Current Topics AT HOME AND ABROAD.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XIII, Issue 17, 21 August 1885, Page 1

Current Topics AT HOME AND ABROAD.

The battle for Christian education' which Catholics hay i > been so long fighting in thia colony is also being maintained with vigor in England. It is true that in England the fight is not so unequal and tbatj Catholic schools obtain some degree of aid from the State, but this is not sufficient to prevent their maintenance for falling heavily upon the Catbolic population, and many sacrifices there also are required to support them. The tendency, moreover, of the Government is to completely secularise the educational system, and to fall in with the movement towards godlessness that in a greater or less degree characterises the age. Cardinal Manning, then, leads the Catholics of the country in their fight, and it is especially interesting to us to find that his Eminence asserts his right to take upon him the part of a politician and appeals to the newly enfranchised voters exhorting them to require from the candidates they promise to support a pledge in favour of Christianity. The Cardinal speaking at a recent meeting claimed the right to take part in politics, because although he had became a member of the priesthood he had not been deprived of the privileges of a layman, and there wag another reason why he should especially speak on the question of education even politically considered, since it was a moral and religious question : — 11 There was no strong line to be drawn between morals and politics," he said, " because politics were nothing but the morals of society at large. When the State entered into the matter of education, the clergy had a right to enter into practical politics, and so he wished to pcint out that the country was now waiting for the opinions and the will of two millions of people who until now had not been able to epeak. What those two millions would say he conld not at all prophesy, but he should be very much mistaken if two millions of Englishmen did not say that they wished the schools of England to be Christian schools, because the Board schools all over England which were set tip without Christianity, had been forced by the public conscience, the public sense, and the public feeling of the people at large to introduce the reading of the Bible and the explanation of the meaning of the Bible. He therefore felt very confident that when these two millions Bpoke they would speak in the same sense, and therefore he wished to draw the- conclusion that every man who loved Christianity and his country was bound, when anybody came before him to ask his interest and his vote, to assure himself that any person he voted for would protect Christian education and freedom of conscience, so that the schools of England should be Christian and religious, thenceforth and for ever. He hoped they would all put this question, and that when the unknown land of the new House of Commons was seen there would also be seen a considerable atmosphere of Christianity over it." — Hig Eminence then went on to point out that England had been established in her greatness by means of Christianity to which she owed unity, freedom, and self-government.—" Down to the year 1870 the English people were a self-educated as well as a self-governed people. All the education which existed was the education provided by the voluntary schools founded by the voluntary efforts of the people at large. That voluntary system was aided, indeed, by the State, for it was the genius of our whole constitution that the State should aid individuals to do what they could not do without State aid, but that the State should not aid what individuals could do by themselves. The combined efforts of voluntary exertions and contributions and the assistance of the State produced the condition of education in England down to 1870." But must we admit that down to the year 1870 England had been an ignorant, an inglorious, and an unfortunate country 1 Or is it not manifest that her name had been won abroad, and the zenith of her prosperity attained to at home, while the nation was still selfeducated ? The Cardinal next proceeded to show the unfair manner in which those people who had done everything in aid of education were treated, they having contributed millions of money, and covered the country with schools only to find that the Board schools, not required for their children, received the whole education rate.— We see then, that, everywhere as well as in this Colony of our own , the

CARDINAL MANNING APPEALS TO ENGLISH VOTERS.

education battle is being fought, and we may derive additional courage and perseverance by knowing that we only form part of one great army fighting in the cause of truth all over the world. Cardinal Manning's hope, however, can hardly be ourp, for thera seems but little likelihood that the electors of New Zealand will change their minds, and demand of Parliamentary candidates a pledge in support of Christianity. Catholic electors, nevertheless, bo often advised in our columns to vote for no man who will not give such a pledge will perceive that we have advised them only as a Prince of the Church, and a leader whose influence is widely acknowledged beyond the limits of the Church, advises his English fellow country, men.

RESPECTABLE AND ENLIGHTENED DBUNKABD3

AMOtfGt the characteristics of the age also is that of a consumption of alcohol, that threatens to work the ruin of society, and to undermine the constitn. tions of the whole human race, and, more especially in countries regarded as taking a principal part in civilisation. We are used to hear of the drunkenness of Ireland, and it has been the comfortable custom of some good people to explain all the misfortunes of that country by the drinking habits supposed to exist among the people. But it was a revelation to us, when the Times published certain letters from its Swiss correspondent disclosing the taste for strong liquor shown by one of the model peoples of Europe, and the extent to which they were accustomed to indulge that taste. A condition of things, in fact was revealed such as had never existed in Ireland, and the question arose as to how the Irish people owing to their drunkenness had become very miserable, whereas the Swiss being, much more drunken were known as models of prosperity, and everything that was commendable. The only satisfactory answer to be given, as we have perhaps already pointed out, was that the heads of the Swiss were much better made, and as to the degree in which that should prove satisfactory it would depend a good deal on the person receiving it. But it seems that it is not .only the Swiss, who are more drunken than the Iri3h and the Times again gives us some particulars that concern some other most respectable nations of the European continent : — " Englishmen," it says, " have been accnstomed to hear themselves denounced by preachers of temperance among their own countrymen as singularly abandoned to indulgence in alcohol. Con-sul-General Oppenheimer, of Frankfort, in a report published within the last few days, and addre sed to the Foreign Office, assigns to Germans a far worse pre-eminence. Great Britain is the land of beeras France is of wine. Valiantly as North Germany imbibes beer England easily distances it in its consumption of that beverage. In spirits the balance is much more than reversed. North Germans drink nearly five times the British spirit average. Spirits were sold in 1880 at ninety - three thousand houses in Prussia. Germans ol the better classes seldom drink spirits. In general, the habit is confined to the working population and to men . Thus, although the statistics do not seem to be very systematically made up, the figures at their lowest indicate the drinking by North German workmen of six glasses of schnaps daily. a head. Only Sweden, Russia, and Denmark Bhow a more damaging proportion, Holland and Belgium, which are notorious for the same taste, do not reach an equal level. It has grown, and is growing ; and Northern Europe must increase its thirst, or it will be overtaken by the Kingdom of Prussia. Consul-Genera! Oppenheimer confesses his obligation for his estimates to Dr. Baer, the head physician at the Plotzensee Prison. Statistics of spirit-drioking are interchangeable With statistics of crime and madness. In Germany forty-one per cent, of the prisoners were in gaol for acts committed under the influence of intoxication. Not quite half the forty-one per cent, were habitual drunkards. An eighth of all the annual suicides in Prussia are committed under the impulse of alcohol. In the Prussian States two thousand and sixteen persons are yearly treated for delirium tremens. Yearly there are five hundred and ninety-seven cases of dipsomania. In Prussia thirteen millions sterling are spent annually on spirits. Spirit-drinkers in North Germany waste a huge amount of the national wealth. They murder, they assault, tbey run mad, they crowd hospitals, prison?, and asylums. The habit ruins themselves body and soul. It devises a fatal inheritance of disease, rickettinesg, and mischievous thirstiness to succeeding generations. "The working classes are the replenishes of the population. For future moral

and physical interests it is of more importance to the national welfare that the transmissible qualities of the race should not be vitiated in those classes than in their social superiors. Germany, according to the British Consul-General, is going hard and fast to work to poison the stock at its root." Here indeed, is a prety state of affairs narrated concerning the enlightened Kingdom of Prussia, and, what is also very grave, a still worse condition of things is said to obtain in the equally respectable kingdoms of Sweden and Denmark, for are they not all of them countries of the Reformation, and basking in the Lutheran light? The Times goes on to propose reasons for the excessive drinking— Such as the want of rational amusement — the absence of temperance societies— of which more anon — the want of proper food, etc., concluding as follows :— " The claim made is that uneducated minds' are incapable of amusing themselves without artificial and mechanical assistance, that the existence of the masses of mankind in Europe is bo sad and dull and starved, morally, mentally, and materially, as to he unable to proceed without intervals of virtual negation." — But it used to be affirmed that there were no uneducated minds in Prussia, — The education, in fact, of the Prussian troops, and those of Germany generally— was urged as a reason for the success of the German arms in the war with France— and if there was no superiority of the kind, how did a drunken nation conquer a sober one — for no one accuses France of drunkenness ? Or is there no hope of truly educated minds or of sobriety in the best education that it is possible to confer upon the masses, and such as it is generally understood the German masses have long been given 1 But as to that reason put forward by the Times touching the want of temperance societies, such societies with lecturers, the Gougbs and Boothes, and others, are numerous in the United States, and yet drunkenness there, with all its frightful consequences, is still on the increase. — The following statistics are borrowed by us from our contemporary the San Francisco Monitor :—": — " The reports of the United States Commissioner of tbe Revenue shovr a continual increase. For example, according to the latest, that for the fiscal year ending June 30, 1884, the total revenue from distilled spirits amounted to 76,905,385,26,d015. an increase over 1883 of 253,66 1,006,d015. From fermented liquors the receipts for 1884 were 18,084,954,11,d015., an increase over 1883 of 1,184,338.3©. The total production of distilled spirits the last fiscal year was 75,435,739 gallons, an increase over the production of 1883 of 1,422,431 gallons. The total production of fermented liquors for the fiscal year of 1884 was 18,998,619 barrels, an increase over 1883 of 1,240,727 barrels. The number of distilleries operated during 1884 was 4,738 ; the number of brewers, 2,240." Meantime Irish drunkenness falls quite into the back-ground, and while all these highly respectable, progressive, and prosperous people are drinking away like fish, mendacity only can accuse Irish distresi of arising from a like habit.

PU22LED.

What they are to do w'th Ireland short of granting the independence that her people demand seems now to be tbe puzzle of all political parties in Great Britain. — Representative Conservatives are coming forward to denounce Dublin Castle as tbe remaining stronghold of Whig as* cendancy, now that the Church Establishment which was the other stronghold has been removed, and they point to the curious inconsistency between the manner in which the conquests of King William 111 have been regarded in England and Ireland respectively, — in the one country being looked upon, as the triumph of the Whigs, and in the other as that of the Tories. Mr. Howorth a representative Con* servative who writes to the Times giving such a view of the matter, in a letter that is made the subject of a leader, denounces the Castle as appealing to the outside world to be a "nest of sinecurists out of By no pat by with tbe Irish people, and most unlikely to make Ireland either happier or more united," and he adds, " Let it go and let its name be forgotten." The Times points oat. however, that the abolition of the Castle is not a new idea, but that a bill for such an object was brought into Parliament by Lord John Russell in 1850, — and be agrees with Lord John that the Lord Lieutenant occupies a most anomalous position. — "Tbe main argument," he continues, " against tbe change is that used by the Duke of Wellington, in a debate which took place in the same session in the House of Lords. He strongly opposed the abolition of tbe Viceroy alty, on the ground that, Ireland being frequently the scene of important military operations, it was necessary for tbe military authorities to be able to confer with a civil authority of great digaity and unimpeachable loyalty. He could not, he said, as Commander-in-Chief, be expected to confer with such a man as Mr. O'Connell, if he happened to be Lord Mayor of Dublin." — The impossibility, nevertheless, that tbe Commander-in-Chief snould confer with such a man as Mr. O'Connell, since the Duke of Wellington's time, is looked upon as less complete. — But with the abolition of the Castle and the establishment of a proper system of Government, the necessity for the carrying on of important military operations of the kind alluded to, and at variance with the mind of the chief magistrate of the metropolis,would be obviated and all the difficulty removed. The Times* however, dees not contemplate a change of this satisfactory nature

but would have the executive power taksnfrom the Castle exercised by a responsible Minister of State who would fulfil all the requirements demanded even by a second Duke of Wellington, should each a one arise. The Times, moreover, sufficiently explains the changes that he for his part would sanction in this matter by a defence of the Irish permanent officials whom he tells vs — are " Irish in birth and Irish in feeling " it — being the especial curse of every oppressed nation to see certain of its own members placed in the seat of tb« renegade and fulfilling all its duties with ardour — who, for example so warm in the service of Russia as Colonel Alikbanoff the Georgian 1 But the Times adds that whatever the new authority may be, it will probably be found that the same staff of permanent officials, that is of sinecorists out of sympathy with the people— as Mr, Howorth says— is employed by it. Mr. Howorth, meantime, errs in considering these officials as sinecurists, they have their duties to perform, and, however various their offices in name, their duties are one, that is to piess upon the Lord Lieutenant and the Chief Secretary, as the Saturday Jtevietv informed us the other day, the necessity for misgoverning the country. To retain these men in office would be to counteract every benefit to be expected from any change that may take place, and to root them out finally, is one of the chief objects of the national party. The Times, we need hardly say opposes the notion of any change approaching to the re-establishment of a national Parliament, but the weakness of his arguments against it is a most hopeful feature in the case. We may say in passing that they remind us of that imbecile plea advanced among ourselves against a government grant to the Catholic schools, to the effect that if puch were made, every other denomination would expect as much. "If Ireland obtained such a Council," he lays, alluding to a Central Council equivalent almost to a Parliament, " Scotland and Wales would set up a claim for similar institutions, and the Imperial Parliament would thus be disintegrated in structure and weakened in its personal composition. England wonld certainly be entitled to institutions similar to those which Ireland, Scotland, and Wales had obtained, and it is mote than doubtful whether either country contains political material of good quality and quantity sufficient to supply Parliament as well as the contemplated Local Councils" But Scotland, Wales, and England would hardly claim such councils if they did not stand in need of them— and if they do, is not their need worthy of consideration ? To with-hold from these countries their needs in order to spare men of sufficient parts to the Imperial Parliament wonld be an unjust action, and the argument, moreover, discredits the abilities of the men of the countries in question. Surely the exceptional able man is not always chosen to represent some constituency. The Times, however, admits that the question must be settled, and thus all his arguments in favonr of Dublin Castle, or an equivalent institution, go for nothing, and we perceive that he also has been driven by the successful Irish party to the certainty that Ireland must in future be fairly and differently treated —however puzzled he may be in common with others as to what is to be done in the way of avoiding the inevitable, that is the full concession of national independence, which is demanded and which alone will tatisfy the nation. He concludes as follows :—" This, however, is a question which can hardly be determined offhand, and it is only necessary at present to indicate some of its inherent difficulties, The new House of Commons will have to grapple with these difficulties whatever Government is in power. It is not amiss therefore, that both parties should now be preparing to approach the problem of the future government of Ireland with something like a common purpose and common principles of action."

BETTER THAN WOBSB.

IT is not only Cardinal Manning, however, who is looking forward towards the effect to be produced on the religion of England by the extended franchise when it has been put into practice. Cardinal Manning hopes that thi effect may be for the good of the country, and the support of Christianity — but a certain body of men are alarmed lest a different result may follow. We allude to the members of the Established Church, who feel some apprehension lest the efforts that will certainly be made to influence the new voters against the Establishment may prove successful, and a majority pledged to its destruction, be returned to Parliament. Bat touching the down* fall of the Church of England, it is a matter that deserves the consideration of others besides the members of that Church as to whether it would not in fact prove a misfortune, and tend to bastes, the decay of religion. We need hardly say that our sympathy for the Church of England as a religious system is very little. In some respects indeed, we consider it the most faulty of all the Protestant Sects, but, on the other hand, it has qualities that in some degree redeem it from these faults, and entitle it to the highest esteem that any Catholic can bestow upon a system of religion that he recognises as false. It undoubtedly occupies a position in England, that, were it lost, would be almost certainly taken up by very much inferior agencies, and it provides for a steady, and comparatively moderate teaching of Christian truths, that, failing its means, would either cease to be taught, or would become the subject of a teaching possibly grotesque and outrageous, and certainly exaggerated and

more or less coarse. With all its faults the Church of England^ preserves among its members a spirit of reverence and gravity, and is a medium of refinement in religion. Cardinal Manning, for example, can still remember with affection the church of his native parish, and can recill with pleasure his early studies as an Anglican of Holy Writ. If this Church with ita ministry -were swept away, then, or what would in the long ru-> come to pretty much the same thing, if it were cast for support upon a people unaccustomed to the voluntary sustenance of religion, a downward step would be taken, and an influence that, on the whole, and everything being considered and allowed for, tends rather towards what is good would be undermined. The way of infidelity would be made still broader at once, or those sects whose very existence depends on the coarseness and want of culture of their adherents would be strengthened for a time, until the match of civilisation made it; no longer possible for them to retain their followers.—Certain arguments, nevertheless, that have been urged for the preservetion of the Established Church do but betray the cause they advocate and bring out into relief the faults that distinguish this Church above all other sects. We find, for example, the very want of unity— that characteristic that; is so distinguishing a note of the Church of Christ —the very one at eight of which the unbelieving world should be converted— we find, that great want pleaded by the Bishop of Durham the other day, as a reason for the maintenance of the Kstablishment. " The promoters of disestablishment would supply them with the best arguments," he said. " They called themselves Liberationists, and, therefore, it must be assumed that their leading motive was liberation. But he would ask— what Church was more free already than the Church of England 2 What were the two tests of freedom ? They surely were these— freedom of opinion and freedom of practical development. The Church of England enjoyed both of those to a rery large extent, and he looked upon it as their glory so long as there was a loyal adherence to the main doctrines of Christianity and a loyal and practical obedience to the Church, and so long as there wasagreat latitude of opinion allowed. The Church was a great gainer from that freedom— from the existence of sjeools of thought— and for the reason that no man or school of men was perfect all round, and if they tried to expel one school of the Church, the Church must be impoverished to that extent. " But who shall distinguish as to those "main doctrines of Christianity," or decide as to those doctrines that are indifferent or nnimportant ? Well, indeed, does Allies write as follows :— •< Has the Anglican communion any one consistent faith concerning the Catholic Church, and the sacramental system, which is in /act the applying of the Incarnation to the mystical Body of Christ and the souls which belong to it ? Who will venture to say that it has, as a whole ? I speak not of this or that party, Evangelical. Latitudinarian, or High Church, or the Oxford movement, within it ; but does tha Anglican Church as a iviwle deliver to men any belief as to where the Catholic Church at thig moment is ; whether the Roman is part of it or not ; whether Presby . terianism in Scotland is a branch of it or not ; whether it is infallible or not ; whether i£ General Councils may err, the whole Church may err, and teach falsehood for God'u truth. Each individual in the Anglican Church will have .his own answer, or none, upon these questions. Yet all repeat : ' I believe one Holy Catholic Church. 1 How can they believe wbatjthey do not know anything about ?" and so, be goes on to say, it is with regard to Baptism, and the Blessed Eucharisf, and Penance, and the Apostolical Succession. How, then, shall it be known by Anglicans what are the " main doc. trines of Christianity " ? Are those only main doctrines upon which all Anglicans agree— if any such there be— and is their agreement the test by which the importance of the doctrines is to be judged— Infallibility being in this agreement? Or how shall there be a " loyal and practical obedience " to a Church that allov/s a " greafe latitude of opinion," and leaves every man to decide for himself ? But still, perhaps, it should be easy to obey an authority that throws looss the reins, and lets a man wander as he will. Obedience, nevertheless, would seem to imply soaae sort of headship or control. But this Bishop eeems to glory in his Church's greatest shame, and to find in the subordination of God to Cajsar the reason for her continuance. On the influence of worldly affairs also on the changes and variations of his Churchmen's teaching he places much stress. But these are spiritual guides of at least a doubtful nature. " The freedom of thought was to a great extent due to the fact that the Church was established. The Church secured that freedom in two ways. First, the broad aegis of the law was held over all parties, and the triumphant majority for the moment bad no power to oppress the minority. Secondly, by the continued establishment the clergy were brought into contact with the mind of the nation, and were themselves put in harmony with the manifold and varied interests of the nation These two facts were a most valuable guarantee against narrowness.'' The thought of the Church regulated by the laws of the temporal power, and the teaching of the clergy coloured by the interests of the day. Here, indeed, is no Church chosei out of the world, but one of the earth earthy. "This is its origin," writes Allies again' " this is the rprinciple on which it is built, the subjection of the spiritual power to the civil in spiritual things, in faith, arid in dis-

cipline. Humanam oonati swnt facere ecclesiam. They attempted and they have succeeded. ... Let those who can put their trust in such a Church and such an Episcopate, those who can feel their fouls safe in such a system, work in it, think for it, write for it, pray for it, and trust tlusir souls in it." Nevertheless, as we have said, the downfall of the English Establishment would moat probably, as things are, be a misfortune to the country— for, at least, whatever be its faults, aad howsoever great its inconsistencies and confusions, even a " human Church " is to be preferred tojthe synagogue of Satan, by which it would be replaced.

SB. CBOKfi CAUSES A COMMOTION.

Archbishop Croke has utterly horrified the London Spectator. The Spectator wants to know to what the Church of Rome is coming at all, and to what depths of degradation especially it is destined to sink in Ireland. He says the Archbishop is convincing the heretical world that some prelates of the Church have renounced all connection with the teaching of the New Testament as to the respect due to the law. But that is a little thing, for if the heretical world has not from the first been fully persuaded that all prelates of the Church were altogether astray as to the whole teaching of the New Testament what right, we should like to know, has it to be a heretical world, or what excuse can it urge for its position 1 Let the Spectator however, speak for himself. He is alluding to the Archbishop's addresses :— •• The yare certainly pernicious to the moral welfare of the people, and instructive only in showing our heretical world how entirely some prelates of the Church of Borne in Ireland, have broken free from the principles and precepts of the New Testament on the Bubject of the respect due to the administration of the law. Even in that address at Kingstown in which Archbishop Croke poured out the first fruits of his communings with the bead of the Church and declared himself by the way, not the Church, ' unchanged and unchangeable,' bis advice to the people to avoid brea-.bes of the law was put in this very sinsterform. — ' You must be prepared not to put yourselves in the power,— in the power of what are called the friends of law and orJer.'— He cannot even recommend obedience to the law without telling an uneducated crowd that the representatives of law, and order, are only so ' regarded,' and by implication at least that they ar» perfectly at liberty to regard them as anything but friends to that cause. This is a broad hint from one who boasts that he iB 'unchanged and unchangeable' as to the interior attitude of Irishmen towaris the law, a hint which is certainly very unlikely indeed to promote that out* ward observance of law and order which he verbally enforces upon Irishmen."— But those who are called the friends o! law and order while they are engaged in carrying out the provisions of an unjust and brutal system of coercion may well be held up to the scorn and suspicion of the people, a grinding tyranny being no wnere sanctioned by the New Testament. As to the objection made that the Archbishop had spoken of himself, and not the Church as unctunged aid unchangeable, he was hardly tlwre for the purpose of teaching a Catholic people tl.eir Catechism. But there is worse to come. '■Then within a few days." our contemporary gjes on to say, "at Fethard, Archbishop Croke receives another address from a religious confraternity,— the confraternity of the S.icred Heart of Jeßus',— to wnich he replies :— { If I were allowed to introduce anything profane into this matter, I should say that confraternities are the Land League of Heaven. Onr National League was established here to break down the forces of a cruel and unjust monopoly amongst certain classes who dominated over this country for years, that is its object and aim. Our a nfraternities have a similar object and aim for heaven. The object of the National League is to fix the people happily on earth ; the object of the confraternities is to give them life and glory in heaven.' " "It is hardly possible," comments the Spectator, "to imagine violent politics dragged more completely by head and shoulders into the very heart of a religious subject than in this speech. We never heard before that there was supposed to be in the spiritual world a ' cruel and unjust monopoly ' of the ' life aud glory of heaven.'"— Where then has our contemporary, the Spectator, been stopping his ears all these years —that is so far as the religious world is concerned ? Has he not, indeed, heard of the " Lord's elect " 1 or of those various sects that believe the Kingdom to belong to themselves alone ? Do they not monopolise it, and cruelly as those whom they exclude may think ? The Spectator, however, forces upon Dr. Croke's words a meaning that the speaker did not intend to give them, and he fully explained the sense in which ho made the comparison. But the Spectator is not particular as to exactness, when he deals with one who doea justice to the Land League, nor is he himself anxious to avoid calumny and falsehood as is proved by his repeating the old unproven and unproveable accusations regarding the League. Here very respectable journalists and others have taken a license that must probably be allowed to them but only in virtue of the barefaced manner in which they lie, and will not refrain from lying. The true murder, however, is still to come, and all that the Archbishop has so far said is comparatively mere trifling: " But much the worst and most actively mischievous of Archbishop Croke's addressee is that delivered at Baneha last week, in answer to

1 an address from the members of the Bansha and Kilmoyle branch of the Irish National League.' Dr. Croke, in that reply, compares the state of Ireland now with the state of Ireland three years ago* • Three years ago, 1 he said, ' Earl Spencer ruled and roped this country, assuming for granted that all who were arraigned as criminals were such in reality, and to be treated as such. To-day his Lordship is parking up his portmanteau, and to-morrow his face will be lost to Irish eyes, let us hope for ever.' • Three years ago, Forster, and French, and Cornwall, and Clifford Lloyd, and hordes of other such amiable and immaculate folk, were omnipotent in Ireland* To-day they are impotent and in disgrace.' Such language as this, if it were used by the most violent of Irish agitators, would be as shameful as it is libellous. Everyone knows that Lord Spencer never assumed the guilt of a single criminal, that under his rule those who were tried were tried with all the guarantees of law, and that not a few were acquitted and released, and that the justice of the sentence of those who were condemned and executed was only traversed in exceptional cases, even by politicians as furious and unscrupulous as Archbishop Croke. To talk of Earl Spencer as ' ruling and* roping ' the country, and as assuming the guilt of everyone accused of crime, is as deliberate and intentional a calumny as was ever invented by men wholly given up to the violence of their own furious passions. To bracket Mr, Forster'B name and Mr. Clifford Lloyd's name with that of a man convicted of unnatural crime, is a sort of outrage so gross, that in a great ecclesiastic of the Roman Church it amounts to an open repudiation of the moral law, and sets a great example of such repudiation to all the priests and laity of Ireland." But the whole voice of Ireland has accused Lord Spencer o£ those very things of which Archbishop Croke holds him guilty, and no attempt has been made to clear him in the sight of the people. His victims, indeed, may have had the pretended benefit of all the law affords, but they who are experienced in the tri Us of Irish political prisoners know what that means. There were such men as French to work up the evidence against them, and with packed juries and suborned witnesses Lord Spencer, or those permanent officials under whose pressure, as we are told on high authority, he acted, could obtain what end they pleased. It was not, moreover, a furious agitator but a grave prelate who had kept himself aloof from the national movement that asked for the inquiry into Miles Joyce's case and it was refused to him. As to the association of the names of Messrs. Forster and Lloyd with those of French and Cora wall, the fault is not Dr. Croke 's, nor is there anything scandalous in a mention by the Archbishop of a fact of which all Ireland is aware. These men were associated in the miegovernment and oppression of the country, and Mr. Trevelyan, as honourable as Mr. Forster, and his successor in office, shielded the convicted felon from the consequences of his crime so long as it was possible for him to do so. It is of advantage to the cause of Ireland that these undoubted and undeniable facts, whatever be the disgrace that they may entail, shouH be kept before the public, and the champions of that cause, of whom Dr. Croke is a chief and honourable one, are fully justified in reminding the country and the world of them. The matter cannot be buried in oblivion to spare the feelings, or relieve the reputation of any individual, let him be who he may, so long as exposure is necessary to force the trnth of a situation requiring amendment on unwilling minds, and to prove that the men who have been reviled, punished, and persecuted for attempting to amend that situation have been cruelly and falsely dealt with. That the boldness of Dr. Croke dismays the enemies of the Irish cause, and puts to the blush many who, perhaps, might otherwise have paid but little attention to it, is a matter that need not surprise us. Nor need we see the danger of disedification or scandal in the indignation expressed by such people that a dignitary of the Church should play Buch a partReligion can never 6uffer from the exposure of evil, and from the upholding of a cause that is right and just, and in these alone it-is that Dr. Croke is engaged, however plainly he may speak.