ON THE BRUTAL TELLING OF THE TRUTH.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XIX, Issue 5, 31 October 1890, Page 20

ON THE BRUTAL TELLING OF THE TRUTH.

(By Matjrj.ce Fbaucis Egan in the Aye Maria.) TBUTH is held by the Protestant English to be their inheritance. yueen Khzabeth, the most successful and accomplished liar of her tune, according to Green, the historian, preserved it to them when she defeated the Spanish Armada. English literature since her time is fall ot the repeated assertion that foreigners are liars, an 1 that truth is an English virtue exclusively. Aul yet, like the jewel in the toad s head, it has been well hidden at times. Our friends the English Protestants have always been sticklers for the exact telling of the truth in small matters. The Puritans would never forbear to utter an unpleasant truth to their neighbours, if the advantage of the utterance were on their own sida. But if it were necessary to plunge froth deeper into her well, that she mi<*bt not illumiuate a sharp bargain with an Indian for a bit of land, the Puritan could do it with serenity. The doctrine that it is as great " a sin to steal a pin " as to defraud the widow and the orphan was cheriihed by these fierce truthtellers, and flaunted by them in the face of the lax Papist, who held that some sins were greater than others. This unreasonable Puritanical confusion is helping modern Protestantism to say, with Kenan, " I drop sin out altogether." Experience has shown that the truth in the hands of people who consider themselves to be entirely truthful, is a weapon more destructive than a knife controlled by a Malay running a-tnuck. To love truth is a precious virtue ; to speak it in season and out of season is a detestable vice. To say, "It is truth, 11 after one has mined a neighbour s reputation may sound noble to the man or woman with a hard heart and a Puntanised conscience ; it is not noble : it is base. Io tell the truth uaseasonably is often a crime agn'nst chanty. lrutb-telling is often the keenest and moat poisonous" weapon of v c envious. Indeed, it is generally the envious who conJone their brutal unchantablenesa by the cry of '• the truth, the truth, and nothing but the truth 1 " It is true that Jack Stripling: was in eraol ten years ago for spending tis employer's money for candy and dime novels. He was thirteen years olu then, and the affair was bad enough ; he was punished ; be repented ; he is a man now, honorable, honest, respected ; nobody knew of it in his new neighbourhood until ihe other \a v youn SeßtS eBt b °y came b °me in tears, broken-hearted, in a world that had suddenly become as gloomy as night. A dear old i n 7T a Pl ° U8 ' con9cleutiouß old lady— nad considered it tier duty to tell the truth, the plain " unvarnished truth," about poor Stripling to a few friends. There are men serving out life sentences in tbe penitentiaries with purer souls and less to answer for than that veteran truth-teller-woo, by the way, is not a Puritan, but a constant attendant at all the services of the Oaurch. She seems to have everything but charity. A brutal truth-teller does more harm than a liar. The words of a liar soon pass for what they are worth ; but truth is truth after all, and it can be made a heavy weapon— a bludgeon to crush the heart out ot those who are trying to live down the past— a dagger to poison nope— an extinguisher for reverence and respect. A brutal truth told without warrant has been known to weaken faith itself. There is no doubt of the fact that whenever you meet a man or woman wno protests his or her devotion to the truth at all times and seasons, you meet a malicious and uncharitable man or woman, an envious and bad-tempered man or woman. If truth in our daily life serve charity, and kindness, and cheerfulness, let it be told a hundred times a day. But tbe just man who blurts it out on all occasions probably falls as often as he blurts it out. Frankness, which our Puritan friends protest they cherish above all things, is detestable unless tempered by tact. When two friends begin to examine eacb other's consciences, relations are becoming strained, though they may both love the truth. r* *k .- 8( £? e of our Phan8 ees— there are Catholic as well as nonCatholic Pharisees— had the opportunity of telling some home-truths to St. Mary Magdalen before she found Our Lord, she would probably have gone back in despair to her sin. There are more crimes committed every day in the name of truth than in the name of liberty. Calumny may be lived down, but who ca i live down detraction ?

Readers of the funny column in the papers are familiar with stones of the meanest man. We think the record is broken by the Bt .°l£-n f the seizore b y the Dublin Castle authoritiep of the manuscript , ™ m °' Brlen 8 novel wiitten during his confinement in Galway gaol. The gaolers seized it on the ground that "as it had been written on prison paper it was the property of the Government."— Unr wit-and»humour editors will find it hard to beat thiß