Dublin Notes.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XX, Issue 24, 1 April 1892, Page 11

Dublin Notes.

("From the National Papers.)

The dispute between Mr Marmion and bis tenants who reside on the Calf and other inlands in the neighbourhood of Schull, has now been finally and, as far as the tenants are concerned, satisfactorily arranged, These tenants some two years ago adopted the Plan of Campaign as the landlord would not give them what they considertd a fair settlement. Their rents were very high, and, consequently, they were not in a position to meet the demands of the landlord. They adopted the Plan, and, nnder the advice and guidance of Mr William O'Brien and Mr Gilhooly, carried out the fight to A successful issue. They were provided with huts on the mainland. The terms of settlement are 14 years' purchase at the judicial rents, all arrears to be cancelled. Tht tenants, under Father O'Connor, P.P., Schull, have gone to Skibbereen to arrange with Mr Marmion. They are to be immediately reinstated in their holdings. The chief ecclesiastical event of the week has been the consecration of the Most Rev B. A. Sheehan, D.D., Bishop of the united dioceses of Waterford and Lismore. The consecrating prelate was the Archbishop of Cashel, and the solemn function, which took place in the cathedral, attracted an unusually large concourse of the clergy and laity. The consecration sermon was preached by the Most Rev Dr O'Dwyer, Bishop of Limerick, and was a very thoughtful and suggestive discourse, affirming the Divine right which is of the essence of episcopal authority. " The bishop's authority," said Dr O Dwyer, " did not come from the people in aoy shape or form ; he was not the elected of any set of men ; he was not like those popular representatives who derived their authority from those who were supposed to be below them, but were in reality their masters. Therefore, he never needed to shape himself to please anyone, because his power was from above, and was obtained from the Holy Ghost. Ht was placed in his position by the Spirit of God. Therefore, though he should always desire to preserve the kindliest relations with his people ; though he should nuko himself to the people all that be should be to Christ,

yet, if he was a true bishop, he would ever remember that he would be false to his God and false to his people also if he allowed their views ever to interfere with the rectitude of his duty as be saw it by the light of the grace of God. It was not a mere rank or dignity giving him a certain eminence, but he had a right, a Divine right, to rule his diocsse, and with the right to rult there was a corresponding obligation on the part of his people to obey." The Most Rev Dr Sheehan, who was the recipient of numerous addresras, in replying to one from the Mayor and Corporation of Waterford, said :— " To-day I have been wedded, and wedded for ever, until death parts as, to the people of Waterford, and heart and soul, mind and strength, and every power I have, they are theirs until they leave me in death." County Court Judge Ferguson, of the West Biding of Cork, who has JBBt ditd in Dublin, was a landlord whose decisions were singularly just to the tenants. He has been known to reduce a man's rent under the Land Act from £72 a year to £22, and this decision was upheld by the Land Commission— a nice comment on West Cork landlords; The late judge's redactions always averaged 40 per cent, a remarkable fact not merely because he was a landlord, but because his court vainer was a land agent who, strange to say, haa frequent disputes with the tenants over whom be is placed. It was Judge Ferguson who said, iv sentencing Mr James Gilhooly, M.P., for * speech that a man to avoid the Coercion Act, under which the sentence was delivered, " should have a lawyer at his elbow." Although a foe to agitation and a great eunmy of boycotting, for which he sent more than one priest to gaol, Mr Ferguson was, on the whole, an impartial judge and a great f.iend of the tenants. So it was " a dirty Irishwoman " who wts the inventor of public baths and washhouses. A Liverpool pulpit has lately heard her fame preached ; and no finer story of a woman's heroism was ever told — though there is many an unfamed heroine of her class in the famine graves of Ireland. We glean her story from a review of the sermons of a Mr Lund, which the Liverpool Post has been eulogising. Mr Lund borrowed the story from Mr Rathbone. The woman's name was Katharine Wilkinson. She lived in Lower Frederick street, Liverpool, when the cholera struck the city in 1832. She could scarcely maintain herself, writes our contemporary, but she nursed the poor sufferers from cholera with unflagging energy. She found that the people had to burn the clothes of those who died because there was no means of washing thorn. Having an old copper in her house she begged the means for patching it up and the coals wherewith to heat it. Her little narrow house was | the first publia washhouße in the kingdom. When the cholera had gone she persuaded the Corporation of Liverpool to be the first municipality to raise public washhouses. "To which," says Mr Lund "were added public baths. The building of which she was the originator still remains. There was a poor man without friends, and the neighbours left him to die alone because it was so unsafe to undertake to nurse him. She announced her purpose of going, and her friends, gathering round her, assured her she was going to her death ; but she broke from them saying : ' Do you think that Jonah would have got into the whale's belly if he bad not run away from Nineveh 1 ' She nursed the man till he died, and then the doctor spoke out, and said the body ought to be buried without washing, in the sheet where it lay, as the danger of contagion after death would be fatal. She assented. Then the neighbours who were prepared to let the living man die alone and uncared for clamoured round the door that the dead body should not be buried unwashed. She came forth to the door, and stood on the steps, and said ' Neighbours, I have nursed the man so long as there was life in him ; he was no more to ma than he was to you. If you think that his bod; ought to be washed, I have no doubt Mrs Rathbone will give you soap, and it is now your turn: I have still work to do amongst the living.' Then the neighbours slunk away."