Current Topics AT HOME AND ABROAD.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XV, Issue 27, 28 October 1887, Page 1

Current Topics AT HOME AND ABROAD.

introduced and which has generally been boasted of aa the moral not less than the historical garden of the country. Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine— everywhere the same results are found— and as it is in New England so is it in New York. •' Let us," says Mr. Montgomery, " test the relative merits of the State and parental systems by one more example. We will take Virginia and Massachusetts as fairly demonstrating the comparative results of the two systems. Down to the time of the late war, Virginia never had a State-governed system of education, and in 1860, after more than 200 years' trial of her parental By stem, she had but 1 native white criminal to every 6,566 people. But ever since the year 1647 down to said date (I860), Massachusetts had trained her youth under her public system. And against Virginia's 1 native white criminal for every 6,566 people, Massachusetts had I native white criminal for every 649, a difference of more than 10 criminals to one against the> State-governed system. And in the meantime Virginia had given vi Jefferson, the author of the Declaration of American Independence; She had given us Patrick Henry and Henry Clay, America's two greatest orators. She had given us a Washington to lead her armies of the Revolution to battle and victory ; she had given us both Scott and Taylsr, who led our victorious troops into the Mexican capital and added a new empire to our already vast dominions. Out of fifteen presidents Virginia had given us seven, beginning with Washington and ending with Taylor, while Massachusetts had given but two, and those two had been educated under personal control.* If, then, Father Jessing has shown us the injustice inflicted on the parent by withdrawing the child from his control, as the State does wherever the godless system is established — at least, so far as the sincere Christian parent is concerned, Mr. Montgomery shows the fitting results of injustice. He makes it plain that the country where godlessness prevails lies under a curse.

mission work

transformation! can be set to their credit. But is this not too bad ? Did not Portia for example, inflict a prodigious moral and social transformation on Shylock when she imposed upon him the task of taking Antonio's flesh without shedding a drop of his blood. And kow shall a missionary lose credit for teaching a company that they must treat a volcano in a somewhat similar manner 1 The New Hebrides Company may takfi all their purchase out of the volcano of Tanna, but the iulphur which is inseparably connected with the object of their purchase, they must not touch. Let this be recorded to the credit of the reverend Watts. And again, is their no social and moral transformation involved in the appropriation of other men's lands 1 Where, par eaenple, is the Irish landlord who cannot answer T But let the reverend Mac Donald receive all that is his tot. Decidedly our contemporary, the fteo-Galcdonien is mistaken. If to transform an unsophisticated community of naked savages into •ne, well clad as elsewhere we presume in profitably imported cotton and skilled in the art of amending bad bargains, or of quietly re•uming possession of that which has been disposed of by them, and •xceedingly sharp in all their dealings, is not a social and moral transformation, we should like to know what is sj. But as for the white people who look on and are scandalised, are they not mere Papists, that deserve no consideration J The missionaries did not go to the New Hebrides to convert them, and that, as we all know can be done much more easily— and also with profit, more or less— at home.

AN IBISH CONSTITUTION.

Amongj the moat able deliverances that have from the first been made on the Irish question is to be reckoned the plan for aa Irish constitution proposed by Sir Charles Gavaa Duffy ia the September number of the Contemporary Review, for it is to this shape that the report reduces itself, which informed us here that Sir Charles had guue over to Ireland, wi>h a coastiiuiiou cut an 1 dry for adoption by the people. His undertaking is much more modest and consists in making way for a. discussion which he earnestly invites, dir Charles is of opinion that uo nation would be justifiel in accepting, as the Irish people, nevertheless, were prep ired to do in the case of Mr. Gladstone's Bill, a constiiuuou framed for them abroad, but that the' very test of their fitness for self-government must depend ou the ability with which they prove themselves capable of acting; in the matter for themselves. And Mr. Gladstone, we may remark'io passing, seems to share in this opinion, if we may judge at least by the refusal he has given to consider Mr. Chamberlain's proposal that he ■hould draw up a constitution for Ulster. Sir Charles Duffy cites the •■ample of many countries as well in the new world as the old, and counting among them states of various magnitudes from France and Italy to Prince Edward's Island and Van Dieman's Land. The instance to which he particularly refers, however, is that of the Unitid States whose constitution, pronounced the other day by Mr. Gladstone, in declining an invitation to be present at the celebration of its centenary, the greatest political work of the human intellect accomplished in modern times. But Sir Charles Duffy ascribes its perfection to debate in the Press, ita bases being laid more by controversy in the Ftderalitt than by anything else. The first stsp in the controversy which we may now probably expect to arise, and which if it be conducted with even a tithe of the ability with which Sir Charles Gavan Duffy begins it, must necessary result in a noble construction, enters very fully into the minutiw of the matter, and seems to leave no detail uaexamined. The salient points, meantime, strike us as being those in which the guarantees required by the Minority and the necessity for the existence of two chambers are treated of. The man, indeed, must be hard to convince and anxious to cavil who can find in Sir Charles' dealing with the question of the protection of the Protestant minority anything to doubt, or any room for the arriere pemee which the writer disclaims. He condemns most candidly the notion that a Catbolio ascendancy should succeed that of the Protestants, and assem the right of this body to demand specific guarantees— not based on any assumed good will of their Catholic fellow-countrymen, arising from experience of their conduct in the past or otherwise— but so established as that it shall be impossible for them to suffer injustice. And the passage, moreover, in which the writer claims that such an impossibility is the basis of •11 securities, and even generally of law itself, strikes us as singularly powerful. In order to afford the necessary protection he rejects the half-measure of limiting the functions of the Legislative and Executive, which, he says, would be thus made powerless to do much good in order that they might do no wrong— and advocates the formation instead of a Legislative and Executive possessing the full powers enjoyed by the Australasian and Canadian Parliaments— in which, he says, wouM consist the only perfect guarantee. But as to the constitution of the P«rHaine:>i, Sir Charles assumes, as a matter of course that it must consist of two Chambers— the single Chamber, as he conclusively showp, having pr..vid .1 danger and afailure even among democracies, whose particular instrument it is supposed to be. And he condemns it especially as making it impossible to secure habitual fair pl»y to minoriticß. In the Lower House he would have minorities

MORE MISSIONARIES.

A TEST CASE.

Thk Vnivers cites the details of the trial o f Pranzini, the man lately executed in Paris for a triple murder, aa certain evidence of the rottenness which pervades society in France. As the matter bears on that universal question, the effects of a godless philosophy whose results are most fully seen in the characteristics of the Parisian people, and whose general spread throughout the world is warmly advocated by certain wiseacres and strongly supported by mul>i v -, who are more or less blind, we think |it opportune to quote »uu passages in question. They run to the following effect :— The jury of the Seine have returned their verdict in the Praniini case. The accused is condemned to death . . . . But Bball w« say that justice is satisfied ? Alas ! the trial itself, all of whose details it has been impossible for us through respect for our readers to publish has presented one of the most repugnant spectacles seen for a long time in the courts of assiees. The composition of the public, their unwholesome and ferocious cariosity, made up of puruleace and lewdnosi, tfct

represented, if not on Mr. Hare's theorem, as being, according to Mr Bright, too complicated, by means of three cornered constituencies against which no such objection can be urged. To obviate the danger of a dead-lock between the two Houses he would adopt a clause in Mr. Gladstone's Bill which provided that in case of a protracted disagreement of the two orders the question should be submitted to the joint voting of both Houses, and that the majority should decide the point at issue. Sir Charles, however, would require an « absolute majority" of the united body rather than a majority of those Toting.— Should any measure be so rejected, he argues, there would be valid grounds, at least againßt its immediate adoption. And behind this joint majority, again, there would be the possible veto of the Crown. Such appear to ub to be, as we have said, the salient points of this article, which, however, is very exhaustive, and every point of which is deserving of deep attention. Even apart from the knowledge that the writer is Sir Charles Oavan Duffy, it is evidently the work of a reflective mind dealing with a subject of absorbing interest to it, and bringing to the task not only the results of wide research and close observation as well as profound study, but also of personal experience fully utilised. As to the style, among its perfections are an unsurpassed lucidity, and something of the urbanity which Mr. Matthew Arnold so highly commends in the writings of Cardinal Newman.

fights, of which the court up to the last was the scene, among spectators of both sexes, struggling to be nearer to the witnesses who were almost all of them belonging to the debauched classes— all this justifies the severe sentence of the President, obliged twice loudly to the public to a sense of shame. But even the judges themselves, eran the members of the Bar, were they in all respects completely beyond reproach f The notions of morality are in these days of onrs so|tarned upside down that we heard the Prosecuter as well as the President pats eulogies on a woman, the principal witness in the matter, who, after having tried to cheat justice in order to save the accused because of the scandalous ties that had for a long time attached her to him, finished by testifying to the truth. That was her strict duty, and this testimony in emtrtnU did not wash away the ignominy of an existence which made of this woman and her former associate in debauchery a revolting couple. But L'ttle was wanting, nevertheless, to make them also exalt her morals, and her fidelity to •he man whose kindness she was rewarding." It costs us something. adds the Uhivert, to make these remarks, but they were necessary to give its true character to the monstrous case that has just terminated. In its details it throws a sad light on the decay of public morality, and it is not the criminal only we must consider to perceive this — but also the society that such a spectacle condemns. " There is something rotten in the State of Denmark," said Hamlet. The Praneini case in laying bare the foundations of a society which prides itself on its elegance, shows that we in France are already far advanced in the reign of moral decomposition, not to say rottenness. It is the jmm fmUt. But where for this corpse is the hope of resurrection f Fr - j the President of the court, then, with false and mawkish sentiment applauding a depraved woman, to the brutal public, delighting in the disgusting evidence, and from these to the ribald street-boys, who dipped their hands in the blood of the criminal when he had been •xecated, everyone connected with the matter is a testimony to us of what,the reign of godlessness and a fine freethinking philosophy must needs produce— that is, when they outstep the limits of some naturally prudent and genial minds, who also owe more to Christian influences than they are inclined to believe, much less to own.

MB. davitt ON coercion.

was to be tried and probably sent to prison. The landlords, however, their caße was desperate, and they could expect no relief from British taxpayer, and must base all their hopes on what an Irish legislature would do for them, would still continue toevict,thinking that by their thus creating a feeling of disgust in Ireland, everybody would get tired of the subjected they would be able to obtain a purchase scheme. Eviction, nevertheless, would carry its own punishment with it. Not a Jew in England would lend a penny to a landlord

whose land was boycotted ; not a bank would advance money to an

evicting landlord, and though fifty Coercion Acts were passed, as Mr. Healy had said, they could not revive the land grabber. The people now know how to protect themselves against this the meanest and

Tileßt of their enemies. Mr. Daritt concluded by answering for all those present that not one of them would allow the fear of the plank bed to make him refrain|from telling the people to resist eviction, and by assuring his hearers that if the struggle were continued as perseveriDgly as it had hitherto been carried on, before two years had passed the victory would be won. Afterwards, in responding to a vote of thanks, he pointed out that there was not prison accommodation in Ireland for even five thousand people, and that if, therefore, two or three individuals from every parish in Ireland were to volunteer to go to prison there would be room for no more, and by all the rest meetings could be held with impunity. But even without any organisation, he said, land grabbing could be prevented, and the interest of the landlords brought down to its proper value because the people were now sufficiently instructed as to how they should act. Mr. Davitt made it as plain as possible, in fact, that coercion must fall flat, and

that nothing would suffice to prop up once more the system that has been undermined. It may be doubtful, indeed, as to whether even the machine guns to which appeal has been made, and which- were certainly from the first among the firmest reliances of opposing extremists, could be of any use. They might, it is true, clear ths ground, and do the work of eviction more thoroughly and rapidly ; but it is by no means certain that the results for which they would prepare the way would prove more profitable than those which are now obtained. The machine guns, however, by the patience and prudence of the Irish people are made impossible-and without them,a§ Mr. Davitt has clearly shown, coercion is worthless and destined to complete failure.