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New Zealand Tablet, Volume XVII, Issue 4, 17 May 1889, Page 1

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AT HOME AND ABROAD.

AN ANGLICAN DION IT ABY ON TUB! IHI3H QUESTION.

which we see, moreover, that some correspondents are just now availing themselves in the daily papers with reference to Mr. John Dillon's addresses in Australasia. Canoa Wilberforce restricts himself mainly to the application to the Irish difficulty of what he calls one fundamental test b sed upon the " golden rule of the everlasting.Qospel." He quotes a passage from Lord Beaconefield which explains the Irish question as follows : — "The Irish in extrene distress inhabit an island where there is an Established Church which is not their Church, and a territorial aristocracy, the richest of whom live in foreign capitals. Thus you have a starviDg population, an absentee aristocracy, and an alien Church, and in addition the weakest executive in the world. That is the Irish question." Under ordinary circumstances, Lord Beaconsfield adds, this would be a state of things to be amended by a revolution, but the Government of Ireland by England prevents a revolution. Therefore, " England logically is in the odious position of baing the cause of all the nrsery in Ireland." It is then the duty of the English Miuistry to t fleet the changed which a revolution would effect by force. " But I will s.iy,' adds Lord Beaconsfield, " .f these recommendations are adoptel that in fifty years hence the men wbo shall succeed the present generation in Parliament will find the whole of Ireland a contented and thriving peasantry." Canon Wilbei force goes on to show how from the time of Henry 11. England has been qualifying herself to deserve t c verdict of Lord Beaconsfield. The fifty years of Queen Victoria's reign, ho says for example, have been characterised by 1,225,00(1 deaths from fatniu ■, 3,668,000 evictions, 4,168,000 emigrations ; while in tweuty years 100,000 acres of land have gone out of ullage, and ot good laid wailing for reclamation there are 1.500,000 acres. But the average Englishman says the Canon has always been thoroughly mis-informed as to everything connected with Ireland. Both the physical features ot the country and the character of the people, he says, have beei systematically mis-represented. " Every characteristic, both of scenery and inhabitant*, contradicts the slander."' — " The Irish people aic. finthe most part, exceptionally patient, God-fearing, law-abiding, and moral, shepherded by a priesthood wbo, in simplicity c 1' life and wholehearted devotion (o duty, will compare favourably with any body < 1 clergy in Christendom," The writer, however, admits that the charge of intemperance brought against the peop'e is true to a great extent. •'The undeniable prevalence of intemperance in Ireland,"' he add •. " throws into even stronger relief the exceptional crimelessne^s ol this people who are demanding the light to govern th*m<selve i '. Broadly speaking ibere is probably not a nation wn the glob. 1 who would have deteriorated so little under euch constant pr< - vocation to discontent, despondency, and despair, ot who woul i show a clearer record under the exaggerating miscrosrope nuw held over every bidden corner. Tes'ed by unimpeachable statistic, there is less crime in Ireland than in auy other part cf the Uuited Kingdom. The chastity of the women, the long-suffering and endurance of the men. indicate a moral nature capable of the highest development under the advantiges of autonomy. It would be unseemly to sully these pages by withdrawing the veil from the great perils to which the chas'i y of Irish women has been exposed by the land system. Before Mr. Gladstone's legislation put an end to the power of arbitrary rent-raising and s-uramary eviction, a terrible weapon was in the h:mds of unscrupulous and vicious men, wh eh they were not slow to use." The charges of atrocious crime, moreover, brought during the prevailing agitation, when inquired into, are found, in many inslancep, to be either grossly exaggerated or completely false. "God forbid th it any right-minded man should plead provocation as a justification of horrois which all condemn

I the Contemporary Review for March Canon Wilberforce, a dignitary of the Church of Engla id, p , 'Hshes an article entitled " Ireland's Demand." T' i article contains especially a good deal that very ci atively answers certain stock arguments — of

with loathing. It should, however, be remembered t'nt so trnthfori a statesman aa Lord Melbourne, when Chief Secivtaiy, publicly declared of a victim of agrarian murder, ' If h&lf of what is told me ot him be true, if he had had forly liven, it would havn been no wonder had they all been taken.' ' ''The scientific action of heredity," explains the writer. '• has more to do with Irish outrages than the theological doctrine of original sin ; the 'perpetrators of outrages ia Ireland are descendant of those outlawed by the ' Plantation of Ulster,' agonised by the atrocities of Cromwell's hirelings, stirred to quenchless revenge by the insult to »ha Celtic blood when one thousand Irish lads were shipped as slaves to Barbadocs, and one thousmd Irish girls and women consigned to be mistresses to the English sugar-planters, crushed and pauperised by oe -turio? of boycotting of the imports, exports, education, man .fact u res, and religion of the whole nation. It is a moral as well as a physiological law that perpetual'irntation produces abnormal maligoity."

Wk have lately heard it asserted among the rest, that coercion in Ireland occasioned no inconvenience to people of ordinary loyalty — just as in

UNOOERCEI) IRELAND.

Naples under King Bomba, no doubt, " loyal '* people were not inconveniencad by the Hws which filled the prisons, as described .by Mr, Gladstone. The fallowing ttateraent of the ordinary condition Of Ireland, however, will suggest what the addition of coercion ia the country must imply so far as the great majority of the people are coicerced. Mr. Chamberlain, quoted by Canon Wilberfoice, sp^k-3 as follows \i Tendon on Jane 17 1885 : — " I do not belhve chit the greit mij u-Uy of Englishraea have tha slightest conception of the system nader which this free natioi attempts to rule a sister couitry. It is a system which is founded on the bayonets oL" 30,000 soldiers encamped pcrrmnea'lf in a hostile country. Ie is a system as completely c?ntrilizc? 1 and bureaucratic us thit wifi which Russia governs Poland, or as that which was common in Venice under Austrian me. Aa Irishinin at this moment cauuo; move * step, hi oannjt lilt a fia^er, in any parochial, municipal, or educational, woik, wrhout being confronted, interfered with, aal c mtrollid b/an E'iglisi official appuntei by a foreign government, and without a shadow or shade of representative authority." Canon Wnbertorc* goss oi to explain the bitua'ion still more in detail. •• Again," hi writes " all who know from personal observation iLe i idescribable .ittachmjnt of the Irishman to the dreanest enbin winch he calls h s home will understand tho unreasoning fur/ with which h'3 iv«oits tne misery cmsed b/ the four million eviction of th" Victorian era. With a few exceptions, eigeily s izfvl upon and published in loaded type in the Jimet, the history of lri'h evictions is the same. Ran: raouatain land, squatted on, enclosed, cultivated, cropped, studded with out houu^, stocked with cattle, gradually increasing in value as the steady labour an! unceasing thnL'c of half a generation of tenants bury their lift -bio i«l in the soil, until \.\\i*; whic'i was ones worth tl rae. shillings an acre, b 'com \s worth t wenty-one shillings. Then tjo scramble fur the e.ig t-'en shillings, the bitter c >ntest over the unearned increment, the rent raised ag.iiu and agaio. I the tenint h^ing iiied for Ins own and his parents' industry, until a succesaiou of bad seasons makes payment impossible. Then appeals to | the landlor I. followe 1 up by the appointment of a new and severer agent, evictions, revolts, and lastly the I'lan of Campaign, and the occupation of the proclaimed district by an armed force. The feroci f y aud cold-blooiedues* with which these evictions are often cariied out is exemplified by the foil iwing ca^e extracted from a leading Irish ncwapaper in M irch 1888. Mr. Ja nes Kilmaitin, of Ballinasloe, waa impiisoned by the niagiitra'e-", and hid sentence was doubled on appeal to tha Uec/nler, fjr eucounging his fellow tetianls to join the Plan of C.impu <n. ' Wtun the Government had put Kilmartin rut of the way, the chivalrous landlord, Mr. Tnomas J. Tully, Ra'hfarn, proceeded with an army cf emergency men ani police to evict Lia wife and seven children from their home. The poor woman Legged for God's sake to be spare), as she was very sir 1 * and ia great pain, Thi tollowing certificate, which wns handed to Mr. Tully, confirmed ] her statement —This is 'n certify that Mis. K'lmanin, !-hra!oa, has

been under my treatment for some weeks, suffering from severe mammary abcess. In addition, she is on the eve of being confine i, and, in my opinion, eviction from her horn's in her present condition may seriously imporil her life. (Signed) P. P.JDe La Hunt, L.R.C S . and P. Ed., Ballinasloe, June 1, 1887. But the tender-hearted Mr. Tully cared for none of these things. He came, he said, for his legal rights, and, by God, he meant to have them. He had his rights. The poor sick woman was dragged out by the crowbar-brigade. She fainted three times in the course of the removal. She was fluag in a heap on the ground, her seven young children clamouring round her Father Costello, who knelt beside her, feared each moment would be the last. Meantime, the hearth was quenched and the poor furniture bundled out into the street after the owner. The triumph of law and order was complete. The cold-blooded evictor stood by carelessly ■witching his cane, and now and again addressing a word of direction or approval to his subordinates. Eren the poor request that she should be readmitted as a caretaker until some shelter should be provided he contemptuously refused. She might have died in the street for all he cared. She would inevitably have died in the street if some charitable neighbour had not offered her and her children the shelter of his roof." " These," adds the Canon, " are the dragon's teeth from whose sowing springs the crop of reprisal and revenge. '• But this is a picture of Ireland uncoerced. and undergoing the ordinary course of treatment inflicted on her.

THE O BANGS POSITION.

Catholic majority," Canon Wilberforce writes, " A more pre-eminently mischievous and insalting slander was never uttered by an ex- Minister of the Crown against the religious sentiment of a people, It is true that the unreasoning virulence and savage bigotry of political OrangeLsm, lashed into turbulence by such inflammatory utterances aa Lord Randolph Churchill's memorable 'By God, gentlemen, you will fight,' may, and probably will, call for firm dealing at the hands of an Irish Parliament with the control of itsown police, and such firm dealing is certain to be called religiouß persecution. Political Orangeism, howjver, has no connection with genuine anti-Catholic conviction, a conclusion easily derivable from the complacent silence with which a recent unconstitutional secret appeal to the Vatican for aid in administering the British Empire was receive i by Orangemen, and the glib facility with which the time-honoured Orange cry *to H — with the Pope ' reconstructed itself after the Papal allosutton into tha formula, "go and do what the Pope bids you.' It is, however, scarcely sufficiently recognised that the weight and influiuee ot tlu disloyal minoiity, who have publ.cly declared toat they will r^bcl .gainst i h ■ Queen's Government if II >n c Rule is conceded to Irelaad, has bean greatly exaggerated, and that in so-called Protestant Ultter, the core of the Anti-Home Rule agitation, seventeen out of thirty-three Members of Parliament are Nationalists." The writer goes on to argne against the taking by Catholics of what he calls " unholy reprisals." " The urgency of the crisis," he concludes " the obligations of conscience, the experience accumulated from egregious blundering, all point to the more excellent way. Fifty years ago, Canadians trooped out of their churches when Te Deutns were chanted in honour of the Queen' 8 accession ; they were demanding autonomy and expressing their dissatisfaction by boycotting, and the mutilation of cattle. The year before last, in no spot in her Majesty's dominions were Jubilee rejoicings more beany or unanimous tban in Canada, and this metamorphosis is the logical fruit of the Home Rale Constitution of 1840. England. 9'irely, is obliviom of her magnilio«nt traditions, and sinks to the bathos of political infauation, when she can be intimidatrd by the manipulation of so antiquated a phantom as the No Popery cry into sitting upon the safety valve of Irish discontent."

As to Mr. Chamberlain's charge that to grant Home Rule will be " to hand over the Protestants bound hand aud foot to be persecuted by the Roman

THE BEAR I N(i OF 'IHE GOPPKL ON THE QUESTION.

the stewardship of which has in so special a manner been entrusted to the English nation." Canon Wilberforce writes, as an Avg ican clergyman — " Wh.it peculiarity differentiates ihe Gospel from t,v ry oth<-r religious cult proTessiug to lift a corner of the veil that hid s the thought-ttanscenriing flans of God ? Modern Christianity is not necessarily the Gospel, though its philosophy may stimulate moral reformation and inspire social improvement sufficiently to justify the observation of Macaulay : ' He who speaks or writes against Christianity is guilty of high treason against the civilisation of mankind.' A versatile and able politiciin (Mr. Ualfour), may deliver a speech bristling wi'h invectue and positively venomous with gibes end retal.atory sullies, and before its echoes have died away lecture with smooth and flowing eloquence a r a Church Congress upon the world-purifying power cf the eth'cs ot Him of Nazareth, and, beyond subjecting himself to the obvioua cikieiam, ' Though 1 speau with the tongues of men and angels, and have not love, I am become as sounding brass, or as the tinkling cymbal , ' he has not violated the code of

" And now, reverting to the title and opening words of this article, we will consider the bearing upon the demand of the 6ufferiDg and discontented people of Ireland of the underlying principle of the

modern Christian amenities, though he is as far from the principle of the Gospel as darkness is from light. The elemental principle of the Gospel id victory over moral evil and the conquest of rebellious hearts, not by coercion of the erriog and weaker power, but by the concession and self-abnegation of the stronger, overcoming evil with good, laying aside imperial dignity and bestowing unconditional pardon and new principles of living. . . . The plain duty cf the believer is to shape his decisions upon the revealed principles of God, and leave complications for Him to unravel, and apparent impossibilities for Him to reconcile. Even upon the bypothes s, which can by no means be conoeded, that the British Government is right an t Ireland wrong in the present contention, the Diviner attitude, t>.e more certain peac -bringer, would be to apply the sacred principle of the Gospel, ' Overcome evil with goad,' and conquer by the simple might of concession."

The argument that because the majority of the Irish people are illiterate they have no right to claim a voice in the government of their country is

THE IGNORANCE OF THE PEOPLE.

one that can be applied to the case of any people on earth, and which might be employed to justify a despotism of savants. Canon Wilberforce, in concluding his article, deals with the general argument as follows :—": — " The final solution, however, of this momentous question rests with the English masses, and it is hardly conceivable that they can be unmindful of the -fact that the opponents of Home Rule are chiefly the very classes who withstood the rights of the British working men as long as they dared, pronouncing the English 'labourer unfit for the franchise as contemptuously and dogmatically as they now pronounce the Irish voter incapable of managing his own affairs It is customary for the opponents of Home Rule to claim that the intellect, the wealth, the social rank of the nation, is solid for coercion. If the traditional sophistry of the aristocratic habit did not blind the eyes to the teachings of the past, this claim should tather awaken their anxiety than .inspire them with confidence. De Tocqueville spoke no idle word when he Baid, ' God works behind the democracy ' ; and one greater than De Tocqueville said ,' Thou bast hid these things from the wise and prudent aud revealed them unto babes.' " The writer goes on to apply his argument to the case of our Blessed Lord Himself. " The Appeal to the People," be concludes, " was treated with ridicule : the multitude were ignorant ; they knew not the law ; how could they decide a point involving a study of ancient writings and a comparison of prophecy with fulfilment 1 In short, they were accursed. There waa, howeve 1 ", a spirit of right judgment inspiring their decision, and the verdict of believing millions for eighteen centuries lias been that the people were right and the classes mere wrong. The pages of history since that day are stuadtd witn examples of crises in the giosth of nations, the amelioraiijn of the conditions of life, the emancipation of men, the purification of faith, in which the people have been right and the classes have been wrong." Canon Wilberforce believes that the people of England will decide the question aright when a general election gives them the opportunity.