TO THE EDITOR N.Z. TABLET.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XIII, Issue 14, 24 July 1885, Page 13

TO THE EDITOR N.Z. TABLET.

Sm ( i notice in your issue of the 17inst, a letter "by Dr. Bakewell. and, I should like to make a few remarks on some of his statements made in this letter. Dr. Bakewell seems to have quite a dislike to the Tablet. Everything appearing in that paper is to him wrong. Only a short time ago he charged it with boycotting from its columns our present Pope. But I suppose that the doctor, as a rule, never looks at the Tablet, except to read over some communication in it written by himself. Hence the reason of that, most ridiculous accusation. According to Dr. Bakewell it is quite right for the English Government to practise, without any notice being taking of it, any sort of tyranny, for English newspapers and reviews to continually vomit forth slanders, falsehood, and more than brutal insults on the Irish people and nation. Our colonial papers, may if they choose, with the utmost propriety, take up these, comment upon them, try to hammer them as real truths down our throats and inflame the populace against Irishmen, and against everything Irish or Catholic. The doctor however seems to think it very wrong on the part of the Tablet to put people here in possession of the real state of affairs as to the conduct of the English government with regard to Ireland, to expose and refute those falsehoods and slanders coming hereby every mail, made by writers in English newspapers and reviews, or to write one word in reply to any charge however scandalous. Dr. Bakewell admits that great wrongs have been committed by Englishmen against Ireland — well he might— hut adds, "Those wrongs Englishmen have done their best to repair during the last fifty years." This does not accord very well with the following statements made by the hon. John Bright about eighteen months ago in the English House of Commons, and which I copy from an English newspaper. Speaking of Irish affairs, Mr. Bright said :-" Let roe Mr. Speaker, give a brief history of coercion in Ireland. From. 1790 to 1823 there were nine coercive measures passed for Ireland including three suspensions of the Habeas Corpus Act, ode martial law, and five insurrection acts. From 1840 to the present^ date forty eight different coercive measures including seven suspensions of the Habeas' Corpus Act have been passed by this House." In 1845 a bill was brought forward Lord Derby, the father of the present Lord Derby, in reference to the tenure of land in Ireland, and John Bright says in the same speech that if that bill had not been rejected by the House of Lords, the sad condition of Ireland would never have bad to be written. The indignation of an eminent stuff-merchant in Leeds was so aroused by the rejection of that bill that he stated in the Leeds Mercury newspaper, that the benevolent designs of the Almighty had been thwarted by the English Government with regard to Ireland on that occasion. This, and other more recent Acts and measures, will show that the best has not been done to redress the wrongs of former times. Dr. Bakewell says that :— At the very worst of times English Catholics were subject to the same persecutions as their Irish co-reh-gionists." This is historically false. The Catholics were certainly most barbarously persecuted and much more so than is generally known ; as will appear from the following extract taken from a standard Catholic controversial work : "So rigidly were all these laws (the penal laws) executed that Lord Scrope wps, in 1626, accused to the King of conniving at recusancy, inasmuch as he had only convicted one thousand six hundred and seventy Catholics in the East Biding of Yorkshire." But excessive as the persecutions in England were during the reigo. of Elizabeth, and subsequent reigns, they were more violent and lasted longer in Ireland at the corresponding times. If the penal code be looked through, many acts extremely cruel will be found which while they were never put k in force in England, were rigorously executed in Ireland. A little later oh Dr. Bakewell intimates that it was then necessary for the preservation of the State, to persecute the English Catholics. This is also incorrect. Nothing could be more unflinching and constant than the loyalty of the English Catholics during all these time 9 of persecution. In proof of this, I refer the doctor to Bishop Milner'd •' Letters to a Prebendary," also to " The History of Winchester," by the same author. Dr. Bakewell again sayß : — •' The English are not a persecuting people, and had Catholicism in England and Ireland been entirely divorced from politics it would never have been persecuted." This, I think, may be safely said o£ any people whobaye ever persecuted, as well as of the English. It was for political reasons mixed with others, that the Jews persecuted and put to death Our Saviour and many of his followers, — that the Boman Emperors persecuted the Christian Church for three centuries— shed the blood of ten millions, — that Louis XIV. revoke&.the edict of Nantes, —that the Emperors of '.China and Japan sometimes commence terrible persecutions among the Christian converts in their dominions,— and that at the present time, the Russian Czar is forcing at the point of the sword, his Catholic Polish subjects to abandon the Catholic, and become members of the Greek Church. In conclusion, f or'jny part, I do not object, to but approve of, what is usually published in the columns of the TABLET, on the affairs of Ireland "though I have not the honour to belong to that nation, and I am of opinion that the N. Z. Tablet has done, and is doing, and will continue to do, a singular service to the Catholic cause in these Islands. Indeed, it may be said that the Catholic Church here would not have the same standing that it now has, but for its influence. Vive La Tablette /—I am etc.

Eemlin.