Current Topics AT HOME AND ABROAD.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XII, Issue 22, 19 September 1884, Page 1

Current Topics AT HOME AND ABROAD.

A FAVOtraiTB topic with non-Catholic writers is thb chijbch the cruelty attendant on the Spanish conquests in AS AN Ihe New World, We frequently hear the misdeeds educator, of the adventurers who flocked to Xl Dorado quoted

and brought forward in evidence of the wickedness of Catholic Europe, which had sent each ruffians out to prey upon and destroy the native races, and we are given to understand that the whole thing was but part and parcel of the midnight darkness that prevailed everywhere until the Reformation burst out to dispel all that was evil, and lead in the good and true. It, nevertheless, occasionally happens that something occurs to lift a corner of the veil that prejudice has hung up before the state of the oase as it really was, and to show us the complete error in which writers who write in the strain to which we allude are found, and how full was the difference between the actual facts, and those that have traditions ally prevailed so long in the non-Catholio world. The other day, for example, there took place the fortieth Annual Commencement of the University of Notre Dame, Indiana, and the Bishop of Linares, a Spanish ecclesiastic, in Mexico, who preached on the occasion a very fine sermon in excellent English, as reported in our contemporary the Aye Maria, gave some details of the results of the Spanish conquest that contradict, iv a very striking manner, many current notions on the subject, and that prove Spanish colonisation to have been accompanied by advantages to the native tribes among whom it was made, which were higher than anything the much boasted British colonisation has conferred upon the people inhabiting the lands where it fixed its seat. The Bishop chose Mexico for his subject, and testified eloquently to the civilising part that the Church had, from the earliest days of the conquest, played there. Indeed, in all the history of British colonisation there is nothing that in any degree approaches the manner in which provision was made for the progress in education of the newly-acquired country. Prescotf, said the Bishop, has represented the Spanish missionaries as bigoted and ignorant men who had undertaken the conversion of the Indians by fanatical means alone. The truth, however, was far otherwise. — " la 1521 ihe city of Mexico was razed to the ground by the exasperated Castilians ; before the end of the century it bad not only been rebuilt on the best European plans, but it was one of the most populous, civilised and beautiful cities then existing in the world. . . . The conqueror died in 1546 ; only five years later, in 1551, the Emperor Charles V. signed the charter for the erection of the Mexican University, which was opened two years later. Immediately learned professors from Salamanaca, then one of the four most celebrated seats of learning in the civilised world, left the mother country with a full cargo of books and scientific instruments, and a staff not only of masters, but even of students. In fact, twenty years after its foundation, the number of scholars was so great that a new site had to be ptocured and enlarged, and the stern magistrates of the Colony wanted it to be removed to a spot where that swarm of noisy alumni might not disturb their deliberations.'* The plan of the University was that which Cardinal Newman has drawn out in our own days, and the fruits of the courses followed there were abundant— Balbuena and Alarcon, celebrated Spanish authors, especially having been among its earliest students. " Allow me," continued the Bishop, "to give you a few dates and numbers. In 1521, as I have said above, the city of Mexico was finally conquered.- In 1525 an ecclesiastical college, asort of petit siminaire, cailed in Spanish Colegio de Infantes, was opened close to the new Cathedral. In 1529 the College of St. John Lateran, and in 1533 St. Paul's College — the latter exclusively for Indians — were founded. In 1544 the Seminary of the Archdiocese waa duly established, according to the decrees issued by the Council of Trent. In 1533 the university was opened, as we have already stated. In 1575 the Jesuits founded the renowned college of St. Ildephonsus, and the Angustinians another athenneum, dedicated to St. Paul. And by this time St. Raymond's and Christ's Colleges, and a great number of school^ were attended by a large number of both Indian and Spanish' childrefn. ' In 1534 a new college for Aztecs rose in the old cit^ °f Tlaltclolco, then part of the newly-built apital,"

Mexico, then, was the first seat of learning on the American continent and the Church At once claimed her right to fulfil bier mission there also of being the teacher of the world. It was in Mexico, as well; that the printing press was, set up for the first time on the American continent :— " Through tne kindness of the University, I reeelve, ladies and gentlemen^gjmd read with pleasure and attention! the two periodicals bo -fpautifully printed at this institution. X see the interest taken by the able President in refilling th« library destroyed by the great fire ; and in the catalogue of the books lately procured I see the title of the first Catholic book published in the United States. All this makes me think again and again of a venerable monk, who in a time whan books were not ao abundant nor so cheap as they are now, bronght over from the Old World thousands and thousands of them ; and, finding that this was' not enough to diffuse knowledge and religion among the conquerors and the conquered, transported both a press and a printer, and inaugurated, by publishing one of bis • own works, that era of innumerable newspapers and pamphlets and books in which we live., His name ought to be pronounced with reverence and gratitude by all thoaj who love science and civilization, by every man who was born or lives in Amerioa. It was the first Bishop and Archbishop of Mexico, Don Fray Juan Zumarraga, It was as early as 1540. The first Viceroy of New Spain, Mendozi, helped the Archbishop in bis glorious work; the celebrated editor Cromberger of Seville furnished the materials and the men ; John Pablos was the name of the typographer chosen to cross the Atlantic, and an abridgment of " Christian Doctrine," in both the Spanish and Aztec languages, was the first book ever issued by the press in the New World. When you see, ladies and gentlemen, those enormou3 sheets on which the Herald is published ; when yon admire the beautiful engravings which adorn the splendidly printed books daily issued at New York and Philadelphia, please do not forget the poor friar who brought to the New World this wonderful art ; and you may feel proud of belonging to the Catholic Church, which has ever been and ever will be at the head of civilization." We find, then, in. all this a contradiction as remarkable a3 it 'v undeniable of the common notions rs to the character of the Spanish colonisation.— We find, what is more important, another full and coavincing refutation of the calumny that the Catholic Church is the enemy of education and progress, and we also find an evidence in all the admirable addresses from which we quoted of the nature of those ecclesiastics who preside in Mexico^over the people upon whose faith, according to various foolish publications made of late, sectarian meddlers cherish designs which they themselves consider hopeful. And in addition to what we may gather from the details we have quoted, and from the character of the Bishop of Linares' address gener illy we may add in testimony to the enlightenment thar prevails among Mcx can churchmen, the fact Btated by the Bishop that a brother prelate, now the Archbishop of Mexico, had been about to devote a great portion of that wealth with whose possession the Church ha 3 been reproached to the construction of a Bystem of railways within the country, an I also connecting it with Guatemala and the United States — a plan which was hindered by the Revolution which drove that Bishop out of the country, plundered the Church and retarded civilisation in aa unmeasured if not an irreparable degree. But let us conclude iv the words of the Bishop — referring to the completion of the railway uniting Mexico with the States :— " We must give honour to whom honour is due. Both your country and mine resound with the praises of the present Government of Mexico, which accomplished what promises - to contribute much towards the well-being of the people of both Republics. What the Civil Government has don's with borrowed money the Church was going to do with her own resources. What the President has performed, listening to the suggestions of some of your countrymen, the Archbishop was about to carry out motuproprie inspiredTonly by his great soul, and by the spirit ever active of the Catholic Church, of which he is such a worthy prelate. Let us not t therefore, forget the Mexican Church in this eventful year, and give her the share of praise and thanksgiving she fully deserves, even for the latest improvements ia that part of the American Continent." And, alluding to the Church generally, he added :— " Now, ladies and gentlemen, what are the practical conclusions we should draw from the historical facts to which I have briefly referred ? First of all we must conceive great admiration for the Holy Catholic Church, and be proud of being her children. She is ever the same, full of life and ' euergy, and vigour. Whether uutltr the Roman. Emperors, or in the

Italian Republics of the Middle ages, whether under the absolute power of Charles V., or the free institutions of the United States, sbe is always thirsting after the salvation of souls, anxious for the diffusion of knowledge, and science, and civilisation. When she finds nothing but the sands of the desert, or rugged mountains, or impenetrable forests, she, as Holy Scripture says, '« runs over them, exulting like a' giant"; if she sees steamboats and railways, she takes possession of them, and onward she moves more rapidly than any human institution. To her, therefore, and not to local circumstances, you must attribute the great progress of religion and science in the United States during the last fifty years. Not satisfied with what has been done, you must persevere until the end, and advance more and more, making use of that liberty which you enjoy at present, and taking care that this liberty be.not restrained, as the Catholic Church acquires more influence and extends her glorious realm over a larger number of souls."

The news reaches us that Mr. James Anthony AN Froude is coming out to visit these colonies — proUN welcome bably with the motive, in part, which wholly led visitor. him to visit America— that is, of vilifying the Irish people, and stirring up hatred and enmity against them. And in these colonies he will find the soil better prepared for such an undertaking, and he will be encountered by no Father Tom Burke (God lett his soul) to thwart bis purpose, and refute all his evil arguments. Air. Froude, moreover, has been making ready for such an enterprise and refreshing his spirit for the unequal fray. H e has been directing a ]ady in the publication of a book dealing with Irish matters, and stirring up once more a foul mass of calumny and gross exaggeration that has furnished the excuse to a multitude of slanderers for^houndingdown the Irish name ; that has, moreover, furnished an excuse' to more than one self -constituted Moses for slaughtering the '• Canaanites," as it pleased him and others to style the Irish people. The subject to which we allude is the rebellion of 1641, and the preface to Miss Hickson's work, from Mr. Froude's pen, contains the following passage :— « We are now asked to \ believe that the entire story was a fabrication invented by the Puritan English as an excuse for stiipping the Irish of their lands ; that there never was any massacre at all ; that not a Protestant was killed, save in fair fight andopen war ; and that the evidence collected by Commissions and published to deceive Europe is so extravagant that a glance suf . fices to detect its woitblessness. This account of the events of 1641 and of the years succeeding has been allowed to grovv.without serious contradiction till it has come to be universally received and believed by the Irish people both at home and in America ; and being believed it lies among the causes which have exasperated the Irish race into their present attitude. They regard themselves as having been made the victims of abominable calumnies. Nor is it only irresponsible agitators who tell them so, but reverend and grave historian*, some of whom go so far as to say that there could have been no maseacie. Thus, in the absence of any clear rejoinder, judgment is going by default, and we are sliding into an acknowledgment that the Long Parliament and their officers in Ireland were the real criminals, and successfully carried through a conspiracy so base and infamous that Sir Phelim O'Neil and his confederates seem innocent in comparison.'.' But the habit of falsehood is inveterate and Mr. Froude practises it inevitably. He knows that what he implies here is false. He knows that an acute examination has been made into the rebellion of 1641, that the evidence has been sifted, and that at least one impartial and capable writer has given a tatement of the case that has been the last word to be said to any fairly-judging man on the subject. He has certainly read Mr. Lecky's History of England in the Eighteenth Century, and found c investigation of the rebellion made there, and the conclusions arrived at, unanswerable. That there were cruelties and massacres perpetrated no one denies— the Pope's Legate at the time deplored them and expressed astonishment at their commission by Catholic people— but that there was a gigantic, causeless, massacre of innocent settlers is wholly unsupported by evidenca — and that Protestants, as Miss Hickson would make out, were slain as such at all is very doubtful. It is dispioved completely that an indiscriminate slaughter of Protestants was the beginning of the movement. It began in the expulsion of the English— the Scotch, who formed the large majority of settlers, being uninterfered with—and under the excitement caused by a repo:t that the conversion of the Irish Papists was to be cairied out at once with the Bible in one hand anl the sword in the other— a report, together with others, encouraged by the Lords Justices, who were anxious tbat an outbreak 6hould occur in order to briHg about a renewal and extension of confiscations. And the people knew what conversion witn the Bible and sword meant. Its meaning had been handed down to them from the days of Queen Elizabeth— when her gallant captains and valiant champions of the gospel did everything among their fathers that could be done by men but one degree, and hardly that, removed from the nature of the devils themselves. Whatever the enormities were that were perpetrated in the rebellion of 1641, there was abun-

dant precedent for them in the doings of the English troops and • settlers — as at the time they were accompanied by enormities on the English side fully as terrible, and followed up by a long course of vengeance that could not be surpassed in its fiendish brutality. The people were and continued to be murdered iv every way in which it was possible to murder them, they were put to the sword : they were burned in their houses ; they were burned jn the , gorse of the fields. Wharever they were found at home or abroad they were killed; at sea they were tied two by two and thrown overboard, on land they were slain according to the invention of tbfi murderers ; in one day alone 80 women and children were thrown over a bridge in Scotland and drowned, or shot as they floated in the water, because, and only because they were the wives and children of Irishmen. But the constant ruthless murder of Irish children gave rise to a proverb— -'Nits will make lice," a nasty saying indeed, but one good enough for the purpose, and characteristic of the ruffians who invented it. There was no need for Cromwell to go over and make himself an especial Moses to avenge the rebellion of 1641. It had beeu well avenged before ever he set a foot in the country, by the wsr of extermination by which it was encountered before it had existed many weeks, and which continued long after it had been repressed. But, if, as Mr. Frjude implies, the Puritans and the Long Parliament werj justified in following up, a3 they did with" all atrocity, the* rebellion of 1641 had not the Irish rebellion been justified by the fiendish doings that had gone before? Or by what right does the English nation claim a monopoly of murder ? Mr. Froude pretends again that Miss Hickson's book may serve the purpose of calming th.3 exwpacation of the Irish people generally at believing that they had been calumniated by the. statements made concerning the rebellion of 1641, calming exasperation that is by the reiteration of statements that had been completely disproved and shown to be calumnious, as Mr. Froude very well knows. But in this pretence, Mr. Froude is true to himself, true to his sincerity, his honesty and humanity. Mr. Froude then, will come to .us with a great reputation, with a heart full of.a life-long, bitter hatred, with a false and unscrupulous tongue or pen, and as capable as ho is willing to~do us Irish Catholic colonists, a deadly injury. We have heard of his intention with alarm.

Archdeacon Farrar, when preaching at West non-catholic minster the other day in aid of some charitable testimony, fund, spoke highly of work done in Wales by a certain. Catholic priest, who, by the utmost selfsacrifice, by the aid of poverty and celibacy, had rescued from utter degradation an Irish Catholic population and been the means of providing them with schools and churches — and the archdeacon drew from his example the lesson that to the success of the Church of England among the masses the c is necessary a class of mission clergy, not bound by an irrevocable vow, but devoted to a life of poverty and celibacy in the service of the poor. Archdeacon Farrar would further improve his Church by instituting tertiary orders such as those whom St. Francis and St. Dominic united to their great orders in the middle ages, and who carried into lay society blessings akin to thoso the religioas enjoyed in their cloisters. Archdeacon Farrar, indeed, joins the name of Wycliffe with those of ibe saints mentioned by him, but why he does so, unless it is, to fall in with the fashion of the day when the heresiarch's memory is honoured by a world that certainly cannot understnni the true nature of his work, it is hard to say. Wycliffe sent out no heroes to work among the poor in poverty and celibacy, and the whole effect of his revolt upon the masses, so far as it had any lasting effect, was to prepare them for the debasement we have recently heard described by a foreigner who travelled in England at the period of the Beformation, and which alone would have sufficed to account for the ease with which the great falling away took place there. But to speak of poverty and celibacy in connection with a Protestant Church is to make use of a contradiction in terms. The pioneers of Protestantism, the rebels against the Church who laid the foundations of the Protestant system, employed as their chief corner-stones states the direct contrary to those of poverty and chastity. The enjoyment of this world's goods in abundance, unstinted enjoyment, was a chief point among their doctrines, and must it be departed from now in the fourth century oi their system's triumph to ensure its success ? Is it not frequently urged by Protestant apologists and the polemical writers with which the sects swarm,- that a sure proof of the superiority of the Protestant creed is the assumed greater wealth of the Protestant peoples ? And shall it be necessary now to perfect Protestantism by having recourse to poverty ? Shall it be necessary, in order to make the system of Luther effective for the good of the masses, that the assistance of the celibacy should be sought against which Luther raved with an almost worse than demoniacal raving '! Poverty and celibacy, the religious orders and their tertianes, are in the blood oT the Catholic Church. They rest upon her foundations, and with all their benefits and all their blessings spring naturally from her as the fruit springs from its particular tree. They derive their nourishment from her,

and divided from her would shrivel ami pe. ish. They have no relatunship with the Anglican Church, or any other Pr-testant system, but are opposed to it utterly, and an attempt to give it life by means of them, as it would be wholly unnatural, must pr >ye abortive. But jet us recognise the homage, and it is no light one, rendered to Cathohe celibacy and poverty— the two s^af^s in connection with the Calhohc Church that Protestants have the most ridiculed, the most calumniated, and the most abused— by so high a Protestant divine and authority as Archdeacon Far ar. There is an answer here to a world of anti-Catholic controversy.

But every day brings us fresh testimony to what »RUIT6 op A the lives are of tfaoee who live in the celibacy and catholic poverty sustained by the grace that is to be found in Education the Catholic church alona. Even while we write

... we are persuaded that in those s'.reets where the cholera is raging the Catholic priest and brother, and the Catholic nun, are to be found, forgetful of themselves, and offering their lives in theserviceof thepestilence stricken people. Already we have received the news that the Sisters of Charity, recalled for the occasion to the French hospitals, had lost several of their members whose places were as usual taken by others of the community. And much to the purpose at the present time, a life has lately been publishel of Louise de Marillac, the foundress who under the direction of St. Vincent de Paul established the order in France more than two bundred years ago. It is, as the saints' lives always are, a record of what may well beem to us more that human virtue. Not only was this high-born and delicately nurtured lady induced to consecrate herself to the service of the poor, at all times no light task when thoroughly performed, but her devotioa from th<ivery first was put to more than ordinary trials. The order in its infancy, and before it had as yet been regularly formed or received the sanction of the Holy See, ■uffered, as it were, its baptism or fire by the plague which ravaged a part of the country, and amidst which Louisj and her daughters nobly devoted themselves, afterwards to their experiences of pestilence that of war being added in the disturbances attendant on the Frotule wherein a report that St. Vincent was the partisan of the Queen brought them i»to danger from tha populace of Paris, never a tender enemy with which to deal— So bravely, moreover, did the Sisters bear themselves in all their difficulties, and so fully and faithfully did they perform the various works of charity undertaken by them, that it was to them the mind of the Queen of Poland who had seen them serving in the Hotel Dieu, turned when the Cossacks and Tartars were let loose upon her unhappy country, and there also their heroic virtues were the cause of wonder to all who beheld them.— And ever since, they have never failed, — to record a tithe of what they have done would need an enduring pea ami many a roam of paper ; from East to VVe3t, from North to South— among all conditions of m9n their devotion form? a common theme. Ths unwilling but practical witness of the atheistical rulers of France, the hardly cordial testimony of Archdeacon Farrar stronger even in what it implies than in what it expresses, are noble evidences to C itholic works, to tbe character especially that is the pure result of Catholic teaching and to be produced in no other way. Let us add as a more particular testimony the following which also comes from non-Catholic quarters : — "Colonel J. S. Dormer, of tbe Drover, Oolora-io, Mint, says tbe Registor Call, received the following letter from Judge Belford a few days ago, which shows that the Judge is not forgetful of a favour : ' Our little daughter is out of danger, and we owe it largeiy to the kindly nursing of Sister S\ Osmond, who was sent to me by Father Sullivan. I think if I had such a " Sister " when Bessie was siok »c could have gotten through, but I bad not sense enough at that time to fully comprehend the sweet charities of the Catholic ordeis. A more faithful disciple never f>llowed Christ than this Sister has been through this sickness of my chill. You know that I have alw.ty* been a Free Thinker, but I have come to believe in the divinity of these Orders of Sisterhood whose loving kindness make our homes ia hours of distress blaze with comfort. There is such a softness an I sweetness about their manner, there is such a long patience and endurance, that, turbulent as we are, we feel quieted, and above all exceedingly grateful to tbe Church that has furnished them. Very truly your friend, James B. Pelford.'" Meanwhile, from the hospital, from the orivatc home, and frjm the world generally tyrants, and calumniators, foold, and kuaves, or those who are b>lh together ; bad Catholics, Evangelicals, Jews and Atheists, are united in one unclean band to drag away the strong but tender hands »f the Sister of Charity— the product of Catholic teaching, and of that alone.

By a paragraph that ia now going the rounds of the

A notabor papers, we learn that another explorer in Jerusalem dirc o V KKT. has found another tomb which he pronounces to be the Holy Sepulchre— utterly repudiating the un. broken tradition that since the reign of Constantine has pointed out the place where the body of the Lord was laid, and to which the pilgrimages of the Christian world have been made from the earlieit

-ages. And one of the proofs advanced by this explorer for tno authenticity of his discovery is— although we would avoid a jest in connection with so sacred a theme— that there is in the tomb in question, in accordance with the Greek rather than the Hebrew usage -"a shelf where two angels could have sat, one at the head and the other at the feet." Our explorer, no doubt, is also an authority as to the nature of the sitting-room required by angels 1 But to an explorer who professes a belief in the presence of the angels in the tomb, and who would consequently seem to hold tha truth of the Gospel Darrative, it might be thought there could be little doubt a? to the fact that the Holy Sepulchre has not remained through all these ages undiscovered. To such a one, moreover, it might be thought that there would be a most irrefutable proof as to the locality of the Holy Sepulchiein the condition of the rock that formed the spot on which the Saviour's Cross was erected, and which to this day boars the marks of having been rent, in a transverse fissure—acknowledged by men of science to have been impossible of formation either by natural means or by an ordinary earthquake. Ths tradition, however, as to the site of the Holy Sepulchre is older than the time of Constantino. It was old in the time of Hadrian, and had come down to him from the apostolic days, for, as it has been proved beyond all doubt, by the discovery of the peculiar lamp 3 dating front the first years of Christianity, Jerusalem, even after its destruction, continued to be the place where a numerous body of Christians resided, and they had surely never forgotten the site of Calvary and the sepulchre close adjoining. Hadrian had erected on these sitas a temple of Venus and one of Jupiter, and it was the knowledge of this fact that guided the Empress 8\ Helena in her search—underneath the foundations of these temples when they were removed, she found what she sought. "When Constantino heard from his mother that her pions labours had been rewarded by this happy discovery," writes. a recent traveller, ia the July number of the Month, "he wrote to Macarius, Bishop of Jerusalem, to spare no expense or pains in constructing on the holy ground a Basilica of surpassing magnificence. Completed in 335, it was razed to the ground in 604 by Chosroes, King of Persia, who carried off with him the relic of the True Cross. This was recovered by the Emperor Hcraclius, in 629, and replaced in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, which had been rebuilt by Modeatus, Bishop of Jerusalem. Unable, for want of means, to restore the grand Basilica of Constantino, Modestns was obliged to content himself with building four small churches ; the Churches of the Holy Sepulchre, of Golgotha, of the Invention of the Holy Cross, and of the Blessed Virgin. These four chnrches were once more united under a single roof when the crusaders became masters of the Holy City. The Basilica, many times partially destroyed and rebuilt, has undergone great vicissitudes, bnt the sacred spots, for ever hallowel by .the D^ath anl Resurrectioa of the Redeemer, have, from the beginniug to this day, been surrounded by the love, the yen ratioj, an 1 the devotion of CarUtians of all rites and natious. It was reserved for sceptics in this unbelieving age to attempt to raise doubts about that which, from the beginning, was never doubted. They are the oily losers ; thsy leave Jerusalem disappointed and disgusted, whilst th-j children of the Church, happy pilgrims of the love of our Divine Ljrl, any away with them memories that will be a joy for ever. ' Bat then, if thjre was no room for angels t> sit dovn, what caa ba said? and pcrhips the argument in question is sufficiently conclusive as to the autho:i;y of our explorer. As to his other argument that Golgotha, at the time of the Crucifixion, was .without the walls, and that it is now inside them, it is but of little worth, and has frequently bien refuted.

Comparisons are not complimentary at times, and the ©fore we question if Mr. Macfarlane would care to have his conduct contrasted with that of Mr. John A. Blaktr, M.l*, for the county Waterford. Mr. Blake frids himself unable at times to vote conscientiously with Mr. Parnall and tbe Irish party. What course does Mr. Blake pursue in this contingency ? Does he hold his seat in defiinseof his constituents, and vole in opposition to the dearest wi>h<-8 and feelings of the m-n who returned him? No ! Like an honourable man he tells his nonstifr'ents that he cannot act as they would wNh, and on Wednesd*y he issued a farewell add res* in which he took leave of the representation of Waterford.— Nation, July 19.

The Tory Press have been saying that there is no great interest in the Franchise Bill felt by the English people, and that any endeavour io get up an agitation amongst them on that subject must be a failure. But the Tory j )urn;ils hive spoken too sojn. T >cv will find their mistake before many weeks have passed over. Tne Irish people will - probably let the English people fight out this battle of Lor Is an I Commons for themselves. The reform of that lumbering old rattletrap, " the British Constitution," does not greatly concern us, seeing that we are governed for the most part without any constitution at all. It is to be hoped, however, that the end of the struggle which is now impending will be such a smashing up and a recasting of the so-called '• Upper House " as will prevent it from ever again becoming an obstacle in the way of human progress. The institution is absurd, antiquated, and indefensible. The idea of a caste of hereditary legislators ia worthy only of the barbarous ages, and the continuance of such a thing is a disgrace to the boasted civilisation of our time. — Nation, July 19.'