Current Topics.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XVIII, Issue 10, 4 July 1890, Page 1

Current Topics.

AT HOME AND ABROAD.

THK CHUBCH OF ST. PATBICI AT ROME.

The claims on tbe Irish people of the national church of St. Patrick in Rome continue to engage the attention of the friends of Ireland. Among those who have lately contributed towards the object has been Mr. Michael Davitt, who gives it a warm support as affording an especial opportunity of establishing in Rome more constant and immediate means of communication between the Holy Father and his Irish children than have as yet existed. Mr. Davitt, indeed, implies that the Irish people are anything rather than free from blame for the neglect hitherto shown by them in this matter. If those who would misrepresent them at Rome, he cays, bave not succeeded in effectually doing so, their failure has been made in spite of the indifference Ireland has displayed dh the subject. Ireland, nevertheless, is not indifferent to the sentiments that Rome entertains towards her. Nowhere in the world is the opinion of the Holy Father more highly reverenced, and nowhere is even his slightest thought more fully regarded than among the Irish people. What object, therefore, can seem more important to the Irish people than that of placing within reach of the Holy Father information such as may keep him constantly acquainted with the true state of things among them. A still more devoted end to which the erection of the church tends has recently been explained to bis people by the Archbishop of Armagh. " The project," sayß his Grace, " is one in which the Holy Father has shown a very deep and practical interest. He wishes that there should be some enduring memorial of the close union which has ever bound Catholic Ireland to the Holy Bee ; and no memorial could be more expressive of Irish faith, piety, and filial devotion to the Vicar of Christ than a temple raised in honour of our National Apostle in the centre of Catholic unity. When bo many other Catholic nations have taken care to enshrine tne memory of their patron saints in the city of the Popes, it would be a reproach to us did we fail in a rivalry which is so much in keeping with the generosity, the religious spirit and the traditions of our race. Were there no other object in view than to yield obedience to the strongly-expressed wish of our Holy Father, this should be, of itself, sufficient to command an earnest sympathy. Such a pledge of reverence for his exalted office and attachment to his sacred person will be especially opportune and consoling to his paternal heart at a time when his enemirs are exhausting every resource which an impious ingenuity can suggest to overwhelm him with injuries and insults."— The erection of this church, then, is a matter of the utmost importance, tending as it does towards the fulfilment of two great ends— the biinging of the Holy Bather into more immediate communication with his Irish children and the testifying to the world of tbe close adheience of tbe Irish people to the See of Peter and their readiness and determination to sustain its rights at any cost, and to cleave to it the more cloeely tbe more it is opposed or persecuted. The erection in Rome of the Irish national church, indeed, now when the Pope is surrounded there by his enemies has especially this significance. It will be a noble mark of the fidelity, courage, and devotion of the Irish nation.

A HOPEFUL CHAN OK.

The nature of the departure made by the German Emperor, in respect to the interests of the massep, has buen marked by an utterance recently made it! the Reichstag by Count von Jlohke V> hetber the E uperor abides fiinily by the expresb.ou of Lis bpnesolent intentions or not, and his late repetition of hrn wniimehts to the men of the great Krupp establishment at Essen teems to show that as yet he hhß not vacillated, the professions made by him, at least, prove that he had struck out a line for himself very different from that followed by his predecessors. Count von Moltke, who represents tl Q old order of thinge, spoke as follows :— " The dajs of war wagtd by cabinets aie past. The elements that now threaten peace are found among the people. The cupidity of the classes less favoured by fortune at home, and their occasional attempts to obtain a rapid improvement

of their condition by forcible measures abroad. Tbe9e dangerous elements are producing everywhere discontent, and may at any moment precipitate a war even against the will of the Govermni For a Government not strong enough to oppose the passions of the people and the endeavours of parties constitutes a permanent danger of war." In this utterance is contained a complete expression of the spirit of tyranny. The people, there is the enemy, sums up its whole essence. For men like this, who, we may hope, belong to a by-gone generation, all desire of the people lo rise above the condition of misery to which they have been traditionally condemned is cupidity. Strong government, in such men's eyes is the remedy that should be applied to the matter. But what the meaning of strong government is in the understanding of those whose motto is blood and iron, it requires no keen discernment to penetrate. It is not for nothing that such men, even when they believe that the danger of foreign war is no longer imminent, insist on the maintenance of great armies, by which the people are crushed even in anticipation of their moving to 8-jcu.e the object of their cupidity, and as a wise and prudent precaution. War against the people, in fact, is thus virtually carried on, and only the pretence is needed to have it actually waged. Let as hope that, with Prince Bismarck and Count von Moltke, this bad old spirit of what we would fain believe is a by-gone generation is passing away. Let us hope the gleam of light the Emperor William has seen is not, as some people would have it, a mere transient flash, but that he may remain firm to his professions. In any case, even by the departure he has made, although he may yet falter in the path, he has given an example to rulers and encouraged the aspirations of peoples in a manner that cannot wholly prove fruitless.

6ELF-CONTBA-DICTIOK WITH A VENGEANCE.

Nay, here is a new and wonderful departure from the great Protestant Tradition. The very foundation and strength of that tradition was that conrents and monasteries were the centres of all corruption. Had such a belief not been adopted in Eng'and, justification for the great and glorious Beformation initiat&i and strenuously conducted under that monarch of piom memory, his Majesty King Henry VIII., could not possibly be justified. For more than three hundred years now, all the forces of Protestant England have been engaged in making this justification etiil more just. Divines have disgraced their homilies in the interests of the argumeat in question ; historians have stained their pages in support of it, and, in every way, by wcrd of mouth or word of pen, it has been constantly sustained. And what is the upshot of all this ? Why, nothing less than the adoption of the system so decried and so calumniated by the very Church for whose foundation the calumnies referred to were necessary, and which largely owed to them not only its being but its growth and predominance. The Church of England, in a word, has adopted the monastic system and is about to make an authoritative trial of it. The Upper Honee of Convocation, then, has passed a resolution extending to Sisterhoods the protection and recognition of the Church, and acknowledging aa binding tho lifelong engagement to the work of the community ot women over thirty years of age. More astonishing still is the departure in a similar but a still more advanced direction made in the diocese of Exeter. Something, perhaps, may be argued against the decision of the Upper Honse of Convocation. Ritualistic influences it may perhaps be argued, accidentally gained the upper hand there. The Bishop of Exeter and those who are allied with him in the undertaking alluded to are pronounced ny mbera of the Evangelical pany, and i.othing connecied with Ritualism can be suspected of entering into any of their movements. The Bishop, nevertheless, with the aid of the dean and chapter, has undertaken to establish in his ditctse brotherhoods of laymen for work among the poor, or otherwise communiiiee of Evangelical monks. What, therefore, becomes of all the arguments dt claimed these last three hundred years and mcie against monastic ins ituuons ? The Church of England, founded and fostered on their demolition, their bitter enemy for centuries, has tried to do without them, has failed, and has at leLgth recognised her failure and resolved to amend it by adopting them. As to bow the Church will find her undertaking conduce to the ends she desires to attain, we shall not now inquire

Monastic institutions, nevertheless, which owe tbeir origin to tbe Catholic Church, and derive their life and usefulness from the nourishment with which the Church supplies them, can hardly flourish iv any other connection, aud seem destined to disappoint those who place their hopes in them. What we may reasonably expect, however, is that now that Protestantism itself, even in its Evangelical form, feels obliged to Eeek assistance from such institutions, the denunciations made of them will no longer be heard. It would seem, moreover, to be proved by the adoption of the institutions referred to that the Piotestant world has itself recognisad the nature of the accusations brought by it against them, At least it retracts these accusations in a very practical manner.

TWO CAN PLAY AT THAT GAME.

had done nothing to provotse, as he had in no single passage of any of his arguments questioned the morality of his non-Catholic neighbours. The line of argument, nevertheless, adopted by these correspondents in reply is that, since statistics which they quote, or assume to quote, show proportionally a greater number of Catholic criminals, Catholic schools are therefore seed-beds of iniquity and Catholic populations fester with corruption above all others. Let us, however, take the statistics given, for example, by the Rev. Benjamin Waugh, a Protestant clergyman connected with the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, which will be found in an article, entitled " Baby Farming," in the Contemporary llevicw for May. According to Mr. Waugh's figures, the number of children of one particular class alone murdered in England annually is 1080. We say of one particular class, because there are other classes as well to be taken into consideration— as may be gathered, for in" stance, by the cablegram this week which reports that startling medical evidence has been given before the committee appointed by the House of Lords to inquire into the question of children's life insurance. Speaking of the baby farmer, whose horrible cruelty he also describes, Mr. Waugh says : — '" Her house is a social shambles to which the unwanted thing goes as a lamb to the butcher. It iB this woman who is largely responsible for the terrible death-rate among these illegitimates, which is permanently 100 per cent, greater than it is amongst all other children, including the children of married poverty, and cruelty, and -vice, and crime ; greater far than it is amongst these even when, in periods of most virulent infantile epidemic, it rises to its most abnormal height. Whilst in every 1000 of the married-bom it is 17, of the illegitimate it is 37." — Mr. Waugh numbers the illegitimate children born in England every year at 54,000, which, at 20 in the 1000, the exceßs over the percentage who die natural death?, gives up, as we have said, at leaßt 1080 children murdered every year by " slow torture." as Mr. Waugh rightly calls it. Have these correspondents anything to produce from any Catholic population which can exceed this ? Or are English Board and denominational schools accountable for such a state of things ? — But, incidentally, we learn something of the classes of whom some of these illegitimate cbi ] dren are born. "Judged," writes Mr. Waugh again, "from the extent of its advertisements all over the country, . . . this baby farming is now a prodigious business. . . . They appear very largely in those places of resort which have earned tbe name ' gay,' and extend to the resorts of the English on the Continent." — The statistics of Irish criminals in Great Biitain give us the number of Irish prisoners as compared with the whole population, and, in proportion to the number of Irish in the country, it is found excessive. Is it fair to compare a people living in poverty, among unfriendly neighbours, and exposed to trials and temptations of many kinds, with the middle and upper classes of wealthy England, who necessarily yield a very 6mall percentage of offenders? And yet these classes are not free from the possibility of reproach. It is not, for instance, members of the lower classes who frequent those "gay " places or the Continental resorts to which Mr. Waugh alludes, Tbe lower classes, again, did not furnish that den, whence Lord Arthur Somerset recently made his escape, with its habitues, But when we are told that the Irish in England, forming a small percentage of the population, supply a large percentage of the criminals, they are compared, among the rest, with the wealthy classes, who, as a matter of course, hardly add at all to the criminal statistics — though, as we have seen, they also have their peccadillos. As to the statistics of crime in Ireland quoted by one or other of these correspondents, they contradict those, for example, given by Dr. Ueorge Grierson> one of the Commissioners of Prisons in Ireland in his lately published work entitled " Political Prisons at Home and Abroad," and which are certainly correct. According totneFe the total number of prisoners of all classes in all Irish prisons in 1889 was 5515, and of these prisoners two-sevenths percent, only were sentenced to six months or over. These correspondents' figures also contradict the fact th^t, aow fgr some years, the rule at Irish assizes baa been for the

Bishop Moran's oft-repeated and very legitimate plea for aid to Catholic schools has been made by certain correspondents the occasion of a virulent attack on the morals of the Catholic people generally — an attack, we may add, which tbe Bishop

judges to be presented with white gloves, signifyiag that there are no cases for trial. They likewise contradict Mr. Gladstone's recent declaration that, apart from offences created by coercion, Ireland was practically free from crime. Ireland, again, is not only compara-^ tively free from crime, but also comparatively sober. Mr. Goschenß for instance, whose unbiassed authority will be admitted, stated the other day in the House of Commons that the consumption of liquor for the year had been 7 gallons a-head of the population in England, 4£ gallons a-head in Scotland, and Z\ gallons a-head in Ireland. But if we look to the United States we also find a condition of things with which people educated in Catholic schools have nothing to do. The National Divorce League, for example, gives the number of divorces from 1867 to 1886, inclusive, as 328,716— divorces during the whole time mentioned increasing at a rate twice as great as that of the increase of tbe population, and having gained more than 150 per cent, in the interval named. Tbe statistics for 1886, the last year reported, show 25,535 divorces, excluding South Carolina, where the law does not exist. These divorces are almost all confined to the Protestant, white population. Tbe motive by which they were caused, moreover, may be gathered from the fact that Mr. Phelps was induced by the statistics we have quoted to write an article — which he did in the Forum, for December, 1889— advocating at least the repeal of the clause in the Act permitting of re-marriage. — Are the secular schools of America, then, accountable for this gross state of things 1 Finally in August, 1884, the Rev. C. H. Spurgeon published an article in the Sword and Trowel, in which the following passages occur :—": — " Externally, the social habits of the people, aa a rule, are greatly improved, but the exterior is merely a thin veneer. Among the wealthier classes, beneath a film of morality, the utmost rottenness abounds. Like the attractive verdure which covers a bottomless bog upon the mountain side, the outward order and decorum of society thinly veil the horrible evils which seethe below." Could any Catholic priest, in admonishing or warning his people, describe a worse condition of things than this? or, is this also an outcome of English systems of education ? It is to be feared that those among these correspondents who rejoice in Catholic iniquity may have as much cause for their joy in non-Catholic quarters, and that those of them who look upon Catholic schools as seed-beds of wickedness may find, if their argu« mcntß are true, as foul a crop springing up from non-Catholic institutions. — The old proverb says " People who live in glasshouses should not throw stones."

Comparisons are "odorous," we know. North Britons, however, are not to suppose that things apart from them cannot be unsavoury enough. The

HAD ENOUGH POSITIVELY.

statistics of illegitimacy in Scotland, for examplej quoted by us last week from Truth have been explained »s incapable of comparison with those of other parts of the United Kingdom, because in Scotland only is the registration of such births insisted on: Truth comments on this explanation as follows :—"lt: — "It seems — though I suppose few of my readers are any more aware of it than I was — that Scotland is tbe only one of the three kingdoms whereillegitimate births are registered as such. Consequently, no basis£exi3tß lor a comparison between the morality of the Scotch in this respect and that of the English and Irish. It is very desirable on every ground that this want should be supplied. I never yet supposed that my own countrymen are more moral than any other people on the globe, a nd it will, therefore, not surprise me in the least to find, when the necessary statistics are forthcoming, that England is at the bottom of the list. But I shall be surprised if the Irish do not show a better record than the Scotch."— Meantime, the Pall Mall Gazette comments on the Scotch statistics for 1885. And let us congratulate our North British friends on the fact that they are apparently growing more moral than they used to be. In 1885 the percentage for the whole country was 8 - 46, whereas last year it was but 8, having diminished from 10-2 in 1866. In fact, contrary to what happens in some other countries, as our North British friends grow less religious they seem to become more moral, although we admit the amendment may be apparent only, as it is elsewhere, for reasons to which we shall not allude. But, as the Westminster Review a few years ago gave us to understand, there are places — by no means Catholic, we may remark in passing — where even the birth of an illegitimate child may be taken as a comparative mark of innocence. The Pall Mall Gazette, however, in commenting on the state of things in 1885, speaks as follows .— " Taking Scotland as a whole with its 8.46 per cent, of illegitimate children born last year — that being the average of the last thirty years — it means that one out of every twelve of the whole population is registered by its father or mother as illegitimate. Recollect that this shocking proportion is the lowest possible amount, for had any of the people who registered an illegitimate child's birth merely said its parents were married it would have been registered as legitimate." We do not know, therefore, how our North British friends can comfort themselves over much by the T^fl that they cannot be proved worse than their neighbours. Their poaitiv^p condition is bad enough, quite as unsavoury as it need be without any recourse to comparison. We ourselves, however, are quite of

Truth's opinion that Ireland must come out of any such comparison with flying colours, and what, among other things, confirms us in this view is that it is precisely in those districts of Scotland where Irish settlers are fewest that illegitimate births are most numerous. We may add by way of postscript that as illegitimate births are certainly included in the Registrar-General's returns for Ireland, we are authorised in taking them as correctly and accurately regis'eredThey are very much fewer than those in Scotland, and, what is more, those in the Catholic provinces are much fewer than those in Ulster.

THE FINANCIAL STATEMENT.

the Premier being prevented by illness from himself performing the task. We had already been informed that a surplus would be announced, and the figures, as it proves, had been correctly stated at £115,174. The farther information contained in the Statement to the effect that, while expenditure had been reduced by an annual sum of £300,000 and a deficit of £125,000 had been paid off, a million of loan money was still to the good, cannot also fail to give satisfaction. The excellent account given as well by the Treasurer of the condition and prospects of the Colony, for which he quoted unquestionable evidence, likewise goes to fill up the measure of the better state of things brought before us. The advice given by Sir Harry Atkinson that people, and especially the Press, should avoid spreading abroad gloomy accounts of matters and should, on the contrary, promote the currency of brighter views, for which there is valid foundation,is advice that all who wish well to the country may consistently act upon. It would, meantime, be still more conducive to the pleasurable feelings with which we should continue to contemplate the good news placed before us by the Colonial Treasurer if, for example, some immediate benefit could be felt by us from the ■urplus. Sir Harry has been successfully able to answer the carping of thoße critics who predicted that the sum in question would turn out to have been saved out of payments deferred until after the Statement had been made. This, as he has shown, would be an impossibility. But the advantage arising from the bona fide nature of the surplus in question must remain in some degree unperceived by the Colony generally, while nothing in the way of tne remission of taxation is to follow from it. On the contrary, we may look upon taxation as virtually increased, for the primage duty, which was originally only imposed as an expedient for two years, is to all intents and purposes to be reimposed for an equal period, and the chief end for which this is to be done— namely, the provision of school buildings, should hardly make the matter more acceptable to sensible people.— But, if this arrangement brings us any nearer to the condition of things in Scandinavia, which another of our Statesmen holds up as the summum bonum for our attainment, perhaps we have no reason to complain, Sir Harry Atkinson, we perceive, meantime, still preserves the cheerful frame of mind with which he contemplates the exodus from the Colony. The nett loss, he tells us, consists of women and children. Widows and oiphaus. however, as a rule, do not wander much about, and these women and children probably represent the families of men who have made settlements in other places whence they have sent to fetch them. Children of the present, moreover, should be grown people of the future, and it is, at least, patriotic to consider the population reared in the country the best to push it forward in the road of progress. The loss of these children then was in itself an evil, and, moreover, was the proof of another evil that had preceded it. Among the measures proposed in the Statement that seem deserving of support is that for the abolition of the gold-duty, a long Btanding and long neglected injustice. That for the prevention of dummyism.also, which the Premier differs from Sir Robert Stout in considering but little practised is to be commended and let us hope it will be sincerely and effectually enforced. The principle, however, on which the Statement chiefly seems to insist is that of careful economy, by which the Government hopes to retrieve all the errors of the past and to secure a future of great prosperity.

T re is a good deal that seems very satisfactory in the Financial Statement, which was read on Wednesday evening by the Hon. Mr. Mitchelson,