Current Topics AT HOME AND ABROAD.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XII, Issue 27, 24 October 1884, Page 1

Current Topics AT HOME AND ABROAD.

A raw weeks ago we referred to a review given by fully the London Tablet of a book on the Irish rebellion

confibmed. of 1641, lately published by Miss Hickson, and which review we accused of betraying a discreditable animus, and of being otherwise unfair and injurious. la order to bear ont what we asserted in this matter we shall now take some quotations from the review of the same work that we find in the Atfonaum. The writer, then, takes exception to the men appointed as to examine into the evidence of the enormities alleged'to have been committed. " The task of taking the depositions was intrusted," he says, " not to the regular legal functionaries, but to nine clergymen of the Established Church, who avowed in print political and theological opinions which, at the present day, would be deemed scarcely consistent with official impartiality. No Irish Catholic, layman, or ecclesiastic, was associated with them in the commission. Confidence in the proceedings of clergy of the Established Church in Ireland at the period is not augmented by the characters of some of them, as portrayed by members of their own order." And further on he says, "It is to be regretted that the present publication does not supply details in relation to the personal history of the clergymen before whom the depositions were taken. An account of the career of Henry Jones, the chief of those commissioners, would have furnished curious and interesting illustrations of the times. Jones was, for a time, in a disturbed district of Ulster in 1641-2 ; he acted as envoy from some of the Irish to the Government at Dublin, and was afterwards agent in England for the Protestant clergy of Ireland. He was appointed Bishop of Clogber by Charles 1., and carried on correspondence with the liish then in arms in Ulster. Jones subsequently became Scout-Master to the Parliamentarians, and received a salary of £340 per annum for the compilation of a narrative of ths rebellion in Ireland. After the restoration Jones obtained the See of Meatb, but did not publish the history which he had undertaken, lie died in 1681, and his son and daughter became members of the Boman Catholic Church." A £act, we may remark in passing, that seems to show that nothing very atrocious done by Catholics, as such, had come to the knowledge of the converts in question. But the reviewer had already thus defended the Catholic cause. "The representatives of the Irish Roman Catholics insisted, in their public declarations, that tumultuary and isolated acts of the lower classes should not be regarded as those of the nation. They declared that many of the unoffending Irish had been killed or subjected to inhumane treatment, and urged Charles I. to institute official investigations into alleged massacres and losses. In the publications of Jones and Temple the portions of the depositions which related to murders, cruelties, expressions of enmity to England and to Protestantism were elaborately pnt forward. The | History ' by Sir John Temple, for a time accepted as an authority, is now regarded as untrustworthy. From the depositions Borlase, in 1680, published ' A collection of murders in several counties of Ireland,' which was reprinted at London in 1720. To such compilations Edmund Burke alluded when he wrote that statesmen ' ought not to rake into the hideous and abominable thing 3 which were done in the turbulent fury of an injured, robbed, and persecuted people, and which were afterwards cruelly revenged in the execution, and as outrageously and shamefully exaggerated in the representation." "With regard to reflections on the character of the nation,' adds the writer, "it may be observed that the worst acts ascribed to the period of 1641 in Ireland were exceeded in enormity by the populace of the Hague, when thirty-one years subsequently they murdered Cornelius de Witt and his brother." And, for our own part, we do not recollect to have read even in the horrid extracts quoted from Miss Hickson by the London Tablet, of any case in which the brutal mob cut the flesh from the bodies of the victims they had butchered in the streets and ate it, as the partisans of our glorious William are said to have done at the Hague. Nothing more atrocious than the murder of the De Witts, in fact, has stained the page of history. Our readers, again, will remember' now* tnVLonddri Tablet, in applauding the publication of the details given by Miss Hickson, implied that they

had now, for the first time, been published — but that such was not the case will be plain from wHat the AtJienceum tells us. ," The depositions," he says, " already mentioned, do not appear to have been claimed by the Government as official records. Early in the last century these pap> je in the hands of private book-collectors,, from whom they passi -inky College, Dublin, which baa not, up to the present time any steps towards printing them. The publication before us iickson's book) contains a considerable number of depositic eluding some of those printed by Jones, Temple, and' '•c, as well as others which have of late years appeared, in lin various books. In addition to depositions connected \. i ' 1641, the present volumes contain documents, some of which have been previously published^ concerning < plantations ' in IrSlaud in 1610-1639, and reports of trials in the High Court of justice in 1652-4. Many points, historic documentary, and po'emical, are editorially referred to in connection with the papers ; but it is not our province to enter here upon .a discussion of them. The history of the period to which they relate has, it was truly observed in the last century, been rendered ' amazingly intricate by the writings of different parties and interests." — The Tablet further seemed to accept ifc as proved that the supernatural element that had been supposed to invalidate the evidence touching the rebellion was easily explained by Miss Hickson — the Athenceum neverthless* seems of a different mind. " From passages in the depositions and contemporary documents," he says, "we may perhaps estimate the degree to which belief in the supernatural pre* vailed towards the period of 1641. The Key. George Creigbton, in a statement of the year 1643, printed in the second of the -volumes before us, avers that ' diver 3 women constantly witnessed and affirmed ' to him that a rebel struck three times at the naked body of a young woman * with his drawn sword, and yet never cut her skin ; albeit,' he adds, ' those that know the Irish know that they carry no. swords unless they be very sharp.' Nicholas Barnard, Dean of Ardagh, and chaplain to Archbishop Ussher, wrote in 1642 that he was assured by officers, 'upon their own experience.' that some of the Irish had by charms succeeded in making themselves ' thrustfree, as they called it ; ' and the point of a sword put upon their naked breasts, it could not be made to enter or draw the least blood. ' It is certain,' continned Dean Barnard, ; that at the taking of Newry, a rebel being appointed to be shot upon the bridge, and stript stark naked, notwithstanding the musketeer stood within two yards of him, and shot him in the middle of the back, yet the bullet entered not, nor did him any more hurt than leave a little black spot behind it.' We read in the despositions that at Dungannon in 1641 a vision was seen of ' a woman compassing about the town with a spear in her hand ; when any would approach her, she would go from them, when, any would go from her she would draw near unto them.' Another deponent of the same period state 3 that ' Master Montgomery, minister,' and several others 'of good worth,' reported that 'there was seen a sword hanging in the air, with the point downwards, the haft seeming to be red and the point turned round.' "—On the whole, then we may safely claim that enough has been written by the reviewer fiom whom we quote to bear out the charges made by us against the London Tablet, and we need say no more.

The London Spectator takes Lord Eosebery to task scotch for the opinion expressed by him a little time ago,' worthies. ia unveiling the statue of Robert Burns, that Burns was the greatest Scotchman who ever lived. «• For our own part," says the Spectator, " we should not only claim John Enox and Sir Walter Scott — to whom Lord Jtosebery referred — as vastly greater men than Burns, but many another in every chapter of the history of Scotland of which we have auy thorough knowledge." And a little further on he says — " Exclude the wonderful poetry he wrote, and what sign of greatness, as a man, did Burns give us ? He wrote good and vivid letters, but hardly so good as Mrs. Carlyle. He wrote some good prose descriptions, bat nothing to compare with the prose descriptions of Carlyle. He had large and kindly sympathies, but not larger or kindlier than Sir Walter Scott, and not half so discriminating. He was not ashamed of his order and loved his country ; but how few are the Scotch peasants of whom you could not say the same ? For the rest, Burns did not govern himself even so far as to prevent doing gross and cruel wrongs to those whom he pretended to love ; and though a careful critic of

himself and accustomed to measure shrewdly his own qualities and defectß, it is impossible to deny that his conduct to his wife before his marriage, to say nothing of his conduct after it, deserved a sort of self-contempt and self-reproach of which he never seems to have had the faintest inkling. 1 ' Burns, nevertheless, had within him the capabilities of a great man— even if human frailty came in their way, marred them, and prevented their full development. But of one of those whom the Spectator sets before Burns it is bard to see how so much could truthfully be stated. We allude to John Knox, whose name the Spectator cwuples with that of Sir Walter Siott-' but who, were it not for the great Protestant tradition and the prevailing bigotry that attends upon it, could hardly be accounted as a great man. It is, for example, no part of a great man's character that he should be blood-thirsty — but Knox was among the men who assassinated Cardinal Beaton, and the horribls levity with which he afterwards spoke of that crime shows how such deeds of blood were agreeable to him. "It is very horrid, but, at the same time, somewhat amusing," says Hume, '• to consider the joy, alacrity, and pleasure which that historian (Knox) discovers in his narrative of this assassination." He was privy, also, to the murder of David Bizzio, and he clamoured for the death of the Queen. Nor was he a stranger to vice and debauchery. It was probably his suspension by his bishop that first turned his thoughts towards the Reformation — and his suspension, as his contemporary, James Laing, stated, was caused by his immoral conduct. Charges of the same kind were also made against him by his ( contemporaries. Archibald Hamilton, Nichol Burne and Baillie, Theret, Moreri and Spendanus, all competent authorities, speak of his irregularities as notorious and undeniable. The testimony of his contemporaries mentioned by us, moreover, has never been met by solid argument or convincingly disproved. Again, if courage be a characteristic of the great man, in what respect did John Koox displayi it 1 who was wont to fly whenever danger threatened his person, and who, though he dared to browbeat his queen, and earned by his treatment of her, as well as his other doings, the name bestowed upon him by Dr. Johnson of " Ruffian of the Reformation," knew that he was perfectly safe in such a course of action. He was, besides, the exact opposite of Sir Walter Scott or Burns in his influence over the intellectual progress of the country, for it was his noble task to hound on the mob to devastate and overthrow the monasteries, that, with their libraries and works of art, were the principal civilising centres of the land. The Spectator, then, in rejecting Burns as the greatest Scotchman who ever lived, has hardly been fortunate in setting above him one who exceeded • in the worst failings of Burns, and in no degree approached him where he excelled. As to Sir Walter Scott, it would be difficult to assign to him a place too much exalted.

Apropos of the reference made by the AtlienceHni wholly to the murder of the brothers Dc Witt, we are incredible, reminded of the words Shakspeare puts in the month of King John — "It is the curse of kings to be attended By slaves that take their humours for a warrant To break within the bloody house of life ; And on the winking of authority To understand a law ; to know the meaning Of dangerous majesty, when, perchance, it frowns More upon humour than advised respect." But the manner in which King John believed himself over-zealously •erved by Hubert was nothing to that in which William of Orange was, in fact, served, if we may believe certain of hia historians. The mob at the Hague, for example, surrounded the prison in which John de Witt was visiting bis brother Cornelius, who was recovering from the torture inflicted upon him there, and the city authorities, seeing the danger, sent to William for soldiers to prevent it, but the answer waß that there were no men to spare, and that the stadtbolder himself was otherwise engaged, and could not come. Sir James Mackintosh, nevertheless, clears the memory of William of all blame. " Tbe Prince of Orange," he says, " thus hurried to the supreme authority at the age of twenty-two, was ignorant of these ciimes, and avowed his abhorrence of them. The murders were perpetrated more than a month after his highest advancement, when they could produce no effect but that of bringing odium upon his party." From the guilt of the massacre of Glencoe, again, Macaulay, as we all know, has absolved this king— his only blame, according to the historian in question, being, that he bad not punished the Master of Stair, on whom the culpability is flung. But neither had he punished the murderers who tore the hearts from the bosoms of the slaughtered De Witts, and some of whom made a show of those hearts as trophies for days after the murders. Lastly, we find him declared guiltless of the breach of the treaty of Limerick. So strong a king, therefore, was never elsewhere on the page of history so much the victim of circumstances, or served in so compromising a manner by over-zealous •ervants, whom he was unwilling to punish if only for having blackened bis fame. The historians, however, who treat William of Orange in this way, befool his memory in vain, for the case they

make out— even apart from all opposing testimony— is wholly $$? vaiiance with the character and career of the man concerning whom they speak.

It seems that in in this good city of Dunedin and "prodigious 1," its suburbs, we live in the midst of a population who, for tbe most part, and we might almost say altogether, are the [children of the " Mother of Abominations." This, it will be seen, is a pretty state of affairs, and it would be well if we could find a way out of it. It seems that.there is, however, a small remnant — shall we call them I—who1 — who have in some way or another managed to be bora of some'other kind of a mother, and it i Bi B with, their.eyes that we are enabled to see the condition'of the folk among whom we are situated. Tbe remnant are known as the Christadel* phians, and we need hardly say that it is by the light of Holy Scripture they have come to discern the nature of those people who do not belong to their sect — which, we believe is, and unfortunately if their doctrines be true, a small one as yet — but there is a good time coming, a {time ,of salvation, and why should not the whole population in due season become Christadelphians? We really do not know, unless it be that there can be no unity in error, and that under such circumstances every man elects— as the old saying is, to go to the devil Ms own way. The Christadelphians, nevertheless, are a charitable people and much concerned about their neighbours' souls, and therefore they have composed and disseminated a tract warning the children of tbe Mother of Abominations that tbey are in a very deplorable condition, and recommending them to be converted, The Christadelphians, moreover, are strong in the Scriptures— as, indeed, it might rationally be expected they would be — for was it not bysearching the Scriptures they found out the existence of the Mother of Abominations, and were brought to distinguish her children in all the Evangelical bodies around them — not to speak of Papists and such like, of course, whose condition has, ever since the Reformation, or, according, at least, as they came into being by degrees, and by fighting with somebody who preceded them, been manifest to the Abominable Mother's progeny themselves — or did our Christadelphians, on the other hand, merely make such a use of the Bible as the.cbildren of the Mother of Abominations themielves have made ? " The Bible is a liberal book " says Josh Billings. "If a man haz got a decent kind ov religion, he kan find plenty ov arguments to his views."— And every man Jack among the children of the Mother of Abominations, it would be rank heresy to doubt, has got a "decent kind ov religion" themost decent kind, and the only decent kind of religion in fact. — And why should the Christadelphians have fared worse than their neighbours ? Depend upon it then, they have just found the Bible serve the purpose towards them, it has served towards all the other Evangelical sects they now so roundly condemn, that is to furnish, them aa it can always be made to do by the skilful private interpreter, and in fact by any private interpreter let him % be never so stupid, with all the arguments ihey can possibly require. — Meantime the joke is manifest, and should even penetrate the ekull of a Scotchman without the aid of the traditional augur, of seeing tracts drawn up and interlarded with Scripture to be|distiibuted and scattered abroad for the conversion >of those children of the Mother of Abominations who had long since found plenty of arguments to convince them that, whoever else might be the sons of perdition, their own calling and election at least were sure. In any case, if our Presbyterians, Episcopalians, Baptists, Wesleyan?, Congregationalists and all the rest of them ad, inflnitnm, are in reality children of the Mother of Abominations— which far be it from us to deny, for why should we contradict what tli? Christadelphians have found in' the " Unaided Word "or proved thereby ?— it is but charitable for us to wish that their deliverance may speedily be brought about by the Obristadelphians, or by somebody else.

Whatever else may be wanting at the present horrors, day, and in whatever direction the world may be making progress, the records of horrors do not fail, and for those who like revolting and frightful details there is abundant satisfaction, to be f ourd. Rumours of cannibalism from the sea and the Arctic regions, tales of death from the south of Europe, and records of executions from the north fill the newspapers, and afford sensational matter, as it is called, to suit the mo3t difficult tastes that delight in such thing". It is. perhaps, a light task for us who sit " at home at ease " toj pass' judgment on the terrible straits to which men in extremity were reduced — so that, in the one instance, if it be true, they should cut the flesh from the corpses of those who had died of the hardships that they had all endured in common, or, in the other, should doom to death the poor lad who had partaken in their sufferings. In the Arctic regions, we are told, the survivors of Lieutenant Oreely's expedition were so driven to the verge of madness by hunger that they had recourse to cannibalism, and the men who escaped from the wreck of the Mignonette cut the throat of the lad who was in their company that they might relieve their hunger, and 'slake their thirst with his blood — and to us who know nothing of their trials the details are shocking and almost beyond endurance,

filling us with horror againet the men who did, or are said to' have done, each things. It is almost a reasonable question, indeed as to whether the publication of such details is wise, involving as it does the future of men entitled to some consideration on account of the terrible privations to which they were reduced, and the temptation in which they found themselves. This we say especially in relation to those who ate the flesh of their companions after these had died ; for the men who would put a helpless comrade to death merely in an attempt to save their own lives may, perhaps, justly be surrendered to the contempt of everyone with whom they meet, even if they are not adjtfdged to be criminals, deserving of severe punishment. The aspect of human nature thus presented to us, moreover, w one that it can scarcely be elevating to study. The only use of such publications is the humility they might teach if read aright but that is a lesson comparatively few can learn from them, and on' the rest their effect must be injurious for the most part.

Ecclesiastical history is an important study, and catholicity therefore it is with much interest that we find a QtJEEBLY • whole chapter of it given in a letter from the Right establishbd. Rev. Dr. Hevill to the Otago Daily Tunes. Dr. 1 Nevill writes to prevent any historic doubts that might arise from the difficulties attending on the fact of his having taken part in the consecration of a Canadian Bishop almost immediately after bis Lordship's own consecration in 1871, and it seems that unless the explanation were made there would be imminent danger that the historian of the future might fall into the mistake that there had actually been two Dr. Nevills— and only think of k what confnsion that might cause among ecclesiastical students in the ages to come. The matter, however, when rightly considered, admits of easy explanation—nothing more startling, in fact, occurred, than a journey of Dr. Nevill's to England, in which he passed through America and Canada, encountering on his way a certain metropolitan who asked him to deviate a little from his course in order that he might take part in theconsecration of one Dr. Helmuth, a converted Jew, of whom they were about to make a bishop, and whom Dr. Nevill had previously met in England, as he afterwards met him on the steps of the throne in the House of Lords when they both had gone to listen to Lord Beaconsfield proposing a vote of condolence to the Queen on the death of the Princess Alice— most striking marks of Catholicity, we may observe in passing. We further learn that Dr. Helmuth could not have been very well pleased with his Canadian See, for he afterwards became assistant to the late Bishop of Ripon, an extreme " Evangelical," and who would certainly have regarded Dr. Nevillas nothing short of a son of Perdition. Dr. Helmuth, in being elected to act as assist mt to Dr. Bickerstetb, must have cleared himself of every suspicion of a leaning towards High Caurch doctrines. To return, however, to the pirticular phise of ecclesiastical history, with which we are concerned. At the consecration in Canada, then, the churches of New Zealand, Canada and America were representeJ by tha presenci of Biabops from those countries— a remarkable facr, confide ing the present means of travelling, and most conclusive as to the Catholicity of the Church oE England. Bishop Nevill afterwards was near taking part in a consecration at Lambeth, and actually took part in one at Lichfield— although here ajso some hitch occurred that almost hindered him from officiating. It was surmounted, however, and when the ceremony concluded the new bishop thanked his Lordship for his action and the "emblem of Catnolicity thus afforded." We have, then, as we said, a most important and interesting chapter of contemporary ecclesiastical hUtory, and one which should certainly be preserved for the guidance of the historian of the future. As to the " emblem of Catholicity," however, afforded by the very praiseworthy activity of Dr. Nevill, it is rather obscure, and would require an explanatory chapter all to itself. The presence of a Bishop of the Church of England at the consecration of another of the same Church in any distant part of the world would hardly seem to the uninitiated a more striking mark of Catholicity than, for example, tbe presence of a Presbyterian or a Wesleyan minister at an ordination of ministers in some place remote from that in which he himself was situated— and we might, moreover, accept it as most probable that all the Presbyterians or all the Wesleyans present were unanimous in their religious convictions whereas it is pretty certain that Dr. Helmutb, at least, must have differed v&tj widely from Dr. Nevill in his opinions, if they were the same when be was consecrated as- they were when be acted as assistant Bishop of Ripon— that, however, may be reasonably open to doubt. Meantime, the Catholicity of the Church of England is proved by tbe activity and speed displayed by her bishops in travelling about the world, and veiily that is just as good a proof as an be advanced in the matter. If there is one objection which more than another A BTBA.NGE it surprises us to see advanced by a Protestant bepudiation. people against the domination of England, it is , that of' religion. Of all things in the world we ehould have thought that Buch a people would have felt for England

veneration and confidence because of her religion. Is it not she who boasts heraelf the protectress and advocate of Protestantism everywhere ? Where is the nation to whom she has not sent out missionaries. Here she has planted a Protestant bishop, there she has estaban Evangelical elder with his staff, and all over the world she has distributed the Bible translated into almost every known tongue, or in some instances into what is supposed by the translator to be a known tongue. It might have been thought that the "union of Christendom " beneath her fostering sway would have been the strong desire of every Protestant people. Such, however, proves not to be the case, and, stranger still to find, the objection comes from a people to whom English sympathies have ever very strongly gone out, that that is from the decendants of those very Huguenots and Gueux of whose cause English writers of all classes have been the cbampionß from of old. To find the descendants of those people or any branch of them rejecting English sympathies and declaring them alien,- is what we might hardly have expected to witness We do, however, find one of the principal organs of the Boers of South Africa laying claim to independence of England, amongst other things because she differs from them in religion, — the newspaper alluded to is named Die Patriot, and in an article recently published by it we find a vigorous denial made of the assertion that the Cape is an Euglish Colony. Nothing at all of the kind, says Die Patriot "It differd for the greater part from English in language, manners, descent, habits, religion." The Cape was not founded as were Australia and New Zealand by English colonists. It was founded and peopled by Holland, and if the greater part of the early settlers there were French and German, the Dutch element as it was natural took the upper hand. Not that tbe people became Dutch :— "The people assumed a national character, with a good deal that was Dutch in it, and much that was not. This is our Africander nationality. The decendants of Hollanders, Germans and French became fused and are distinguishable now only by their family names. They form an African nationality, and are called Africanders. They are just as little Hollanders as they are English, French or German. They have their own language, their own manners and customs, and are as much a people as any other. The Cape Colony was conquered by England and afterwards Holland surrendered it voluntarily ; if you please, you must surrender it. Whether a Government has the right to sell a country or people without the consent of the people themselves we will not discuss. Each one judge for himself whether a people can be bartered away like a lot of cattle. Any way, the Cape came under the rule of England, certainly not without the Divine will. This, however, does not prevent the people remaining African, and having their owu rights.' ' The African people then claim to be governed according to their rights. They do,not exactly demand a total independence of England, at least we suppose not until that neat saying of Paul ELmger's repeated the oihes day, a proposof the Convention, in the Transvaal Volksraad is fulfilled, and which we find translated as follows by our contemporary the Graaf Iteinet Advertiser, who also gives us the extract from Die Patriot :— " The day would come when he could say : the point of my sword is sharp enough or as sharp as yours." Bub they demand a system of Government suited to their peculiar situation. African not English nor Dutch, " Our duty is to keep calling to our people. « Preserve your nationality which the Lord has given you. 1 It is an inheritance from our fathers, our religion and our manners are bound up with it. We do not by any means preach and publish rebellion ; our nationality has nothing to do with the flag that flies over us. So it was with the Israelites in exile ; they were a people of themselves under foreign domination or rule, which they did not resist. The sooner this delusion, that this is an English colony, disappears the better ; and with it the term English and Anti-English. If this does not disappear it will have to be changed to • African and Anti-African.' " But, as we said, the peculiarly strange feature of the whole thing is that English religion should not be found suitable for these Africanders, that on the contrary it should seem io be regarded by them ai bearing a relation to their creed somewhat like what was borne by the religion of the Egyptians to that of their bondsmen the Children of Israel.