The New Zealand Tablet. Fiat Justitia. FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 4, 1881. VEILED INJUSTICE.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume VII, Issue 408, 4 February 1881, Page 13

The New Zealand Tablet. Fiat Justitia. FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 4, 1881. VEILED INJUSTICE.

HE civilised world presents at this moment a curious spectacle. Never before was the cry for liberty and justice louder and more universal, and yet, though there has been more brutal tyranny and injustice in days gone by, there never has been more galling tyranny and injustice than at the present moment. Heretofore individuals and individual governments acted the tyrant, and • uthlessly trampled on human and divine rights ; but, then, they made no pretence of liberty or of ruling, except in the interest of power and authority. To-day, however, it is the people or popular assemblies that act the tyrant, and utterly

ignore all law not made by themselves. Natural rights, individual rights, and the rights of God and His Church go for nothing in their estimation. The theory of the hour is that man has no rights, except such as the Government of the day concedes him. Property is no longer sacred, parental rights do not exist; man is not the creature of God, endowed with rights which none may deny, but the mere creature of the majority in power for the time being, bound to do the will of that majority, and to trample on conscience at its bidding. These are the principles acted on in our time by popular assemblies everywhere.

Call to mind the facts of the history, for example, of the last eighty or ninety years. What do these teach? The confiscation of the property of individuals, simply because they happened to be religious or ecclesiastics ; the banishment of Catholics from their natjve country, merely because they were Catholics ; the invasion of home and parental rights in the matter of education ; the one-sided taxation, which compelled, and still compels in many places, notably in British colonies, one section of the community to pay for the godlessness of the other, prove to demonstration that a majority in power, whilst hypocritically proclaiming its love of liberty and justice, is, at the same time, not only capable of the greatest tyranny and the grossest injustice, but actually exults in th« perpetration of these enormities.

We prefer the old brutality to the new hypocrisy. It is not so hard to submit to the hangman as it is to bear the wrongs inflicted by cynics iv the name of justice and fair play. In the former case naked brute force does its wori ruthlessly and directly, but its victims are no more disgraced nor insulted than if they had fallen by the fangs of the wild beast of the lorest. But in the latter, insult is added to injury. Mockery gloat* over those it injures and insults, and those who pull the wires in the recesses of the secret lodges, dance in ecstacy whilst contemplating their dupes and their rictims.

The majority, in the name of liberty, insults religion, ignores God, contemns the opinion and principles of the minority, repudiates its most legitimate claims, gives it not what it is entitled to, but only what it is itself pleased to concede; so that the world has come round again to the point from which it started centuries ago, — there is now little hope for real justice and liberty, except in successful revolution. The opinion of the minority is powerless, the claims of justice are despised, the voice that demands fair play and respect for natural and divine rights is drowned in the clamour of a majority in power, cynically and hypocritically shouting liberty.

The persecution is an ignoble one, it is that which the strong for the time being inflicts on the weak ; it is that which ■wages, amongst other things, a pitiful warfare against the faith, morality, and happiness of helpless little children. It is that which aims at demoralizing and dragging down to perdition the rising generation. The Church and Christian civilization have had to defend themselves in all ages against ruthless enemies of various kinds ; but since the days of Julian the Apostate never have they had to engage in a contest more deadly than that which godlessness now forces upon them. As Julian the Apostate endeavoured to re-establish paganism by poisoning the intellectual and moral springs from which, the youth of his day derived nourishment, so this new apostacy aims at the corruption of the minds and hearts of children "by setting up godless schools and compelling parents to pay for the degradation and everlasting ruin of their own children, But things are now worse in this respect than they were fifteen hundred years ago. It is not one Julian we have to deal with, but a whole army of Julians, who. themselves brought up, apparently, in Christian principles, have discarded them, so far, at all events, as education is concerned, and are now bent on excluding God from that part of his creation which lies within the schoolroom, and consequently from the minds and hearts of multitudes of His creatures whom He created for Himself, and whom He redeemed by the blood of Christ. A more diabolical design cannot be conceived, nor one more injurious or insulting to the Author of our existence, in tohom, according to the Apostle, we live and move and have our being.

What is most deplorable in this matter is — that many who have not yet altogether thrown off the yoke of Christianity, are to be fouud in the ranks of those who most strenuously advocate godless schools. These men frequent Christian churches, read their Bibles, spout at Bible meetings, and thus, by their example, mislead not a few to their de-

struction. Good Catholics, however, will not be found amongst the number thus misled. They know by experience, and from the authority of the inspired Word, that children will be as they are reared, and that it is their duty to educate them under the influence of the Christian religion, to bring them up in the discipline and correction of the Lord, and that, consequently, they must not permit them to frequent godless schools.