A PRODIGIOUS CLUCKING AT INVERCARGILL.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XVII, Issue 13, 19 July 1889, Page 17

A PRODIGIOUS CLUCKING AT INVERCARGILL.

What in the world is the matter with our poor, dear, old contemporary, the Southland Times ? Surely it cannot be the occurrence of the Orange anniversary that has upset him in this way. However it be, such a prodigious clucking was never heard.

That telegram received here some weeks ago, and concerning Mr. Gladstone's having compared the present coercion in Ireland to the Reign of Terror, in the first place has set our contemporary goirg. He cannot tell what to make of the cablegram, and, therefore, makes it the text of a confused homily all about rowing at all. One thing he threatens, that if Mr. Gladstone really said the like, all Scotland, outraged by his comparison of Mr. Balfour with Robespierre, will forsake his following for ever. All Scotland, says our contemporary, is logical and mat-er-of-fact, but — do we not judge of others by ourselves ? — he evidently is impressed, nevertheless, with the notion that all Scotland, to put it prettily, is qualified to browse upon the national thistle as its chosen dainty.

And here is Calvinism, moreover, introduced characteristically into politics. Mr. Gladstone, says our contemporary, in effect, has no right now to complain of coercion, for he himself was once a coercior : stof a far more severe type. Is there then no place left fo 1 * repentance ? Must no one profit by the le&sons of experience, and must the reprobate remain even politically accursed ? Mr. Gladstone's coercion, meantime, was not one tithe as bad as that now exercised. No one, for example, under it was foully done to death in gaol, as was young Lark'n of Woodford, and poor John Mandeville. Nor was any one, like Mr. Harbison, the other day at Falcarragh, arrested and placed on his trial for handing a piece of bread to a starving child. But loose statements like that referred to naturally come of clucking overwildly. In fact if Mr. Gladstone has compared coercion to the Heign of Terror, making allowances for circumstances and times, he has not very much exaggerated. Scotch logic and common sense, moreover, uninterpreted through a clucking medium, may be accredited with a power of recognising the justice of the comparison referred to. In the second place, our poor, dear, old contemporary is grievously affected by the notion that Sir Hercules Robinson, although not inclined to stand for an Irish constituency, is still a Home Ruler. Our contemporary, again impelled by clucking necessities, hazards the statement that more than one-third of the Irish people are decided Unionists. Verily clucking works like madness in the brain. A poor, effete, third they must be, then, not to make their influence more felt in the country. And are no^ \he Orangemen alone, if there be

Y^nk™ • 088t . i \ g ' aWe t0 exceed th « finest Yankee and whip their weight in tigers twice over ? it « BnJ*Tri O ir 8 ™! 0 ™ 1 * p«r venerable contemporary pJ ts it. But Irishmen/' pays he, "are not all Home Rule.s S.T .I?* 11 r °l the P°P«l^ion of the Island^f SaSts and Moonlighters being very decided Unionists" Aye inTea L n *' th A SaintS and Moonlighters, t/it vL P wT- yOU> fl?, SUCh is the distinction that you and your kind, m your feebleness and folly, for feeblenes, and folly Z 18ll B l TJ- qU - htleS at time8 ' WOuld P^petuate. Such are the natural divisions ol a country oppressed Tor ages. Those who endure their suffering with patience are sanctified by sufin TrSr/ beC0 "?VfT 5 thoSe Who cannot bear the evil, 8,,7™,h • rt! r y k f ? nUmber ' become moonlighters nnlr th vt &htj ° f human nature > and let him who, under the like circumstances, would be without sin cast the !h!^-f ne ; Is , there >P erb -aps, self-righteousness enough in hi« S W p°k We J- c / er t0 am him with that fissile of t?! he * elfa8 ,t kl dney? The Island of Saints and Moonlighters, therefore, makes evident the infamy of the system championed by our venerable friend, and which be has all the will to perpetuate. ptJS*!! oU d°* hi - S ° Wn m ° Uth OUr venerab^ contemporary is Ilk n a « T D / am t0 Slr HmwUBB RoBI»SOK,he Tn V 'a \ ? y "? VY \ W t0 ° lat e to enter on a new career." lo the dotard, therefore, there remains his dotage alone. There is no new and better state of things for him thnth hrnh m Yene \ & u e be excused, then, even though he may still go clucking malevolently to the grave.