LESSER REPTILES.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume X, Issue 510, 19 January 1883, Page 3

LESSER REPTILES.

The Bishop's address is almost entirely taken up with a discussion of the Education question, and its tone is certainly not that of the polished ecclesiastic A vein of mingled ferocity and exaggeration runs throughout it. We suspect that Mr. Donnelly's unwise assertion of spiritual independence— if it really be independence— will prove fatal to his prospect of rising to the head of the poll when the election takes place. Meanwhile, the question forces itself upon our minds, — as doubtless it does upon the minds of the public at large, — whether the agitation against the " godless" schools is not practically confined to the Boman Catholic priests, and is not sympathised in to any great extent by the Boman Catholic laity.— N.Z. Christian Record,

Dr. Moran, Roman Catholic Bishop, Dunedin, has issued an address to the electors of the Peninsula, for which district he offers himself as a candidate for a seat in the General Assembly. This step on his part has met with the strong disapproval of the Dunedin Press, and we expect the opinion of the inhabitants of New Zealand generally will be pretty unanimous in the same direction. "As a man, a citizen, ana an elector of the Peninsula" he abstractly has a right in common with everyone holding these qualifications to aspire to a seat in the Legislature. But as an ecclesiastic of an organisation claiming a power and authority in all matters, temporal as well as spiritual, superior to that of the Queen and Government of the country, and owning absolute allegiance only to the Pope in Borne, he will not be considered by many outside his own influence as eligible for the office, His weekly fulminations from the pulpit and -the Press against the laws, law-makers 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 maintain 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 Boman Catholic faith that serious consequences have not ensued from the doctor's intemperate language and behaviour. While we have no idea that he will ever obtain a seat in the Legislature of a British colony, it might do himself good if he did. He would not there have it " all his own way," as in the pulpit ; he would have to debate with men of intelligence, education, and ability — " foemen worthy of his steel"— and the result might tend towards his own good, if not that of his constitaents.—Clutka Leader.