Current Topics AT HOME AND ABROAD,

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XII, Issue 23, 26 September 1884, Page 1

Current Topics AT HOME AND ABROAD,

It once happened, to our knowledge, that two A queer charitable and pious ladie3 were discussing with mission, much self-congratulation the good deed they had performed in rescuing a certain clown from the temptations that surrounded him, and setting him up comfortably in a Ices exciting line of life. A lady, however, who did not pass for being especially pious, stood by, and she caused some slight disturbance by quietly but suggestively inquiring—" And who is now clown in his place ? " We have been reminded of this by an article in which the Saturday Review deals with the efforts of one Miss Barlee, who, it Beems, has been occupied in the rescue of children employed in the acting of the pantomime on the London stage— one only out of ten of those who apply being engaged. But while the nine rejected are apparently left to their fate unheeded, the chosen one has been made the obj *3t of solicitude, and the aim of a work of conversion. Miss B^rlee has written a bosk on the subject, and dedicated it appropriately to Lori Shaftesbury, and the Saturday Review cuts up the book, the work, and Miss Barlee all together, in a very amusing manner, suggesting that there is a donbtful kindness in taking awsy children from an occupation, that will always endure, whatever particular children may be taken away from it, in order that they may, at an infinitely reduced rate of wages, be Ret to maVe match boxes or roll up black lea lin paper parcele. " Pantomime children, we hear," says the Review, " like their life and their profession. So few of us who have any profession like our lives, that it seems really cruel to diminish the number of the contented by means of illuminated texts " (one of the instruments of conversion). " Yet an imp's life is not always a happy one. These little artists delight in taking the parts of animals, especially when two chiliren go to make up one beast. But even here the head has to be kept thrown back for a long time, aLd, of course, the heat must be intense • Much endurance has to be borne by children,' siys oar honts voyager into pantomime land, admitting, by the way, that ' no one in the present state of the labour market, denounces the occupation as wrong.' Thus it appears that morality depends on the state of the labour market. An opposite and sterner view must be held by the owners of the ' Christian influences ' which converted the ministering Demon (one of the children mentioned). The real cruelty comes in when a poor child has become perfect as a wolf or a crab, but has outgrewn his crab-sbell or bis wolf-skin, 'To 6ave the purchase of a new skiu, the child is forced into an old one,' than which no form of meanness can be more detestable. Sometimes, too, a Blue Fiend with bat wings and a forked tail has been found writhing benea'h the cane of a cruel mistress. The Blue Fiend bad outgrown its wings, and could not nutter naturally in the circumstances. No training is needed for a wave, who merely runs about on all-fours under a painted ocean, and earns three and sixpence for this delightful form of industry." Such are the occupations and the sufferings of the children to whose reclamation Miss Barlee has devoted herself. Ihe nine rejected for the one chosen, meantime, as we said, being allowed to grow up uninterfered with, and abandoned to the guidance of the disposition that would have made them " pantomime imps " — had they been fortunate enough to secure the opening they sought. But do we not find in this lady's devotion some indication of the motive that seems to inspire many self-appointed heralds of the Gospel— that is the desire of distinguishing themselves and coming before the public in connection with something that is unusual, remarkable, or interesting in some particular manner ?— For that is undoubtedly a common incentive to missionary undertakings on the part of our friends the Evangelicals.

" The heart searches for its vanished kindred, and hope FOB the it will not be Sieve that they cease to be, or that its PBOTESTANT interest in them or theirs in it is broken. It is a world. universal Eentiment of humanity wbich has survived, and will survive, all the sophistries of speculation.. . . . And it is the same instinct which prompted the custom of praying for the dead— a custom which prevailed and still prevails among the Jews, and which pervades the earliest literature

of Christianity. How natural the habit is comes out incidentally in one of the Princess Alice's letters. * Ernie ' [her eldest boy] 'always prays for Frittio, and talks to me cf him when we walk together.' And with equal naturalness Tennyson, in his Ode on the Duke of Wellington, prays for the soul of the great Captain. The reader will remember, too, a beautiful passage in the Morte a" Arthur, where the duty of praying for the dead is argumentatively enjoined in the person of the poet's hero :— * Pray for my soal. More things are wrougbt by prayer Than this world dreams of, wherefore let tliy voice ' * Rise liko a fountain for me night and day. For what are men better than sheep or goats That nourish a blind life within the brain, If, knowing God, they lift not bands of prayer Both for themselves and those who call them friend ? For bo the whole world round is every way Bound by gold chains about the feet of Ood.' The fact is we all pray for the dead— at least all loving hearts do. When our beloved pass away from us we follow them with our longing thoughts ; we speculate on their condition and their work in the world unseen ; we wish them well. Ani what is a wish but an anexpressed prayer ? ' Every good and holy desire,' says Hooker, ' though it lack the form, hath notwithstanding in itself the substance and with Him the force, of a prayer, "Who regardeth the very moan* ings and sighs of the heart of man.' In troth, to forbid prayers for the dead is to undermine the doctrine of prayers for the living." Our quotation is taken from an article on the Princess Alice written in the Fortnightly Review by the Rev. Malcolm M'Coll, and it may surprise many of our readers to find such an expression of opinion coming from a Protestant pen. What part of the Church's creed, in fact, has been more ridiculed or more condemnei by the Protestant world generally than that connected with prayers for the dead ? From the time of the Reformation, when countless endowments left by pious and charitable people in order that Mas<es for their own souls and those of others might be perpetually offered, were plundered by greedy apostates, down to the latest hoar at which an anti« Catholic boanerges has thundered at Kxeter Hall, the Catholic doctrine in question has been most violently, and even most brutally, assailed. Yet, now we are told by a Protestant divine that the instinct that prompts to such prayers is a universal sentiment of humanity, and tbat to refrain from prayers for the dead is to threaten the doctrine of prayers for the living.— The Cburch, then, according to this high Protestant testimony, has been right all these ages in which she bas been so grossly condemnei,— and i Protestantism has been denouncing the tiuth and stands convicted of having robbed the dead of the prayers that were their due, as well as bound the human heart in cruel chains that curbed and Btunted its most holy feelings. — But a belief in the prayers of the living for the dead olmost in volves a belief in the prayers of the dead for the living, and much more, and that section of the Protestant world that accepts the one belief bids fair to accept the others also.— Let us hope that the gratitude of the holy souls, no longer neglected, and the intcrcesaion oE the saints no longer abhorred, may obtain for the world in question the grace of a full conversion.

Under the title of "Official OpUmism," in the A failure Contemporary Review for July, Mr. Francis Peek, through chairman of the Howard Association, brings a central'SATiojt. heavy indictment against the prison system of England, and traces to the centralisation and secrecy which obtain in connection with it many evils and abuses. If it bo true, as ho says it is, that crinn is diminishing, the causes must be asciibed to something else, he maintains, than the discipline of the prisons— for that is sufficiently illu-strat< dby the numerous and heavy offences committed by discharged i ris mers— a complete proof of its inefficient nature being furnished especially by the report for 1882 of the Medical Inspector of Her Majesty's Prisons, in which it is stated that the 21,917 habituU criminals eiuraerated in the prison census had each incurred, on at» average, four previous convictions.— As to the system of criminal treatment, the first fault is attributed by the writer to the law, which makes no provision tor cumulative penalties for repeated off jnces.— A measure, nevertheless, which, if we may juds?e by the outcry somewhat artificially raisai among ourselves at the additional sentences given by certain Visiting Justices, would hardly find favour in the eye 3of a tender-hearted

public, however it might tend to preserve them from the results of criminal enterprise.— The defects in prison treatment itself may be •ummarised in, first, the careless selection, the imperfect training and illiberal treatment of the warders. — Mr. Peek,* we may conclude, not having at the same time, calculated for tin deg-addtion or the dismissal on slight pretences, the wanton removal, or the general disturbance of warders of unexceptionable character, of long training and experience, as well as of valuable services, such as we ourselves have lately witnessed. — But to continue. — " In neglect of the needful means for the moral and social welfare, and in want of discriminating treatment of prisoners, in the exclusion of unofficial moral influences." — But have they not officialised even the moral influences of our owa Mr. Torrence, and placed his piety under the cramptng guardianship of red tape ?— Mr. Peek continues—" in an insufficient number of Discharged Prisoners' Aid Societies ; and most of all in the mingling together of convicts without regard to character or age."— The writer goas on to enlarge upon the evil consequences resulting from the defects he mentions— giving many examples to prove his points— and insisting that centralisation is an unmitigated evil " In regard to the Local Prisons," he says, " the Earl of Kimberley, an imporfcint authority, remarked at the Quarter Sessions for Norfolk, in Octobar last that «li 3 regretted that the local prisons had bjen handed over to t!ie Government. A wjrie measure, he bslieveJ, had never baen passed. Many paople now regretted it ; and none more thaa so no of fie Hjim Offijj authorities.' S'.tcb an opinion is the more deserving of consideration, because Lord Kimberley has had wider opportunities than most men of knowing what prisons really are from his observation and experience while Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, and subsequently as chairman of the Royal Commission on the Penal Servitude Acts." And, again, he writes :-" Tha Home Secretary (the nomiml head of the Prisons Department, and in this respect answering to our own Minister of Justice), " however desirous personally to rectify prisoa abu*e<, is a mere instrument in the hands of permanent officials. The latter, in their turn, are easily kept in ignorance of what ;their own subordinates do. For, under a rigid system of centralisation, such as the prison system, where local magistrates anl Parliamentary victors are liable te be mere ciphers andhavenoexesutivu powers, it becomes, as a shrewd obsarver has remarked * the easiest thing in the world for an active official of any kind to convert the Home Sicretary, or any other nominal controller, into a superfluous wheel in the machinery which goes on spinning and humming to its o*m intense satisfaction, butVhich is practically disconnected from the real and active management.' " The writer's conclusion is as as follows : " Reforms are made slowly in England but the danger to lifo and property arising from the present manufacture of hardene 1 villains out of reclaimable criminals may urge attention to this important subject, even if justice and mercy to fallen men and women fail to exert an influancs. An es^ntial part of any reform must bs the opaning of the prisons to visits from the true Howards anl.Frys of our own time, visits which are not le-s needed by the prisoners now than of old, land which .ire as much in the interests of offiiers aai warders as of the prisoners. But, first of all, we must sweep away that un-English system which centra Uses the administration, leaving it practically to the control of an oligarchy, who not only onnaga it in their own way, bat also fur-ish the only official reports from Whica ths public can at present derive any information." On the whole, then, it may bs of interest to consider how far these remarks apply to prison management among ourselves —which, perhaps, is none the better .of being carried oat on autocratic principles, as it appears to be, rather fian on those that belong to an oligarchy.

Djcep are the mysteries of Parliamentary life, and GROSSLY it v not for those wao are not initiated into them

TTSJU3T.

to eater upon any explanation of the nicer motives

of honourable members. There are, moreover espacial ciracontvicM undsr whic> it bacomes even more, if possible' than extraordinarily diffijult to coTiprehsnd tha manner in which honourable miners are affwted, and among such circumstances those were nob the iaisfc that pi-ivxilel thj o:her day when the representatives of the goldfields assemble! together for the purpose of considering the reply made by the Premier to their represent itioas cjncemin» the abolition of the gold duty. We should have expected that the utmost harmony would have marked the occasion, and that all would have been unanimous as to the absolute necssaity of fha complete abolition of a tax that is certainly among the mo3fc gjariagly unjust to be found in the world. The digger's life is a bard one ; his earnings are precarious, and taken on the average aw very small. He works at a risk, and iv connection with no other occupation than his do we hear of more lamentable accidents, or, parhaps, of so many that are fatal. He is the pioneer of civilisation, moreover, and encounters nature in its roughest state. He commonly pays dear for the necessaries of life, and enjoys but little else, and everything connected with his condition proclaims aloud that he U a man who, if anything, deserves special consideration from the Government of the country— whose

resources he so largely assists to develop a-. A to whose reputation abroad, !J wei las its prosperity at home, his sucoesaf ul oareer is t>f incalculable advantage. For there i«i nothing that more tends to raisa the credit of the Colony in Jthj Old World, or to attract emigrants to its J3hore3 thin the proluction of gold. Why, therefore, the digger, of all men in th 3 Colony should pay an exceptional tax it is hard to sty — but it is by no rmans hard to perceive that the tax is an unjust one. Th 3 property-tax itself which has proved so unpopular, aid been felt a3 so great a hardship by those whose industry ha I placj'l them in poisjasion of soai3 moderate belongings sin*? into insignificance compare! 1 with th 3 tax that falls on the digger, owning no iniepsadjnee, but oa the contrary probably depending on the price o£ the grid for which he has toiled so htrd, to live and work until another turn of luck rewards his efforts. It is a tax. openly leviel oa an important industry, and concerning who?e unfairness and impolitic nature there seems room for little doubt. Compare this taxation, for example, with the manner in which it is proposed to encourage the manufacture of beet-svgar — an industry almost certain to prove a failure, as it has proved' elsewhere, from want of abundant labour— and let us hope those industries that require many hands at starvation wages may never thrive in New Zealand— and the injustice will become more apparent. Here an uncertain industry is in a manner encouraged by protection ; there an industry of vast importance is impeded by a tax— and a class, who, of all others are labouring hard already under great disadvantages from the vary n itur.s of their work, are subjected to an additional weight, and madj bear far more than their share of the public burden — for they already pjy the ordinary taxation in common with all other Sit to argue concerning so apparent an injustice should sesm mere waits oE time — and were we not obliged to recognise facts as thjy exist, it would appear to us that all said in favour of the abolition of this duty was mere empty verbiage. Whatever, thea, may hive beea the differences of the goldfields members in committee, or whatever the shindies that arose among them, for it is even rap irted thit such took place— we may believe that they will prove united and energetic in advancing the intere sts of the Bill by which so glaring an injustice is to be rectified , and that their efforts will succeed in having it passed. The wonder is that need for such a Bill should ever have come into existence.

If we had needed anything to convince us of the the liberals violent nature of the so-called Liberals of the world unveiled and of their determination to bend all things to

suit their own needs and views, we should have found it amply in the conduct of the defeated party in Belgium.— Their overthrow was met with repeated riot, with threats of the most scandalous kind, and so loud were they in their denunciations that the processions of the Fete Dieu were abandoned to avoid their fury , the Catholic ecclesiastics and their people thus giving an example of moderation and conciliatioa that we should look for in vain among the enlightened of the century by whom they are denounced as bigots and would-be tyrants. But of the tyranny, again, of the Liberals a good proof was given in the fact that at onca on their overthrow the children of the Government officials who bad attended the secular schools were removed from them and entered on the rolls of the Catholic schools from which the reasonable fear of their parents had evidently excluded them, and a proof was thus given that as usual our liberal friends themselves do what they accuse the Catholic priest hood of doing, that is, they force on people submitted to their influence the method of education that they themselves approve of* without consulting the will of the people in question. And now a cablegram informs U3 that the King of the Belgians has refused to veto the School-Bill, from which we learn that the Liberals had appealed to the King, and perhaps even sought to frighten his Majesty, so that his power might be brought to bear upon Catholic parents* and subject them to the enemies of their faith and of the souls of their children. But from nothing more than from this attempt can we judge of the metal of which our Liberals are made. The nature of the education Bill introduced by the Catholic party is of a a extreme moderation ; — it conclusively and most strikingly illustrates the difference that exists between the liberality of the Catholic and that of the Liberal, and gives a triumphant reply to the old argument of the narrowness of Catholics and their resolution, were the power in their hands, to educate the whole world in their own way, whether it would or no. The particulars of the bill in question we take from the London Tablet, and, they will be found to bear out all wo have said, or even much more. "It aims at imitating the English system, and, not to go into wearisome details, the idea is simply this, to say that each commune, or, in some cases, two communes united must have a school ; and to leave to the commune the right to decide what sort of a school it shall be — religious or secular —only, that if it is religions, and twenty fathers of children within the school age demand a secular communal school, one must be provided at the expense of the tax-payers. If the communal school is secular, Catholics may, without restriction found and maintain another, but at their own expense. And what-

ever school there is, its efficiency must be certified by Government inspection." Could anything be fairer or more moderate than this f And can anyone deny that the Liberals who are furiously opposing such a bill, and wbo have even endeavoured to make the King veto it, deserve to be named tyrants. Belgium shows the Libeials to us in their true character, and it is to b 3b 3 h >ped the whole Catholic world will take the warning *o a man. Union against them can still prevail.

Wb have been favoured by the Christchurch branch A GRACIOUS of the Irish National League with the following BBCOositiok. letter, which has afforded us much gratification. „ „ " Christchurch, September 20, 1884. Tne Editor of the N. Z. Tablet, Dear Sir,-I am instructed by the president of the Cbnstchurch branch of the Irish National League to tender you the best thanks of the branch for your consistency and unwavering kindness and courtesy both in always inserting very long reports of its meetings, and for giving free advertisements, together with defending the principles of the organisation generally in your leadmg columns.— l remain, with respect, faithfully yours, P. Leahy Hon. Treasurer." We cannot, however, take credit to ourselves for any exceptional kindness in the matter, or admit that we have performed more than a very ordinary duty towards our far off native land and its cause. We have felt it an honour to publish those reporta that have been furnished us from time to time, and in which we found so cheering an evidence of the faithfulness of Irishmen and the patriotism that, wherever it truly exists, is one of the most eonobling characteristics of mankind. To what better use, indeed, could we turn our columns than to fill them with the records of such a patriotism, or to make them the means of ministering to that sentiment by collecting in tbem from every part of the world in which they were to be found the reports of the proceedings and efforts of Irishmen iv their attempt to liberate their country, and all that was in any degree connected with what we must regard as the most sacred cause, apart from what is purely religious and devotional, tbat is to ba found on earth ? There is nothing which we have heard said, or which we ourselves could say with regard to the objects of the Irish League that we regard as too strong, too passionate, or too highly coloured. The struggle of the League is a war waged without bloodshed for the rights of a people oppressed for centuries, but never conquered— for whose subjugation all means have been employed that the open violence of more barbarous ages, or the plausible, partly concealed injustice and force of the present could invent. Tne past and the present, indeed, are brought together by many of Ireland's enemies in an attempt to perpetuate the miseries of the people, and, by recounting the calumnies that of old accompanied the iron hand that smote them down, to justify a course of injustice and tyranny that to everyone must seem palpably inconsistent with the boasted pnndples of the tfinete -nib. amtury. And it is asp etaele of which Irishmen may well be prjui when they see how firmly, how unfalteringly, un loterreJ by blim-, o; ridicule, or sl.tn.ler— the weapons fiercely usdd agiiust ie by those to whom the ear of the world h mo.«t open— the brave phalanx that hoi Is in its hanls the fortunes of the nation stands its ground and is making headway. Our enemies are driven to their wits' end— one flies for muuitiun.3 of war to the rebellion of 1641, and details over again the horrible old-tissue of falsehoods that has been more than once most fully exposed ; another goes back to the diys of Qjeen Elizibeth, and assures his readers that the country was then in a most deplorable state of immorality, and that bands of abindoned women, and other vile wretches were to be found parading the highways in every direction. As it may well havj been, fur eve y country ia the world that has been similarly used, has shows similar effects. Nay, Scotland, so late as the en I of the seventeenth century, under an infinitely milder system of oppression, displayed a condition of things much worse than tbat we allude to, and not even the Saturday Review himself, for it was he who ransacked the chronicles of Elizabeth 1 * reign, could find anything so bad to relate of Ireland as Jletcher of Sail oun fort sample, has left on record concerning his own country, « There are," he says, «at this day in Scotland . 200,000 pcopie bagging from door to door. These are not only n© way advantageous, but a very grievous burden to so poor a country ; and though the number of them be perhaps double to what it rose formeily by reason of this present groat distress, yet ia all times there have been about 100,000 of thos^ vagabonds wbo have lived without any regard or subjection either to the laws of the land or even those of God and natuve — fathers incestuouily accompanying with their own daughters, thesjn with the mother, and the brother with the sister. No magistrate co.ild «.ver discover or be informed which way one in a hundred of these wretches died, or that ever they were baptised. Many murders have been discovered among them, and they are not only a most unspeakable oppression to poor tenants (who, if they give not bread or some kind of provision to perhaps forty such villains in one day, are sure to be insulted by thorn), bub they rob many poor people who live in houses distant from any neighbourhood. Ia years of plenty many thousands of them meet together in

the mountains, where they feast and riot for many days ; and at country weddings, markets, burials, and the like public occasions " they ars to be seen both men and women perpetually drank, cursing, b'aspheming, and fighting together," It can hardly be an argument then, against the Ireland of to-day that in the time of Queen Elisabeth and among the horrible brutalities of her captains and their men, numbers of abandoned people were found [rambling about the country. Prom the state of affairs described by Fletcher Scotland was rescued by the establishment of the creed of the majority, and an efficient system of educatioa. But Ireland with the creed of the majority persecuted or discountenanced and education forbidden or imperfectly provided for has remained free from the grossness spoken of and though poor has been at least decent. But what of that to those whose interest it is that she should continue oppressed ? They and their adherents in Parliament, in the Press, everywhere, will unscrupulously employ the weapon of slander and abuse— and the world, including especially the great body of Eaglishmen, will listen and be deceived. It is against this method of warfare backed up •s it has been by coercion and bullying of every kind, that the Irish phalanx are sustaining the combat, and, we say again, that, for our own part, we know if no nobler us?, no more Bacred use apart from matters of pure religion, to which we can put our columns, than that of laying the details of the fight before our readers, with everything that can sustain their interest in it, or encourage them to take such a part in it as lies open to them. In return therefore for the acknowledgement made to ns by^the Christchurch Branch of the League, and to earn for ourselves, if not gratitude which we can hardly deserve, at least the recognition that we have done ourduty, we would takeit upon ns to recommend to the various branches of the League all over the colony to organise the promised collection for the purpose of supporting one member of the Imperial Parliament, and that they may have their due part in the battle that the Irish nationalist phalanx U so raliantly fighting against odds so great and unscrupulous.

Interest in the evolutionary theory has baen evolution revived by certain discoveries made by a Camonce mobb. bridge professor in conaection with the pla*ypus

and the echidna of Australia. — The platypus and the echidna, it seems, lay eggs, and therefore we have all had an ape for our forefather. Professor Max Mtiller, nevertheless, who told us the other day in one of the English monthlies that he had been more surprised at the number of illustrations Darwin had collected in support of an exploded German theory than at its revival by him, will probably still abide by his decision that human speech or language alone suffices to establish an impassable barrier between the man and the beast, and that it could never have been evolved from the jabbering of a monkey.— Professor Virchow, also, will continue to maintain his statement that none of the human skulls, not even the very oldest, as yet found sbows tho least sign of being nnything but fully human, — and Quatrefages will still claim that the distinction of species is as necessary to prevent confusion in the animal world as gray ty is to hinder collision and chaos among the heavenly bodies.— And many men of science will sustain tbe many and insurmountable objections they have made to the truth of Darwiu'd theory.— Whatever may ba the value of the eggs of the platypus and the echidna, then, they will hardly eventually determine, marifl- bestial descent. *• I think/ writes Andre Samon, " it would "be gt/>d to give up the over-extended custom of bowing down before hypotheses that des;rve to be quali« fied as ingenious. I, for.iny>part, distrust them much, because lam convinced they run every risk of never being verified. The true in science is generally simple, and it even onuses astonishment when it ia once established and demonstrated by its simplicity.— We are tempted to ask ourselves how it escaped from being always knownit strikes the intellect so by it 9 evidence . . . The system of the transmuta:ion of species is one of these ingenious conceptions." — It is not true, therefore, as we have seen it stated that the theory of evolution has been universally received as true ; on the contiary, the men of science who reject it are more numerous and of gr»jater authority than are those who accent it.