Current Topics

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXVI, Issue 12, 22 July 1898, Page 1

Current Topics

AT HOME AND ABROAD.

Great men nowadays die upon the stage, with the world looking on. Every word, gesture, pang of suffering is noted. Doctors, nurses, chambermaids, are besieged for 'copy,' privacy is outraged, and the minutest details are served up to the expectant public and embalmed in print. The feeling is, to a great extent, morbid, like that of Caligula, who displayed a gruesome curiosity in watching the countenances of the dying in the arena. There is no privacy for the man who has the misfortune to die either great or notorious. But the stories of such death-beds only emphasise the fact that a man's death is of the same complexion as his life. Rabelais' last words were : ' Let down the curtain. The farce is over.' Moody, the actor, died with a quotation from Shakespeare on his lips. Napoleon 111. lisped feebly about Sedan. Columbus, Tasso, and most of the saints passed away with the sweet words : ' Into thy hands, 0 Lord, I commend my spirit.' Mr. Gladstone died reciting the Lord's Prayer. It was a fitting close to a life which was permeated through and through with deep religious feeling. One noteworthy incident in connection with his closing hours is related by the London correspondent of the Irish ultra-Protestant organ, the Dublin Daily Express. The correspondent states that the last piece read to the dying statesman was F.ither Matthew Russell's touching little poem, My Last Rondeau. Oae of Mr. Gladstone's favourite pieces was Cardinal Newman's Dream of Genmtius. The devout lines of the Irish Jesuit could scarcely have failed to smooth the dying statesman's parting hours with some of the sweet resignation to the Divine Will which breathes through the every line of Cardinal Newman's famous poem. Father Russell's poem runs aa follows : ' MY LAST RONDEAU. ' My dying hour, how near art thou 1 Or near or far my head 1 bow, Before God's ordinance supreme ; But, ah ! how priceless then will seem Each moment rashly squandered now ! ' Teach me, for Thou canst teach me, how These fleeting instants to endow With worth that may the past redeem, My dying hour I ' My barque that late with buoyant prow The sunny waves did gaily plough, Now, through the sunset's fading gleam, Drifts d.iinly shoreward in a dream. I feel the land breeze on my brow, My dying hour !'

THE TECHNICAL i EDUCATION BILL.

New Zealand Catholics are paying some £60,000 a year for the maintainance of a godless system of public instruction which they cannot in conscience accept. They also pay for the erection and maintenance of their own schools, which do mnch of the work taken over by the State, save the Colony large sums of money, arfd instil into at least a portion of the rising generation day by day those principles of religion and morality that are the country's best safeguard. For this we are penalised. The Technical Education Bill ia big with the promise of still further disabilities for those who dare to train the heart and will of the little ones to good, at the same time that they lead them gently through the thorny labyrinth of the three R's. People often build lofty fabrics of hope on a hair s-br eadt h of foundation. But we are not aware that the Catholic body iv New Zealand ever had much foundation for being prodigal of hope in the present Technical Education Bill*. At the same time a strong, not to say a violent, effort will be made to confine its benefits to the godless State schools only. The campaign has already been entered upon

CROSSING THE BAR.

with a show of bustle and temper which, in the circumstances, seems a waste of useful energy. A 'no surrender 1 party has been formed in the Houfie. It consists of Messrs. Montgomery, Meredith, Tiinner. Smith, Taylor, M'Nab, R. Thompson, and J, Hutcheson. They have formed themselves into a Vigilance Com* mittee. Their object — is a Dv edin daily paper pate it — is *to eliminate any vestige of the provisions grunting State aid to private (including denominational) schools.' In other words, th« 'no surrender' party wouM inflict a fur&har double burden on the Catholic body : (1) thair quota of the adlitional 093t of £ha new measure, and (2) a further drai a on th-ir resources to keep their own schools abreast of the new line of competition opened up under the aegis of the State. And yet Catholics, through their wilful lack of any semblance of organisation, have left themselves with scarcely a voice to speak boldly of their rights and wrongs in the House of Representatives,

WIT FROM THE GALLERY.

Who has not beard of the wit that sparkles in the ' gods' ' gallery in the Dublin theatres ? It it ai sharp as a needle, and as pointed. We do not necessarily mean a pun. One of the pet aversions of the Dublin pod is what is termed ' fiddle-stringing ' — long-drawn tuning up. Once upon a time, when the top gallery was preparing to throw a rowdy customer over into the dresß»circle, one of the ' gods ' cried out : ' Don't waste the man. Kill a fiddler with him !' ' Flaneur,' in the Sydney Freeman, gives a later instance of gallery wit. The 6t(>ry is told of a veTy poor soprano who, after worrying through the part of Arline's music in the Bohemian Girl, came "to, the great air which, commonplace though it be, invariably receives a welcome. On this occasion the murdering of it was too atrocious, however, and as soon as the warbler had sung, ' I dreamt that' I dwelt in marble halls,' a disgusted ' god ' shouted back ; 'By dad, it was a blazin 1 pity they ever woke you I'

' OTJIDA ' ON ITALY.

In an article on ' The Recent Troubles in Italy ' la our last week's issue,, we pave some extracts from 'OuidaV Village Commune pointing out the rain wbioh the present regime has brought upon Italy, The same writer has an article on the same g\n>* ject in the June number of the Fortnightly Review under the title ' Misgovern men t in Italy.' It deals chiefly with the devastation wrought by the spoiler in the picturesque old cities and towns of ' United Italy, 1 The following extracts will sufficiently indicate more than one method of rushing a country to ruin :: — • There is neither common sense nor common decency in the chief part of the measures taken within the last decade to humiliate and imbastardue the cities and towns of Italy. The process of destruction began indeed much earlier ; but within the last ten years the pace has increased from a leisurely walk to a furious gallop. The B-Tambte to be the first to outrage, to deface, to deßpoil, haa become a 6t Vitus's dance among the syndics, assessors, and oounoilmen, each deliriously eager for the approving smile of the various ministers in whose hands the destinies of the great and' unrivalled Urbei un* fortunately are plaoed. . . It is such shocking and wioked watte of money as this (the destruction of a whole quarter of Piitoia.) which impoverishes every town, and disfigures each with vulgar piles of bricks and iron, and grotesque monuments of black metal, whilst a miserable woman at their gates pays four centimes (about id) duty on a pint of milk before she can take it past the guajrds to sell, and a wretched man, who owns a little road-fed flock el goats is taxed two hundred francs (&8) a year before he may drive them into the streets to yield the little nourishment which they can afford to invalids and children. Should the law proposed by Luzzatti, now under consideration, pass, and the debts of the Communes be paid by the State, and the monies be henceforth lent \>y the State to the Communes, this wicked expenditure will increase tenfold, and the jobbery accompanying it will be multiplied in similar measure.'

* There were, not many yoars ago,' bhe sayi», ' a great measure of mirth and contentment in all the minor cities of Italy and in the small towns and big walled village*, much harmless merry-making and pastime, much pimple and neighbourly pleasure, much enjoyment of the btn di Bio, the blessed air and sunshine. Most of it has been killed now, btarved out, strangled by regulations and penalties and imposts, and a fiendish fiscal tyranny, dead like the poor slaughtered forgotten conscripts in Africa.' Referring to the recent insurrection which took place over twothirds of Italy she says : ' This could have been foreseen by anyone who had accurately estimated the tendencies of public life during the last ten years, and revolution cannot logically be held as a crime in a nation created by revolution. . . Were it not for the terrible suffering- which is caused to the poople, one would be tempted to find a poetic justice, and a grim satisfaction, in the fact that the many thousands o! workingmen called by the municipalities into the cities to pull down ancient streets and beautiful buildIng, have remained there, and formed a hungry and imperious proletariat, which is the chief factor in the rebellion, and will cause difficulties as dangerous in the future.'

THE G&AND LODGE AND THE BITUALIBTB.

If strong words and white-hot thoughts were lightning- flashes, the Anglican Church at Takapuna would be a pile of rubbish, and its pastor in as many separate f r grnents as if he hud been struck by one of Admiral Dewey's melinite shells. We refer in particular to the wording of a resolution pasted by the Grand Orange Lodge of New Zealand, at Auckland, on the Bth of the present month. Race hatreds are strong. So are social and personal hatreds. But no hate lives as long and dies as hard as that of sect. The special business of the Orange Society is to cultivate this, intensify it, and direct its high capacities first and above all against ' Papists,' and in the next place against all who lie under the suspicion of thinking kindly of them. Ritualists oatne in for a fair share of this energetic and loud-voiced hatred of the lodges. In the columns of the lodge organs — such as the Victorian Standard — Ritualism is described as ' bastard Popery,' 1 Romanism in dißguise,' etc., and Ritualists as ' renegades,' ' traitors to the Protestant cause,' ' Jesuits in disguise,' ' trucklers to Rome,' and sundry other pretty epithets. The brethren in New Zealand are not behind their brethren j elsewhere in the use of ' language.' The Auckland Grand Lodge has adopted a resolution written by some brother who was suffering from a severe congestion of adjectives. Yellow-scarved dedaimers are usually in that painful oondition. The resolution, which was sent out by the Irish Grand Lodge, was passed ununiinGUtJy. It ran as follows : — • That this Grand Lodge, taking into serious consideration the alarming and insidious efforts of an unscrupulous Romanist party in the Protestant Church, who (with Jesuitical subtlety by introducing Ritualistic practices and by instituting Scriptural novelties for the eimple teaching of Christ's Gospel) labour perseveringly to pervert men's minds and to seduce them from the pure faith of the Reformation, enjoins, every member of the Orange Institution to be watchful, and faithfully and unitedly by all lawful and proper means to oppose the designs and schemes of those agents of the Romish Apostacy, and determinedly to prevent the introduction into our Churches of Ritualism, retreats, the confessional, and other fanciful novelties which have no warrant in Scripture.' If strong words can kill Ritualism in New Zealand, its insurance policy is now overdue. It may, perhaps, discount some tm the fine fury of the brethren, that such out-and-out Protestants as Rev. Dr. Killen, Grattan, Lotd Gosford, etc., etc., described the brethren as ' crowds of miscreants,' ' the very scum of society and a disgrace to Protestantism,' ' a lawless banditti,' ' a violent mob,' . etc, and that the British Parliament supressed them for their persistent turbulence and disloyalty. There is one principle of the early Reformers to which Orangemen hold fast : They severely restriot religious liberty and the right of private judgment to themselves. It is a fine monopoly, and in the past paid hanlsome dividends in the shape of power, place and — bawbeos. Thereon was built so much zeal as they profess for the Reformation.

BABLE* WINK : WHAT NEXT ?

What with the magical surprises sprung- upon us by chemistry and other sciences," it is becoming unsafe to laugh at the philosophic qiacks ot Lapnta. Modern magicians have dune more Wonderful things than extracting sunbeams from cu -.umbers. One of the latest developments is the manufacture of wine from barley. We were long ago aware of its being made from chemical compounds known in Italy and France as wine-powder Qpolct-re Tini/era, poudre vinifkre). The wine so madd is as innocent of grape- juice as ' harvesters' whiskey ' is of barley-malt. In the near future, when Willie brews a peck o' maut, he will be able to turn it at will into Barton ale, or Hielan' whuskey, or good Rhine wine.

Chambers' Journal for June is responsible for the following statements. It may interest our farmers to learn that their barley-fields are also potential vineyards : —

'An interesting account of the manufacture of various wines from barley has recently appeared (says Chambers' Journal) in a consular report from Naples. The chief seat of this new industry is a factory at Wandsbcck, near Hamburg, which is said to produce aquarter of a million gallons of wine per annum. The barley, after being malted and carried to the fermentation point, has added to it lactic acid and various ferments under certain careful regulations as to temperature. The mixture is then vatted and ripened artificially by heat, after which it is racked into pmall casks, or bottled, and is ready for consumption in three or four months' time. The wine has a som-wbat high percentage of alcohol, which is wholly derived frnn the fermentation process, and is not the result of " fortifying," as the process of adding sririt is called. The new beverage is known as " highly fermented barleywine," and sherry, port, tokay, malaga, etc., are most successfully imitated by the producers It is largely used in the German hospitals, and is favourably reported upon by the medical authorities.'

THE PRINCIPLE OF DISUNION AND DECAY.