Current Topics AT HOME AND ABROAD.

New Zealand Tablet, Issue 41, 11 February 1898, Page 1

Current Topics AT HOME AND ABROAD.

GAUNT FAMINE AGAIN.

the memories and fears of 79 and "black '4C>." There are still in New Zealand some who woke up one morning in Ireland, and beheld the well-remembered blight fog

" Wave abroad its heavy warnin', Like the white plumes of a hearse ;"' and who, perhaps, were among those who dug beneath the withered white and purple blossoms — "... but only soattered Poisoned spuds along the slope." The crisis seems to be already acute in rack-rented West Mayo, where many of the poor farmers are kept in their little homes, not by what the land produces, but by the remittances — amounting in the Clifden district to about £10,000 a year — which come from relatives beyond the Atlantic.

Mr. James Long, a great English authority on agricultural subjectF, has been on a visit to the famine-stricken portions of Mayo. In the course of a letter to the Manchester Guardian, he says : —

" The potato has been the blessing and the curse of the Irish cottar. It, and it alone, has enabled him to exist ; it is his bread and his meat ; in ten thousand families no other solid food will pass the lips of parent or child during the coming winter, and these people are thankful for the sustenance it affords them. But, in truth, it is owing to the potato that these people have settled in districts so uncongenial, in a country so barren that it is deserted alike by wild animals and almost every plant useful to man. Wild, bleak, hedgeless, and treeless. Where green pastures are absolutely unknown, is the land on which the poor cottar has in many eases squatted— an undrained moorland which covers hundreds and perhaps thousands ot square miles with its dank and worthless herbage, only furnishing the peaty turf which, on the cottage fire, keeps body and soul together. It is possible, however, to bring even a peaty bog into cultivation by the employment of unremitting labour, and this the poor cottars have done, to their own sorrow. By clearing and draining a seed bed is obtained, and by hand-digging and planting the potato— the one plant which responds to this primitive culture— the bog becomes a liUle farm, upon which oats and potatoes are grown in alternation. In this way tens of thousands of acres of otherwise useless moorland have been reclaimed, only to enslave the people at once to an industry which will not provide them with the necessaries of life. The English people have no true conception of the gravity of the suffering and distress which exists in some of the districts of western Ireland."

Our latest Irish files continue to give distressing news from the western counties. The failure of the crops, and especially of the potato crop, revives

AN UNEXPECTED APPRECIATION

form, full square before the public eye. Holy living has been termed "the Gospel in practice" ; and the reading of the records of the saints — whomsoever written — has been, for many outside the Church, one of the many roads that lead to Rome. The distinguished convert, Mr. Richard Malcolm Johnston, says that, while yet a Protestant, " the Life of the Cure of ir.f produced a lasting impression on me. As an antidote, I read Laud and Hooker. They were no longer convincing ; I was filled with agony and depression. I could not banish from my mind the thought that ' these Catholic writers have got the argument.' "

The Rev. Alban Butler was, perhaps, humbly unconscious of the far-reaching good which he effected when, in 1715, he gave to English-speaking . people his ever popular Lives of the Set bit a. He placed the Church's note of sanctity, in concrete

Ritualists have long been busy sampling and assimilating Catholic doctrines and devotions. Catholic hagiology is, however, for Protestant divines, a comparatively unexplored region. Nevertheless, a beginning has been made. It has resulted in the publication of appreciative volumes on SS. Francis of Assisi and De Sales, and St. Teresa. One of the latest explorers in this ground is the Rev. Alexander Whyte, D.D., a Presbyterian clergyman, residing at Edinburgh. A lecture on St. Teresa was reoently delivered by him to the Young Men's and Young Women's Classes of Free St. George's, Edinburgh. It appeared in the Non. conformist paper, the Britixk Weekly, from which it was trans* ferred to the columns of the Liverpool Catholic Times,

Dr. Whyte dwells long and lovingly on the inner life of Sfc Teresa, and especially on what he terms her " simply miraculous life of prayer," " the quite extraordinary purity and spirituality of her life of prayer." "By her life of faith, and prayer, and personal holiness," said he, " Teresa made herself ' capable of God,' as one describes it, and God came to her and filled her with Himself to her utmost capacity, as He had said He would." " Her faith," said he in another place, " is truly the substance of things hoped for, and the evidence of things not seen. Our Lord was as real, as present, as near, as visible, and as affable to this extraordinary saint as ever He was to Martha, or Mary, or Mary Magdalene, or the woman of Samaria, or the Mother of Zebedee's children." Dr. Whyte is a firm believer in the reality of St. Teresa's visions and '• locutions." '• lam driven," said he, "in sheer desperation, to believe such testimonies and attainments as those of St. Teresa, if only to support my f Uling faith in the words of my Master." And he sets up the great Carmelite saint as an example for his Presbyterian hearers to follow. '"Teresa's was," said he, "just the life of self-denial and repentance and prayer and communion with God that we should all live." And, we may add, it is such a life as is possible only in the bosom of the Catholic Church. According to his Life and Letters (published in 181)2), another gifted Presbyterian divine, Dr. Cairns, waxed eloquent over the use of images and relics in his descriptions of the .statuary in St. Ambrose's Church, and in the Cathedral of Milan. Professor Milligan has done much to throw ridicule and discredit on the popular identification of Rome with the Babylon of Hi vrhitionx, and of tho Catholic Church with the Mistress of Abominations. Perhaps we are witnessing the first small beginnings of an Oxford Movement among our Presbyterian, friends.

WHAT IS A CHUISTIAN?

reioices in the xohriquct of " the King of Louth " :—: — " Amongst the many yarns spun by the ' King ' this time was one which painfully proves that before our Anglican friends start mission maidens off to enlighten the pig-tailed pagans of far Cathay, they would do well to round up some of the white heathens on the Backblocks, and fill them with at least enough religious instruction to lift them above the level of the blacks. The ' King ' had a trusty old retainer who, .after battling with life for 96 years, died rather suddenly, and as he was being taken to his last home one of the mourners, a father of a family, too, observed : " ' What religion was ole Bill ? I'm Church of England myself although I never go anywhere ; but I'm hanged if I think Bill was anything at all.' " ' Oh, yes he was,' replied the ' King ' ; ' Bill was a Christian, and a good one, too.' " ' A Christian V said the other with much surprise. ' Well, now, that's queer. I've heard of Baptists, and Jumpers, and Shakers, and other ratty religions, but hang me if I ever heard of Christiana before. What do they believe in, anyway V "

The '• Flaneur," in the Sydney Freeman's Journal tells the following story on the authority of the well-known old New South Wales colonist who

THE GREAT BOOK DIFFICULTY.

some and unwholesome in the literature of the day — in fiction, history, philosophy, and travel. There is a peculiar solemnity in the warning words which describe the gradual but sure process by which the moral sense of Catholics is undermined by the habit of reading the risky literature that is masked under a fair exterior :—": — " If, in an affected tone of friendship, the innuendo supplies the place of open attack, and under the plausible garb of literature or science Catholic doctrines are misrepresented, then the ordinary reader ia thrown off his guard, and may easily and unconsciously imbibe the fatal poison. In such cases the novel treatment of the subject disguises its religious aspect ; rank blasphemy clothed in decorous and ornate language ceases to shock ; mere sophistry passes for argument when it flatters vanity, and the reader is half won over unawares. Then spellbound he is hypnotised so to speak, seeing, hearing, thinking with the eyes, ears, and mind of the hypnotiser."

The illustration is a happy one. The hypnotist may succeed even with well educated persons who possess a strongly developed consciousness. He scores be&t and most rapidly with those whose faculties are least developed, or who are somewhat low in the intellectual scale. Such subjeots.|as Ball and Manaccine tell us, when frequently submitted to hypnosis, begin at length to fall into the hynotic state at the mere sight of a bright object In like manner, even well educated persons may fall under the insidious influence of dangerous reading. But the great bulk of Catholic readers have neither much education, nor a special training in the exposition of the dogmas of the Church ; nor have they, in most cases, a judicial cast of mind. They are, therefore, particularly open to the snares of the heretic and the sophist. In their case the danger to fa th and morals which may arise from the perusal of insidious anti-Catholic or antiChristian literature is of the mist urgent kind. To all alike the four great remedies pointel out by our Metropolitan will be invaluable, for they go to the root of the matter. To his Grace's parting words of advice — as to the necessity for great discrimination in regard to books, papers, etc., not bearing the stamp of Catholic orthodoxy — we might be permitted to add the few homely but far less fundamental directions given by Edmund Wengraf in the Wiener LiU'ratur-Zettunr/. Ilerr Wengraf recommends all and sundry never to real (1) books with catchpenny titles ; (2) novels in more than one volume ; (.^) works on popular science, the authors of which are not known to us as reliable ; and (4) books of which we have read pu(t'-( or several unanimous notices. Attention to even these plain instructions would banish from the hands of our people many of those plausible but risky books whose only mission, says Perryeve. is " to corrupt the mind, and blot out the boundary lines of honour."

Some seven years ago tho Belgian Government suppressed the railway bookstalls because of the class of books which were exposed for sale on them. Even in China, according to the Caxtou Review, the publication of such books is visited, in the case of an official, with dismissal ; in the case of private persons, with a hundred lashes ; and their sale by a similar penalty. And yet no Belgian bookstall or Chinese bookshop has. perhaps. ever sold worse publications than are daily placed within the reach of even our schoolboys. From the law we can expect but little real help in this matter. The duty of united action rests with ourselves. Our hierarchy have given the initiative ; but, by the very necessities of the situation, a great part of the success of the good work must depend upon the hearty and zjalous co-operation of our priesthood and of the Catholic population at large. Success in such a movement will be assured when, and only when, we shall have (1) created and cultivated among our people everywhere a sound conscience regarding the duty of discrimination in the choice of their reading matter; and (2) when we shall have place! within eisy reach of them — by means of Catholic Truth Societies or otherwise — a good supply of safe literature in the shape of book«, magazines, and newspapers.

It is not a far cry to the time when, to use the words of tho Protestant historian Lecky, the

IKIBII SCHOOLS.

legislation against Catholic education in Ireland '•amounted simply to universal, unqualified, and unlimited proscription ;" when a reward of £10 was offered for the hi ad of a "Popish schoolmaster"; and when, after the foundation of the proselytising Charter Schools in 1733, "the alternative offend by

There is no uncertainty in the note struck by the Pastoral Letter of the Archbishop of Wellington, which appears eLswhero in our columns of to-day. The letter touches a crying evil of our times, and is, in effect, a complete treatise in miniature on the subject of what is whole-

law to the Catholics was that of absolute and compulsory ignorant or of an education directly subversive of their faith." Even during the blackest periods of the penal days Irish hedge-school masters and their pupils snapped their fingers at the law. The hum of school work — punctured, probably, by the swish of the birch or woodbine rod — rose inilonely bogs and caves, and on the bleak hillsides, as Campion, Dr. Healy, Goldsmith, and Wakefield tell us ; and till far on in the eighteenth century Latin continued to be spoken with a mellifluous Doric brogue in Kerry and the highlands of Connaught.

Wltitaln'rx Almanac for 1898 shows that the desire for education among the Irish people has been steadily growing. Despite the manner in which the population of the country is melting away, the number of children on the rolls of the National schools increased from 694,294 in 1892 to 720,977 in 1894. As many as 8,593 National schools were open in 1896, as against 8,377 in 1892. During the same period there was an increase of 185 certificated principal teachers and 546 pupil teachers ; while the salaries to the teaching staffs rose from £923.453 to £1,106,586 ; the cost of schoolbooks and requisites went up steadily from £3,113 to £4,459 ; and the erection, maintenance, and repair of school-houses from £36,401 to 1:52,68.). The rate 3 paid on school-buildings, etc., in 1892 amount to £3,893. In 1596 they had risen to £9,258. The total expenditure on the National School system mounted from C1,110.770in 1892 to £1,331,426 in 1896. while during the same period the population of the country had reduced by 107,695 persons.

The returns of the Intermediate Education Board show that the same gratifying signs of progress are evident in the secondary schools of the country. The number of students who presented themselves for examination rose from 5,759 in 1892 to 8,711 in 1896 with a corresponding increase in passes from 3,323 to 4,966. It is well to have even these small crumbs of consolation as a set off to that weary emigration which from May, 18,1 1, to December 31, 1896 sent 3,690,123 souls over the seas— which carved out of the heart of a nation the makings of a nation greater than Chile, or Peru, or Australia.

PROFESSIONAL SLANDERERS.

A.P.A. hired " lecturers " were trying at the time to palm off on the United States. Such trappings have long since been discarded by educated and refined English Protestants, but their tatters and rags still adorn "lewd fellows of the baser sort"— like the castoff finery which descends from my Lord and my Lady to Jeems and Phyllis, and from them, by easy stages, through the old clo' men to the foul-mouthed, beer-swilling, human scarecrows that people the neighbourhood of the Seven Dials. Mr. Stead had temporarily forgotten about the existence of Exeter Hall, the National Protestant League, the Church Association, the Orange Society, and Mr. Kensil — all of whom appear to have a rooted objection to our eighth commandment, and an unfailing belief in the efficacy of vilification as a means of leading the public on the path towards eternal life. As a matter of fact, the United States has not lately offered a congenial field for the operations of no-Popery ■' lecturers." Public exposure, imprisonment, and disgrace persisten tly dogged their footsteps. Some of them, like unclean spirits, returned to the place whence they had gone, to find it swept and garnished. The western English counties, and especially Lancashire, have recently been suffering from an invasion of this pestilential class. On street and stage they have been improving the minds of young people by filling their imagination with details of the supposed phenomenal immorality of Catholic religious, and frightening old women of both sexes with the time-worn effigy which they call the Romish Church — with its familiar hoof and horns and tail, and its depraved appetite for " the blood of saints."

One of these " lecturers " — who represents two Protestant associations—has appeared in the open streets at Wigan, ostentatiously surrounded by a body-guard of Orangemen. His no-Popery discources caused considerable disturbances there. One of that happily very rare class— an unfrocked ecclesiastic— has, with the aid of a female impostor, aroused strong sectarian feeling at Liverpool and elsewhere — the Orangemen, as usual, forming a body-guard to a man who«e drunken habits led to his banishment from the sacred ministry in Ireland, and whose vending of indecent literature secured him a lengthy detention in a United States prison. But, aoror'-in-r to their Gospel, "of such is the kingdom of Heaven."' Despite npeated exposures, they take to their besom, in then- fall, men w horn they hate or despise while ho'ding an honoured place in their sacred calling. The experience of thesa colonies has shown that there exists, even in our midst, as in Englaod, an extremely gullible class of honest bigots who support these itinerant adven-

Aiter all, Mr. W. T. Stead is not a prophet, at least in his own country. In his lurid book on Chicago, he said that England had no further use for the cast-off no- Popery trumpery which the

" turers. fancying in a puzzle-headed way, that they are thereby somehow advancing the cause of God. Many others — and perhaps the greater number — attend these saturnalia of vilification from a prurient itching to hear indecent language addressed to mixed audiences by foul-mouthed blackguards from a public platform, and to purchase and stealthily read the filthy pamphlets the sale of which is designed to add to the receipts of those roving agitators When our laws exercise as strict a supervision over pornographic literature as they do over the sale of poisons, such garbage will be publicly burned by the common hangman. -* * v The incidents that have occurred in Lancashire have revived the whole question as to whether liberty of speech should be permitted to cover the degrading tirades of those ex-gaol-birds and vendors of indecent literature. The law of libel provides redress for an individual who is libelled in this fashion. It permits a whole community to be libelled with impunity. When the law extends to a community the same measure of protection that it extends to John Doe or Richard Roe, the occupation of the anticonfessional and anti-convent " lecturer " will be gone. So will it be when the uttering of indecent language and the publication of Zolaistic writings will be promptly dealt with by the strong arm of the law, and not afforded a quiet and lazy tolerance, as at present. Things seem to have been better managed in 1867, when the notorious adventurer Murphy's filthy lectures and pamphlets raised such an uproar in Birmingham and elsewhere. Murphy's infamous pamphlet was seized under Lord Campbell's Act for suppressing indecent publications. Many thousand copies of it were destroyed, and the attraction of pruriency being withdrawn, the fellow hadj to retire into private life. The action of the criminal courts has done much to thin out this class. One of the most telling methods of dealing with them is to publish their history to the world. Thus Father Lynch has published a withering exposure of Slattery and his female companion. The Catholic Truth Society of London has been giving, with marked effect, details in the career of Chiniquy, O'Gorinan, Golding, and a number of Protestant or otherwise bogus "' ex-priests," " ex-nuns," " escaped and rescued nuns," etc. The present year may, we hope, see the issue of a book of biographies of a class of platform imposters which will, we ween, read like a further instalment of Tim lioijuis 1 Calendar. In dealing with adventurers of this class, Protestants might well take a leaf out of our book. When a certain " Sister " •' escaped " some years ago from a Protestant convent, and published her Xnnnrr// Lijr In the Chinch of Untfland, no Catholic was found base enough to take her up, to listen to her platform discourses, to purchase her book, or to give her countenance of any kind. When will Protestants go and do likewise with the weeds the Pope throws over his garden wall .'

Tiiosr, :\iAiuuA(.r. ui:tuk>!s again.

against the sceptics of his day. In our issue of last week we referred to a clerical sceptic who, in grim seriousness, not alone undertook in the Chun It Tn»<\ to deny the \ cry existence of the great Borne ward movement now goinj- on in England, but even tried to prove, by well-cooked marriage returns, that the Catholic Church in the country was in an advanced state of consumption, and rapidly approaching its dissolution. Mr. Cheney's figures. collected from the Registrar-General's report, and published by us, go to show that, if they pro\c anything, they prove that the Catholic Church is at least maintaining its own, while the Anglican Establishment is slowly but surely losing grouud. Two important letters have appeared on the subject in the is-s-ueof the Catholic '1 'nn t.s 1 just to hand. The writers of both agree that the marriagereturns are not a safe j^uidc as to the total number of members in the Established Church or the Catholic Church in the country. A " Late Anglican Rector "' points out two important facts in this connection : First, that large numbers of Dissenters,! who are strongly opposed to the Establishment, arc married in the parish church, and never appear within its precincts a^ain ; and secondly that, year after year, the greater proportion of the many converts to the Church become Catholics after they have been married. Father Breen supplies the following additional figures which are of great interest, and place the matter beyond the reach of further denial : —

"In IS IT) the Catholic marriages are returned as 20 per 1,000; in IS'.H they are returned as 12 per 1,000. This shows that the marriage rate of Catholics has more than doubled itself during the last fifty years. The marriage rate of Anglicans in 181.~> was i)Ol in every 1,000. In 1891 it was returned as only GBG per 1,000, showing a decrease of 21] per 1,000.

In ISID, Archbishop Whatcley set forth to prove that there was no sufficient evidence of the existence of Napoleon Bonaparte. His book — Historical Douhts — was from beginning to end a bit of keen, razor-edged irony, directed

" I do not| attach much importance to these returns because, owing to poverty and other causes, the Catholic marriage rate is known to be below the average, and the registrar officer tends to deplete the Anglican Church in the matter of marriage amongst the very poor, who seem to prefer the public registrar to the Anglican clergy ; but as a certain class of Anglicans appeal to the marriage returns they must abide by their appeal.

" The Catholic marriage rate isjthus shownjto be 1 to 23 of the rest of the population. Taking the population of England and Wales as 26,000,000, and dividing 1 by 23 we get considerably over 1,000,000 as the number of Catholics in England and Wales as shown by the marriage rate, as against 30,000 to 36,000 in a population of 9,000,000 as returned at the end of last century. But as the Catholic marriage rate is about a third lower than that of the general population, their number must be increased in proportion. This shows that whereas the general population has multiplied itself by three during the last hundred years, the Catholic body haa multiplied itself by fifty, and yet certain Anglicans tell us ' Rome is playing a losing game in this country.' "