ARCHBISHOP MACCABE'S PASTORAL.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume IX, Issue 456, 6 January 1882, Page 5

ARCHBISHOP MACCABE'S PASTORAL.

Abchbishop MacCabe, of Dublin, delivered an important pastoral on Sunday last, Oct. 30th. The following is an extract referring to the present crisis :—": — " The condition of our dear country calls for our bitterest tears. Only a little while ago our own city presented scenes of lawlessness which might disgrace an un- Christian rabble. It is true the evil-doers were but a handful of misguided youths, but it is nevertheless true that evil-doers are in our midst, and that the youthful culprit of to-day may become the hardened profligate if society fails in its duties to the rising generation. We feel ourselves, very reverend Fathers, imperatively called on to enter our most solemn protest against another indignity which has been offered to the moral sense of our own people in this city, the centre of Catholic Ireland. Only a few days ago over-confiding men were startled from their dream of security by the publication of a manifesto which at once assailed the eternal law of good and struck at the foundations on which society rests. Passing over all other cases in which these rights are threatened, let us confine ourselves to one particular class of the community. There are hundreds of honest, industrious men among us who, trusting to their faith in the public conscience and calculating on the security which a duly constituted Government iB expected to give, have invested the fruits of their years of toil and self-sacrifice in property from which they hoped they and theirs might draw the means of an honorable subsistence.

" But all this must swept away by the breath of a handful of men, the bulk of whom have neither stake nor interest in the country. We disregarded the warnings which cautioned us against the danger that lurked in the specious programmes pretending to aim at nought save the redress of the wrongs of oppressed people. But now God's Providence has forced from the lips of the unsafe guides an avowal of their aims, and if the notice to pay no rents be not the teaching of communism, communism is yet to be defined. Let no one suppose, very reverend Fathers, that we have a word to say in defence of the oppressors of the poor. We feel as keenly as the most outspoken of our brethren inspired by the ministration of cruel injuries worked by bad laws on the defenceless tenants of Ireland, but we must not allow our abhorrence of injustice to betray us into a repudiation of the claims of justice. If to-day the landlord's claim to his just rent be questioned, who will guarantee the tenant's right to his outlay of money and toil to-morrow ? Injustice will repay injustice, and in the day of retribution the wrong-doer will be laughed at when he seeks for sympathy in his troubles. The issue iB now plainly put to our people which of two paths they will follow — whether they will follow the men who have marked out the road that must lead to anger with God and disgrace before the Christian world, or the bishops of Ireland, who through a glorious and unbroken succession of fourteen centuries are the heirs of those who eM|nntered poverty and exile and dared death in its most terrible foiZx for the people with whom their lives are irrevocably bound up." Dublin Oct. 30. — The pastoral of Archbishop MacCabe was read in all the Catholic churches of the Dublin diocese to-day and created considerable sensation. Passages from the pastoral were printed late last night, and demonstrations against, to be made to-day, were at once organised. At the Pro-Cathedral, in Marlboro 1 street, hundreds of men rose at the moment when the priest began his references to the Land League and left the building. At Arran Quay Chapel and other churches similar incidents occurred.

The New York Herald, while commenting on that part of the pastoral which condemns the manifesto of the Leagae, is amazed that an Irish prelate could shut his eyes and be silent as to the significance of English outrages in Ireland, The Herald says :—

So far, therefore, the pastoral address ot the Archbishop is to be commended. The question, however, which now excites thinking men is not the platform of the Land League or the declaration of the agitators. Common sense will settle that. What the world sees is that in free England — the England of Magna Charta — liberty, free press, free speech and the right of petition — it is possible to employ the forms of government made familiar by Russian Czars and Louis Napoleon. The world sees a liberal government violate every right consecrated to freeman. Members oE Parliament are imprisoned, women are arrested, priests taken from the altar, meetings are suppressed, the press is silenced, the right to bear arms is denied, the habeas corpus is suspended, martial law is proclaimed, trial by jury is denied to men charged with violations of law. Grant that the teachings of Parnell and the Land League are pernicious. In a free country the law permits the promulgation of any doctrines that do not offend decency. It is well enough to censure the wild teachings of the Land League. But why imprison men for opinion's sake ? If Parnell and his followers have committed a crime let them be tried and punished. It is no crime to declaim against property in land. We censure such doctrines, but we do not send a man to prison for holding them.

This is what Mr. Gladstone has done. This is what we mean when we say that his Ministry has applied to freemen the methods of Louis Napoleon. The fact that Archbishop MacCabe does not see in this extraordinary perversion of the powers of government a cause for regret takes from his pastoral address that respect and approval which otherwise would have been commanded by the utterance of so eminent a prelate.