THE JOINT COMMITTEE.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XI, Issue 22, 21 September 1883, Page 16

THE JOINT COMMITTEE.

fU, N two previous issues we published the report from | Hansard of the debate in the House of Representatives in reference to the No Report ot this now i* famous committee. To-day we publish from y Hansard the debate which took place in the • Legislative Council on the same subject. From both, several things are manifest. First of all a strenuous effort was made to .burke all enquiry, and turn Catholic petitioners ignominiously out of court. This failing, an effort was successfully made to render all enquiry extremely difficult by a vote of the committee refusing to pay expenses of witnesses. Whatever evidence, then, was given before this committee was purely voluntary and without expense to the State. In this, the committee condescended to such coniumelius treatment of Catholics and others suffering injustice under the present education law as would not have been given to a complaining rabbiter. In the second place, two gentlemen residing in Wellington were reluctantly asked to give evidence, but not summoned to do so. In the third place, the evidence of these gentlemen was so strong in favour of justice to Catholics and other petitioners, and so condemnatory of the tyrannous and most unjust treatment to which they have been subjected by the secularist sect, that the secularist leaders on the committee and in the House of Representatives, fearing justice might possibly win in the committee, thought the only way to prevent this was to pack the committee by adding a number of secularists to it, so as in any event to secure a majority determined to uphold injustice, and accordingly they packed the committee. Fourthly, it was with difficulty that the majority of the committee consented even to hear the evidence of Bishop Moran, who came all the way from Dunedin to Wellington to help the committee to understand the case of the Catholic petitioners. Fifthly, the evidence of Catholic laymen was refused ; and, sixthly, a hypocritical whine was heard complaining that the whole world was not examined, in order to afford information to enable gentlemen to make a report, who had, nevertheless, already made up their minds to present no report. All these things are very evident from the various reports on the subject contained in Hansard. Then, finally, an effort, and a strong and passionate effort, was made to prevent the public from knowing anything about the proceedings of this committee, or the evidence taken by it. The entire proceedings, so far as secularists are concerned, are discreditable in the extreme, petty, tyrannical, hypocritical, and mean. In addition, a persistent effort was made to misrepresent the position of the Catholic petitioners . It was asserted, again and again, that they were endeavouring to destroy the great idol of godless education. They were not endeavouring to do so ; they were not seeking to prevent its votaries offering adoration to their idol. They sought for nothing but justice for themselves ; they only asked that, as taxpayers, they should not be compelled, after undergoing the expense of the education of their own children, to contribute largely to the free and godless education of other people's children. If the secular idolaters were determined to maintain their idol, Catholics regarded that as no affair of theirs. Not only Catholics, but all men who understand what justice is, and love it, are amazed at the brazen tyranny that compels men, who educate their own children at their own sole expense, to pay taxes in order that other peopled children may have a free education. And so astounding is this, no one need be surprised at the persistent and angry efforts made by the patrons of this monstrous tyranny to pi*event inquiry, the publication of the evidence, which would place it in a still more odious light, and all discussion on the subject. Not satisfied with trampling on the necks" of people anxious to bring up their children Christians, and educate them as Christians ought to be, these secular tyrants fall into a rage at the bare mention of anyone even daring to complain of the injustice done him by this monstrous system of plunder and partiality.