Current Topics. AT HOME AND ABROAD.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume X, Issue 510, 19 January 1883, Page 1

Current Topics. AT HOME AND ABROAD.

It is a strange thing that under the patronage of gentlemen who take Herbert Spencer as one of their chief guides in life an association should be formed in New Zealand into whose rules there enters the custom so much condemned by Herbert Spencer as being altogether contrary to the spirit of free institutions in America, — that is the marching to the poll of bodies of men under the leadership of a boss.— For this it is which, to all intents and purposes, the Council of the " Trades and Labour League " are promoting, and the method of voting they recommend differs altogether from the block vote recommended to Catholics. This is a vote imposed upon them by a particular tyranny, and which they are only recommended to make use of for a time : it is by no , means a vote intended for permanent use or to obtain for Catholics the whole control of the government of the colony. But, in any case, the Council of the " Trades and Labour League " should, when they issue an. address, abide by the literal truth, and refrain from misrepresentations. That they have not done so, however, will be evident from the comparison of these two paragraphs.— The one from the League's Address to the Liberal Electors ; the other from Dr, Moran's address at Naumann's Hall : — " Dr. Moran holds liberal views on many important questions, but his primary and avowed object is the subversion of our system of public instruction. He seeks to put the education of the young under clerical control and thus introduce a system which would foment sectarian strife and denominational feud." — <' I think you will be a little anxious to hear a little more in regard to my views with reference to education. You will naturally ask, me what do I purpose. Is it my intention to move for the repeal of the present law ? I say no. My object is to amend it, not to abolish it. If you wish to have the present system or any other, I shall not oppose ; I will give to every man the liberty I claim for myself. If you wish to maintain the present system, well and good f I shall be satisfied as long as you do justice to the Roman Catholic body. You will ask me again if lam an advocate for the reintroduction of the system of charging school fees. I say no, if you are opposed to it ; but I say if you maintain the present system of education, then I will go in for fees, so long as Roman Catholics are obliged to support their own schools unaided, because I think that only fair and just." The disrspancy between the statement of the League and Dr. Moran's plain and open avowal of his intentions is too glaring to require any comment from us, and it is not creditable to the League. They should certainly abide by the simple truth. The next sentence in the League's address is mere excusable, and it triay be overlooked on the plea that they have not been zealous or intelligent students of history. It runs as follows : — " The Bishop is, moreover, the able mouth.piece of a powerful Church, and all history proclaims the truth that ecclesiastical influence in the sphere of politics has been detrimental to the public good." AU history, we Bay, proves nothing of the kind : it tends to prove the direct contrary — and for the descendants of the men for whom " ecclesiastical influence in the sphere of politics" largely contributed, for example, to win Magna Charta, such an assertion is base ingratitude, as well as a contradiction of the truth. " Ecclesiastical influence in the sphere of politics," in fact waß all the working man especially had to look to for protection during centuries of the world's history, and it ill becomes him to deny the Church the praise she has well earned at his hand. If he himself be cut off from his justly earned wages, the Church proclaims that the sin cries to heaven for vengeance, and it is also a sin on his part to keep back from the Church that which she has deserved from him. If, however, he errs through ignorance, and does naught in malice, his Bin is pardonable. Let us hope no malice has entered into the composition of this address issued by the Council of the " Trades and Labour League" to the Liberal Electors of the Peninsula.

We cannot, of course, make any attempt or pretence MAGNIFICENT I to criticise the utterances of the Press on the Bishop's candidature — or even to comment on a tithe of them. Our editors will say whatever comes into their heads

A QUESTIONABLE ADDRESS.

on the subject— and a queer |ot it occasionally ia— but we are . forced to pass it by unquestioned. When, however, something; stupendously grand is said we should deprive our readers of a great privi* lege were we not to bring it under their notice, and we therefore shall be obliged, in such, instances, to make an exceptional effort But who would have thought that our good "Mrs. Softy" of the Otago Daily Time* would s have put off her pattens to assume the buskin, or would have dropped her scrubbing brush, and her occasional pen, in favour of the tragic «ceptre 7 We ourselves could not have credited it, had we not seen her sweeping in upon the ictne wrapped in the awful pall of tragedy,- and shouting' in. deep tonet ft warning which has made the very marrow in 'our- bones grow; stiff with cold. Here, then, are her sublime accents as she has delivered them in black and white. "We say, then, to Bishop Moran, as we hope the electors of the Peninsula will say to him next Monday Hands off I rash prelate ; bands off this ark of our liberties !" " Thit ark of our liberties !" which is it, the scrubbing brush or the occasional pen 1 But there is no joy without its succeeding sorrow, no rose without its thorn. We shall lose " Mrs. Softy" ; we know we ■hall. Some travelling show will erelong come by and she will be enlisted as its tragedy queen. As sure as fate she will be strolling about io. the part of Lady Macbeth before the new year grows old. The Bißhop, meantime, goes about with his hands in his pockets, and cannot be prevailed upon, on any account, to stretch even so much ai a finger out lest it should encounter that " ark of our liberties," and burst it up like a soap-bubble — a thing that is of course most familiar -to •' Mrs. Sotty" in her every-day capacity.

What the elect can do,

Thbbb are two classes of people in this community who enjoy great spiritual privileges — their freedom is excessive, and in some instances they are found to avail themselves of it to the utmost. We allude to that class of persons who have transformed tha devil into a scarecrow of the past, and who can, in .consequence, perform all , their actions without taking him into their reckoning or recollecting they will ever have to settle with him. We allude also to another class, which includes those who retain a lively belief in the existence of the devil, but who belong to the Lord's elect, and are therefore inde* pendent of him. He has absolutely lost all power over them, and can never regain it, because they can never fall from grace, and therefore they may play all sorts of tricks with him while they still continue perfectly safe. Down they can go in fact to the very gates of the inferno, and poke at him between the bars, cracking jokes at his helpless condition, and doing all sorts of things, for which, if they were not fortified against him, he might clap his claws around them on the spot. A remarkable example, then, of the persons who enjoy this particular privilege is a certain worthy gentleman who contributes articles occasionally to the Chctha Leader, and, if Old Nick is not stamping mad because of him, he was never put out during all the centuries of evil he has lived. That gentleman's particular method of poking up his Satanic Majesty is by means of the commandment which forbids the bearing of false witness ; but from whose trammels the freedom of the " Gospel" and the assurance of the elect have released him, so that he may make of it a plaything to edify his companions in salvation, and to evoke the envy of those who are outside the pale. This reverend contributor, then, deals with the com* mandment as follows :—": — " His weekly fulminations," says he, referring to Dr. Moran's candidature, " from the pulpit and the Press against the laws, lawmakers, and institutions of the country, ought to disqualify him. No one has ever more determinedly, systematically, and persistently, exerted himself to set class against class and to stir up and main* tain the most bitter of all animosities — religious animosities — in the community than he has done ever since he set foot in the Colony. Indeed, it is only through the good sense and prudence exercised by the members of the Roman Catholic faith that serious consequences have not ensued from the Doctor's intemperate language and be* haviour." See how the Lord's elect can talk I— For those of us who are not the elect such an utterance would be bare-faced lying and scandalous calumny, — It would be aggravated lying, and abominable calumny, if we ourselves were members of a ruck that, a little while ago, brought a filtby-tongued fellow here, and went, night after night, to hear him, , whij^e,, hg r waa doing bis Vest to stir upabittw

religious animosity— and which he must have stirred up had not DrJ ■ Moran advised his people to hold their noses till the stench of the abomination, sniffed up by pious Presbyterians as the perfumes of Araby, had been wafted by. Or were our pious Presbyterians not desirous of stirring up religious animosities, but merely themselves enjoying a repast of that •• gculduddery " which Sir Walter Scott and Burns have shown to be popular in holy places among them 1 However it be, we have here an example of what the Lord's elect can do with impunity, and we can but admire at a distance the privilege that enables them to go down into-the very mud of the infernal regions without incurring a stain. Why, no Freethinker in the country* however completely he might have slain the devil/could kick a loose leg with less fear than they do— their holy assurance is delightful to contemplate. Meantime, Mr, Gladstone told us a little time ago that it is common for Presbyterian ministers to acquire their theology while earning a livelihood in some shop or other place of business— and this is to their credit although we doubt if any, except men of first-rate talents, can under such circumstances attain to any great depth of learning. — Supposing, then, that the contributor to the Clutha Leader were a Presbyterian minister, and that he had in such a manner acquired his theology, it would be evident that his particular employment must have had something to do with a pepper or ginger store — or maybe one of aquafortis, for something hot has certainly become absorbed by this writer's constitution,— to the great detriment of the unfortunate paper his ill-tempered and calumnious rigmaroles disfigure.

NOT "TBUTH" BY ANY MEANS.

Thrre is a leash of correspondents also in full cry in the wake of the Bishop's candidature. Them also for the most part we most leave to their devices — and, indeed, we cannot say that we even glance over one half of that particular phase of idiocy for which onany of them are accountable — it is insufferable trash over which to expend even a moment would be a waste of time. We shall take,- however, as one example, the silliest and most malicious of the number ; and we shall select him more especially since he comes to us under a pseudonym in which we recognise an alteration of one employed by a champion of the unfortunate ecclesiastics who so rashly mixed themselves up in the Gury struggle. This gentleman, then, if we are correct as we believe ourselves to be, wrote at that time under the name of " Veritas," which he has now altered to " Aleetheia " — having apparently so much grace, from which he cannot fall of course, left in him as to avoid proclaiming a falsehood in plain English and calling himself " Truth." Our pundit accordingly writes under this Greek nom-de-plwne which he has managed to spell out of some lexicon or first Greek book, to contradict Bishop Moran's statement that Catholics established in Maryland the " principle of universal liberty " because Christians only were included in the law passed by them. If our pundit, however, is excessively stupid, the Bishop cannot help that, and the screech of bigotry will only betray to everyone of common sense the emptiness of the bigot. There is no contradiction whatever, as any one not foolish can see, between Bishop Moran's statement and that made by Bancroft with respect to Maryland. " Thus " says he, " did the early star of religious freedom appear as the harbinger of day ; though, as it first gleamed above the horizon, its light was coloured and obscured by the mists and exhalations of morning. . . . The clause for liberty in Maryland extended only to Christians, and was introduced by the proviso, that ' whatsoever person shall blaspheme God, or shall deny or reproach the Holy Trinity, or any of the three persons thereof shall be punished with death.' " But this was nevertheless to initiate " the principle of universal liberty," and it was a great advance at a time when the Puritans of America and the Presbyterians of Scotland were hanging and burning those who presumed to differ with them, whether they were Christians or not. — The Presbyterians of Scotland especially continued to persecute and Thomas Aikenhead was hanged at Edinburgh for blasphemy as late as 1697. Our pundit, however, goes on to explain the Syllabus. Have his masters then, learned Latin of late, or how comes it that he can pretend to make a better hand of the Syllabus than they could of Gury ? But we are, after all, not unkind ; we will give this pundit a word of advice ; it is to stick to his last whatever may be his particular line of cobbling. Of Catholic theology he knows nothing whatever ; neither he nor his masters possess qualifications necessary to understand or explain it, and the extraordinary screeching he comes out with now and then can only bring his sanity into question. — He may be a very excellent cobbler, but as a Catholic theologian he presents a pitiable appearance. — Let him stick to his last— it will be for his own advantage, and we really wish the poor body no harm. — But he is a fair sample of these rabid correspondents ; we do not know that there could be any of them wilder or more stupid.