Current Topics

New Zealand Tablet, Volume IX, Issue 456, 6 January 1882, Page 1

Current Topics

AT HOME AND ABROAD.

If out statesmen and philosophers were not so GOLDWIN SMITH bent on trying experiments as they appear to be, ON and if they were sufficiently diffident to distrust education, what may perhaps prove to be crude judgments of of their own, and to look abroad for instruction, a more prosperous future might probably lie before the colony, and systems that have caused harm elsewhere, instead of being eagerly advocated here, might be estimated at their true worth. The Hon. Mr. Oliver, for example, the other day in an address made by him at the Dunedin High School, and to which we have already briefly alluded, extolled the advantages of education, as if they were without alloy, and invoked with longing the advent of an hour at which secondary schools would be thrown open free of charge to all the country. If the Hon. Mr. Oliver, nevertheless, had cast his eyes somewhat more widely around him, and not generalized excessively from tte scrupulous dustings of his wife's intelligent maids-of -all-work, or from tbe orderly plodding of his own well-instructed porters and errand boys, on whose admirable parts he seemed in a large degree to base his knowledge of high class learning, he would have found that even education among the masses is admitted to have its drawbacks, and that an excess of the secondary education, he so desires to make free to all the colony, in particular is loudly called in question as to its beneficial results. We do not venture to quote for Mr. Oliver the authority of Lord Denbigh, who, being a nobleman of a somewhat oldfashioned type, and of the ultra-aristocratic school, can perhaps hardly claim an attentive hearing among our newer conditions of life —not that we should dream of questioning the Hon. Mr. Oliver's right also to rank with an aristocracy, but it would be an aristocracy of a different class, and such as they now propose to confer upon these colonies, founded rather on the pride of the purse than on high descent, on intellectual, or martial merit, or any of the foundations on which the vieille noblesse or its associate classes are based in England. Lord Denbigh, however, when speaking at an educational meeting a little time ago, did make mention of one of the ill efforts of education that we now find also enumerated by a very different kiM of man, that is Professor Goldwin Smith ; he describes the countrj.peopie M being taught by their new-fashioned schooling to despise thb rougher pursuits of the country, and hasten to the towns in search of ligtAer wor k. And a like state of things we find is also noticed in America , where, moreover, the secondary education so yearned after among ourselves, seems looked upon with reasonable suspicion. The following paragraph, which we take from Professor Goldwin Smith's opening address to the Social Science Congress, is sufficiently clear as to the matters to which we have alluded :— " Public education is politically the sheet-anchor of the democracy, and as to the necessity of maintaining it there is, I believe, no serious difference of opinion on the Continent. Yet even this, like other good things, has its attendant shadow of evil. At least, the general impression is that the system of education in the public schools lias something to do with tbe growing tendency of country people to leave the farms and to flock into the cities in quest of the lighter callings and the social pleasures of city life. Certain it is that the ttndency exists, and that callings of the lighter kind are - oatly overcrowded, almost as much overcrowded as they are in England. »If you Hvertise for a clerk or secretary, or even for a shopman, xl ew York, you will get nearly as many applications as you woulri get jre. It is a iv>t which men of education who think of emigrating to America are earu= s tl y recommended to lay to heart. The resu;', as there seems reason tof ear , will in time be an educated proletariat of a very miserable and, peiw^g, dangerous kind. Nothing can le more wretched or more explosive than destitution, with the social humiliation which attends it, in men whose sensibilities have been quickened and whose ambition has been aroused. People are beiDg led to the conviction that, at all events, the education given iv the public schools and at the expense of the community ought to ba of

a strictly practical character, and that the door should be closed against ambitions programmes, which engender a false conceit of knowledge and of superiority to common work. There are, also, some who think that the multiplication of universities and of facilities for ! taking degrees without any special aptitude for learning or science has already gone far enough. We have not an unlimited market for graduates, any more than there is for shopmen, or mechanics ; and the pleasant idea that a youth, after receiving a university education and taking a degree, will go back to common callings and elevate them by his culture has not as yet been borne out by the facts. 1 ' Among ourselves, nevertheless, ' ' ambitious programmes" are much in favour, and our statesmen and philosophers are ardent in their desire to promote all that Professor Goldwin Smith utters his warning to restrain.

Of the efforts, meantime, that American Catholics THE WOBK OF are making in the cause of Catholic education we American find some interesting particulars quoted in an catholics, article written by Bishop McQuaid in a recent number of the North American Review :—": — " To understand the amount of education work," he says, " accomplished by the Catholics of the United States, a few statistics will be useful. According to ' Sadlier's Directory' for 1881, there were in Christian free schools, of a grade corresponding with the common or State schools, 423,383 children, whose education in State schools would have required 6,164,456d015. 16 cents, computing the cost at the average per scholar estimated by tbe Commissioner of Education for 1878, — a large annual saving in favour of non-Catholic taxpayers. New York State had 270 Christian free schools, attended by 80,429 pupils. In New York City there are fifty -Beven Catholic Churches under the care of resident pastors. Of these parishes thirty -two have Christian free schools. Special reports for 1880 have been received from twenty-three of these parishes. They had an average attendance of 21,550 scholars. The great majority of the teachers were Brothers and Sisters of different religious orders. The amount paid for tuition alone was 100,928 dols. 16 cents ; for books, 8,638 dols. 93 cents ; for janitors, 8,397 dols ; for expenses, coal repairs, etc., 27,147 dols 50 cents. The estimated value of these twenty-three school-buildings, including ground and furniture, is placed at 1,501,300 dols., omitting the cost of residences for teachers. As tax-payers in New York City pay for tuition at the rate of 20 dols. 30 cents for each child in its grammar and primary schools, they are saved 437,465 dols. annually by these twenty-three Christian free schools. In a few years the parishes whose school-buildings are insufficient to receive all children, whose spiritual care is on the conscience of the pastor, will have erected larger ones ; and the other parishes not yet provided with these necessary school-churches for children. . . . will also have joined their sister parishes in a noble rivalry to work with whole-hcartedness, as the syllabus and the Church teach, in gathering into Christian schools, from which the great thought of the life to come is not excluded, all the children of the flock. Priests aud people who do not believe as the Church teaches have lost their faith. Priests aud people who fail to live up to their faith because of heavy sacrifices to be made are unworthy of membership in a Church that demands of her disciples heroic sacrifices to preserve the faith. It is then only a question of time when there will be ample schoolroom in every Catholic parish of New York City for all children having a right to a Christian education. As the above figures (continues the Bishop) refer ro schools in the great metropolis, others relating to a much smaller city and in the rural districts nuy be of interest. In Rochester there are eleven parishes, ten of which have Christian schools. In these there was, in 1880, an average attendance of 4391 scholars. To teachers the amount paid was 14,152 dols. 39 cents. As it cost the taxpayers of Rochester, in 1579, 117,387 dols. 37 cents to pay teachers for 8017 children, or at the rate of 14 dols. (54 cents per scholar, simple arithmetic tells us that the 4391 scholars in Christian free schools saved non-Catholic tax-payers 64,284 dols. 24 cents for teachers, not to speak of additional expenses for buildings, coal, repairs, etc. Catholic schoolhouses in Rochester are valued at 250,000 dols. It is a costly price to pay for religion's Bake, but it is well woith this and more."

With the question of the Bible-in-schools Bishop THE BIBLE McQuaid deals as follows :—": — " We turn now to our in schools, non-Catholic friends, believers in Christianity, and

ask, "What have you done for the religious and moral education of your young ? It is well known that educational establishments for the wealthier members of your flocks, in which religious and secular education are combined, are worthy of all praise, and bespeak the zeal of ministers and the liberality of laymen; but what have you accomplished for the poor children of your denomination, in view of the utter failure of the public schools 1 How have your congregations responded to the admonitions and entreaties of the General Assembly and the Protestant Episcopal Convention 1 The weakest suggestion of a reform is the demand to replace the Bible in the public schools. The uselessness of the Bible as a mere reading book was demonstrated long ago. As a teacher of morals and religion, it needed the living voice of a competent instructor to explain its meaning and enforce its authority and precepts, thus turning the school into a church. As a sign of antagonism to Catholics, it has ceased to play a part, for Catholics are no longer there to note the intended insult, or to heed the fumbling and crumpling of its pages by irreverent scholars. Bible-reading that teaches no dogma to children's minds is like trying to feed their bodies with dry husks. Theology without dogma may be adapted to the ' Church of the Future, 1 of which the agnostics arc preparing to be the high-priests, but it is now an unknown quantity. It is profound reverence for the Bible which induces Catholics to object to it in schools as an ordinary reading-book. Yet more do they object to its use in the hearing of their children when the teacher is one whose sympathies and belief aru opposed to their faith. The school-master may never speak si word abusive to the Catholic doctrine, and yet exercise a pernicious influence over the minds and hearts of Catholic children. The power of personality in the teacher is strongly placed before his hearers by the Rev. Dr. Hall, Presbyterian minister in New York City. In a Sunday sermon, he says : ' You cannot detach absolutely the person of the teacher from the thing taught. One may ask, What can religion have to do with algebra 1 Now, if you could get teaching without personal interests, that might be true. But you cannot,' &c. Earnest and devout Christians see that much of the growing contempt for the sacred Scriptures is due to unwise and indiscriminate reading by young school children whose attention is called to passages suggestive of evil by perverted companions ; or to its cold, hesitating, half-hearted, mechanical reading by skeptical masters. Personal influence is often more active and seductive on the play-ground than in the school-room. Catholics deaire the exclusion of the Bible and of religion from schools to which, for the time being, they are compelled to send their children, in default of schools of their own. They grieve to see the exultation of secularists and infidels over the easy victory evangelicals have permitted them to win. The Secularists not Catholics, wave aloft the banner of triumph."

A3 to how the secular system has Milled its THE results promises in the States, the Bishop informs us as OV secularism, follows :—": — " When the people of New York State

were er.jolcd into the free-school sy.<«tcm, with its I denial oE pnron'al contiol, the prom; so was held out to V.vt anxious tax-payers that inmeased taxation for school* would be followed by lessened taxation for alms-houses, prisons, and lunatic asylums. The former wiil cost less, so said partisans ot the ncAv system. Has the promise been kept? Our educated rogues are shrewder, aud escape with greater facility from the meshes and restraints of the law, but our bouses of correction are multiplying out of all proportion to increase of population ; and lunatic asylums, State and county, cannot keep pace in number and accommodation with the demand made on them by victims of shattered brains and morals. The increase of crimes, not alone o? crimes which send their perpetrators to jail, but of crimoa which destroy the fountain of life, aud the startlingly progressive multiplication of divorces destroying all hope of Christian families, iho prop and mainstay of a republic, alarm ministers and and laymen, and justify the verdict of ' failure.' Schools that won sympathy on the plea of providing a plain education for plain people have spread out into high schools, academies, colleges, and universities. Normal srhools give a professional training to young men and women who. for the most part, have no thought of followiug a teacher's career, for the compensation usually given is not commensurate with their expectations. Notwithstanding unlimited expenditures of public money, complaint is heard that instruction in the elementary branches of learning falls short of what the people have a right to expect, and ' failure ' is written again."

The failure, however, becomes still more glaring TIIE failure when it is seen that the secular system fails even crowned, to make a pretence of educating various classes of

children, and among them, especially, those in fvhosc'patlicular interests it was proposed to be established— a result

indeed, already apparent also in New Zealand, and to become more' and more marked according as " ambitious programmes " obtain hew, and the free secondary education of ;the masses is aspired to. " But when in large cities," continues the Bishop, " such as New York and Rochester, a third of the children turn from the open door of tbe public schools, on conscientious grounds, and seek schooling in other buildings, put up and paid for by citizens the least able to open their pockets to a second tax-gathering, it becomes a duty to proclaim the existing system. a 'failure,' and ajiruel wrong. The ' failure ' is the "V more evident when separate schools are needed for coloured children, ' banned for the accident of colour. It is yet more marked when the system requires poor schools, under the Children's Aid Society, to make room for those who suffer from the misfortune of poverty. But when a system of free schools, that seventy-five years ago began an assault on private and church schools for the alleged reason that there were some few children uncared for, and monopolised the teacher's work and profession by the power of the General Treasury, to-day has to admit that there are adrift and untaught in the streets of one city from ten to twenty thousand children of the very class in whose behalf State charity finds its justification, acknowledgment of 1 failure ' becomes more than a necessity." The " glory of America," then, has resulted, according to Professor Goldwin Smith, in spreading abroad throughout the masses a distaste for labour, a hankering after '• the lighter callings and the social pleasures of city life ; " and has caused a reasonable fear that there will arise in time " an educated proletariat of a very miserable and, perhaps, dangerous kind." According to Bishop McQuaid, it leaves adrift in the streets thousands of the children of the very classes for which it especially professed to make provision. Can those who hail the system as the " glory of New Zealand " — and particularly Sir George Grey, who proclaimed it once more as such the other day at Auckland — show any reason why it should not produce similar results in our own Colony 1 We see cause to believe, on the contrary, that whatever has failed in America must prove an exaggerated failure in New Zealand. But this is the land of experiments, and experience teaches.

It is not a little suggestive to find that among the more most virulent enemies the Jews have at present are

loving to be numbered the men to whom there attaches "brotherhood" the least suspicion of a Christian fanaticism, but who, on the contrary, are the extreme outcome of the much-vaunted " brotherhood " of the period, and show a full dedevelopment of all the theories we rind put forward with such pretensious magniloquence — that is, the Nihilists of Russia. In one of their late manifestos, then, they call upon the peasants of the Ukraine to rise against the unhappy people in question, and appeal to their hatred of them as an incentive to rebellion against the Czar. The Czar, they say, has protected the Jews ; and his soldiers, at certain towns noted for the late outrages committed there upon them, defended them against the just rage of the peasants— at the cost of " Christian blood."— And here let us note, moreover, how ready these people of progress and advanced ideas are to avail themselves, when it suits them, of what they otherwise stigmatise as the fanaticism of supcistitioH.— lt is. however, on the contrary, stated that the Czar troops connived at tbc attacks made upon the Jews, and abst&" ied from rendering them any aid, until their property had wen destroyed and their persons maltreated : and the reason i^t, forth, for this is thai the Uzar hoped in such a way to allay «o growing dissatisfaction, and give scope in another direction to the violence that threatens to be turned against himself. We find, however, and it is most interesting in many points to find, that the most advanced thinkers of the day are as anxious to attack the Jews, and as fierce in endeavouring to stir up a persecution against them as the wildest mediaeval mob— supposed to be actuated by Catholic fanaticism— or the moet zealous Crusader.— And how does this fall in with the pretenbions of " modern thought" 1 ruOFESrfou Goldwin Smith, nevertheless, in an thu article contributed by him to the Nineteenth CenCRUSADEiis tun/ for October, defends the mediaeval persecudbpended. tions of the Jews from the exclusively religiouP character generally ascribed to them. " The Christian States," he writes, «of the Middle Ages, in which the Jews underwent maltreatment, were in an early stage of dvilispfwn, aja their religion was bound up, as that of primitive commies i gen rally is, with their polity, their morality, and the wb'» lite or in<mr people. They could no more help this than a child can help not being a man. Historical philosophy has t-ght us to distinguish the inevitable shortcomings of nations f-n their enmes The common faith of the States of Christendom formed among other things the bond of their indispensable and effective, though loosely knvt confederation against Islam. Into nations of this character the Jew mtruded himself, well knowing their prejudices, which, ia fact, were merely the countcrparta of his own, but willing to run all neks in

pursuit of gain. If English adventurers had in the same way intruded themselves into China and Japan before those countries were opened, it is doubtful whether the Foreign Office would have felt itself bound to protect them in case of a riofc (and, for our own part, we may add, as, nevertheless, Popes and saints protected the Jews). Had it appeared that they had been plying trades oppressive and naturally hateful to the people, their misfortune, though it might have excited pity, would have created little surprise. Their case would have been still weaker if they had been acting as instruments Of extortion in the service of a tyrant, and had been sharing with him the spoils of the people, as the Jews did under mediaeval kings, and as it appears they did also in Egypt under the Ptolemies. Jewish writers, in their natural exasperation (he continues), are heaping contumely on the memory of the Crusaders. By David or Isaiah a Crusader might have been understood : it is impossible that he should be understood by a Jew of the Talmud and the Stock Exchange. The Crusades, like their sequel the straggle against the Ottoman, were in truth a defensive war waged by Christendom against Islam, which, organised for conquest, came victoriously rolling on, with fatalism, despotism, polygamy, slavery, and all the other Eastern vices in its train, till on the plains of Tours it had almost achieved the subjugation of the "West. The Holy Sepulchre was the Carroccio of Christendom, though its position, far in advance of the natural line of defence, placed the Christians at a military disadvantage. It is true that in Godfrey and his brethrenin-arms there was a strain of savagery which sometimes totally overpowered the nobler parts of their character ; that they carried on their holy war with the ferocity which marked wars generally in those times ; and that with their devotion were largely mingled the unextinguished propensity to nomadism, the love of military adventure and the lust of hooty. Still they were the half-conscious champions of that which has been incontestably proved by experience to be the higher civilisation, and for the hope that was in them they gave up their lands, their pastimes, and the bowers of their ladies, and went to die on Syrian fields. So long as Christianity is preferred to Islam, we must look with gratitude on the stately tombs of the Crusaders. The world will have become materialist, indeed, when any child of western civilisation can rejoice in abuse of St. Louis or Edward I."

" Now the Jew was a religious alien (continues the the jew's writer) and what his own law, if the parts had belationship been changed, would have called a blasphemer, in to the a religious camp at a crisis of intense excitement medieval and mortal peril. Not only so, but he was not a Christian, very distant kinsman, and probably at heart a

friend of the enemy, occasionally perhaps even a confederate, grotesque as some of the medieval stories of Jewish complicity with the Saracens are. (The writer then quotes passages from a Jewish historian, acknowledging and explaining the sympathy of the Jews with Mahommedanism.) It is not necessary (he continues) here to discuss the by-question whether the reign of Islam is that of liberty of conscience, and whether centuries of cruelty to the Jews had really preceded the year 710. As to the main point, the passage quoted is correct. History can cast no cast no blame upon the Jew for feeling and obeying his natural affinity; bnt on the other hand we must acqait the Christian of anything that with referent* to people in that stage of civilisation can reasonably be called demonic, an a p ronO unce that his rage against the Jew, even when most detestable and sanguinary, falls within the measure of human crime. It is pro\> a bly conjectured, if it cannot be said to have been proved, that at the time of the crusades, when all men were hastily raising money to equip themselves for the holy war, the Jewish usurer took cruel advantage of his opportunity, and thereby made himself more than usually obnoxious at the moment when he was most in peril. Nor is it by any means certain that he used all possible care to avoid irritating popular feeling. He has always b»en . . . somewhat apt to presume upon his wealth. . .' . The bloodiest and most disgraceful of all the outbreaks of popular violence in England was provoked by the disastrous indiscretion of some wealthy Hebrews who, in defiance of a warning proclamation, as well as of popular sentiment, had intruded themselves upon the coronation of a Crusader king. Even on this occasion, however, behind the religious fanaticism which is set down as the sole incentive to the outbuist, there is discernible that which I suspect to have been generally the deeper and more potent cause of popular antipathy At York, the rioters made for the place where the Jews | had deposit their bonds. So, in French 'history, M. Martin, * though he genetMiy treats the outrages against the Jews as religious, and descants on theuv i n the ordinary strain, sometimes lets us see that other causes of animosity were at work. < Never,' he says in relation to the rising of 1380, ' W the Jews been more hateful to the people than since they had been protected with so much solicitude by the Crown. They abused the need which men had of their capital to suck to the very marrow both the spendthrift nobleman and the necessitous citizen.' The money trade is not more oppressive or odious than any other trade, provided it is not pursued ia an

illiberal and grasping spirit ; but there are money-lenders of different kinds ; there is usury which is fair lending, and there is usury which is extortion ; there are mortgagees who do not want to foreclose, and there are mortgagees who do. A tyranny not less grinding or hateful than that of an armed conquerer or a political despot may be exercised by a confederacy of crafty operators, which has got the money of a country into its hands and makes a ruthless use of its power. In the chronicle of Jocelyn de Brakelond we find an example of the prodigious usance by which a debt to a Hebrew money-lender grew ; and we are rot surprised or much scandalised on learning from a subsequent page of the Chronicle, that the worthy Abbot Samson procured letters from the King empowering him to compel all Jews to quit St. Edmondsbury, on the condition, however, that they should be allowed to take with them their chattels and the price of their houses and lands. It was the period of the Crusades, and Samson was an enthusiast, it was true ; yet we cannot doubt, looking to what had preceded, that his main object was to save his people from the bloodsuckers. The Jews had a strong tendency to congregate at Oxford, a large portion of which is said at one time to have been in their hands. We may believe that they were partly, perhaps chiefly, drawn to it as a seat of learning and science ; but a university city also affords special opportunities for usury, and as the Universities in the Middle Ages were distinctly liberal, it seems probable that here again the conflict which took place had a social and economical rather than a theological cause."

"Into England," says Professor Goldwin Smith the jews again, li the Jews streamed after the Conquest, as in they follow in the train of modern wars ; and we England, may be sure that their presence was not the least part of the calamity which befell the hapless people. Through them the Norman and Angevin Kings were enabled to * organise vicarious extortion, and though the King squeezed thesponge when it had sucked up the money of the people, this procesi while it filled his coffers did not restore the popularity of the unfortunate [Jews. Nor does it seem that the Jew, to make up for his exactions, when he had amassed wealth, bore himself meekly towards the natives. Our highest authority on Mediaeval history, Mr. Freeman, says : — ' In the wake of the Conqueror the Jews of Rouen found their way to London, and before long we find settlements of the Hebrew race in the chief cities and boroughs of England — at York, Winchester, Lincoln, Bristol, Oxford, and even at the gate of the Abbot of St. Edmonds and St. Albans, They came as the King's special men, or more truly as his special chattels, strangers alike to the Church and the commonwealth, but strong in the protection of a master who commonly found it his interest to protect them against all others. Hated, feared, and loathed, but far too deeply feared to be scorned or oppressed, they stalked defiantly among the people of the land, on whose waats they throve, safe from harm or insult, save now and then, when popular wrath burst all bounds, when their proud mansions and fortified quarters could shelter them no longer from raging crowds, who were eager to -wash out their debts in the blood of their creditors. The romantic picture of the despised, trembling Jew, cringing before every Christian whom he meets, is, in any age of English history, simply a romantic picture.' The suppleness of the Oriental, which made him willing to be the chattel for the sake of the royal protection in his trade, might diminish the respect of the people for him, but would not diminish their hatred or their fear. Like the expulsion of the Jews from St. Edmondsbury by Abbot Samson, the banishment of the whole race from England by Edward I. was unquestionably intended by the King and welcomed by the nation as a measure of social reform and relief to the people. The execution of the measure was marked by savage outbursts of popular passion against the objects oE general hatred ; and Jewish writers may be easily forgiven for denouncing Edward as one of a set oE ' insolent, rapacious, and unprincipled tyrants whose virtues, if they happened to possess anj, were overshadowed by their crimes.' But this is not history. Edward was as great, as noble-minded, and as beneficent a King as ever sat upon the Enslish throne ; and he must have made no small fiscal sacrifice in sending away the luckless race whose craft had filled bis coffers and those of his predecessors. The situation was throughout miserable : its consequences while it lasted were deplorable ; its termination was hideous and heart-rend-ing : but the English people bad never invited the Jews to England."

" AOAIX (continues the Professor) it is constantly the jew asserted that the Jews, during the Middle Ages, falsely were rendering some biilliant services to civilisaAccredited. tion when their beneficent efforts were arrested by the intolerance and folly of Christianity. Christendom, it is said, was wasting itself in the pursuit of a spiritual ideal, in crusades, in religious art, and scholastic philosophy, while the Jew was promoting the roal welfare of mankind, by founding medicine and developing trade. Scholastic philosophy need hardly shrink from comparison in point of practical utility with the Talmud •

Cabala, If the Jew founded medicine, what became of the medicine which he founded ? The Middle Ages bequeathed none, it~is believed, worthy the name of science. Trade was developed not by the Jew, but by the merchants and mariners of the great Italian, German, Flemish, and English cities. Its progress in England did not in any appreciable way suffer by the absence of the Jews from the time of Edward I. to that of Charles 11. It may be doubted whether even the money trade which was the special province of the Jew, did not owe at the least as much to the bankers of Florence and Augsburg as to the Jewish houses. Bossieu St. Hilaire, in his history of Spain, while he shows abundant sympathy for Jewish wrongs, finds himself compelled to contrast the narrowness and rapacity of their commerce with the boldness and grandeur of Arab enterprise. In the early Middle Ages Jews were the great slave-dealers. This was not the reproach in those times which it would be in ours ; but slave-dealing was never the noblest or the most beneficent part of commerce,"

An argument that we have sometimes heard adA standard vanced in New Zealand also, is answered as follows ARGUMENT, by Bishop McQuaid :— " Should Catholics at any time, and in any part of the country, grow to be the majority, they will take delight in placing the minority on a footing of equality with themselves, even as the French Canadians, forty years ago, being then a large majority of the inhabitants of Lower Canada, settled this question of schools, in its moral and religious aspect, by conceding to the Protestant minority every privilege and claim asked for. It is an unfortunate suggestion to offer that to keep Catholics from practising intolerance towards a Protestant minority, it is advisable for a Protestant majority to be intolerant towards a Catholic minority."