AUCKLAND.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XII, Issue 10, 27 June 1884, Page 17

AUCKLAND.

(From our Own Correspondent.)

June 20, 1884. Since my la*t communication, the Catholics, of this City have sent petitions asking for educational aid to the House of Representatives. That they had to be presented through members antagonistic to the measure may be detrimental to its own ends, but although Auckland can lay claim to one or two of the present Parliament who are Catliclics—at least in name— their assistance in the coming struggle i 3 not reckoned upon, owing to promises made to vote according to the will of the majority of their constituents, rather than conscientiously. However, it is to be hoped a calm and dispassionate hearing will be given to the advocacy of the measure as the great difficulty Catholics have hitherto laboured under has been the unwillingness of their opponents to listen to the subject. At the same time I would not affirm or insinuate. that the Protestant people of New Zealand would knowingly do their Catholic fellow-colonists a wrong, but I believe they have been labouring under a serious misapprehension in our regard, and if we have not been heard it is owing to the fact that our opponents were satisSed that our claims were inadmissible. But it is a noteworthy fact, that some of the best- and purest of mortals, and the greatest and most powerful nations, have ofren laboured under delusions of this character and been unconsciously guilty of the grossest injustice to others. Whowill say thattheonce fiery zealot, St. Paul, on his way toDamascus before his conversion, breathing out threatenings and slaughter against the disciples of the Lord was not honest in his convictions ? But when the veil fell from his eyes he saw the great wrong and un justice he wasdoing the meek and unoffending Christians. As with individuals, so has it been with states and empires in this respect. During the last three hundred years the pagan Roman Empire thought it was light to stamp out the Christian religion. It could not understand why a comparatively insignificant number of men should separate from the citizens and stubbornly refuse a willing compliance with the laws prescribed by Caesar. When the Empire grew up, expanded and became great under their care, they could not see why "amere vulgar set" should dare to refuse to join their processions in honour of their gods. We have not, however, to go back to pagan times to look for cases of a similar nature. The advocates of a godless education in this fair Colony of New Zealand are doubtless aiming at making of it a great nation— and in the construction on the principle that " Hard upon hard makes a bad stonewall," are forgetful of the possibility tbSb some day the air-built castle— like the pagan Roman Empire— -nrfay topple down and crush its, victims in the debris, which may cona^J; largely of the fragments of a godless system of education. '* During the past monththe weather here has been so unfavourable for all kinds of out-door work that nearly all the labouring men are thrown out of employment, and a large number waited on the Mayor last week seeking employment. He made arrangements as a temporary provision that a stone-breaking machine, recently imported, should be stopped, and the unemployed supplied with hammers and other requisite? for the work. A gooi many have availed themselves of the offer, but can make only small wages through inexperience. It is a pity that men should be enticed to come from the South Island, and even from Australia, by newspaper reports that work is always plentiful in Auckland — when such is only seldom the case. If the large farms in the Waikato and Piako districts were cut up into small sections— say of a few hundred acres each— and farmers of moderate capital induced to settle on them, it would give employment to thousands whose habit it is to always 6talk about the large towns during half the year doing nothing, which in their case, as in that of the " lords of the soil," often means doing A dreadful wave oE suicidal mania has set in over Auckland, as during the last week no fewer than four persons have " shuffled off this mortal coil " according to their own wish. Truly, the materialism and indifferentism of the present, which prevented thope deluded people seeing farther than to-day, helped to inspire the po»t to reply to the infidel : . "Tell me not in mournful numbers, Life is but an empty dream," etc.