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New Zealand Tablet, Volume XI, Issue 24, 5 October 1883, Page 1

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AT HOME AND ABROAD.

The murder of a landlord in Mayo has been re- \ AN English parted here among the news of the week — and the JESUIT report will serve to maintain and heighten, if posON Ireland, sible, the anti- Irish feeling. — The statements, on , the other hand, that might serve, not to excuse murder indeed, but to explain the terrible provocation given to the people among many thousands of whom one murderer is occasionally found, .are not thought worthy to be reported, and if they were so it is doubtful as to whether they would be read, for among the enlightened public of the day, there is unfortunately a large majority , who refuse to read anything by which their prejudices might be . removed or a knowledge of the truth impressed upon them. In this very county Mayo, for example, from which we now receive the report of a landlord's murder, there has been for many years a system of wholesale eviction carried on, and by means of which , many people have been murdered in the fullest sense of the word, , and cruelly murdered, — It is not long, for example, since we published in these columns a list of families driven from their homes on the borders of Mayo and Sligo, and who, for the most part, were found under the open sky in sandpits, or trying vainly to shelter themselves in ditches. — The report of these cases was made in "May last to the Board of Guardians at Tubbercurry by Mr. Devine, one of their , number who had been deputed by them to enquire into the cases in j question. — The evictions having taken place on the estate of the ( Messrs. Knox. — We are happy to find, moreover, that the cases in question have been brought before the English Catholic world by the Eev. R. F. Clarke, S.J., the editor of the Month, who, in a second paper on his visit to Ireland, describes them and speaks of them with a feeling that does him credit — and that is doubly welcome to his Irish readers at least since it contrasts very remarkably with the attitude of many English Catholics towards the Irish people from > whom they seem to withhold their sympathy in a manner that is as ' perplexing as it is distressing. — That Father Clarke, nevertheless, has failed to gain the sympathy of some of these inconsistent Catholics for the sufferers spoken of by him we learn from the columns of the London Tablet where the good Jesuit is sharply, and we admit with much consistency, taken to task for his advocacy of the Irish cause. — Father Clarke, then, gives us some additional details concerning the families so cruelly dealt with, and they are such as bring the cruelty into very bold relief indeed. Two families, he says, " consist of the widow and the fatherless, one of orphan children, two or three others of women, with their children, whose husbands are away in England. Several of the women are mentioned as weak and sickly g In all, there are some thirteen men, eighteen women, and between ninety and one hundred poor helpless children, all evicted at one fell swoop." " Several of the men," he goes on to say, " were away in , jpfcgiand working as labourers on English farms. . , in order to get together the arrears of rent due to their landlord." — The badness of the two past seaeons, he adds, had prevented them from raising a sufficiency of crops to pay their rent. — But as to the weather in which the poor people were thus exposed we find it described thus. — "The beginning of the month of May was bitterly cold. Mayo is one of the bleakest countries in Ireland, and I shall always have a piercing recollection of the bitter north-east wind which for some two or three weeks continuously swept over the country. If it seemed to freeze to the bone one who was well housed, well warmed, and well i fed, what must have been the cruel sufferings of those delicate women and tender children without food, without clothes, without fire, without a home, and without hope, some without even a shelter by the side of the ditch, whither the cruel edict had driven them forth ?" — And the edict bad been wanton as well as cruel, for the Very Rev. T. Conlon, the parish priest, had offered in every case a year's rent, with the payment of costs so that the landlord might get the benefit of the Airears Act. " Such are the plain facts," says Father Clarke. " They speak sufficiently for themselves. From their hearths and homes, from the land which they regard as in part

their own, from the land which during these two unfruitful season, has, through no fault of their own, refused to yield its wonted crop more than one hundred persons — men, women, and children, widows and orphans, tender maidens and sucklings at the breast— are thrust forth by bailiff and constable. Thrust forth to starve in that cold east wind ! Thrust forth to die like dogs by the road side or in the ditch hard by I The scene would move our hearts and rouse our indignation if it had taken place in some African Eraal, or in some barbarian village in far off Asia. Bat these are no barbarians, bred in some distant land amid superstition, and ignorance. They are no aliens or foreigners who are left to perish. They are dying uncared for within a few hours' journey of our own wealthy and prosperous homes. They are no heathen or heretics. They are our fellow Christians. They are of the household of faith. They are our brothers and sisters in the faith of Jesus Christ. They are united to us by a tie closer than that of country or blood or any earthly relationship. They have a claim upon us far surpassing the claim o common parentage or common kindred. They are signed with the sign of Him who is the Lover of the poor. They are the members of the communion of Saints. They are children of our common mother the Church of God. What Catholic, what Christian, what man of ordinary kind feeling, can restrain his tears of compassion when he reads of the scene, the cruel heartbreaking seene — cruel and heart-breaking even when told in the cold unimpassioned language of the official visitor ? Men wax warm in their just indignation at the deliberats murder even of one who has been guilty of a long course of oppression and cruelty, but is no indignation due at the sight of the famished faces of those poor little ones of Jesus Christ, pining away of famine and cold by the side of the unsheltered ditch." Yet, as we learn from the Tablet there are Christians and Catholics who are indignant that Father Clarke has made his appeal on behalf of those famished little ones. — There are Christians, and Catholics, too, who are willing to express pity for them, but who are also ready and anxious to brand with infamy the men who are trying to free them once for all from the bondage in which such sufferings are possible and even probable. — Catholics and Christians who warn us to have nothing to do with leaders whom they declare to be infidels ani bad Catholics, but whom we still may see not so much worse off on the day of judgment than those who condemn them and whose charity may well be called in question — whose justice cannot be called in question because it does not exist. Father Claike continues : " Let us look forward for a moment to the time when the men who are absent ia England shall return. They carry with them the hard-earned money which is to satisfy the Messrs. Knox on the approaching rent day. Joyfully they approach the little group of cottages, full of hops and courage in the prospect of a happy meeting. But when they draw near, alas! Their cottage is empty : nought remains of it but the bare walls. But where are its inmates 1 Eagerly they go from house to house but all are deserted. At last they find a neighbour more favoured than the rest, left as caretaker of his cottage, who tells them the sad story how for long days and nights the wife and little ones turned out from their home, starved by the side of the hospitable ditch ; how, perhaps, first one and then another of the little children was unable to withstand the want of food and raiment, the piercing cold, the damp and the exposure, and chaDged that dreary scene for a land where they shall hunger no more, where cold and sickness are unknown. Now when the poor desolate father hears the news, and finds at length all that remains of his little family in the shelter of some hospitable neighbour, when he sees the wife broken down with grief, when he misses, it may be, some of those little faces he left in smiling health, what wonder if, in the bitterces3 of his sorrow, the words which rise to his lips are not blessing 3on Messrs. Knox> and the thoughts in his heart are not thoughts o£ loyalty and love for landlords and landlordism ? And when the survivors of those ninety children grow up to manhood, and in the great Republic of the West some of them rise, perchance, to wealth and influence, can we wonder f we find in their speech and writing the result of the ineffaceable impressions of childhood 1 Can we wonder if their words teem with an inextinguishable hostility which seems quite unaccountable to us as we sit quietly at home, ignorant of its cause, and if they indulge in a wild denunciation which seems to the Englishman, who know

not their antecedents, tho mere blustering braggadocio of political fanaticism ?" But for our own part we will add to all this the supposition that an Irishman should return to such' a scene from England where he had been waylaid and beaten, as, according to a statement published in our last issue, Irish harvestmen have lately baen ! And the landlord is not content merely with turning the people out ,* his malevolence pursues them so that no one shall dare to shelter tham, and Father Clarke gives an instance in which a man who had allowed some hut 3to be erected by the Land League for certain evicted tenants, was so intimidated by the landlord as to make an attempt to throw down the huts. The case was one in which the predecessor of the man alluded to having evicted twenty-five poor families, he himself followed up the work by evicting twenty -six, for whom the Land League built wooden huts on the land of a small farmer in the neighborhood. " Bat it is intolerable, forsooth," writes Father Clarke, " that the dignity of the landlord should be thus insulted. Is the exercise of his power over his poor tenants to be frustrated by the craft of the enemy ? If he has decreed that they shall be homeless, who is this insolent farmer who ventures to interfere with him ? Unfortunately, the mischief is done, and he has no direct power to expel his rebellious serfs from the comfortable homes built for them by the Land L-ague. But it is not to be borne that he should sit down under such an insult. He sends for the farmer who has consented to receive them, and threatens him with all the dread consequences which will follow if he perseveres in his insolent compassion.^ Happily his threats are illegal, his wrath futile, his whole'proceeding is through the recent Land Act a mere brutum, fulmen. But had it not been for the active priest and the vigilance of the pious constable, might would have prevailed over right, and the poor frightened farmer would have completed the work of violence which he had already begun, and the seven or eight families on his field would in defiance of all law and justice have shared the fate of the unhappy tenants of Messrs. Knox." The rev. writer goes on to speak of the impossibility of such a state of things prevailing in England, and represents the whole country as condemning it with one voice. " Bat in Ireland," hejsays, " such conduct passes unnoticed— it is too much a matter of everyday occurrence to attract attention. If the newspapers were to express themselves in the terms that such conduct deserves, we should be told that they were ' rousing the worst passions of an ignorant peasantry,' that their language was seditious and disloyal, that they were seeking to set class against class. If a question were to be asked in the House of Commons as to the truth of these outrages, we should have a protest ' against questions which imply an imputation on the character of honourable men. If one of the poor sufferers, in an outburst of passion, were so far to forget the teaching of his catechism as. to take the law into his own hands, we should have our walls placarded with ' Another Irish Outrage,' fresh police would be sent for the protection of the landlord's property and per. son, and the district would have imposed upon it a heavy fine to compensate him for the injury inflicted" Nevertheless Father Clarke defends Irish landlords generally from the charge of being of one class with those of whom he ha? spoken— m my of them being, on the contrary, good and kind— Still he asks, " What can be the state of public opinion in the ruling class where no social stigma falls on the rich absentee, whose starving tenantry have to subsist on the contributions of foreign benevolence, if they are to subsist at all 1 where no vials of indignation are poured on the head of one who drives delicate women and poor children, to the number of a hundred and more, to perish of cold and hanger by the way -side? What hope is there of the pacification of the country while a sense of injustice and oppression and wrong is fostered by wholesale evictions and an affectionate, warm-hearted people are driven to hate those whom a little kindness and sympathy and compassion would easily have taught them to love ? "—We may add an inquiry for our own part as to what can be the state of a world, like that of the colonies, where an attempt to put an end to such a disgraceful and barbarous state of affairs is regarded with dislike, and met with opposition, and where every report tending to perpetuate it, and increase the prejudices by which it is supported, is received witn eagerness and made the most of.

The state of feeling in France is pretty well illusSIGNS O* 1 the trated in two or three paragraphs which we find times, in a recent number of the Figaro :— The first is a humorous sketch, relating to the republican fetes held in commemoration of the taking of the Bastille. — It is written by the writer signing himself Le Masqve defer, and represents a scene at the Rouen railway terminus. — " An endless train packed like a carpet bag enters the station. An Englishman to a porter : ♦ Where are all these travellers going V 'To Paris to see the fetes.' Another train, no less long and no less crammed arrives at the same moment from the opposite side. The Englishman to the porter : ' And where are these coming from?' 'From Paris to avoid the fetes.' The Englishman looks at the arches of the roof with a thoughtful eye." And verily such signs of a divided people are enough to give food for thought, and r however jestingly they may be pointed out, they are

serious enough. Another paragraph hardly contains much that is amusing, although the writer who pens it comments on the fact he speaks of as the latest manifestation of good taste.— lt is the description of a song to be heard sung all over the the faubourgs, and which invokes the cholera, then working such havoc in Egypt, and causing a panic throughout Europe, as the means of getting rid of the useless owners of property.— The refrain of the song runs as follows :— " Nous benirons le cholera - Qui bient6tmous d<§bai;rass'rfl, Des propri6taire3 inutiles ; Ainsi soit-il. We see, then, in this unhappy country not only divisions but reckless ferocity— and fiendish wickedness that would welcome even a horrible death, ifj only it would also seize upon those whom these murderously disposed people detest.— Another incident also revealing the condition of the country is related by the same paper, which informs us that an order has been issued that the church-bells, hitherto devoted to the service of religion only, are now to be placed also at the disposal, of the maire, 'who is to have a key of the belfry so that he may ring the bells when he sees any need to do so. The Figaro inquires how the faithful are henceforward to know whether it is their cure who is calling them together, or the maire\ who is inspecting the firemen.— Buc, at least, we may conclude that the obedience and alacrity of either party will bs put to the' proof ; and the faithful will ba shamed if they be found wanting. — Then it will do the firemen no harm if they occasionally find themselves at some religious ceremony or service which otherwise they would not have attended .-The faithful, moreover, need never feel astray, at being summoned even in mistake to the church. — Nevertheless, the order is to be taken as another encroachment on the rights of religion, and as another sign of the divisions by which every day unfortunate France becomes more and more distracted, and which must eventually rend or totally destroy her.

What Catholics have to expect in the matter of eduA hard case, cation from Protestants, Scotch Protestants especially, who hold the balance of power in their hands, we learn from a pamphlet published last May by the Bishop of Argyll and the Isles in explanation of the treatment of the people of South Uist and B.irra by the factor of Lady Gordon Cathcart.— The case i 3 one of extreme hardship, and the conduct o£ the Protestant official in the matter has been such as would rouse the whole Protestant world had it b 3 .en shown by any Catholic authority, even in the remotest corner of the universe. According to the Education Act of 3872 it depends upon the rate-payers of Scotland as to whether religious instruction shall be combinel with secular or not, and on the erection of two new schools in the places alluded to the great body of the rate-payers desired very strongly that such a combination should be made. In the districts affected the proportion of Catholic children to Protestant children was 160 to 20 and 95 to 5, respectively but notwithstanding this the factor with a very small minority rejected the Catholic teachers proposed, and whose qualifications were of the highest order, in favour of Protestants, thus forcing on the Catholic people the secular education that in every part of the world is so abhorrent from their principles. Remonstrance made by the Rev. Father Macdonald, the priest of the districts, with both the factor and Lady Gordon Cathcait herself, not only failed to have things placed on a sounder footing, but brought out from the factor threats of displeasure against the complaining people, and they were given to understand that unless they compromised their consciences, and submitted to the will of the Protestant minority which had pronounced in favour of secularism they would ibe made to suffer as tenants who have offended the owner of the- property on which they live can be always made to suffer under the present condition of the laws relating to the occupation of land. — The Bishop of Argyll in his letter, of remonstrance to the factor explains the position of the Catholic tenants and their attit^e towards education as follows, " We do not, and we cannot, look upfb the question except as one involving religious as well as secular education ; and the law fully sanctions this view. I have had considerable experience of religious instruction, and I can attest that without the school organisation and discipline, without the aid of trained teachers the work of religious instruction and moral training must be very difficult and imperfect. Hence, when the law places ! such facilities within our reach, without injustice to others, we are i naturally, keen to avail ourselves of them. The poor people see, their common sense tells them, that they ought to have Catholic j teachers. They cannot, indeed, formulate their claim or explain its ; legal details, but they look to their clergy and to their bishop to do that for them. I assure you that Catholics are not one whit behind their neighbours in esteem for education. But they value sound religious training still more, and they will leave no rightful means untried to secure every facility which the law affords towards securing it. If the Rev. J. Macdonald seems to stand alone in his present attitude, it is not that others do not share his views, but that he, as pastor, is. bound to disregard worldly influences which naturally weigh heavily on members of his flock."— The bearing of

the matter on the land question by which the Bishop has been justified in bringing it before the Highland Crofters' Commission, hia Lordship alludes to thus :— " In the management of public schools Parliament took special care to prevent, as far as possible, unseemly disputes about religious instruction. Yes ! but not by committing to the estate-management department the right to control and override the wishes of majorities of ra<epayers, and to enforce its views by threats of the proprietor's displeasure, and of possible social disabilities in case of disobedience. No ! it placed the whole matter in the hands of the people, and it undoubtedly expected that those who by their position and education, would naturally be looked up to as models for imitation in their respective spheres would first set the' example of respect for the law, and of a hearty desire to avoid all interference with any legitimate expression of religious feeling."— We ccc, then, how the liberality of which Protestantism boasts is exercised when there is a question of dealing with Catholics. We also see the necessity that exists for taking out of the hands of landlords a power they have not hesitated to abuse.

Protestantism is said to be spreading in Russia. the speead of Lord Badstock is undermining the Greek Church— the " gospel." which is said to be now greatly leavened with evangelical doctrines— which, however, in no way interfere with the outward observances of the worshippers who continue to comply with all that the national creed demands of them. Still the times are hopeful— Protestantism is spreading, and so far has it extended that even the newspaper Press feels called upon to provide edifying articles for those who have admitted the Gospel into their hearts and received the calling and election sure. Such an article, for example, we find in a recent number of the Journal de St. Petersbourg, and we hasten to lay its substance before our readers in hopes that they may not prove more dull of heart than pious Russians, but may be found as fully rejoicing in the truthwhatever their outward observances may be. Things evangelical, indeed, must be very eagerly sought after in Russia, when the Journal de St. Petersbourg receives despatches all the way from Connecticut informing it of the latest moves in evangelical circles, and the contents of the particular despatch we allude to, which comes from Hartford, are to the following effect :— lt seems that there is in the town of Hartford, then, a certain • South Baptist ' church, Jwhich the Congregationalists had long desired to capture ; the Reverend Everts being the pastor of the Church in question, while the Reverend Parker is that of the Congregationalists.— And this Reverend Parker being, moreover, of a wily turn of mind, as well as of an adventurous spirit, resolved to attack Satan in his own fortress,' by baptising some dozens of children in the fountain of the Baptists. He accordingly prepared his people and made them get their children ready for the momentous dip, and then, accompanied by a minstrel who played upon the barrel organ, he headed a procession and went straight to the.church. There, says the Journal de St. Petersburg, was found only ' the sacristan ,' who strove to drive the invaders back by cries i of Vade retro Satanas, but surely here is some mistake, for that a sacristan vociferating in latin could have obtained a footing among the South Baptists of Harfcfurd is unthinkable, and we are therefore obliged to conclude that Satan was allowed to proceed wholly uninterfered with. At all events the Reverend Parker obtained possession of the church, and incontinently the taps were turned to. fill the reservoir, and the children to be operated on were stripped. Stripped themselves, in fact, being spurred on by their pastor to fight the good fight for the glory of Congregationalism. But, meantime, there arrived upon the scene the Reverend Everts followed by bis deacons, and soon the church was thronged with expostulating Baptists. The Reverend Parker, however, continued cool, and his children were even cooler, for they shivered in complete undress on the brink of the reservoir, while the contention waxed farmer all around them, and as the Reverend PaTker proceeded to submerge them the din of battle grew still louder, and the despatch says the intermingling of pious forms of words with forms of words that were not pious was especially remarkable. The climax of the affair,— which, whatever it may prove as to the craving for evangelical tittle-tattle that prevails in Russia, certainly proves that the French editor who provides it for them is cot wanting in liveliness, — was reached when the rival pastors sprung at one another like two tigers, and, as the result of.their struggle, rolled into the reservoir, where, says the editor of the despatch, they conscientioHsly tried to drown one another. At sight of this, the faithful left off their combat, and betook themselves to fish their pastors out of danger by means of their umbrellas, a task which, at length, was successfully performed, although it was much impeded by the size of the gentlemen rescued, who were, each of them, very corpulent. The reservoir was, then, immediately emptied, in order that it might be ascertained as to whether any of the children present had been drowned as it was feared, but, fortunately, without the fear's being realised. We see, then, how hopeful the times are for Russia, when the blessings of the reformed faith are considered of so much interest

that it is found necessary by the Press to provide illustrations of them for the edification, of their readers.— And if the illustration in question was a little bit more lively than usual it was at least all the more agreeable to read. — For those whose tastes are not lively, suitable illustrations will not be difficult to find.

The account given by Father Clarke, again, of the the pbiests relationship that iD political matters prevails beAnd the tween the Irish priests and their people is very deNATIONAL serving of consideration. It is the following : — cause. " The people have the healthy instinct of looking to the priest as their guide in matters temporal as well as spiritual, of asking his advice, and trusting his judgment in what concerns this life as well as the next. The excitement of feeling Jwas so great, that if the priests had altogether stood aloof and had not, so far as their consciences allowed, joined with the people in their outcry, they would have been in danger of forfeiting this invaluable influence, and would have been regarded as out of sympathy with their oppressed flock. Apart from this, most of them— and especially the yctmger generation — took a very strong view as to the cruelty and oppression of the existing system, and considered the protest against it reasonable and desirable. Hence it was practically impossible for them to abstain from joining, when their union with their people accorded alike with their national sympathies and their sense of pas. toral responsibility. — Of course such a motive would be valueless if the bounds of justice were overstepped and unlawful measures of : redress were proposed for the wrongs of Ireland. There can be no I doubt that among the hot-headed young curates there were some who incurred the censure of their ecclesiastical superiors by the warmth of their language and the exaggerated expressions into which they were led by their patriotic zeal. They occasionally forgot that they were no true friends of Ireland when they fanned in the breasts of the laity a flame which was already burning with red-hot ardour* and when they declaimed in unmeasured terms against the brutality of the Saxon oppressor. But such cases were rare, and in general their influence was exerted in favour of moderation, Irish priests receive at Maynooth a thorough and sound training in practical theology. If they forgot themselves in the excitement lof a public meeting, their more sober judgment soon showed them that they had gone too far, When the No-Rent t Manifesto appeared they condemned it almost to a man, and that at the peril of their influence. But as long as the law of God and the teaching of the Church were not disobeyed, the combined force of natural sympathy and what appeared ordinary prudence made it, I was assured, most desirable that they should not be guilty of political abstention. In the place of the parish priest the foreign agitator would have been the leader of the people. If the priest had taken no part in a movement which he watched with a vigilant care lest it should go beyond what he, as a priest, could approve, he would have had to sit apart, mourning over his poor sheep led astray by paid declaimers and unscrupulous leaders of revolt. In addition to open agitation, secret societies would have sprung up everywhere and sapped the very foundations, not only of civil order, but of religious belief in the hearts of the misguided people."—" Such, and much more to the same effect," continues the writer, " were the arguments by which priests and bishops defended the action of the Irish clergy' Some, indeed, kept aloof, but in Mayo they were few and far between ; and the general sense of their compeers was against them. They W9re for the most part elderly men, whose gray hairs were held to excuse them. But of thejyouager generation I do not believe that there was one in a hundred who did not throw himself into the movement and did not believe that it was an inevitable step in the progress of Ireland towards happier and healthier days."