, famine, confiscation , and the cruel penal laws, all in their turn, worked havoc among3t her people, and if these are not to-day such abject wretches as we read of to be found in Asia Minor, it is to the Catholic faith they owe it. This was their sole support under their miseries, and, taught as it has been under heavy penalties, under restrictions, and even yet, to a very large extent, imperfectly because of the many impediments positive or negative cast in ita way, it has preserved the Irish people markedly virtuous at home, and only failing in virtue when exposed abroad to the temptations cast in their path by Protestantism or Freethought — for Freethought is widely spread abroad, in various degrees, Although as yet the name has not come into fashion, a fact of which certain pettifoggers who seek to build up for it a false reputation are anxious to take advantage. Even this year, notwith standing the want in Ireland; we find the judges at the Summer Assizes in almost all the counties offering congratulations on the lightness of the criminal calendar.

We last week inserted in our columns an article falsehood from the Dublin Weekly tr cerium reflecting re-published severely on the conduct of the Pall Mall Gazette, in publishing a series of falsehoods relating to the distress in Ireland and its attendant 'circumstances. Since our issue, appeared, owing to the anxiety of the editor of the Dunedin Evening Star to re-publish here anything calculated to wound the feelings of his Irish fellow-colonists, and to sustain the sentiment of bigotry against them, we have had an opportunity of seeing some of the malicious utterances referred to by the Weekly Freeman, and never have our eyes lighted on anything in print which more plainly bore the mark of audacious, rancorous, lying. The Pall Mali Gazette has, it seems, discovered an ingenious method of accounting for the distress which attributes it all to the extravagance of the people, encouraged by the shopkeepers, who in turn have been liberally dealt with by the banks. The banks, affected by the commercial failures in England, were suddenly obliged to contract their credit, but this did not for a time change the course of affairs, for the banks might be left unpaid, and it was not until the anti-rent agitation began that the shopkeepers took the people at their word and insisted upon ready money transactions. Hence the Irish Famine of '80. and there really has been no suffering at all. It is true the summer, and great part of the autumn weie wet, but the weather, nevertheless, cleared in time to prevent any serious loss. The Gazette explains the matter as follows :—": — " It was in September, while the summer rain still continued, that the inspectors of the local government board visited their various districts. No wonder they reported that the potato crop would not give half its usual yield, that the general harvest was deficient in quantity and quality, and that the turf crop was practically lost. But with September the rain ceased, and before the official report was issued by the local government board on the 28th of October the corn, had already ripened, and yielded an average crop. The sodden turf would not have been saved by twenty-eight days of October fine weather ; but, fortunately, from the Ist October to the lit of January we had but three days' rain, so that the wells showed symptoms of running dry. With such weather it may well be accepted that the turf, though inferior, was by no means lost, and then the remainder of the winter

was exceptionally fine. So fine was it that th« hay stored for the I winter feeding of cattle was not required, and large quantities arc even now being offered for sale at a low price. The potato crop was the one whose loss seemed most assured. While the potatoes were being dug, commissioners went through the country making close inquiries as to the state of affairs. The reports were all the same — the crop was lost. A couple of anecdotes may throw some light f upon these reports. A gentleman, anxious to see for himself, walked into a field where the potatoes were being dug. He saw an excellent crop. 'I am glad,' he said to the owner, ' that you seem to have a good crop.' ' Good crop, your honour ! Not a basket of white potatoes you could get on a whole ridge,' he answered, in apparent distress. The gentleman, who was a practical farmer, said, ' Well, I should like to get a basket of black potatoes, and I will civc half-a-crown for a basket off this ridge.' ' Bogor, theL, the nioney'll soon be earned/ said the owner, as he took a basket and walked along the ridge. He could not fill it, and returned saying ' Ah, sure, I wouldn't take your honour's money for bad potatoes.' Then, seeing from some remark made by the gentleman that he lived in the country, he said ' Well, thanks be to God 1 they are not bad ; but sure I thought j r our honour was one of them English gentlemen that's going round.' I went into over 100 potato fields in the West of Ireland, and saw the potatoes dug. In some the yield was excellent ; in the majority a little more than the usual proportion of diseased tubers was apparent. In three fields the crop was practically lost. I always asked what the crop was like before I examined the potatoes. Invariably the answer was ' They are bad.' One day I asked the usual question as I drove past a small field where a girl was busily engaged in carrying the potatoes to the potato pit. ' They are all bad, sir,' was the answer. I went in, and saw one of the finest creps T have ever seen. • Where arc the black ones ?' I asked. ' Ocb> sure, there aren't many,' she replied, quite unabasheJ. ' But I see none,' I continued. ' Troth they're fair enough,' she said, laughing. She had evidently taken me for a commissioner. One thing is certain. All through the winter potatoes sold in the western towns at from 4d, to sd. per stone, and were to be bought in April at 6d. ; and while shiploads of potatoes were being imported into Ireland, at least an equal quantity was being exported to England and Wales." All this would be merely ridiculous, were it not that the circumstances under which it has been put forth render it grave and wicked. Every one who is at all acquainted with the nature of things in Ireland, will at once perceive the falsehood it bears so impudently stamped upon its face. In the September, for instance, that followed a wet summer, the potato crop must have been wholly past recovery. The blight comes on in July, and we well remember the ominous smell in tbo air, that filled with glootn for ail who perceived it mar.y a fine evening in the month alluded to ; the anecdotes told in testimony of the safety of the potato crop, are clearly the invention of some imaginative pen, and hardy worth even the traditional pcnn3'-a-line. It is rank nonsense to speak of corn rained on up to October, and then, notwithstanding all saved, as an average crop ; the statement need not be reasoned against ; it is perverse falsehood. The " sodden turf" could not be dried in the three months, beginning on Ist October; it requires the long days of summer to diy it. Let any man, who knows what the long nights and short grey days of late autumn and winter are upon an Irish bog, decide what value there is in this statement of the wretched special pleader, from whose malevolence and ixnblushing ignorance it has emanated. The price at which such potatoes as were to bo had were sold here and there in the Irish towns is no criterion to judge by ; in the worst days of the great famine we have seen them sold at as cheap a rate but they were only an exceptional handful, a luxury for which there was no demand. We have no doubt the fact, if fact it be, related by the Pall Mall Gazette, may in like manner be accounted for. Finally, as to the exportation of potatoes, that may well have been ; we can readily believe such remnants of the crop as were found were made the most of by the large landholders, and sent out of the country in the very teeth of the starving people. Does not all the world know that during the great famine there was more corn exported from Ireland than would have prevented the starvation twice over? It is but the same bitter policy still pursued. Fortunately, however, independent witnesses have with their own eyes seen the state of the country, and this dastardly attempt made by the Pall Mall Gazette can b*tsead to its own condemnation, and that of the Government it seekff to defend by calumniating a country plundered, oppressed, and belied for centuries. Fortunately honest Americans have gone to Ireland, seen for themselves and reported in burning words, not to be overthrown, what it was they saw there. Meantime the editor who has thought fit to republUh here the gross calumnies to which we allude, is a gentleman of pious sentiments, one judged capable of instructing even " Christian young men"' to their advantage. We trust, then, to find that his next lecture upon the platform in question may be upon the subject of " Christian charity," and that, for this purpose if for no other, he will by the time of its delivery so have studied the subject as to have attained to some knowledge of what it really

means. It certainly does not consist in helping to spread abroad cruel falsehoods against a suffering people, and embittering) he minds of fellow-colonists against each other.