The New Zealand Tablet. Fiat Justitia. FRIDAY, OCTOBER 6, 1882. THE OTAGO DAILY TIMES SUBLIME !

New Zealand Tablet, Volume X, Issue 495, 6 October 1882, Page 15

The New Zealand Tablet. Fiat Justitia. FRIDAY, OCTOBER 6, 1882. THE OTAGO DAILY TIMES SUBLIME !

«HE editor of the Daily Times of this morning C Thursday) is grand, nay, sublime. From his lofty pedestal of philosophy, statesmanship, and philanthropy, he looks down with undisguised contempt on the selfish efforts of the Catholics to extract some benefit from the taxes they pay, and declares that the agitation of the Catholics ~~^~ " is a miserable quarrel about money and not one about principles." This is good, very good ! coming, as it does, from the Daily Times, the mouthpiece of the party which appropriates other people's money to its awn exclusive benefit. It is all a miserable quarrel about mdney, is it, and Catholics have no care about principles ? this will be news to the people who in bright contrast with so many others, have flung aside all the pecuniary advantages of godless schools because they are godless, and at very great sacrifices of time, labour, and money, have established,*and are still establishing, Christian schools. There is no principle in all this according to our sapient contemporary : the only thing Catholics regard and quarrel about is money. What is to be said of the intellectual powers of the man who wrote these comical words? " It is, after all, a miserable quarrel about money, and not one about principles." Bravo, Daily Times ! we are disposed to throw- up our hat and shout, hurrah ! three cheers for the Otago Daily Times I But this is not the only discovery the Daily Times has made. Its editor tells us that Catholics are afraid to meet and declare their opinions on the education question, and that *' they are subjected to all sorts of pains and penalties if they send their children to the godless schools or refuse to back the priesthood in the demand for Catholic schools."

And the editor really believes this ? He believes, does he, that Catholics, lay Catholics, if left to themselves, would send their children to be educated in godless schools, most gladly, under the tuition of men who would teach them it is folly to believe, serve, worship, and love God, by ignoring his very existence ; who would inculcate on their tender minds falsehoods in history, and by every astute means, instil into them, not only contempt, but positive hatred of the religion of their fathers ? Of course Catholics are such idiots, so utterly careless as to their religion, that they would most certainly, if the clergy would leave them free, send their children to be thus brought up in the free, godless, public schools, of course they would ; and it is only through fear of their priests they impose upon themselves heavy, pecuniary burdens, and submit to the disability inseparable from abstaining from patronising godless schools. The editor of the Daily Times believes all this ! What poor paltry unprincipled cowards Catholics must be in the estimation of the Daily Times. But, come now, friend of the Daily Times, this will not do ; this make-believe is too transparent, and if you have no better arguments against doing justice to Catholics you had better cease to argue the question. Fall back on the known determination of your party to refuse justice simply because you are strong enough to do so. You tell us in express words that "as all Parliamentary systems must be based on the will of the majority the utmost the State can do is to legislate for the majority, while carefully guarding the minority from any direct pressure on their conscientious convictions." Yes, this is, indeed, the practice, policy, and principle, of the party which the Daily Times represents. This party has power, and it uses that power entirely for its own benefit, it legislates exclusively for the majority, and whilst abstaining from any direct pressure on conscientious convictions, it uses all sorts of indirect pressure on consciences. We thank the Daily Times for this frank admission, that the majority can only be expected and asked to legislate for the majority, and that it cannot be expected to abstain from employing indirect pressure on conscientious convictions of the minority. It is on this principle our school legislation is founded. Our schools are intended for the majority only, and indirect pressure is authorised to undermine the faith of such Catholics as are silly enough to frequent them. The tone of the teachers, the books, the Committees, the Boards, are all an indirect, pressure on their conscientious convictions. Very well, but is it not rather too much to expect, and, what is more, compel Catholics to pay for this indirect pressure on their consciences ? Yet this is what the Daily Times strenuously, if not wisely advocates, whilst at the same time declaring that we cannot, either injustice or on the score of policy, expect the least aid out of our own money for our own schools. The Times even scouts the idea of such aid ; it is on our part a miserable quarrel about money which we are denied ; but so far from its being a miserable quarrel on the part of those who have it all, and are determined to retain it all, it is something very noble and patriotic. It is an illustration of the fable of the wolf and the lamb. There is only one other point with which we need trouble ourselves to-day. The Daily Times maintains that the demand of Catholics involves an increase of taxation, or at all events an increase of the annual education grant, — a thing not to be thought of. From this, it is evident that our contemporary and its party never contemplated even the possibility of Catholics' frequenting Government schools, and that money has been always voted on such an understanding. This is clear from the fact that if Catholic children attended the godless schools, the grant should necessarily be increased hy at least thirty thousand pounds annually ; for we presume the increased capitation allowance would have to be paid. But our contemporary says an increase on the annual grant is not to be thought of, whilst the present expenditure must be maintained. Nothing, therefore, can be more manifest than that all schools-arrangements have been made under the conviction that Catholic children would not frequent public schools. Is it not evident, consequently, that Parliament deliberately refused to make any provision whatever for the education of Catholic children, and has at the same time not hesitated to appropriate the money of all to the maintenance of a system which it was well known would be for the exclusive benefit of the majority ? This it is to which we object, and which we designate as unjust and tyrannical. The minority, nevertheless, is as much entitled to justice as the majority, and will continue to demand it.

Our contemporary the Dunedin Morning Herald says that though Irishmen " have quietly appropriated " as their fellow-country-men Wellington and Sir Garnet Wolseley, the one was and the other is a Saxon— Wellington of Somersetshire extraction, and Wolseley " a genuine Staffordshire hero." Our contemporary adds that it was " by no faulb of his own " Sir Garnet Wolseley was born near Dublin. , It was, however, we presume, " by a fault of his own" that on the termination of the Zulu war, Sir Garnet Wolseley publicly claimed to be an Irishman. The English papers which took him to task for doing so, then, admitted that his family had been settled in Ireland for some generations. Such was also the case in connection with the Wellesley family, and thus it came about that good Irish blood had been found to flow in the veins of both the commanders in question. Why. we should like to know, did not the family genius manifest itself in someone who had been pure Saxon-bred ? None of the stay-at-home branch of either family have been heard of in the lanes of war, but only those who were Irish-bred. They needed the good drop of blood they soaked up out of the '• old sod" to make men of them and without it they would have been nobody at all — but mere English non-entities. Our contemporary the Morning Herald should know that by this time there are a good many gennine Irishmen besides those who have come straight down without a trip from King Brian Boru, and on the other hand, many of those who have done so are Irishmen no longer. But, admitting for the sake of argument that both Sir Garnet and Wellington must be looked upon as Englishmen,the loss to Ireland can be made up by the number of distinguished men who, on quite as good grounds, may be counted Irish among the nations of Europe. We shall find them every where— in France, in Spain, in Austria. A plague of small-pox has been raging at the Cape, where 600 deaths have occurred out of 2000 cases of the illness. Capetown presented all the appearance of a plagae-stricken city, but it is hoped that the worst is now over. Mr. George Gray Russell, whose liberality in connection with education is well known, has given £1000 towards the establishment of scholarships at the Otago University. M'lntosh's Hotel, at Blacks, and Mr. Eaton's house, at Mitchell's Flat, Waipori, were burned down on Suuday. Warfare at Parihaka has proved very profitable to some members of the forces engaged there, it appears. Some of them bought land in the neighbourhood which is now selling for considerably more than double the price they paid for it. The land agitation in Skye has reached to such a pitch that a military force is now in the island, and engaged in the work of eviction. Other men besides Irishmen, then, are found clinging to their homes — and small blame to them. A man named Archibald W. Symons poisoned himself at Christ* church one day this week, by taking laudanum. The Resident Magistrate at Christchurch, it appears, esteems himself appointed not only to administer the law, but to censure it. The worshipful gentleman is highly indignant because the law directs neglected Catholic children to be sent to the Asylum at Nelson, and pronounces it a great waste of public money. Can this worthy Shallow, nevertheless, define why it ie no waste of money to bring Protestant children from the outlying districts to Burnham or Caversham, which seems a proceeding of a somewhat similar kind with that he objects to, — in a manner most unbecoming the place he finds himself in, and wnich proclaims him better suited to the itinerant's inverted tub than the magistrate's bench. This Mr. Whitefoord had a great deal to say about what "he thought," but if his thoughts had been worth even the traditional penny, he would have been more chary about intruding them where they had no business whatever to put in their shabby appearance. Is there, by the way, any room for lawyers in the Salvation Army ? We are requested to acknowledge a subscription ©f £2 2s. from the Hon. Dr. Grace towards the Oanuru school-church fund. We would remind our Dunedin readers that Mr. M. Donnelly's lecture, at the Temperance Hall, takes place on M onday evening, 9th inst. The object of the lecture and the lecturer alike deserve their support. Mr. Bryce has been snubbed by a chief of Taupo who refuses to have anything to do with him, but agrees to accompany Mr. J. R. Brown, Civil Engineer of Wellington, through the territory in connection with the central rail way. Among the accidents of the week have been the following : — A fall of earth near the woollen factory, at Kaikorai, which badly fractured the leg of a man uamed Hugh Dunne ; the poisoning of a child by tutu berries at Te Awamutu ; the fall of a miner named James Bord in going down the ladder of the shaft at Larrikin Terrace, Kumara, and of which h« died in an hour or two ; the fall from the platform of a tramcar at Wellington of a boy named Frederick Williams, who was terribly injured, and died almost immediately ; the capsize of a boat on the Mataura river by which a young man named William Smith was drowned ; the fall of a gate in Dunedin by which a little child named Henry Butterg had his thigh fractured.

A German company proposes to colonise New Guinea. I The Rev. Father Vaggioli, 0.5.8., has been presented with an address and a purse of sovereigns, on the occasion of his leaving Gisborne for Auckland. The address was expressive of much affection, and made mention of the marvellous quickness with which the rev. Father had acquired a perfect use of the English language, and the successful exertions made by him to clear off the heavy debt he found due upon the church when he arrived in the district. Me. Edmund Dwteb Gbay has been released from prison, but the fine of £500, imposed upon him also by Judge Lawson, has been exacted from him. A steameb has been burnt on the Mississippi, occasioning a considerable loss of life in the dreadful manner attendant upon such accidents. The Londoners complained of the fatness of the last cargo of Australian beef brought to their markets, and which in consequence sold at 4d. a pound. The Waihato Times has reason to believe that a certain gentleman has discovered alluvial gold in the Taupo or Tuhua country. O'Connob the pedestrian was presented, the other day, by his New Zealand friends, with a chronometer worth 30 guineas, as a token of their recognition of the victory gained by him in a race with W. J. Bark at the Caledonian Ground, Dunedin, on September 16th. A woollen manufactory is about to be established in the Milton district. We are requested by the Rev. Father Ginaty, S.M., to say that a letter has been received by him from the Archbishop of Cashel in acknowledgement of a draft forwarded to his Grace on behalf of several subscribers to the funds of the Land League, and in which the Archbishop asks the rev. gentleman in question to thank the subscribers in his name. Thebe is a missionary down in Southland, who, it appears has great difficulty in getting the Chinese to keep the Sabbath. His moralising has no effect upon them'at all, aud although he acknowledges with a becoming modesty that " what should have the most weight is the physical argument," even that they manage to evadeThe missionary pleads that not only is God's law broken by their carnal goings-on, but the law of the land as well. And still the Chinamen only laugh at him, and at once when his back is turned set to again to work. The case is indeed a hard one, and this desecration of the Sabbath hard to bear. But we would suggest that if it be found advisable to break the heathen in question to evangelical observances, before he has attained to the knowledge or love ofevangelical principles, the constable should be sent to be the herald of the missionary. As it is it would seem the Chinaman sees in the missionary more of the constable than of the preacher of a gospel of peace, aud whether this is a step towards the spread of Christianity in these darkened quarters may very well be doubted. It pertains, however, to evangelical missionaries, as we have the best grounds to believe, to enforce a due respect for the strong arm of the law everywhere — even occasionally to make this their more especial mission. But why should our thrifty Presbyterian friends waste their money on a missionary to the Chinese in Southland if it be merely a constable they want there 1 We are requested to warn our readers, and the public generally, that certain characters, who have been going about representing themselves as relatives of members of the Dunedin Catholic clergy are drawing altogether on their imaginations, with the design of drawing on the purses of good-natured people. The clergy in question know nothing whatever about them, except that they must needs be impostors.