General News.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume IX, Issue 432, 22 July 1881, Page 17

General News.

The Arab revolt in Tunis continues to increase. The French will probably find some employment for their forces there for a considerable time to come, and it seems likely that the upshot will be an open annexation of the country, together with the neighbouring State of Tripoli. Turkish warships are watching the course of events. Mr. Gladstone has announced that diplomatic communications are being exchanged on the subject between France and England. We may, however, be convinced that whatever turn things may take England's hands are already too full to allow of her interference in them. The Catholic Columbian tells of a certain school district in Ohio t where a Catholic was appointed school ma'am. The district was strongly Democratic, but when the teacher's religious belief became known, her resignation was at once demanded. The Board of Directors, all Democrats, felt it their duty "to keep Catholics down everywhere." The emigrants landing at New York from England, Ireland, and other parts of Europe are averaging at present not fewer than 70,000 a m*nth. Permanent homes and employments are not to be found for them in the Eastern States, as the American Press warns them, and accordingly we learn that the main current of the new population is flowing steadily to the boundless plains of the far West. — Duhlin Freeman. The proclamation by which the King of Denmark has dissolved his House of Commons appears to be a remarkable document. His Majesty regrets to find that the members have been wasting their time, and are either unable or unwilling to carry useful measures. In six months they have neither passed a useful bill, nor voted any supplies ; the King, therefore, thinks they may as well go about their business. The Morning Advertiser thinks " French journalists are moderate and even generous in their tone upon the Tunis question. If the sort of language used by English journals had been used in Paris when Cyprus was handed over to this country by the Sultan, we should have had the whole English nation at fever-heat. But, so far as we have seen, the French Press treats this splenetic outburst with good-humoured sarcasm rather than serious resentment, and, considering the violent tone taken on this side of the Channel, exhibitsa calmness which is at once a lesson and a rebuke. The French will do well to reflect that the fiery articles which are the subject of their complaints are written for home consumption only." One of the most discreditable official documents that even the State papers of Ireland could stow has beeD brought to light this week. For some time past it has been apparent that the Government were using the most extraordinary means to crash popular opinion in Ireland, but few people suspected that the Chief Secretary had gone to the length of secretly issuing a circular finding fault with the police for not having " suspected " more people under the Coercion Act than are in prison at present, suggesting to them that they had better show greater zeal and energy in this respect — Nation, May 28. The Poles, in the name of the Polish nation, have addressed to the Holy Father a memorandum which throws a clear light on the deplorable state of the Catholic Church in Poland. In this interesting document they enumerate the services which Poland has rendered to the Church from Lignitz to Vienna, from Vienna to the Confederation of Bar, and from that period up to onr own days. The Poles respectfully supplicate the Holy Father, while expressing their devotion to him, to have regard, in the negotiations with Russia, to the traditional usage of the Polish language in their churches ; to protect the Uniates, so worthy of this favour by their martyrdom and their heroic resistance to apostasy, and to have before his mind the imprescriptible rights of the Polish nation, whose partition has never been sanctioned by the Holy See. London, May 17.— The Standard's despatch from Berlin says the Nihilists have answered the manifesto of the Czar by a proclamation, saying they accept the war which has been forced upon them, and. are confident of victory. The greater the oppression the firmer will the people become. The other day an ensign found a mine of 37 pounds of gunpowder under a stone bridge at a steamer landing in a street leading to the Tsarkoeselo Railway Station." Two naval lieutenants have been arrested at Constadt for abstracting a quantity of dynamite from the Imperial Mining Department. Paris, May 17. — TbeEmperor of Russia is said to have nearly perished by poison on the 12th of May. One of the palace scullions, who has been arrested since, had sprinkled arsenic over a bowl of salad, of which Alexander is known to be very fond. As the dish did not figure on the menu, the attempt was fortunately detected. The Lanterne says that on the day previous the Emperor received an invitation to his own funeral. The Morning Post comments on an article in the Augsburg Allgeimine Zextung which expresses the conviction that the French movements against lunis will in the end be of decisive significance i for England. England came to feel so secure in recent times of her hold on the Mediterranean because the hand of the Ottoman Empira . was on three-fourths of the coasts of the Mediterranean, and because for the purposes of naval supremacy that hand had long since become a '-dead hand." So long as France was cooped up in a corner of the Mediterranean coast the naval power of 1 England was quite able to meet all eventualities. So long as France i looked for a dominion beyond the Rhine, so long as the integrity cf the Ottoman Empire had not been torn up and abandoned by the place hunting Liberalism of England, even Algeria was only an interesting colony, and not the Btarting-point of a new Mediterranean domination. But with the conquest of Tunis begins the self-same process which made the Romans the masters of the Mediterranean. The Tunis question, thinks the German critic, is the touchstone of England's destiny.

The Daily News remarks that « practically France accepts Tunis m lieu of Alsace-Lorraine. Germany, we venture to think, has the best of the bargain. The stage surely in its wildest extravagances never witnessed a greater burlesque of conquest and heroism than this conquest of Tunis. What France has done in Tunis, Spain ■urely can accomplish in Morocco.' France is not now the disturber ol Jfiurope. She is simply the perturber of the weaker minds in some .European nations. Her feverish unrest is a dangerous symptom for herself. The anger of Italy and the adroit friendship of Germany will combine to thwart France in her search for allies in anticipation of an opportunity of avenging the defeats of 1870." The member for Tipperary has from the first expressed such opinions and given such council to the people that it is hard to see wby, having remained at large so long, he should be in prison now v V u n i ure to sa y that fa e himself, in common with most of those who had marked his behaviour, anticipated a prompt airest. Mr Jforsters net, however, is so constructed as to catch the little fishes nw,f tv «W, ones J° cs ™P e > unless they absolutely invited capture. The "village Hampdens" have gone to Kilmainham by tfle score, while the master-spirits of agitation are allowed to better their former teachings under the influence of increased exasperation and actually to support disaffection against the blow carefully aimed tastrike it down. The result so far has been most disastrous. Since the Coercion Bill passed Mr. Dillon has set his countrymen an example of deliberate defiance, at once going far to neutralise the influence of the measure and to make himself the idol of a people who have rebellion in their hearts. Now, to intensify the situation, tne Government have made him a martyr. He is " caged like a, wild beast, and, though silent in Kilmainham, speaks louder than from any Land League platform ; while Mr. Parnell is enabled to taunt tne Government with having put an obnoxious member of Parliament out of toe way, and to plead that as a reason for flouting the Land Sfe ra AWA W iS thiS unha PP y state of thin S 8 t0 laßt t— itoMy On Palm Sunday his Holiness gave audience to Count Roselly de Lorgues and Signer Joseph di G. Baldi, of Genoa, the Postulator and Tice-Postulator m the cause of canonization of Christopher Columbus. Tfrey laid at the feet of the Sovereign Pontiff a magnificent album containing the petitions of four hundred and sixty-three bishops, who prayed the Holy See to introduce the cause before the Sacred Congregation of Rites ; and, in reply, his Holiness directed the petitioners to appoint an advocate in connection with that Sacred Congregation. Signor Joseph di G. Baldi took back with him the valuable and interesting collection to add to it other petitions and documents which had arrived in Genoa during their absence. Bishop Chatard, in promulgating the Jubilee in the diocese of Vincennes, writes : " From the moment the breach was made in the S« B^? e 'v? !£ c 2< 2 th of 1870, the Pope has been a prisoner. His liberty of action has been not only hampered, but absolutely in very many instances, made null by the Italian Government. Especially has this been the case with reference to his teaching power ; for, as our most Holy Father says, his most impor- ™ f^ * specially proper prerogative of imparting instructions to youth has been denied him, while the fullest license has been granted P**"** 10 " *o afc tack Catholic doctrine, from the newspaper entitled La CajntaU, which openly warred against the Divinity of our Lord and Saviour Jesas Christ, down to the latest tract sent out by non-Catholic agents. Add to this, the Church stripped of her possessions, religious orderg abolished by decree of the State, their valuable books and precious treasures of archeology scattered, earned off or sold by dishonest officials, to the damage not only of OD> Ut °* learn . tn e aDd ar t .' finally, the frightful deluge of Vice which undermines the very life of a people, at this moment inundatong Rome. When, with all these evils we couple the wide spread of doctrines subversive of society which European immigrants, often fleeing their country to its greater good, are striving daily to disseminate even here ; doctrines which destroy individuality, deny all SSSn?*^ ?™? ednesa ° f Property, the sanctity of the family reiationf, all obedience not only to the Church, but to civil authority itself, we can well see how much reason there is to pray and do penance. J

™ M^if* b ° m x th^ * illed th * Czar ' according to the Gaulois, which publishes a "fac simile, natural size," showing the internal arrangements of the explosives, was a tin cylinder, six inches long by three ftroacl. Down the centre was a copper tube, filled with Bertholet's salt and antimony, and through this ran a glass tube, hermetically sealed, containing sulphuric acid. A leaden weight was so placed as to break the glass tube when the bomb struck. The flame occasioned 7 of the sulphuric acid with Bertholet's salt passed by a small channel to a cartridge with a fulminate composition at the head and pyroxyhne below. The fulminate fired the pyroxvline, and the explosion of the pyroxyline ignited the nitro-glycerine with which the cylinder was charged. If one of the tubes had been choked, the future of Europe and Asia might hare been altogether different from that which is now in course of development. The Catholic, and we will add, the Irish instinct, which revolts against association with such political allies as Victor Hugo, Bradlaugh, Mrs. Besant. Clemenceau et id genus onme, is not likely to be soon blunted in Ireland, no matter what example may seek to make that fashionable. We are therefore not surprised that Mr. A M Hullivan repudiates the action, so far as he is concerned, of an Englishman who includes him and two or three other Irish members among the fourteen vice-presidents of what is called the Democratic League jt! Bntian > and which seems to be officered by Hugo, Bradlaueh and Besant. Mr Sullivan writes :"I sympathize with his good purposes expressed to me, and I heartily appreciate his just andgenerous sentiments. lam tolerably well known in Ireland, and to some extent m this country, as associated in political and social movements for the emancipating and uplifting of the masses of the people, with men of widely differing political and religious views. But there £»c names on this list that have ho place or recognition whatever in the public arena except as representing the most aggressive form of principles social, moral, and political, which it has been one of the chief efforts of my life to resist and combat." Catholic Review.