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New Zealand Tablet, Volume XII, Issue 9, 20 June 1884, Page 16

On Tuesday last a meeting of ladies belonging to the Society oE the Children of Mary was held at the Dominican Convent, Dunedin, for the purpose of inaugurating a committee to undertake needlework for the benefit of the poor. Contributions towards the object in question, in the shape of materials to be so utilised, will be thankfully received, and may be addressed to LJesdames Conway and Connor, Dominican Convent. A magnificent church built at a cost of nearly £100,000 by the fathers of St. Philip's Oratory, South Kensington, London, was opened on April 25, The London Times concludes a leader devoted to the subject, and dealing more especially with certain sanguine expectations expressed or implied by Cardinal Manning in his sermon as follows : " We have established a sort of informal concordat based upon charity, good-will, and respect for a faith which is often nobly illustrated in the lives of it adherents, though we have no desire to take it for our own. Roman Catholics well know that they have nothing to fear from England, so long as England has nothing to fear from them. In no country in Christendom do they enjoy a greater measure of liberty, civil and religious than they do here We are troubled by no Kvlturluvrnpf. We have no Article 7 excludng their teachers from our schools, and they are free to profess their own faith and to teach it in all ways compatible with the equal liberty of all. It remains true, nevertheless, that the gulf between England and Rome is as wide and as deep as it ever was. Its continual existence and the conviction that it is permanent and ineffaceable account as much as anything for the kindly feeling .of toleration with which Rome is now regarded in England ; but though the old animosities are happily abated it would be a great mistake to suppose that they are incapable of ever being ravived." And we, for our own part, incline to the belief that this passage contains a just estimation of the state of affairs. Nor would we overlook or have the Catholic community generally to forget the warning or threat with which the passage concludes, " Feemantleitk " writes to the West Australian Catholic Record from Adelaide as tollows : " I am very much gratified in having to announce to you that a young lady from Weat Australia, Miss Kate Adamson, has entered the Convent of the Dominican Nuns in this city, and it is further worthy of remark that Miss Adamson is the third West Australian who has adopted the religious life in South Australia. The Glasgow correspondent of the Nation May 3 gives us the following particulars : " There do3s not seenuto be much likelihood of the sturdy islanders of Tirie and Skye caving in at present. The Duke of Argyle, it is said, offered his Tirie crofters the same terms as Lady Cathcart gave to her white slaves of South Uist, which they refused, as they have determined not to emigrate. At a meeting of crofters and cotters, from all paTts of the island, held in the Baptist Hall, Baugh, on the 17th inst., it was agreed to ask Mr. D. H« Macfarlane, M.P. for county C allow, to contest the county o£ Argyle, against Lord Colin Campbell, at the next election. It is generally believed that there will be some exciting work in Skye before long. The Government, it is expected, will have to resort to force before the obstinate Slcye-men can be brought to bay. At a mass meeting of crofters of tbe Stenscholl district oE Kilnuir held at the Kirk Rock> Staffin Bay, on the 22nd inst., one speaker expressad himself as fol. lows : 'We are in possession, and we mean to keep posses non until driven out at the bayonet point.' The people have a thorough contempt Tor the police, and a correspondent in the island writes that however large the force that might be sent a bloody combat will be the result. The representative oE the Scottish Land Restoration League in Skye has held several meetings in different parts of the island. His reception was most enthusiastic. He was accompanied by the redoubtable leader of the crofters, Mr. John Macpherson, the ex-prisoner. Captain Campbell, one of the Highland Land Law Reform Association deputation which waited upon the Lord Advocate the other day in connection with these threatened evictions, told that gentleman, that since the advent of the Restoration League in Skye the more moderate association which he represented had lost very much of its influence among the islanders. There is no doubt the principles of the Scotch Land League are gaining ground very fast j in many parts of Scotland— notably in large cities and towns | throughout the country— particularly in Glasgow Greenock, Aberdeen, and Dundee. The Opposition, or perhaps we might say the Oppositions, have received the Governor's concession of a dissolution to the Ministry with anger. Sir George Grey would have been quite ready to form a Cabinet, and set about ameliorating matters immediately, without j appealing to a country in whose appreciation of merits he, of coursei

confides most fully, nevertheless. Among the more indignant members, or, at least the more vociferously indignant, wa9 to be reckoned Mr. Fish, who, it seems, is quite an authority on everything connected with the Constitution, and can place the Governor in leading strings at a moment's notice. Mr. Fish, as it is rumoured about, had the case of his portfolio all ready prepared, and is naturally mortified at being obliged to lay it on the shelf that it may await its contents still for a few weeks. Under the circumstances— or any circumstances, perhaps— a gentleman of bis temper could hardly be expected to hold his tongue. Oub contemporary the Dunedin Evening Herald is much concerned respecting the overthrow suffered by the so-called Liberal party in Belgium. Our contemporary says that it is an important matter that the Liberals in Belgium, as elsewhere all over the world, Bhould free the people from clerical control— or, in other words, should continue and increase their persecution of religion. Let ns not forget that they are of the nature of those who in the end of the last century imprisoned the people under " clerical " control by the thousand, and guillotined them by the hundred. But if to the " rising tide of democratic sentiment," as our contemporary pays, were due the tyrannous attempt made by the Belgian Liberals to force the children of the Catholic people of the country to foisake the faith of their parents, it is time indeed that tide were stemmed ; and democracy is fully revealed as a tyrant more cruel than any of those who had as yet appeared upon the arena of Europe — the enslaver and murderer of the soul as well as of the body. How, again, can that be a true democracy in which the great body of the people are subdued by the power of a few ? On the contrary, it is the reasonable democratic power that has now been put forth to compel the tyrannous minority to relinquish their stifling "grasp, and to assert the will of the people — but without imposing an unbearable yoke upon any section of the population. It is to be hoped the example set to Europe by the people of Belgium will be universally and vigorously followed by them — for it is the shame of the Catholic nations that they remain indifferent— or at least quiescent, while their dearest rights are being trampled under foot by an ignoble and unprincipled band supported by comparatively insignificant numbers. The dissatisfaction manifested by our contemporary the Evening Herald because the great body of the Belgian nation have exercised their right of voting to return members pledged to carry out their policy according to their conscentious convictions, speaks very plainly for the kind of Liberalism that guides his councils. But we admit it is the Liberalism of the century and its great weapon of offence and defence is the otherwise unmeaning cry of " clericalism." " The Vagabond," who has written some letters from the South Sea Islands to the Melbourne Argus, gives it as the fruits of his experience that missionary work among the natives is vain — and that being made Christian they are harder to civilise than they are when pagan. He further expresses an opinion that they are sure to die out as the white man— or Anglo-Saxon, we conclude — takes possession of their country — and for this he gives us to understand that there is a natural law — not to speak of the debauchery and other destructive causas that accompany the coming of the stranger. Time was, nevertheless, when the effect of Christianity among barbarous tribes was civilising in tbe extreme — and if it be not so now we may, perhaps, see reason to suspect that the difference ia rather in the nature of the Christianity in question than in that of the human being. As to the explanation that the barbarian must' perish rather than live to be civilised by the presence and example of the Anglo-Saxon, it should prove agreeable to those who now occupy the inheritance of the heathen, and still more so," perhaps, to those who are looking out for an opportunity of doing so. Such a doctrine is calculated to excuse a good deal— and there is, moreover, a good deal that can only be excused by some such argument. It ia also capable of a very wide extension, but we doubt if it could or need be held by a people of any notable humanity. It is a doctrine for a people willing to destroy by force of law, and to be troubled by nothing that might be done decently and in order. The dissolution of Parliament takes the interest in a great measure out of Sir Julius Vogel'a speech at Ashburton. The speech, however, was, on the whole and under any circumstances, rather disappointing, and gave but little indications of the speaker's being prepared with a line of policy certain to deliver the Colony at once from all its embarrassments and place it on a sure and speedy road to prosperity. It was taken up a good deal in pointing out the mistakes that had been made in not following the advice formerly given by the speaker, who, nevertheless, seemed to prove his conclusions very fairly. He openly advocated a wise continuation of borrowing, was rather hazy as to the questions of protection and free-trade, and condemned the rise in the Canterbury railway tariff as an unjustifiable and dangerous precedent. But Sir Julius will now probably speak again, and may place his intentions for the future more clearly before his audience. We have received a pamphlet on the Buller Harbour and Coalfield, written by Mr. Eugene O'Conor, and to which we shall refer , more at length in our next issue.

O»r Thursday evening, the Feast of Corpus Ohristi, a procession of the Blessed Sacrament was formed in St. Joseph's Church, Dunedin. The number of those who took part in it was necessarily limited as it was confined to the church ; but it was carried out with much solemnity and in a very edifying manner. His Lordship the Bishop carried the Most Holy Eucharist under an umbraculum of white silk and gold borne by the Venerable Archdeacon Coleman. The usual hymns were very sweetly and devoutly sung by the Dominican Nuns' choir. On Sunday — that within the octave of the Feast— Exposition of the Blessed Sacrament took place after the 11 a.m. Mass, lasting until Vespers, and was attended during the day by large numbers of the Catholic congregation — the special adoration being maintained by members of the societies of the Children of Mary and the Sacred Heart, and of those to which the children of the different schools belong. The adornments of the altar and sanctuary were very "rich and in admirable taste. A missionaey who is writing letters for our contemporary the Evening Star defends his savages from the charge of exclusive cruelty by referring to the fires and tortures of the Inquisition. Had this missionary, nevertheless, known anything about the matter, he must have known that the fires and tortures of the Inquisition were fabulous and such as could not be produced for the extenuation of anything whatsoever. The Inquisition was a court proved to have been in advance of Usage in mercy and mildness. But our missionary might have brought forward for comparison with his savages. people whom he would claim to be far more advanced in civilisation and enlightenment than any of those connected with the Inquisition. He might have pointed out, for example, how long after the horrors related are supposed to have ended the British Government themselves made use of torture and fire— criminals having been burned and subjected to the peine forte et dure or pressed to death by them even in the course of the last century. In the present century moreover, and in our own days torture was in common use in BritishIndia. Let not our missionary, then, go outside his own nation to find imaginary cases ; he will find all he needs at home.