Current Topics AT HOME AND ABROAD.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XI, Issue 6, 1 June 1883, Page 1

Current Topics AT HOME AND ABROAD.

Drink is greatly run down no w-a-days, temperance movements are much in vogue, and the League of the Cross, and the Blue Ribbon Army, and various other organisations of more or less importance, are '^ doing their best to conquer the evil. — And surely, so far as theyffrfe' doing good we wish them success. But what we desire to know is, supposing Ihe drinking habits of the people of the United Kingdom to be done away with, how is the revenue of the empire to be maintained ? As matters are at present, we find a contemporary speaking of England as follows : " Her entire income the last year was but seventy millions of pounds sterling, and of this thirty-one millions, or 44 per cent., was the proceeds of the tax on liquors. This ' drink' revenue is larger by four millions of pounds than the entire cost of both army and navy ! It is three millions of pounds more than necessary to defray the interest on the national debt ! It is millions of pounds more than the entire outlay for education." What, then, is to be done when the source of income has been dried up, and the people have been made sober ? We know, indeed, that, in one instance, England actually does keep up her revenues by forcing a people to be intemperate, for the supply of opium is forced upon China because without it there would be a deficiency annually of seven millions in the Indian Budget. It is to raise this sum, which there is no prospect of raising in any other way that a practice worse than that of getting drunk is encouraged among the Chinese, whose Government would, if they dared, prevent it by prohibiting ihe importation of the drug. — But were the people of the United Kingdom to become abstainers, they could hardly be forced to pay for the liquor they did not use, and some other means of providing the revenue must be devised. Meantime, it is curious to reflect in how great a degree the glories of the Empire on which the sun never sets have been maintained by the fruits of its people's degradation— and even for those, perhaps, who doubt as to whether those glories have, in fact, been the result of the unlimited use of the " Unaided Word " there is some sort of justification here — for that Heaven, at least, is not inconsistent we have some idea. That seven millions of Indian revenue should come from the enforced degradation of China is, of course, a different thing. — China is a long way off, you know, and the Chinese are heathens, and if they were not smoking Indian opium they would be sure to be smoking Chinese opium, or doing something quite as bad, or even worse if possible — and all that sort of thing. The whole affair is stuffed away at the other end of the world, in Bhort, and need hardly seem a blemish on the sunsetwanting Empire's pious glory, any more than the Himalayas, for; example, or other big mountains, interfere with the world's perfect rotundity, as geographical books tell us they do not.— But, when it comes to be known that the country so favoured of Heaven, the nursling of the Word, the Christian champion, and pious paragon of nations, supports the high position in which Heaven has placed her, as the especial reward of her piety and propagation of the Word, by the revenue due to the debased habits of her own very people, we begin to wonder how it so turns out. — Or, is it, indeed, fitting, tha this eldest daughter of the Gospel should be maintained in so great a deg|g£ by fines levied on the devil ?—lf? — If so, the various temperance societies are simply engaged in tempting Providence, and they can hardly hope for any great means of success. — Perhaps, in fact, this is the very secret of their failure so far.

AN OLD FOB TBIUMPHS.

The Neiv Zealand Herald, in an article on the diepute between the Auckland Board of Education and the Grafton-road school committee, publishes a few details that should of themselves alone go far towards justifying in the eyes of all rational people the attitude of the Catholics of the Colony towards the educational system, and which must serve to strengthen Catholics in their resolution to resist the gross tyranny exercised over them in their enforced support of this system. Oar contemporary, then, publishes a portion of a

BOHSTHda WRONG r fi r SOMEWHERE"

circular issued by the Grand Orange Lodge of New Zealand las {December, on the eve of the school committee's election, and urging its members to secure, if possible, the return of Orangemen, or at , least of " Protestants of known integrity,"— in other words urging 'them to make the committees aggressively hostile to Catholics, for { we can easily fancy what would be the fate of Catholic children in ; the schools under the charge of these men, and what would be the duties towards them required of the teachers. According to the iV. ,Z. Herald, moreover, it has not taken long to find an instance of how I honestly the Orange committee otherwise goes to work. "Under the influence of this circular," says our contemporary, "which operated similarly, we presume, all over the province, an Orange committee was elected at Pamell, having as its chairman Mr. F. iTalbot, an officer of an Orange lodge and assistant master of the Grafton-road school, the committee of which had been elected at the jSame time and under the same influences as the committee at Parnell. ;In due time trouble arose between the committee at Grafton-road and the head teacher, who, it appears had disobeyed the instructions of the committee, acting, it is alleged, on the advice of his assistant .teacher. The position of the head teacher ultimately became too hot for him, and he was obliged to resign, the committee nominating the assistant teacher in his place." It is hardly necessary for us to ; add anything to this which is a statement quite full enough and .quite suggestive enough, to everyone who reads it. The Herald, .goes on, nevertheless, to point out the evil of allowing of the interference of secret societies in public affairs — even though their objects be " the purest that it ie possible to conceive "—as, of course, we all know those of Orangemen to be, and which interference he rightly affirms to be the cause of endless mischief in America. With the question between the Education Board and the Grafton-road School Committee, however, we are not so much interested — let them fight it out between them as it befits a gang of Orangemen and their sympathisers. — What we are interested is to point oat how, with regard ,to this secular system, we Catholics are situated between the " devil and the deep sea," — or, perhaps, between the devil and the devil entirely. The secular system was devised in the atheistical lodges of the Continent, for the especial purpose of perverting the minds of our children and stamping out the Catholic faith, and here we find ;it improved upon by the rabid society that makes identical with its ; love of God the hatred of its Catholic neighbours, and measures the one by the other.— We find the heirs of the men for whose benefit our Irish Catholic fathers were slaughtered and robbed, and trampled down, seizing here upon the instrument of our oppression that they ,may carry out in practice the bad traditions they have inherited, and of which they make their boast. What, then, shall be said of a system that can be so utilised, or by what pretence can any moderate man any longer justify it ? But as for Catholics, there is no degree ,o£ lawful resistance that they are not called upon to make against it. . — And above all, let us note the debt of gratitude due by Catholics — [Auckland Catholics especially — to those members of Parliament, who ,have done their best to deliver them into the hands of their time,honoured and deadly enemy. — Surely secularism in its Orange garb is doubly hateful.

HALF-MEASURES.

In another place we publish an article from our contemporary the Wairarapa Star dealing with the Boyal Commission appointed to enquire into the late management of the Dunedin gaol. Our contemporary very properly points out that what is in truth needed is, not an inquiry into the management of one prison alone, but into that of all the prisons in the Colony. Indeed, this is manifest from the very fact that the attempt made by a certain portion of the Press to prove that prisoners in the Dunedin gaol had been exceptionally harshly treated, was completely overthrown by the publication of cases in connection with other prisons, which proved beyond all question that the treatment of prisoners there bad been infinitely worse than anything brought forward to excuse Captain Hume's method of getting rid of Mr. Caldwell — a method, moreover, that reflects by no means highly on the Captain's courage as a man, or, what is still more strange considering that Captain Hume is the gentleman of position par excellence, on his honour as a gentleman'. — Perhaps, however, entlemen of position, by virtue of their position, can afford to dis-

psnse with the finer obligations of honour. The state of the affair, nevertheless, M it at present exists, seems anything rather than creditable to the Government themselves, who appear in this matter to have been guided by their newly -imported servapt into very shuffling and timorous courses, and over whom Mr. Caldwell has all Along been victorious so far as public opinion goes. Indeed, the Appointment of this Royal Commission of inquiry into the management of Dunedin gaol alone is an open acenowledgment that Mr. Oaldwell has been extremely badly treated, and that now, so late in the day, the Government is driven to seek an excuse for the manner in which he has been dealt with. The excuse, however, will most certainly prove a failure, and will meet with derision and contempt alont in the eyes of all fair-minded men unless it be full, and clear, and convincing, and that it can only be by the Royal Commission's deciding, beyond all possibility of doubt, that, while all the other prisons in the Colony have been fairly managed, that at Dunedin has been totally misgoverned. Timorous and shuffling measures have so far been the rule, and we cannot without proof positive receive it as true that a man who had deserved punishment for cruelty and mismanagement, instead of being boldly sent about his business with a severe reprimand, has been elbowed out in a kind of deprecating manner, — a course of proceedings that the appointment of this limited Commission has every appearance of a desire to confirm and continue. The public, in a word, will have every reason to believe that the Government is only anxious to satisfy them on a weak point in their administration, and that they are not really concerned about justice and fairplay, unless the powers of the Commission be extended at least to all the principal gaols in the Colony.

an : VNACOOUNTABLE NHGLECT. i

There has been a great neglect made this year in Dunedin. Oar Freethinking friends have neglected to celebrate a great anniversary cf their sect, and one which it seemß a crying inconsistency in men to overlook who are so devoted to the memories of the dead heroes of their party. Tom Paine's birthday, or some of his days at least, we have celebrated regularly, — and surely it is notbacause Tom was a rebellions Englishman who turned his back on his friends of a lifetime to fight against them in the ranks of those he had known for about sis months, that we find him exceptionally honoured. No, it is as a hero of humanity at large, a whole lanthorn in himself of the new light, that the laurels are figuratively wreathed around his noble brow. Tom's universal character, and general soul-expansiveness, came out especially, we may add, during the French Revolution, when he was a worthy pioneer of those great days of which we gave a sketch a week or two ago, borrowed from the French historian of the Revolution, M. Taine — days of the true glory of Freethinkers, when their hands were as unshackled as their minds, and they made use of them in dealing, especially, with Catholic ecclesiastics and fanatics " — imprisoning them by the thousand, guillotining them by the hundred, says M. Tame. — But is it not inconsistent in those who celebrate the world-wide Tom, the revolutionary hero of the past, to refrain from honouring, at least with an equal honour, the revolutionary heroes of their sect who, during their own lifetime, have enriched the world with deeds of fame and high renown ? Tet the eighteenth of March has been let go by here unmarked in any way. — No lecture deep enough to drown the lecturer even were it possible for him to stand on his own head and thus double his stature, — no sweet droppings of a wholly unfathomable philosophy hava been made. — And yet we know it was not because the day happened to fall on Sunday that the neglect was made, and the matter is wholly inexplicable.— Only, we know it has occurred, and yet it " did not ought to." In Paris, however, the anniversary of the Commune was celebrated, although in something of a diminished manner because of the alarm of the Government and the watchfulness of the police. — But the correspondent of the London limes, in describing the festivities, gives ua also a few particulars respecting the Commune and its doings that, at the present time, are of particular interest to us. He tells us, then, for example, that the true leaders of the ourbreak have never been discovered. " The identity of some of these men," he says, " the means by which they worked, and the precise nature of their designs, remain to this day surrounded with a good deal of mystery, because very few of them were caught when the rebellion was quelled. The insurgents who were shot or transported were for the most part insurgents rather than originators ; even Ferrd and Baoui Bigault, who directed the massacre of th« hostages, appear to have been tools in the hands of men much craftier than themselves, who, having got all they could expect out of the civil war— principally money, no doubt — quietly took themselves off, and left their dupes to do the fighting." The mystery that surrounds these leaders and their object is particularly striking at the present time we say, because it naturally suggests to us some of the particulars reported as to the Irish conspiracy of the " Invin▼incibles." There, too, we are told there has been a " Number One," of whom no trace is to be found, and whose real object it is impossible to divine. — Perhaps, even this conspiracy has also originated in the secret lodges of the Continent, and may have had for its chief

end also the destruction of religion in Ireland — That its origin lay among Freethinkers of the extreme stamp we might conclude from the nature of the chief tool they employed to work out their purposes. James Carey, supposing him to have fcetn the tool of these people and not the originator of the plot, was just such a tool as the Secret Societies would need in doing their work among the Irish people. Be was an abandoned villain who did not hesitate to wear the cloak of religion while concocting all his infamy, and so that he might the better conceal his true character. We are told that it has transpired upon the trial of Brady that the unspeakable wretch in question, had joined a religious confraternity, and that he was in the habit of regularly frequenting the sacraments. Here, then, we have the sacrilegious emissary admirably fitted to the needs of the Continental Lodges, and ready to forward with an exceptional cunning their abominable projects. — Rochefort may, indeed, well come forward in his Intrantigeant and demand of the French Government, as he has done, to support the " revolt" in Ireland— if by the " revolt" he understands a movement to be managed by men such as this scoundrel it disgusts us to write of. — But happily the infamous designs we allude to have failed, and the plot introduced or promoted by the sacrilegious wretch will succeed in warning the Irish people against all dealing with the Secret Societies. They will feel that not only human life has been ruthlessly sacrificed, but that the majesty and sanctity of God himself have been outraged in cold blood by those who would tempt them to join in such societies, and they have now before their eyes a true sample of the ruffians whom Continental Atheism has so long produced, in steady succession ; and even of James Carey we can say no worse than this—- Let M. Rochefort not hope over confidently. — The Irish "revolt" will certainly not wear the garb he and his sect approve of. But the Times corres pondent further on gives us a few more particulars of interest. As to the designs of the Commune he tells us : " The truth is, that dynamite and petroleum were to lay in ruins not a few Government buildings only, but whole quarters of Paris. Barges laden with explosives were to be fired in the subterraneous part of the Canal St. Martin, which would have resulted in the blowing up of the Place de la Bastilie and the whole adjacent Fanbourg St. Antoine ; while the Pantheon and surrounding streets on the other side of the Seine were to be hurled up by dynamite placed in the Catacombs. How many lived would have been sacrificed bad these projects not miscarried ? " Here, then, is something like a policy of explosion, and before which the designs attributed to the Fenians may sink into complete insignificance. Ah, those men of the revolution, as Victor Hugo says, were indeed giants, gigantic in their blood-shed, gigantic in their savagery. We may judge of them by the deeds performed or contemplated by their somewhat degenerate successors, the men of the Commnne. But wh y has the anniversary of the sect been allowed to pass here unnoticed ? Nearly a hundred years of revolutionary ideas, and the philosophical education of the people bad their fruits in this outbreak — is it not worthy of commemoration ? Nay, is it not a slight to the memory of the universal Tom himself to pass over in silence a glorious manifestation based, among the rest, upon his immortal works I— But, even this year, it is not to late to mend. An anniversary more immediately still connected with this Tom of the unlimited soul,— or whatever it is that in the philosophical, pfailanthropical, hero of the period is supposed to have answered for a soul, — is now approaching. — The glorious capture of the Bastille, the sublime murder of the De Launay, occurred in July. — Let that day be trebly honoured, now that a historian who cannot be contradicted has laid before our view all the glories it led to— the Catholic " fanatics " imprisoned by the thousand, murdered by the hundred, in the name of enlightenment and the unshackled mind. — We bespeak the due celebration of the day, in the name of all that is philosophical and philanthropical in the universal humanity. — " Vexilla regit prodeunt inferni."

POOR COMFORT.

OUR contemporary the Wellington Evening Post has a leader on the education question, for which he deserves at least the acknowledgment due to one who desires to do well, but who has not the remotest idea as to how he is to set about it — whom the mere thought of doing well, indeed, seems to set into that condition of mind described as a man's not knowing whether he is on his head or his heels. Our contemporary, in fact, does not know what the deuce to make of all the clamour that is now being made by the various sects for undenominational religious in struction, which, nevertheless, not one of themselves seems to understand anything about, and on which no two of "them can be brought to agree. — And never will be brought to agree, we may add— or if they are, it will only be for a time, and at the end, the near end, of that time to result in a scrimmage of more or less gravity, and much absurdity. The cream of our contemporary's leader, however, is contained in the following paragraph :— " There is no mistake at all as to the views of the iloman Catholics. They are quite clear as to what they want, and they are determined to have it— at their own expense if they cannot obtain it from the State. And they have got it— by noble exertions and self •sacrifices, which do them the greatest

honour, and place their earnestness beyond the region of doubt. Jttoat unprejudiced persons feel that there is a serious hardship in the Boman Catholics being compelled, in addition to this, to contribute equally to the support of a system from which they allege that con■cientions scruples preclude their deriving any direct benefit." Now these are charming sentiments, and do their writer infinite credit. aw generosity and magnanimity are delightful, and there is nothing we might not expect from his exquisite sense of justice.— But beyond expectations, alas, it is to be feared we should not have far to move. —We have all heard of that agreeable and amiable cow that first with all the generosity in the world yielded to her milker a fine full pail, and then gave that pail a sound, if graceful, kick and turned J»er yielding* at oace into spilled milk—for which, as we all know, there is no help whatever.— Well, here is how our editor puts his foot w the cream of his elegant leader, and leaves us a little worse off than he found us— with all our hopes aroused only to be distracted.—"But how U this grievance to be redressed with out breaking Ootvn, our whole educational edifies, reared at such enormous coßt ? Jxst some of our ambitious politicians show us how all these difficulty* oan be smoothed away, all these conflicting interests and claims reconciled, and he may rest assured he will at once be the foremost man in the Colony." Thero we are, then, left to suck our thumbs pondering over our acknowledged grievance, until the statesman of the future has been developed and comes to our aid.— Our educational edifice has cost sq much that no one must touch it— and Catholics must continue to suffer injustice lest any attempt to relieve them should bring the whole precious affair toppling down 1 This is the moßt delightful consolation possible.— But the system has cost so much that it must still cost more, and good money must be thrown after bad, as the saying is, to maintain it, worthless though it is, and grievously unjust.— And as to that Statesman of the future he must simply be the equal of the doctor who can cure those blindest of the blind, the people who will not see.

A j DOUBLE-HEADRD I BODY. |

At the time we write the telegraph has been broken in Australia, and no message hasjcome to relieve the minds of the New Zealand colonists from the pressure under which they labour as to the fate of the Emperor of all the Bussias. We do not know whether his majesty has been crowned at Moscow ; we do not even know whether he still has about his person the part whereon a crown is generally placed when it is worn, which we have been credibly informed is not always the case.— For have we not even seen, for example, in some old publication the printed astonishment of a certain peasant who had found her late Majesty Qaeen Charlotte, a mere old woman without a morsel of a crown about her. No queen, we need hardly say, since her late Majesty's time has ever been a mere old woman. The Emperor [of all the Russias, in short, for all we at the present moment know, may be a heap of disjecta membra. One great ground of hope we have, however, that his Majesty's life has been spared to his loving subjects, and that those among them who are given to the pursuit of an Imperial game may have the object of their sport still within view, and unharmed— and it is that in St. Paul's Anglican Church at Dunedin last Sunday the Eussian National Anthem was played, by the way, no doubt, of a supplication for the preservation from all harm of the Imperial life. We do not hear that the words of the anthem were sung, but this, perhaps, may have been owing to the fact that the choir did not know how to pronounce the Russian language, or could not read its somewhat strange characters, or, perhaps, it may have been feared that the congregation in general would have mistaken the strange sounds for those of the Latin tongue, and the report might there and then have gone abroad that the choir, organ and all, had gone suddenly over to Popery, as we know there are suspicions now rumoured about, supported by satanic candles and other things of the kind. But we want to know what is the particular relation that binds the Emperor of all the Bussias to the Anglican community of Dunedin. — Are our Anglican fellow citizens, indeed, the devoted friends and admirers of a despotic rule all over the world ? Do they pine for the sway of the autocrat and all its accompaniments ?— Or was this demonstration made with a view to an acknowledgment of the rights of exalted rank, and a covert protest that the Bishops of the Anglican Church were and would continue to be lords in spite of all that could be said to them. For some special reason we are driven to seek for this particular musical performance. It can hardly have been a mere mark of <y>^yrtesy towards a great people, since other great peoples there are with whom New Zealand seems more intimately connected than even with the Russians, and nothing has been done to honour their festivals in the Anglican churches of the Colony. We have never heard, for example, that at the instalment of a President of the United States "Yankee Doodle " has been played during the course of divine nrvice. But, perhaps, it may be in the ecclesiastical character that the Anglican community honours the Russian Czar ; he, we know, is head of his National Church, as the Queen of England is head of hers, and as Anglicans incline to a union of the Churches,

perhaps they also incline, as, indeed, they can hardly avoid doing, to receive both their heads. Decidedly, under such circumstances the Russian National Anthem, and " God Save the Queen," may well be played indifferently, or in conjunction; so far as the laws of harmony will permit— unless, perhaps, and for the sake of harmony, the Bussian Czar might be persuaded to take six months of the headship, leaving the other six months to her Most Gracious Majesty, in which case the anthems might be played alternately. But, however it be, let us hope this performance of the Kussian National Anthem may have had some effect in thwarting the designs of the Nihilists, and preserving to the Czar a place whereon to wear his crown.

PHOGBBSS AND ITS AC« COMPANIMENTB.

There are very few people who would rentureto ask an American whether he were not ashamed of his country, and fewer still are they who would dare ask any American worth speaking of that question a second time. Yet, if the fact of murder's being committed by some unfortunate wretches here and therein* country is sufficient to cause the people of that country generally to be ashamed of their nationality, Americans have much more cause to bang down their beads than have Irishmen. The murders committed in America, in short, during the time of peace and prosperity are, in every way, out of all proportion with those committed in Ireland, driven desperate by ages of oppression and misery, and undergoing a revolutionary excitement. According to the Union Argus, then, of March 4, a paper published in Brooklyn, two murders and one suicide had been committed in the country for every day in the previous year— a list that it is frightful to contemplate ; the more so since the country which furnishes it is one standing in the van of civilization and every year becoming of a more marked influence on the rest of the world.— Progress, and education, and independence, such are the distinctive features of American life taken as a whole, and to find it also accompanied by murder and suicide on so tremendous a scale is a fact that may well appal.— Nor will it do to try to explain away this grim accompaniment by attributing it to the foreign element— for everything goes to prove that it is among the natives of the country the worst crimes exist, and the greatest extent of crime. Statistics published, for example, the other day, represented the illiterate population of the States as very large in proportion to their total inhabitants ; but in the prisons the educated prisoners predominate, and the better educated classes must certainly be chiefly composed of the natives of the country. Again, in a list of seventeen murders published among the news of the day by a late issue of the Washington Daily Republican, the Bixteen names given betray nothing of a foreign origin. They are as follows :— Thomas Kerr, Samuel Rives, Jennie Griffin, George Felmar, Charles Branch, John Booth, Joe Styles, Charles Gilman, George Portwood, — Ellis, F. Shaw, Merriam A. Montgomery, Joseph Jarvis, Samuel Blackwood, and Hon. N. L. Dukes. We are justified, then, in concluding that among the signs of the age's progress, murder and suicide are to be reckoned, and that, so far from being ashamed to belong to a country where they are in vogue, people who claim to march with the times must learn to look upon them with equanimity, if not with respect. For ourselves, we acknowledge, nevertheless, that we are humiliated and sincerely grieved at the terrible things that have been done within the last year or two in Ireland—but then, we do not claim to march with the times, but to be altogether out of the running, and old fashioned in the extreme.

AN OLD F|RIEND

In another place will be found a paragraph from the American Celt published at St. Louis, and giving the particulars as to the present situation of Mr. Robert Williamson, for many years connected with the Dunedm Press, and very well and favourably known in this city. The following pithy paragraph which we clip from the same paper referring to the mission of the Irish American journalist, we believe to be from the pen of the gentleman in question, to whom we wish all happiness and success in his new sphere of life and labour. «* Salutation, oh Celt ! The Standard under which you fight represents ' not a war of dynasty,' but ' a war of motive ; ' that motive the helping forward of the Irish race among the nations ; a war which has a permanence because a principle is involved. And such a struggle, which, in ene age, produces an Emmet, and in another a Parnell, not afraid to sacrifice class interests to the common good of the dear old land, involves a principle, and that principle has ( a passionate interest and never loses its pathos by time* Success to such a cause will assuredly come, for, in the language of the noble Emerson, ' when men are led by ideas and die or suffer imprisonment for what they live for, the better code of laws at last records the victory,'