General News.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume X, Issue 475, 19 May 1882, Page 9

General News.

Bom*, March 27.— At a Consistory held to-day the Pope crafted seven Cardinals, inolading Archbishop licCabe, o€ Dublin. Bis Holinesß afterwards delivered an allocation on the position of the Church.— PUat. *^ The Bagby colony of English swells don't thrive well in the hardy climate of Tennessee. Governor Hawkins says bluntly that the trouble with the colonists is that they are lasy and dissipated. They spend their time in hunting or playing lawn tennis, estimable pursuits if practised on a suitable income, at Newport or Long Branch, but not exactly the be«t avocation for pioneers.— PUat. There is a story of Father Santa Clara, the famous Vienna preacher, who lived a hundred years ago. In preaching on the immorality of the age, and especially of the Court of Vienna under Joseph 11., he remarked about the courtiers of the day, in his plain spoken language, that they were not worthy to be spat at. Being recriminated with in high places for using such undiplomatic language, he promised to retract his statement. Next Sunday, addressing his flock, he said : " Last time, in speaking of some of the members of the Court, I said that they were not worthy oi being spat at. I am sorry to find my words should have given offence, and so I wish to retract them, and to say that they certainly are worthy of being spat at." Just a similar case has latelj happened in France. At the last general election a priest, Father Sugier, of La Feline, in speaking of the Badical candidates, remarked that they were a set of vagabonds scarcely fit for the galleys. These words gave great offence to the parties concerned, and they threatened a prosecution unless Father Sugier were to retract what he had said. T,he priest readily complied with their request, and on the very next occasion apologised for having remarked of certain people that they were scarcely fit for the galleys. "On the contrary," he added, " they are quite fit for them." He certainly had the laughers on his side this time. — Universe The manner in which the Coercion Act is being administered in the various prisons in Ireland was brought before Parliament at length, on Mondvy night, by the Irish members. Mr. Redmond opened the debate by pointing out that under the present" Bystem the men in jail spent eighteen hours out of the twenty- four in solitary confinement, and this rule was a distinct violation of the pledges of Ministers last session — that no hardship which was not absolutely necessary would be entailed upon the suspects. So painful was the story told by Mr. Sexton of his own sufferings while in Kilmainham, and of those endured by other men, amounting in many cases to " positive torture," that two English members, Mr. Came and Sir loha Huy. one a Liberal and the other a Conservative, immediately rose and offered a strong protest against the continuance of a system under which such a state of things as described by the member for Sligo could exist. Later on in the debate Mr. Healy made a strong and effective speech which compelled Mr. Gladstone to rise and reply. In answering the member for Wexford the Prime Minster showed some concern for the sufferings of the men whom he and his colleagues had cast into jail, but his chief desire was to defend himself against the tannts of Mr. Healy, who had charged him with adopting a policy towards Neapolitan prisoners which he reversed when he came to deal with Irishmen. The debate, besides exposing the cruelti s of coercion, was attended with some praotical resu ts. — Nation, March 18 In an outspoken editorial, the tf. Y. Sun says :— We are said to be on the very best terms with England ; but when Mr. Lowell meekly asked the reason why several respectable Irish-American citizens had been imprisoned nearly a year, without a hearing of any kind, Lord Granville snubbed him with the enrt and contemptuous answer " that in no case could information be given beyond the statements, of the warrant of arrest." Now, these citizens may be held wholly on charges of perjured informers or of hired spies, without an opportunity of defence or relief, and with not the least prospect of redress so long as the Government refuses to bring them to trial. While Lord Granville insultingly declined to give any satisfaction to our Minister, and while Mr. Lowell complacently pocketed the affront and officially declared -it to be sufficient for him against any fuither applicatfcnfon behalf of our citizens, the outraged prisoners from their celfe denounced the allegations in the warrants as false and fabricated. This very unpleasant experience illustrates the absurdity of maintaining missions merely to gratify the vanity of persons whose first ambition is to gain favor at the courts wheie they may reside. An American Minister who is unwilling to disturb social relations by the least assertion of American manhood or by any defence of American citizenship ought to be called home. A Catholic priest as the ruler of a State is an unusual thing— so very unusual that some people would call it a monstrosity. Yet such a monstrosity has now existed for some time in the American Republic of San Domingo that forms part of the island of Hayti, Until a few years ago that country, which has about a quarter of a million inhabitants, used to be constantly in hot water, bo much so that at one time one of its Presidents sold it to Spain, and the people had a hard battle to fight to undo the treason of their own chief magistrate. A con pie of years since, howevei, they thought they would try a different departure, and so they elected for their president a Catholic priest — Father F. A. de Merino. The effect of the rule of this man who, it was said at thetimp, would throw the country back by two hundred years, is as follows : " The country seems to have entered a new era of social progress and material improvement, such as it has never previously know since it first fell under European hands.'' These are uot the words of an Ultramontane, but of Major Robert Stuart, the British minister at Port au-Prince, who has lately reported to his Government that the Republic of San Domingo is getting prosperous ia every way under the. .wise rule of its President. So it appears that, after all, it is not quite 'stich a monstrosity 13 have a Catholic priest fora chief magistrate. — f'nh'irse.