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New Zealand Tablet, Volume x, Issue 473, 5 May 1882, Page 16

We record with deep regret the death of Mr. John B. Dungan, which occurred at Palmer&ton North, and suddenly of heart disease, on Tuesday morning. To the readers of the Tablet, Mr. Dungan's name will he familiar ; he assumed the editorship of the paper soon after its establishment, and for some considerable time his ability as a journaliut was very evident in its columns, and went far towards setting them upon a permanent basis. As a journalist, indeed, the gentleman in question was possessed of exceptional abilities, and had already distinguished himself both in America and Australia, where, as well as in our own colony, he has left as his memorial more than one newspaper which owes to him the principal portion of its Excess. He was a memrer of a highly respectable family, and a native of Dublin, where, if we mistake not, his first connection with the newspaper life began in the printing office of the Nation. His disposition was kindly and genial, and together with a pleasant and obliging manner, and an agreeable and entertaining

flow of conversation, it had secured him numerous friends in every locality where he had made his home. He has left a wife and a family of seven children to mourn his loss. — R.I.P. His Lordship the Bishop of Dunedin was present at Lawrence last Sunday, where an address was presented to him. We regret that we have not received a report of the proceedings in. time for our present issue, but we hope to furnish our readers with full particulars next week. The foundation-stone of a Catholic schoolhouse, in connection with the Convent to be founded by the Dominican Nuns, will be laid at Oamaru on Sunday next. The Most Rev. Dr. Moran will officiate on the occasion. We learn with regret tLat the Rev. Father Crowley is about to resign his connection with the diocese of Dunedin. The departure of the rev. gentleman, who has made for himself many sincere friends, will be a cause of much sorrow. A deputation from the Maoris has left New Zealand en route for London with the purpose of laying before her Majesty the Queen certain complaints as to alleged breaches of the treaty of Waitangi. The members of the deputation take with them various objects of Native manufacture as presents to her Majesty and the royal family. During the course of the past week heavy rains and floods havo occurred in several parts of the South Island, and also at some places in the North. Te Whiti is reported to have expressed his intention of going, on his release, to see Tawhiao, and aid him in carrying out bis policy. The report of the half-yearly meeting of the shareholders in the Bank of New Zealand, to be found in another column, not only gives a very satisfactory account of the standing of the company, but aleo presents us with most cheering views of the approaching progress and prosperity of the colony. The chairman predicts an abundant flow of capital to our shores, and speaks highly of the development of industry and the productive qualities of the colony. We refer our readers to the report in question, which is well worthy of attention. A reception of members into the Association of the Children of Mary will take place this eveniig in St. Joseph's Church, Dunedin. Mb. Fohstbr declared in the House of Commons on March 29th that the Coercion Act had done something for Ireland, by enabling the authorities to lock up in gaol those mho otherwise might have committed acts of violence. Such a declaration needs no comment. Eakl Cowpeb has resigned the Lord Lieutenancy of Ireland, and has been succeeded by Earl Spencer. A family named Smith, consisting of a father, mother, and two children, were burned to death in the ferry-house at Whareama Ferry, near Masterton, on Monday. Iheie are no means of ascertaining how the fire occurred, as there it no survivor, and no neighbours live at a distance nearer than eight miles. The Melbourne papers report that great opposition is being shown in the United estates to Irish immigration. At Milwaukie they say the inhabitants have protested againßt it as introducing a very undesirable class of citizens. In this report, however, we have meiely an instance of the savage snti-Irith spirit, that would drive the Irish out of their own country, and yet provide them with no substitute for it. Even Cromwell offered them the alternative of Connaught. There are editors in these colonies who would araign to them hell only— and among them we may reckon our innocent friend of the Soutldand Times. A sebious fire cccurrcd in Chew's Buildings, Wellington, en Saturday night, le&ulting in the destruction of Mr. T. Dwan's aiction mart, and the premises of Messis. M'Cugh and M'Namara. A man named Robert Mai son committed suicide on Saturday at Eaiapoi by stabbing himself several times with a penknife in the arm. Anti-Ibjsh riots, accompanied by the wrecking of a C&tholio Church, have taken place at a town named Cran bourne in Cornwall. A Catholic priest named O'Higgins has been committed for trial at Galway on a charge of inciting to murder. It by no means follows, however, that there is the slightest foundation for the charge. The Fenians are going to blow up a tunnel at Woolwich Arsenal, and the Town Hall at Manchester. As usual they have been considerate enough to send the authorities word of their intentions beforehand. The Dominican Nuns acknowledge with thanks the receipt of money and blocks for InvercargiJl Art Union from Messrs. Redding, Arrow, and Dillon, St. Bathans. Oub wise contemporary tbe Otago Daily Times is, we perceive, indignant, as it might be expected, at the exposure of the worthlessness of our secular system made by Mr. Petrie in his report. Our contemporary has nothing, however, to say in defence of the schools, although this time he has evidently availed himself, in his editorial

column?, of some writer more intimately connected with the working of the schools, but he makes up for what is wanting ia this respect by a plentiful bespattering of Mr. Petrie's reputation as an inspector. The inspector, in a word, has honestly done his duty, and as he was bound in the character of an honest man, has Bpared neither the teachers nor the system nnder which they work. Our contemporary, nevertheless, would prefer that Mr. Petrie should hare sacrificed his character of an honest man to the reputation of the secular system, and so couched his report as to deceive the public and sustain the reputation of ths schools. This it is that his article inform us of, and otherwise it is utterly empty and worthless— but let it be taken as a sample of the method in which the secular system is bolstered vp — by faisihool and deceit, and the unscrupulous brow-bsating of every honest man who would tell the truth in connection with the matter. As to the attack on the language of the report in question we should advise the writer to retain his hints on composition until he distinguishes himself by the publication of a neat hand-book on the subject — they smack most strongly of the pedagogue, and of themselves are qnite sufficient to reveal the anthorship of the article in which they appear.— Meantime Mr. Petrie has told the plain troth in plain English, and deserves the thanks of the community rather than an insolent and ignorant condemnation. Alabm concerning small-pox-continues at Melbourne, where it ii reported that another case of the disease has broken out. The Imperial Government have thrown up the sponge, and the Land League have won the day.' Mr. Forster has resigned, carrying with him into private life the reputation of blood-thirstiness, and the contempt and derision of the whole Irish nation throughout the world. He wa3 well named by Mr. Sexton as a clumsy Cromwellbutcher, or butcher's boy, and hypocrite. Messrs. Parnell, Dillon, and O'Kelly have already been released, and the release of the other " suspects "is to follow in due course. Coercive measures also, under their preeent form, are to be discontinued— and, in a word, the whole \ Government programme has collapsed. The Government have failed to destroy, it now remains for us to fee how their ability will be displayed in the more grateful task of building up. Judge Gillies in opening the criminal session at New Plymouth the other day said with reference to the Native prisoners that the West Coast Settlement Act gave the Governor power to authorise any one to be taken in custody who was obstructing the course of the law. The only person, however, to give the authority was the Governor, and, so far as he could see, no power had been given by the Governor to anyone to disperse the Natives. If the jury found that the officer who had ordered the arrests had not been duly authorised they would find no true bills. True bills were found in the ca*es of Tito Kowaru and Bangi Puhuho. A yobkshibe man, named Young, has threatened the Queen, with the object of extorting money. Twenty-five gentlemen at Invercargill met the other night in the theatre, and drew up a long address of eulogy to Mr. Gladstone on the fiftieth anniversary of his entry into public life as a member of Parliament. This mark of appreciation of his services, no doubt will go far towards smoothing ihe remainder of Mr. Gladstone's caTcer, and atone to him for much that has been untoward in the past. He is still the William of twenty-five " individuals" at Invercargill, and " distance lends enchantment to the view." Chbirtchuech vindicates its right to an English origin. A man there has sold his wife for £5. A child named Ford has been 6calded to death at Geraldine, by pulling down a basin containing boilirg water, left by his mother on a table. It has been discovered that the troops stationed in Ireland have become disaffected and are not further to be depended on in the coercion of the people. This is attributed to the number of Irishmen in the regiments, but are English soldiers so void of feeling and manliness as, without a pang, to shoot down the innocent and help * less at the word of command ? Our belief is, on the contrary, that the English soldiers themselves no less than the Irish have been revolted at the bestial task propoeed to them, a~d given tokens that they would shrink from its performance. We have always held the treatment of Ireland to be grossly anomalous in comparison with the character of the English people, and such ss could be maintained only by their being deceived. — After all English soldiers are Englishmen, and the time will come when England will be as proud of their refusal to slaughter the unarmed and unoffending people of Ireland, as she has reason to be of their prowess on the battle-fields of all the world. The commission of the House of Lords have recommended that the landlords should be bought out, and a peasant proprietory established in Ireland. It \3 wonderful to see how what was regarded yesterday as a mad idea impossible of accomplishment, to-day appears the easiest thing in the world, and to be done without an effort. But so it has always been in Ireland ; the people have always succeeded when they were resolute, in opening the eyes of their oppressors in like manner. The degree of sight now forced upon these, however, is greatest of all, and we have reason to believe that henceforward they

will see with perfect clearness. The spßctacles fitted on them by the Land League have been, indeed, all but miraculous glasses. A concert in aid of the Catholic Presbytery at Port Chalmers will take place in the Foresters' Hall in that town on next Wednesday week, the 17th inst. It will be uader the patronage of his Lordship the Bishop, and as the arrangements are under the personal supervision of the Rev. W. J. Newport and several well-known gentlemen, our readers may rely upon enjoying a pleasant evening, and at the same time contribute to what is an undoubted want at the Port. A train will leave Dunedin for the Port on that evening at 6.20, and return after the concert. We have received a copy of a bill, drafted by Mr. J. Aitken Connell, to amend " The Lan J Act 1877," and of which we shall give a notice in our next issue. We take the following from the Tasnanian Catholic Standard of April 15th :— His Lordship the Bishcp of Dunedin visited Hobart, en, route for New Zealand, on Tuesday the 30th ult. His Lordship was travelling by the s.a. Hero. During the few hours he had to spend in Hobarfc he made the most of his time, visiting the Bishop's bouse, St. Mary's Cathedral, Presentation Convent, and schools attached to the same, with all of which Dr. Moran expressed himaslf much pleasei. Before his departure he also visited St. Joseph's Church, the Town Hall, Library, and Museum, and expressed his admiration of the exquisite scenery in the environs of Hobart, as well as of our beautiful harbour acd river. Bishop Moran had visited Rome and many parts of Ireland. He spoke of Parnell, whose family he knew well (both being of the county Wicklow), as a good and honest man, whose whole soul was devoted to the end for which he had now laboured and suffered long — that end being to raise the tenant-farmers and labouring classes in Ireland from their present miserable and degraded condition to that of free and happy men, by rooting them in the soil of their native land. We already knew that the editor of our contemporary the Southland Times was an indignant editor. We are now, however, informed that in him millennial phenomena are made apparent and that the lion and the lamb have met together. — Our editor is as innocent we learn as a sucking dove. He ia gushing, now, with a fell wrath over the murder of a young lady, shot accidently instead of her brother-in-law, in Westmeath, and he tells us in his ravings that 11 every imaginable sort of crime has been perpetrated" in the course of the present agitation. Now-a-days when it is hardly possible to open, even a colonial paper, without seeing the details of some odious offence, it is charming to find an editor who3e acquaintance with crime is limited by that which is committed in an agrarian disturbance and who can imagine nothing worse — the softness of such an editor is almost past belief, and it is a pity to break in upon tha beauty of his all but spotless miud .by presenting to it the records of anything defiling. Nevertheless we will venture to furnish our innocent abroad with a paragraph in which he will be forced to recognise the records of a state of affairs that is evidently far worse than anything that has occurred among the long-outraged peasa ltry of Ireland, in the wonderfully bloodless and quie cent bat effectual war they have been waging against a force a thousand times more powerful than they are. Wo have seen in the English and Irish papers the details of all the particular cases mentioned here, and we have at hand those of very many of the crimes tpoken of generally : "An English journalist named Joseph Hatton has collated a week's record of British crime, confining himself exclusively to deeds committed by those moving in the higher social circles. It would almost seem that an epidemic of scandal and social outrage is raging in England at present. The criminal calendar begins with the Morewooi brothers, four of whom visit the elder at Christmas and try to force him to sign a paper giving them nvuiey. They leave him naked and bleeding ; are arrested for assault ; forfeit their bail and go yachting with the Earl of ShrewPbury, who has previously elopjd with their married sister, a Mrs. Munday. Then Lieutenant Ponsonby, of the Royal navy, seduces a barmaid, and the poor girl commits suicide. The Ponsonby family are close attendants upon royalty, and prominent in the Lord Chamberlain's office. Then again an English clergyman, the hasband of a boarding school mistress, is ai rested for indecently assaulting seven little girls, and it is reported that forty others have been subjected to similar treatment in the rev. gentleman's school. Then two men are sent to gaol for mutilating a respectable gentleman named Brooks, who afterwards confessed that he did the deed himself. All the above events were ventilated in the courts within a few days of each other. In addition the record of wife-beating, assaults on women, assaults on children, pick pocketing, larceny, drunkeanes?, seduction, abduction, murder, and other crimes and misdemeanours is unusually large. Talk about England sending missionaries to convert the heathen ? It seems that there is a wide field for their labours at home. People go into hysterics about crime in Ij eland, but the amount in England, with no land league disturbances, seems to be quite as great," We are sorry to be the means of introducing our cleanly-minded editor to an acquaintanceship with so much that is abominable, and which, it seems, he never would have imagined

anything about, But perhaps when he sees that his imagination was at fault in one particular, he may suspect that it is at fault also in others, and so be induced to try and mend matters, and arrive finally at something better than pandering to bigotry, narrowness, and ignoble prejudices, which at present seems to be his task where Ireland is concerned. Her Majesty the Queen has been playing, we should not like to say what, with the feelings of ever so many of her devoted servants. She has actually " been and gone" and paid a visit to a Jesuit College—there now. The college so honoured was Beaumont Lodge, where two hundred students received her Majesty with hearty cheers. and the following address of congratulation was read to her by Master Charles Edmund de Trafford :— " May it please your Majesty. We, the boys of Beaumont College, offer to your Majesty our hearty and loyal congratulations, on your escape from the cruel attempt made on your most precious life. It has already been our privilege to celebrate a thanksgiving service to Almighty God for His mercy in preserving our Queen to her lovisg subjects ; and we desire to thank you for giving us this opportunity of testifying again our gratitude for your merciful deliverance. It is our happiness to assure your Majesty that our loyalty, resting as it does on the firm basw of religion, is, and ever will remain, rooted to our hearts, and that yourMajesty may ever rely on the steadfast allegiance and faithful devotion of the boys of Beaumont. Signed on behalf of his schoolfellows, by tha senior boy." The Queen returned a gracious answer, and was further pleased to accept two bouquets of flowers which were presented to her by the sons of Bir Evelyn Wood, who are among the pupils of the college. Her Majesty also thanked the Rev. Father Cassidy, S.J., for the loyalty expressed to her by the students under his care. We publish in another column an able article on Ireland from our contemporary the Wanganui Yeoman, a newspaper that is deserving of the most honourable mention in connection with the stand taken by it's editor from the first on the Irish quesiion— the Irish people in their struggle have had no warmer friend or more sincere advocate. Our contemporary, in the article we allmle to, as it will be seen, recommends the Parliament of New Zealand to imitate the good example set by that of Canada in suggesting that the Imperial GoV3rnment should grant Home Rule to Ireland, and if our Parliament will follow this advice they will act not only for the relief of an injured people, but for the benefit of the Empire at large. Sir Bryan O'Locrhlen we see, has also commended the action of the Canadian Chamber in the Melbourne House of Representatives. OUR fair friend the Otagonlaness, of the Dunedin Evening Star' has, we perceive, come eafely down from the summit of St. Peter's And this is a fact worthy of being chronicled. The Otagonianess i 8i 8 evidently a personage of distinction, and from the King on his throne to the pilgrim at his prayers, every mortal she comes near, as she tells us, is all agape at her— we are almost inclined to think, in fact, that she can be nothing less thaa a specimen of the Maori art of tatooing. THE Wanganui Yeoman bears the following testimony to the character of the Maoris :-•• The Jegard which the Maoris entertain for dumb animalp, and the uniformly gocd treatment which they bfstow upon them, is a pleasing trait in the Native character. Everyone has observed the fondness of the Maoris, especially their womankind, for dogs (and generally for the vilest curs of the canine species), but an instance of another kind came to our notice yesterday. A Native had been unfortunate enough to have his buggy and horses taken in execution by Mr. Rendell, the Bailiff, and was greatly exercised in spirit thereat. Accompanied by an interpreter, he interviewed Mr. Rendell, and implored him to release the horse, for which he had a great affection, on condition of paying half the debt. The Bailiff was touched by this amiable plea of his dusky-skinned friend, and after carefully ascertaining that the horse was a venerable creature of about 40 years old, and not worth half the debt graciously granted the M tori's request. It does indeed make a man satisfied with human nature when he comes across such a touching incident as that we have just recorded."