Current Topics

New Zealand Tablet, Volume IX, Issue 435, 12 August 1881, Page 1

Current Topics

AT HOME AND ABROAD.

We find another illustration of the fact that there A PRECEDENT, ia nothing new under tne sun in certain passages I from Fitzpatrick's " Life of Dr. Doyle," which J f lows us how the great patriot in question had in the tithe-war anticipated the Land League of our own times. " Dr. Doyle," says the writer, " told the people not to infringe the law, but he, at the same time, gave it to be understood that they might exercise their wit in devising expedients of passive resistance to tithes. The hint fell upon fertile soil. An organised system of confederacy, whereby signals were, for miles around, recognised and answered, started into latent vitality. True Irish 'winks' were extensively exchanged; and when the rector, mounted on his palfrey, at the head of a detachment of police, military, bailiffs, clerks, and auctioneers would make his descent upon the lands of the Catholic peasantry, he generally found the cattle removed, and one or two grinning countenances occupying their place. A search was, of course, promptly instituted, and often two entire days were consumed in prosecuting it. When successful, and that the cattle did come to light, the parson's first step was to put them up to auction in the presence of a regiment of English soldiery ; but it almost invariably happened that either the assembled spectators were afraid to bid, lest by doing so they should incur the oft-threatened vengeance of the peasantry, or else they stammered out such a miserably low offer, that, when knocked down, the expenses «f the sale w«uld be found to exceed it. The same observation applies to the crops. Not one man in a hundred had the hardihood to declare himself the purchaser. It occasionally happened that the parson, disgusted at the timidity of bidders, and thinking by a ruse to remove it, would order the cattle twelve or twenty miles away, in order to their being put up a second time for auction. But the locomotive progress of the beasts, on. such occasions, was always closely tracked by men deputed for that purpose, and who adopted certain means to prevent either driver ox beast receiving the slightest shelter or sustenance throughout the march. This harassing system of anti-tithes tactics, of which an idea is merely given here, soon accomplished important results. The Most Eev. Dr. Whateley, Archbishop of Dublin" (continues the writer) "mentioned before the Tithe Committee some interesting facts. ' I have received information,' observes his Grace, ' which leads me to feel certain in some instances, and very strongly to suspect in many others, that the resistance to tithe payment in numerous parishes may be traced to the reading of Dr. Doyle's letter. All composition has been refused. / - . . . Every possible legal evasion has been, resorted to, to prevent the incumbent from obtaining his due. A parish purse has been raised to meet law expenses for this purpose, and the result has been that in most instances nothing whatever, in others a very small proportion of the arrears has been recovered I know that in one parish some extensive farmers had reduced into writing a form of proposal for a composition, and that the proposal was signed by the parishoners at a fair in the neighbourhood. The fair was held on Saturday, and in consequence, as is supposed of Dr. Doyle's letter having been read and commented on next day, instead of his receiving the proposal for composition, notices were served on the Clergyman, by those very persons, to take the tithe in kind. He was forced to procure labourers, to the amount of sixty, from distant counties, and at high wages, who yet were incapable of obtaining more than a small portion of tithes, being interrupted by a rabble— chiefly women though men were lurking in the background to support them. He instituted a tithe-suit which was decided in his favour ; but, instead of receiving the amount, he was met by an appeal to the High Court of Delegates, and is informed that a continual resistance to the utmost extremity of the law is to be supported by a parish purse.' We find in the Carlow journals of the day, (continues the writer) a graphic account of a tithe seizure in that town, and of the surrender of the cattle to their owners. The narrative ia culled from The Sentinel, a Conservative organ, and cannot, therefore be suspected of exaggeration, ' Yesterday being the day on which the Sheriff announced that

if no bidder could be obtained for c cattle, he would hav^uypsfc < perty returned to Mr. Germain, ii ense crowds were colleCTwSpwi -^ the corners of the neighbouring counties. At twelve o'clock, "the * streets were crowded by upwards < ' 30,000 men. The county Kildare men, amounting to about 7,000 ent «.d, led by Jonas Duckett, Esq^ in a most regular and orderly mann. . This body was preceded by a band of music and had several barm 'on which were : ' Kilkea and Moone, Independence For Ever;' -'o Church Tax,' <No Tithe,' * Liberty,' &c. The whole body foil- ed six carts which were prepared in the English style — each draw. >y two horses. The rear was brought up by several of the respect©, of Kildare. At one o'olock the barrack-gates were thrown open, and the different detachments of infantry took their stations right and left, while the cavalry, after performing sundry evolutions, occupied the different passes leading to the place of sale ; but no one could be found to bid for the cattle, upon which he announced his intention of returning them to Mr. Germain. The news was instantly conveyed, like electricity throughout the entire meeting, when the ehouts and huzzahs of the people surpassed anything we ever witnessed. The cattle were instantly liberated and given up to Mr. Germain. At this period a company of grenadiers arrived, in double quick time, after travelling from Castlecomer, both officers and men fatigued and covered with dust. Thus terminated the proceedings ef this extraordinary contest between the Church and the people, the latter having obtained by their steadiness a complete victory. The cattle will be given to the poor of the sundry districts.' Thii sort of contest (the writer goes on to say) continued with spirit for some time, until at last Mr. Stanley, from his place in Parliament, avowed the significant fact that notwithstanding a vigorous effort made by the Government to collect arrears of tithe, with the aid of the military, police, and yeomanry, they were able to recover from an arrear of £60,000 little more than one-sixth of that Bum, and at an outlay of £27,000.

The following passages from, the work we bare A difference quoted from, although they also relate to the state OF opinion, of things pre Tailing fifty years ago might be written with hardly an alteration of what prevails today. Concerning the tithe law Dr. Doyle, the writer tells us, spoke as follows : " They permitted the agents of that impost to execute its penalties ; bat they appealed to heaven and their friends to witness the injustice, and to manifest indignation at wrongs so cruel 'We bless those who sympathise with us,' he added ; 'we shun those who co-operate in the enforcement of an odious law against us ; but if anyone resort to violence or intimidation whilst our goods are taken from us, him do we disown. Unless your Excellency can change our nature, you will not alter our purpose — it is fixed and immovable. When the Derrise was asked by Alexander what he thought of the conquest by that warrior of India, he took the dried sheepskin from his shoulders, spread it on the floor of Alexander's tent, and having walked upon it — the skin yielding to the pressure of the foot and rising when the foot was removed — he said, ' Such will be your conquest of India.' The allegory may be instructive also to your Excellency. With horse, foot, and artillery you may collect the tithe, because we have not the power or the will to resist you ; but remove the pressure, and our passive resistance will immediately arise.' He prayed Lord Anglesey to consider the nature of the duty which was imposed upon him, and the effects of that law to which his Excellency would wish J. K. L. and his disciples to yield obedience in the most comprehensive sense. During the recent Parliamentary Inquiry into the causes of disturbance in the Queen's Coun ty, a highly respectable witness was asked if he had known any instances of great severity under the tithe system that might have led the people into those outrages ? To this question, which is numbered 3338 in the Blue Book, he replied : ' I have known of potatoes being sold out of the bouses of poor people ; of the pot to be sold, and a man left two and a-half years without one, being obliged to borrow a pot to boil his potatoes. I have known the blankets to be taken off the beds of the children ; I have known th« widow's pig taken away ; I have known an aged woman taken out of a sick-bed and laid on the ground, and the clothes, and the bed, and her daughter's clothes, sold for tithes ! I have known that in the town of Maryborough,' " Passive resistance was, however, as little

held in estimation by the powers of the times aB it is by those that now be. " Lord Anglesey," the writer continues, " had, no doubt, read that answer ; and, having condemned as pernicious the doctrine that a law which works such cruelties ought to be evaded, proceeded to Bay : ' Such an opinion I cannot too strongly reprobate, nor shall any exertions be spared to bring to justice those who act upon it, by entering into illegal confederacies themselves, or (which is equally criminal) inciting others to do so.' " Dr. Doyle, nevertheless, ventured to persevere in his own ideas : " In reply to this remark Dr. Doyle argued that the odious Dame of illegal confederacy might be understood, in this case, to designate what was not only legal bnt laudable. He therefore submitted some true and pregnant observations with regard to unions and confederacies of men, and declared that the greatest misfortune, except civil war, which could befall a country was when laws opposed to the public good, or founded on false presumptions, or injustice, were sustained and enforced by the executive power in the State. When a circumstance of this sort occurred, the breast of every virtuous subject became the arena of a conflict. 'On one side he is urged to honour the King, and yield a willing and ready obedience to the law ; whilst, on the other, he is impelled by a sense of justice, and of what he owes to his own and the public interests, to withhold from the executive power the honour due to it, and to defeat the provisions of a law unjust in its nature and opposed to the common weal. . . . This system which the laws are said to uphold, finds no advocate ; its iniquity is exposed to tke whole world ; no man even pretends that it is not opposed to all the interests of Ireland ; and the sole motive for upholding it, which a man of sense would not blush to avow, is the sanction it borrows from the law. 1 "

The following passages from Dr. Doyle's letter to pebtinent Lord Anglesey seem also most pertinent to the passages, present condition of affairs :— " Is it then prudent, is it wise, is it politic for a Government to announce in Parliament the extinction of this system (the tithes) ; then retract their own promise and arm in its defence 1 Is it wise or prudent to uphold laws which cannot be justified by any argument, save an appeal to the bullet or the sword ? Ah ! if the dignity of the law is to be upheld, it should be done, not by confounding the good and the bad, but by expunging the latter fiom the code, as the husbandman separates the chaff from the wheat. This name of law has lost a portion of its power and the reverence due to the majesty from which it emanated may be utterly lost in the torrent of indignation now sweeping the whole surface of this country. But why does not the British Government, whose decrees your Excellency is called upon to execute, take a lesson from itself ? That Government commenced with Virge confederated bodies. They admitted almost to the counciltable the leaiers of those confederacies — the very men who had marshalled in military array, with officers of different grades, hundreds of thousands of the people, for the undisguised purpose of compelling Parliament to change the constitution of the House of Commons. They did this, and were they censurable for doing so ? No 1 They would have been traitors to their own principles, to their Sovereign, and, above all, to the commonwealth, if they had not done so. Why what could have ben th^ir justification ? It was this, and this only. An intolerable, but a legal grievance — the corruption of the House of Commons — preyed on tho people of England ; and such was the power of the sect which supported this legal griovarco that not the wishes, nor the wants, nor the distress, nor the petitions of that people, but only their threats, through their unions or confederacies, could overcome that power. The G-overnment had to choose between a legal abuse, having what is called prescription in its favour — an abuse secured by some hundred charters — an abuse consecrate! by time — an abuse claiming connection with the power and glory of England — an abuse involving in it the titles, and fortunes and wealth and dignity, and privileges of the highest order in the State— the Ministry had to choose between the preservation of this legal abase and the wrath, and indignation, and resistance of the British people ; and the Ministry wisely, and justly, and promptly took up the cause cf the people, and, combining with them, overthrew the monstrous legal abuse. The Ministry, at that time, seat forth no circular to the magistrates of England to arrest the leaders of the Birmingham and other unions : they did not make the House of Commons resound with the common-place phrases of prescription, vested interests, or chartered rights ; they instructed no Committee of either House to inquire into the state of the representation— though the corruption of it was not half so glaring as the iniquity of the tithe system ; they produced no returning officers or patrons of boroughs, to prove the injustice of depriving them of the right to usurp the representation of the people ; they did not predict or prognosticate that property in boroughs was like all other property, or that if boroughs were wrested from the usurpers of them, and restored to those for whose benefit they were first founded, no other property would be secure. They voted no money, whilst the strong man withered and the widow and orphan died of hunger, to compensate the borough- monger for the loss he sustained, when the people wrung

from him their own dear, sacred, bufc long-lost rights. They introduced no reports or bills to Parliament to render void their own pledges, to change the name, but to secure and aggravate the sway of an oligarchy, and perpetuate the corruption of the House of Commons. They dispersed no public meetings— they prosecuted no agitators — they dismissed no magistrates — they displayed no fleet or army, nor did they threaten to suspend the palladium of British^ liberty, and imprison beyond the seas those who importuned them on the subject of Reform. No 1 In England the Government seemed to recollect it was the creature of the people, and entrusted with power for their good ; but in Ireland the rule of policy appears inverted, and that is criminal in this, the Sister Island, which in Great Britain is the lawful exercise of a power inherent in its people."

Fubthke on in the work we borrow from we find db. Doyle's the following :—": — " Dr. Doyle admired the conduct views. of that man who sternly refused to pay tithe, but peaceably allowed his goods to be carried away and sold, as the law provided. He could not discover anything immoral or illegal in one man, or ten men, or ten thousand men who, being influenced by the injustice of the tithe law, declined all participation ia the enforcement of it, and refused, under this influence, to pur-% chase goods held to sale under the provisions of that law. He thus a concluded : ' I have written thus far, my Lord, in order to vindicate ▼ those principles and opinion which I share and profess with nearly the whole Irish nation. I thought they were glanced at and censured, however obliquely, in the reply of your Excellency, and therefore I hastened to reassert them. If in doing bo I have been wanting in that profound respect which I owe to your Excellency, I have erred through ignorance, and I pray your indulgence.

The following letter of Dr. Doyle's, addressed to one moke Sir H. Parnell, also contains a word or two moot apqtjotation. plicable to the present aspect of affairs. It was written at Carlow on the 18th October, 1832 : — " It is is well if even now, at the eleventh hour, the Ministry become wise, or at least desist from proceedings, which bespeak on their part something worse than fatuity. But, whilst they speak with you of ceasing to provoke hatred and spill blood, their deputies here are busied in issuing decrees ; and our roads are covered with horse, foot, and artillery, as if about to commence a regular campaign. The public hatred against them is at its height ; and to bespeak confidence in their intentions, would be to expose one's self to utter derision. I really do not know one individual in Ireland who could be brought to confide in them. You know how I hoped in them against hope ; but I have ceased to think of them, except with bitter sorrow. Their conduct has rendered law vile, and the administration of it more than ordinarily hated ; but what is worse, it has called forth in the democracy a spirit which no law can appease nor force subdue, and which tends every hour to the breaking up of all the old relations of society, and precipitating the reform of abuses, to the great risk of the public safety. See it in your county, where Pat Lalor will be your colleague, if not your successor, in the representation of Kildare, where probably More O'Ferrall will be replaced by an adventurer from the Xorth ; in this county, whore they would go to Calcutta, if necessary, to find an opponent to both Whigs and Tories. All this have the Ministers done in despite of your advice, and of the opinions of every man who knows the workings of this country. I will look with anxiety for the change you expect ; but until I witness it, the prospect of its coming shall have no effect upon my mind or conduct."

Now ihat the publication of the Eevised Version the chdrch has drawn much attention to the subject of the and the Scriptures generally the following explanation of SCRIPTURES, their use in the Catholic Church which we take from a recent number of the Manth will be found of interest :-" The subjects, then, (says the writer) treated in the Bible in its bearing on Christian life, may be conveniently ranged under the three heads of history, tnorality, dogma. It ia plain that the first-named of these is valuable from our present point of view only in so far as it involves the other two. Bible history, then, is taught Catholic children at their homes and at school, not simply as a record of barren and purely temporal facts, but as the chronicle of God's wonderful and supernatural dealings with His chosen people, written down by His commandment to serve as types and examples for our own instruction. Accordingly the text books used are careful to point the moral for the benefit of the learner, to keep always b?fore him the deeper spiritual meaning of the events narrated, and as far as their compass and pupose will permit, to clear up difficulties which may easily arise, and provide an answer to doubts. Next, the dogma or doctrine contained in the Inspired Book has been impressed on the mind of the Catholic child at his home (under favourable circumstances), afterwards at school, with such fulness and precision as his years allowed ; he knows of One God in Three Persons, the Orea-

tion, the Fall, the Incarnation of the Son which repaired it, His Life Passion, and Death, of the Church which He founded, and the Sacrifice and Sacraments with which He endowed. All this the Catholic learns from his catechism, and the explanations of it he receives from his school teacher and priest. Your Protestant boy, on, the other hand, let loose among the oracles of God, like a child in a cabinet of antiques, lays rude hands on the precious things of which he does not understand the value, dashes to the ground the alabaster vases to see what they are made of, perhaps tramples them under foot, and goes away at last in a lit of temper after his work of destruction with his fingers cut, but with a dim consciousness that he has not been acting altogether right. He is sulky because he could not pluck from the broken pieces in division the secret of their beauty as a whole. Bat the docrinal instruction of the Catholic does not end with his school-days ; it is continued in sermons, catechetical instructions on Sunday afternoons which adults often attend, and, where it is possible, in set homilies on different parts of Holy Scripture ; it may be even supplemented in the confessional should the priest judge it necessary in any particular case. Well-to-do Catholics, also, will generally have a copy of the Bible in their homes, and an English Missal with all the Epistles and Gospels lead at Mass during the year ; of course the Sunday Epistle and Gospel, and the Vespers and Penitential Psalms are to be found translated in most prayer-books in ordinary use. Lastly, the Catholic Church teaches her members the ■morality of the Bible — the eternal, unchangeable laws of right and wrong, as God Himself declared them, not cut down to the measure of the carnal mind, or moulded according to the pressure of the times, or refined into the phantoms of scepticism and unbelief, but broad, real, and energetic in all times, and in all places like the Divine Essence on which they are founded. Let us now suppose a Catholic trained in Christian dogma and morality in the manner we have described, to enter an ecclesiastical seminary in obedience to the Divine call. He there begins a course of theology extending over several years, when be goes again carefully through the great dogmas of his faith with a more thorough and intelligent study, weighing and probing them all to the bottom as far as the limitation of the human intellect will allow, examining the proofs by which they may be supported, establishing their truth against all objections, under the guidance even of learned and acute professors. The proof of each theological thesis is set firmly first on its Scriptural basis? parallel passages are scrupulously sifted, seeming inconsistencies are diligently examined and explained ; in fact, Catholic theology is little more than Scripture drawn out into fulness and method. But besides this constant and primary reference to the Bible in theological lecture and study strictly so-called, every seminary has its special Scripture professor, whoße lectures all must attend, and there are men who hold this position at present in England whose ability and erudition are none the less real because they have not been hitherto paraded in print. His seminary studies ended, the young cleric is raised to the dignity of the priesthood ; he must henceforoh, under pain of grievous sin, daily recite the Divine Office, which is chiefly made up, as we have already said, of the Psalms and extracts from other parts of the Scripture ; he prefixes a text from Scripture to every sermon he preaches, and he is told to make his sermon a development of it as much as possible. Can such a priest, after so long a preparation for such duties, be fairly described as ignorant of the Sacred Scriptures? He may not have got by heart so large portions of them P- ( the Scripture Readers by profession ; he may not have the name of the Lord Jesus so glibly and so lightly on his lips, but his real acquaintance with the teaching of the Divine Word, and t his reverence for it in theory and practice, is more solid, more earnest and large, than any his accusers can show. St. Paul wrote long ago that 'the letter killeth. but tbe spirit giveth life ;' there is a literal knowledge of Holy Scripture that is barren of all good fruit, and only puffs up instead of edifying the reader, which, thinking itself sufficient for itself, spurns all authority and control ; and, having been wrested a hundred times to support eccentricity and fable, is turned at last against the Church, whom Christ loved and gave himself up for it, that lie might sanctify it, cleansing it by tlie layer of water in the word of life, tliat He might present it to Himself a glorious Church, not liaving sp«t or ivrinkle or any such thing, but that it should be holy and without blemish. To those who interpret them so, the Scriptures become indeed 'the letter that killeth ;' but in communion with the Catholic Church (a man) may find them, if he will, ' the spirit that giveth life.' "

The mistrust of nearly every rank and class has at last extended to the Russian army — the last support of the Government. Between twenty and thirty officers, one of them a lieutenaat-colonel in the " Guards, have been arrested during the last month. The mistaken belief that at least the army, or, at any rate, the Guard, was loyal to the backbone has now been rudely shaken. The officers of Marine are especially compromised since the arrest of three of their number for complicity in the late attempt at assassination. Among the officers under arrest is a relation of the Procuror of the Senate, who conducted the prosecution of Risakoff and others. His name his Mouravieff.