Current Copies

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XI, Issue 18, 24 August 1883, Page 1

Current Copies

AT SOME AND ABROAD.

The Dews of the Archbishop of Sydney's death at A GBIEVOITB Liverpool on the 18th inst., has been received MESSAGE. everywhere throughout these colonies with un* feigned regret. By the Catholic community generally, we may say without exaggeration, there has been uttered a wail of grief, and the feeling of personal bereavement prevails amocg them. — All through these colonies they loved and were proud of Dr. Vaughan — they followed his movements, and hung upon his words, hailing in him a great captain and champion of their cause,— one worthy to lead in the Church of God, or if not worthy — for what man can be so I—than1 — than whom at least they knew none worthier. — And now when it falls to our lot to record his death we have no fear of betraying an excessive sorrow, or of making an unbecoming lamentation — " Quis desiderio sit pudor aufc modus Tarn cari capitis ? " But what have we here to do with the plaint of a pagan writer ? So much, that human nature is common to us all, and that, while we lament the great and noble prelate, we also grieve for the true and gracious man. Of what Dr. Vaughan's career was during the ten, all toe Bhort, yeaTS he had been among us in these colonies, there is little need that we should speak. It has been before our readers all along, and none of them will forget the many beautiful quotations we have given them in these columns taken from the addresses and other publications of His Grace. But, nevertheless, what could we say of Dr. Vaughan's career that would be too strong. — How should we celebrate excessively his fearless combat for the little ones of his floek — the wisdom, grace, and learning of his pastorals— the scathing power of his denunciations — the copiousness, the ease and clearness with which the results of long and arduous research, of years of deep and patient study, came flowing from his lips ? How should we speak too highly of his devoted and -unceasing labours, which, as now, alas, we know too well, were wearing oiit his life? It was but the other day we heard with admiration of his presidency at that great ceremony, full of joy for his archdiocese, and of edification and sincere pleasure for us all, the consecration of St. Mary's Cathedral, and who could have anticipated that the grand figure so full of dignity and beauty— so splendid as a prelate, so noble as a man, even then stood on the brink of the grave and. carried within him the seeds of death — that the Mass of requiem would be sung so soon for him who was leading in the joyful singing of the Te Deum ? The uncertainty, the deceitfulness of life is, indeed, the ever present truth above all others — the truth that is hoary with the age of the world yet ever new. We very deeply share, then, in the grief that His Grace's death has caused, and especially we desire to offer our most heart-felt condolences to the flock who, as it were, yesterday parted with their beloved father— still in the very prime of life, and apparently full of health and of the promise of a long career, only to hear to-day that they must never hope to look upon his face again. — But at the same time we would remind them, andnever more fitly or hopefully, of the homely, but pregnant old phrase—" Our loss is hi 3 gain." — In the words of the glorious poet he himself was wont to quote, we may, indeed, now, most appropriately exclaim — " Oh quanta c 1' überta, che si sofiolce In quell' arche ricchissime, che f<sro A seminar qnaggiii buone bobolce 1 " Hequiescat in Pace,

An address lately delivered by JudgeHigginbotham A gross ebeor. in Melbourne, is the latest sensation of the day) and our contemporaries are full ■of it. It deals with religion, and seems, so far as we have been able to judge of it from a superficial glance, to be theistic in iis tone. We have not given any especial attentien to it, however, for nowadays there is a great deal to be read, and if a busy man sees reason to believe that there is nothing whereby he may profit contained in any given publication, it is generally wise for him to refrain from a study that

will probably prove to him a mere loss of time. We saw reason so to judge of the address ia question, and therefore we did not closely follow the columns in which it was printed. — And our reason was that one plain, and palpable— one glaring error that could not possibly have been made by any man who had bestowed the commonest care upon the subject he essayed to treat of caught our notice at once. An address in which so serious an error could occur is one that may well be suspected as fit only to mislead, and of but little instructive value. The passage we allude to is the following :—": — " Let ns take the case of a European, an educated and learned man, at any period between the second and the sixteenth centuries. What were his thoughts about Nature and God ? He could see, as we now do, that man was at tbe head of the animal world. But he believed, in accordance with ancient tradition, that all animal and plant life had been called into existence about the same time as man, and that they had been created for the use and benefit of man. He looked up from the earth, whose shape be did not know, and saw that the heavenly bodies appeared to revolve round it at uncertain but small distances, and he naturally concluded that they, too, like everything else on the surface of this planet, existed for man and to supply hig needs, that the sun ruled by day and the moon and the stars governed by night in subservience to man's convenience and wants. He wonld necessarily infer that man was the centre of the universe, and that all things existed for him. The Creator of the Universe could not, in the estimate of such a mind, be other than a magnified man, not free from the prejudices and caprices, and even the passions of men of smaller growth. How profoundly erroneous do all such conceptions now appear to us 1 " But as a matter of fact, we know that the Creator of the Universe was nothing of the kind to educated and learned men who thought of His existence, and inquired into it between the second and the sixteenth centuries. On the contrary, the most profound thoughts that uninspired man has ever thought as to the existence and nature of God were thought by men in the interval between the centuries in question. —Judge Higginbotham, for example, might have been expected to know something of a book so commonly to be met within its English translation, too, as the " Confessions of St. Augustine," and whose •writer lived in the fourth and fifth centuries, — but, although St. Augustine doubtless believed the stars moved round the world and had even been at one time given up to astrological superstitions — still his conception of God contained nothing of all Judge Higginbotham claims. On the contrary he repudiated all such notions.—" 0 eternal troth," he cried, " and true charity, and lovely eternity I Thou art my God ; for thee I sigh night and day. And when I first began to know thee, thou liftedst me up, that I might see that there was something to be seen, but that I was not yet one that could see it. And thou didst strike back the weakness to my sight, shining upon me with an excessive brightness, and I trembled all over with love and'fear, and I found that I was at a vast distance from thee in the land of unlikeness, as if I heard thy voice from on. high, " I am the meat of those that are grown up ; grow tbou up and thou shalt feed upon me; neither shalt thou convert me into thee, like thy corporeal food ; but thou shalt be changed into me. 1 And I knew that it was by reason of iniquity that thou hast corrected man, and haat made my soul to consume like a spider, — And I said : Is the truth then nothing because it is not spread by extension through any spaces of place, finite or infinite, and thou criedst out to me from afar off; Yes, surely, I who am. And I heard this after the manner of the hearing of the heart ; and there was no room left for doubt. And I could with more ease call in question my own being alive than the being of the truth wbioh is clearly seen, ' being understood by the things which were made.' " (Confessions : trans, Book VII, Chap. X) There is nothing of the " magnified man " here.— Nor is there anything of human " prejudices, caprices, and even passions " in what follows, "0 most high, most good, most powerful, most almighty. most merciful and most just, most hidden and most present, most beautiful and most strong, stable and incomprehensible, unchangeable and changing all things, never new, never old, renewing all things and making old the proud, and they know it not ; always in action and always at rest ; still gathering and never wanting ; supporting, and filling, and overshadowing all things ; creating, nourishing, and perfecting ; seeking and yet wanting nothing. Thou lovest without

pain, thou are jealous without uneasiness, thou repentest without grief, thou art angry and yet always calm, thou often changest thy works, yet nearer thy design. Thon recoverest and findest, and yet never losest any thing. Thou art never needy, and yet art pleased with gain ; art never covetous, and yet exaetest use. Men supererogate to thee that thou mayest owe, and yet who has anything that is not thine ? Thou payest debts, and art a debtor to no one ; thou forgivest debts, and losest nothing : and what is all this that we are saying, O my God, my life, my holy sweet delight, or what is all that anyone can say, when he is speaking of thee I And woe be to those who say nothing in thy praise, since the most eloquent are but dumb." (i bid, Book 1., chap, iv.) St. Augustine, then, who lived in the fourth and fifth century, was an educated and learned man who knew nothing of a Creator that was a " magnified man " possessed of a man's " prejudices, caprices, and even passions."— Another writer, who gives Judge Higginbotham a notable contradiction, is still more remarkable because he deals particularly with the supposed revolution of the heavenly bodies around the earth, and gives to it a very deep and beautiful meaning. But, in his book likewise, we find no trace of the imaginary Creator of whom Judge Higginbotham speaks —we refer to Dante, with whom surely any man assuming to give an account of the mediaeval mind should have some acquaintance. — But the God of the Paradise is na magnified man — nay, the very glorified beings who derive their bliss from beholding Him, and in Him all that exists, are free from the prejudices— caprices— and passions of men of smaller growth—and the mind that has so imagined them has surely not pictured such feelings as existing in God Himself — this address, then, that is so much praised, and considered worthy of such wide publication beats written-on its face one glaring blot at least that of itself is sufficient to discredit it, and justify those who pass it by unread.

M. Chables de Mazade, in the Revue des Deux A notable Mondes of June 15, contrasting the conduct of the failure. French Government towards religion with that of other Governments, which are most independent of the Roman Church, gives us a sketch of Prince Bismarck's proceed* ings that is especially interesting, aud shonld prove instructive to all legislators who are in any degree concerned with Catholic questions. When, ten years ago, he says in effect, Prince Bismarck undertook the war called the Culturkampf, for which he founed such warm allies in the National-Liberals, he had no intention of setting his power at the service of a sectarian idea. He feared to find among the Catholics a resistance dangerous to German unity, and he made Parliament pass the legislation of 1873. which plsced a great worship in dependence upon him. He armed himself with that code of warfare and persecution which may be shortly summed up : The obligation on the bishops of submitting all the nominations of parish priests and curates to the civil authority invested with a right of absolute veto, — an obligation on all ecclesiastical functionaries of passing the State University examinations,— the institution of a special court composed of laymen to judge recalcitrant bishops and priests, — finally, as a crowning measure, an interdict, under pain of banishment on unauthorised ecclesiastics to say Mass or administer the Sacraments. The Chancellor, in arming himself with such authority, acted evidently on a political calculation. He has not been long in perceiving that this campaign, by its endurance, deceived all his previsions, and made for him a situation almost impossible, or, at least, very difficult. On the one hand, he exasperated the Catholics, raised up in Parliament that formidable opposition which became the " Catholic Centre, " and turned against him and his policy one of the most serious conservative elements in the empire. On the other hand, by the ideas he seemed to patronise, by the alliances he was obliged to accept, he gave new strength to the liberal parties, democratic or progressionist ;— this war has, moreover, perhaps hampered him in his dealings with Austria, as much as it embarrassed him in his parliamentary combinations on economical and financial plans. At any rate, after having brought about the war by a political calculation, M. de Bismarck has decided on peace for reasons equally political. That M. de Bismarck has, for some years, been resolved on this religious peace is not doubtful, and all his actions have made it evident. That he ha 9, nevertheless, desired to avoid giving way over-much, and to preserve a certain degree of liberty is alßo evident, and this is the secret of all his manoeuvres. He has proceeded by every means ; now bringing forward projects that were a partial abrogation or, suspension of the May-laws ; now sending to Rome M. Schloszer, a confidential plenipotentiary, to negotiate with the Sovereign Pontiff, and put an end to these old differences. It is only a few months since there was, between the Emperor William and Pope Leo XIII. a significant correspondence, full of cordiality in spite of some reservations, — which visibly attested the common desire of arriving afc an understanding that was recognised as necessary. At the foundation of these recent negotiations lay the question of dealing directly with all the vexations and impositions by which for the last ten years the German Catholics and their

Church have been tried, M. de Bismarck, once engaged in the path on which he had entered, did not, doubtless, refuse absolutely to complete what he had begun, and to make new concessions.— He did not wish, perhaps, to lend himself to all that Rome demanded of him, too ostensibly to pursue to its very end his journey to Canossa. What is certain is that, at the last moment, laying aside negotiations with the Roman curia, and acting en his own initiative, he has presented his project which is about to be discussed in the Prussian Landtag* Such as it is, the new project, without being the express abrogation of the laws of May, is visibly calculated to make amends to German Catholics in giving them back the liberty of their worship and freeing their Church from the hard constraints that have been imposed upon them. The Chancellor, in proceeding thus, secures for himself the advantage of appearing to accord spontaneously almost all that was demanded of him, of having no agreement with Rome, of taking away from the Parliamentary "centre "the banner of its incessant claims,— of offering peace, in a word,, serious ipeace, and remaining free. The tactics are, without doubt, able. It remains to be proved as to whether they will completely succeed, as to whether there will be no fresh difficulties, either with the Parliament or the court of Rome* At all events, the Chancellor has certainly taken a decisive step in the transaction npon which he entered a few years ago, and, by hia project, he definitely breaks with that policy of religions warfare, which at the outset was no more than a false calculation of his irascible genius, and which, in reality, aided neither his plans, nor his ascendancy. Here then is the end of the CvlturJtampf by the willof him who inaugurated it, and the example of M. de Bißtnarck should serve to enlighten— to discourage the abettors of a policy of persecution which always brings repentance with it, even when it is practised by the most imperious of men.

In the Nineteenth, Century for July, Mr. A. M. A. M. SULUVAN Sullivan replies to an article of Professor Goldwin ON Smith's in a previous number of the same periodiemigbation. cal, and which, dealt with the Irish question from the unfair and prejudiced-stand point occupied by the writer in question. Mr. Sullivan begins by denying that Ulster is, as Mr. Smith asserted, the Teutonic and Protestant portion of Ireland, par excellence ; on the contrary, he says, "It is fully one-half Catholic ; and, of all districts or divisions of Ireland, happens to be the least ' Teutonic,' Leinster and Munster being by comparison, the most so." — Afterwards he says, " Many Englishmen have been struck by the circumstance or coincidence that, so far from the Irish trouble having its seat in the Celtic provinces alone, outrage and crime roost largely prevail in the Teutonised districts." Mr. Sullivan, who, however, does nofc agree with this view, but maintains that spells of agrarian disorder have disturbed every province in Ireland more or less, quotes Mr. Gladstone as expressing the opinion referred to in the House of Commons on February 15, 1870. His words were, " Indeed in no part of Ireland is the ratio of crime so low as in the counties where the Celtic blood is unmixed." — When Mr. Sullivan speaks of Ireland, then, he tells us he means Ireland as a whole, and by Irish he means all the people of the country generally. For some time, he continues, a feeling has been growing that it is unwise to increase on American soil the Irish population disaffected towards England, and he gives as an example O'Donovan Rossa forcibly banished to America, only, with other exiles of his kind, to plot dynamite outrages and propound kerosene conflagrations in a most advantageous position for such an occupation. The remedy for all the evils of Ireland by means of emigration, nevertheless, Mr. Sullivan goes on to say, is supported by various parties on various grounds, but the fallacy which underlies all their speculations is that Ireland is suited to become a country of great pastoral farms, " The one serious blunder," he says, " with writers like Mr. Goldwin Smith, or rather the one fatal defect in their information is their manifest unacquaintance with the fact that there can be seen in Ireland today tens of thousands of acres of land, once cultivated and cropped to the last inch, now relapsed into a state of nature. Twenty or thirty years ago the human occupants were ruthlessly cleared away, the farm plots were consolidated and turned into grass. But ere long the unwelcome discovery was made that in grass the land would not permanently remain. The population being gone, the scarcity of labour made recurrent breaking up and manuring too expensive, and so, acre by acre, the land went back into heath and moor." It turned out then that, by the reduction of the cottier holdings from 310,375 in 1841 to 61,292 in 1880, and the sweeping away of the "surplus class," "a blow was struck at the progress of reclamation and improvement in Ireland." The agricultural statistics of the country have only been arranged in anything like a satisfactory manner within the last fifteen years, but from them we learn that in " the ten years between 1871 and 1881 not less than 418,615 acres have gone back to waste ; lost alike to pasture, grass, and tillage.* The official report is as follows :—": — " Land under grass in 1881 appears to have decreased from 50*4 per cent, of the total area in 1872 to 49*6 per cent, in 1881. In crops a decrease on the ten years, of from 5,487,313 in 1872 to 5,195,375 in 1881, or from. 27*0 to 256 per cent.

of the total area. In bog, waste, water, etc., an increase of from 20-9 to 23*1 per cent, of the total area. But again, with the destruction of the small farmer class, the supply of eggs, poultry, and young stock, has fallen off, arid there is, moreover, reason to believe the scientific laTge farmers of England are being beaten in this respect in the London market, by the three-acre farmers of the continent. Neither do the agricultural products of Ireland, taken as a wbole> compensate for the loss of 5,000,000 inhabitants. "The average yearly acreage under oats in between 1851 and 1860 (within which period it had already considerably fallen) was 2,074,381. In 1881 it was only 1,392,565. Wheat acreage in tbe like period falls from 460,802 to 1 54,009 ; barley from 221,150 to 210,152; turnips from 378,482 to 340.097 ; potatoes from 1,039,921 to 854,294. Cabbage shows an increase of 313 acres, and flax of 20,969." Concerning live stock, the returns are these. — The average number of cattle in all Ireland yearly, throughout the period between 1851-60, was 3,480,623. In 1881 it was 3,954,479 ; an increase of 173,856. Sheep, 3,297,971—3,258,583 ; a decrease of 39,388. Pigs, 1,194,303 — 1,088,041 ; a decrease of 106,262. Horses, 572,219—547,662 ; a decrease of 24,557." These figures are portentous enough, but in Connaught, where the depopulation has been greatest, there is loss all along the line. "In cattle the decrease has been 38,681; in sheep, 318,251 ; in pigs, 24,316." «• That is to say, in the province pre-eminently subjected for thirty-five years past to the improving process of emigration and consolidation, public statistics attest that tbe extent of productive land has considerably diminished ; whole districts of the depopulated area have relapsed from productiveness to waste ; there is a ruinous declension in the sum total of agricultural wealth or produce, cattle, sheep, pigs, poultry, oats, wheat, barley* bere, potatoes, turnips, — all have gone down." But as to the country's being over-populated, famine and discontent prevailed when the population was under four millions— when it was under three millions—when it was under two millions. "If we are to fly to depopulation every time Irish misery or Irish discontent grows troublesome, duwn to what point must we go to reach prosperity and peace by such a process ? We have gone below five millions — four, three, two ; and found them not. Query — is it certain that this is the process whereby they are to be reached at all ? In Turkey — the richest soil, and once the fairest garden of Europe, ' the teeming cradle of the human race ' — a population of barely 120 souls per square mile are sunk in misery. France supports in thrifty comfort, 180 ; Italy, 225 ; Belgium, 421 ; England and Wales, 442 ; Flanders, 718 ; Ireland is over-populated with 161 ; though it has an arable acreage of 73 per cent, of its whole surface, and an area of reclaimable land at least another 12 per cent., and a soil more fertile than that of England by 10 per cent." Is it any wonder then that Irishmen refuse to believe that depopulation is for the good of their country ? Behind this, pretence, moreover, a ruthless policy is discerned—" Mr. Goldwin Smith scarcely afiects to conceal it. The Irish are illiterate ; they are poor ; they are uncivilized, unthrifty, violent, vengeful, lawless, against Government wherever they go. ' Their fatal influence threatens with ruin every Anglo-Saxon polity and every Anglo-Saxon civilisation throughout the world.' This is a terrible picture of a people England has been ruling, managing, civilising, educating, converting, training, and teaching for centuries and centuries. lam afraid that although it is is offensively exaggerated, it is not wholly untrue, Laws that forbade schools or school matters through eleven reigns of Tudor, Stuart, and Hanoverian dynasties, have unques. tionably done their work, though the Irish tried hard to break, or baffle them, and get some schooling contraband. Edicts that banished the native race from walled towns and civilized life, that made it a high crime to teach them trades, and drove them to live like hunted game on mountain and moor, have left their mark in the furtiveness of the peasant character, and in the rude and barbarous squalor of their dwellings." A land system now confessed by the Imperial legislature to have paralized their industry, and confiscated their property, trained them badly in habits of thrift, and their long exclusion from political rights trained them ill for tbe duties of citizenship abroad. — Yet, conceding all this," says the writer, " who is the culprit ? " The excessive rental of Ireland for the last thirty years has been a yearly sum of L 3,500,000, or since 1851 of more than L 100,000,000, wrongfully squeezed out of Irish farmers.— All wrung out of them by a process as agonizing as the courbash, L 100,000,000 ,1 How many tragedies of humble life darken the background of those figures I How much of unrequited toil ; how much of cruel injustice ; of heart-sinking and hopelessness ; of hunger and privation 1" But while this great sum of money in excess has been extorted from the people, the Imperial taxation drawn from Ireland had been increased from the yearly amount of L4,C06,71l in 1851, to L 7,086,596 in 1871. It was 12s 6d per head of the population in 1851, and Li 2s 6d per head in 1871. While within the same period the burden of taxation in Great Britain had been lightened by 3s 3d per head per annum. But if the Irish in Ireland are a nuisance with their chronic poverty, and a danger with theix chronic distress, what is gained by their emigration? "Of the group of dynamite; conspirators who stood in Newgate the other day— men

whose f rightful purpose was to bnry London in rains, — not one vu' born on Irish soil. All were the sons or grandsons of men swept away from 'congested districts,' and sent or driven to America 'for the good of those who went, and of those were left behind.' " The animosity towards England is often displayed more strongly in the second or third generation of Irish Americans than in the immigrants themselves. So long, however, as Irish American movements were confined to enterprises like the Fenian conspiracy England was proof against them, but a new project has been adopted that cannot |be thwarted. " The cry arose that if the Irish at Home would only be steadfast, the Irish abroad would supply the sinews of war. No corner of the earth was too remote, no Irish exile was too poor or too wealthy, for the purposes of co-operation in a vast and world-wide co-operation of this character. The idea was embraced with an enthusiasm and a steady perseverance truly remarkable, and Mr« Goldwin Smith cannot now find a spot on the surface of the habitable globe where he can stow away expatriated Irishmen beyond the possibility of their bearing a part in what he calls .' the trouble ' in nnforgotten Ireland." With the aid thus set at his disposal,' Mr. Parnell will be able to " carry from sixty to eighty seats in Ireland, again and again, and maintain their representatives during active service in the field." Mr. Sullivan concludes hia very able article as follows: " If, in dealing with a plea— and such a plea— for further • clearance ' of the Irish peasantry I have tried to encounter it with the force of fact rather than with the vehemence of feeling, it has been to me somewhat of a struggle. I cannot write of these things, nor think of them without emotion, I regard Mr. Smith's accusations and proposals with much indignation for their injustice, bat with greater sorrow for tlie mischief they must do. Not by insulting taunts about the ' master race ' (whichever one that may be) driving the other to somewhere or another ; nor yet:by cries for expatriation of Irishmen to some No-man's-land as a worthless, dangerous, or criminal race, can Irish hatred of England be allayed, or the inevitable reconciliation of these countries hastened in our day, If Irish agriculture be injured, not benefited — if Irish prosperity be repressed, not advanced — if Irish disaffection be increased and intensified, not weakened or qualified— by the policy of clearance and depopulation, it surely is time to turn round. The real question for all true friends of England and of Ireland is not merely • Why send more Irish to America ? but « Why send more Irish oat of Ireland ? ' Why not tackle the problem of making Ireland as prosperous and populace, as thrifty and industrious, as law-abiding and as loyal, as either Flanders or Belgium.

Mb. Gladstone, a cablegram informs us, "has A made an eloquent appeal to Mr. Parnell and hia misdirected followers to abstain from inflaming national hatred appeal, between England and Ireland." We do not know what the occasion for this appeal may have been, if there were, indeed, any occasion for it, and nothing that we have heard reported a 9 from the lips of Mr. Parnell and his followers enables us to conjecture with any degree of probability. We have heard nothing said by the gentleman in question that should inflamo such a hatred. To have their just demands urged by able men should not surely inflame the hatred of Ireland against England — and to bs urged to concede justice is a very poor reason why England's hatred should be inflamed against Ireland. There are, however, people altogether independent of Mr. Parnell and hia party, who are labouring very strongly to inflame such a hatred, bat to whom we have not been told -that any word of remonstrance has been addressed. There are, for example, a multitude of writers in the newspapers, and many writers in the periodicals, who are playing such a part, and many of whom have played it for so long that it would seem their powers might well by this time be exhausted, It, nevertheless, falls in with the general style of dealing that is pursued with regard to Ireland that the Premier should make an appeal to Irishmen, seeking bare justice for their country, not to inflame the national hatred, while he leaves unrebiiked the insulting and insolent Press, which reeks with the hatred of all that is Irish. — Take, for example, the article of Professor Goldwin Smith, in the Nineteenth Century for June, and the reply to which, by Mr. A.. M. Sullivan, we have quoted at some length. Professor Goldwin Smith we may take as a type of the highly civilised, highly educated, cultured, and literary Englishman of the period, — but if, by his writing on the Irish question, we are also forced to take him as a type of a great deal that is very discreditable we cannot help that. He has placed in black and white before us that by means of which we cannot refrain from judging of him, — and if he has not inflamed the hatred of his English readers against Ireland it is certainly not his fault. It is impossible for any Irishman to read his article without indignation and anger and without the strong suspicion that such a man would gladly see the Irish people exterminated by fire and sword, by pestilence and famine, or in aay way in which it would be possible effectually to exterminate them. In fact the proposal be makes for the settlement of the Irish difficulty is one that points at extermination, as we shall see. This highly cultured literary gentleman, then, begins

by reproaching Irishmen as Catholics atid Celts. He twits them ■ with having been conquered by the " stronger race," fighting against great odds, at Londonderry and Newtown Butler. He denies that there is any hope for them in the formation of a peasant proprietory, and recommends emigration as the only resouice. But what emigration ? If it were possible, emigration to the frozen regions of the North. "If," he says, "the emigrants could be shipped straight through to th> North-west like goods in bond, without leaving stragglers, and there permanently settled, it is very likely that in that vast and remote expanse their political venom might be dissipated and lost.". And, no doubt, the chance that they would probably, for the most part, perish in the severe climate, would make such emigration doubly satisfactory to tins most humane gentleman and able man of letters. There would, however, be a chance that the Irish immigrants might escape from the inhospitable regions in question and take refuge in the United States, and this consideration puts the north- western district out of the question as a field for Irish j immigration. But there is, fortunately, another region which offers itself for the reception of the exiles, and it also has its climatic advantages. " I have often urged those who had the conduct of Irish emigration," he writes, "if this continent was to be the receptacle to turn their attention to the Southern States. In the South there is no Fenianism ; the political questions are all of a totally different kind, and the Irishman will not find a fellow conspirator in the Negro, whose cruel and insolent opprt ssor he has always been ; a fact which somewhat mars our appreciation of the patriot eloquence of Erin." The writer might have added that in the South there was, moreover, an unwholesome climate — prolific in fevers, and that the swamps of the Mississippi were in his eyes what Connaught was in those of Cromwell, the only alternative— and a worse one than Connaught — to hell that he thought a fit receptacle for the Irish people. — " Assassination, dynamite, bloodthirsty bluster, and delirious lying make the same impression on all moral and civilised men ; " says the writer a little further on — But when the assassination is to be conducted in a strictly orderly manner, sanctioned by the law and indirect, when the bloodthirst can be slaked without; bluster, and in all serenity, when the lying is calm and measured, put forth under the veil of philanthropy, and wearing the fair garb of hypocrisy— the moral and civilised man may approve of it, and make it all his own, without sacrificing one tittle of his self-respect at home, or of his character abroad. The Irish Fenian may be held up by him as a monster of iniquity, while in his heart he gloats over scenes of carnage and ' destruction from which the most savage Fenian would shrink back appalled ; and since representative Englishmen, like Air. Goldwin Smith, come forward with such brutal denunciations— such bitter contributions to the literature of hatred and strife, how can Irishmen treat any appeal that may be made to them to refrain from urging their just claims, lest they iaflame the national hatred ? Must they not look upon it as a device to impose silence upon them while English writers, aud English speakers, are trying to inflame not only the hatred of England against them, but that of the whole world. And as a device, moreover, to inflame the hatred that, unhappily, already prevails against them 1