Current Topic AT HOME AND ABROAD.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXVI, Issue 17, 2 September 1898, Page 1

Current Topic AT HOME AND ABROAD.

Some gloom-pampered man may yet rise to harrow THE up people's souls with a history of famous ship- * bourgogne ' wrecks. That of the ' Bourgogne ' will find its disaster. place with the wof ul tales of the ' Pomona,' the ' Lay-ee-moon,' the ' Wairarapa.' Five hundred and seventy-one souls were sent to their account on July 4 when the French ocean-liner 'La Bourgogne' was sunk off Nova Scotia by collision with the British steamer ' Cromartyshire.' There was a mad scramble for life. The papers tell a story — which we hope is overdrawn — of primitive savagery in the struggle which the terror of death infused into a portion of the mass of humanity that sailed aboard the ' Bourgogne.' The story is a horrible one. Happily it is lighted up by the calm courage of four French priests and one German, who went about among their terrified shipmates, absolving and consoling them on the brink of their liquid grave. ' They gave no thought to self,' says the Boston Pilot, ' but died with sublime simplicity performing their sacred duties.' The New York papers heap encomiums on the brave black-robes who made no effort to save their own lives, but busied themselves to the last in helping others to die happily. » * • A non-Catholic New York paper publishes the following telegram :—: — 'The priests on board the ' Bourgogne ' exhibited sublime courage. When all hope was gone, they passed among the stricken passengers on the deck quieting them and warning them to prepare to meet their end. ' Large groups gathered around the priests, kneeling and praying, and as the ship sagged down deeper and deeper, received absolution. 'In this posture, the priests with hands uplifted, the people kneeling in a swaying circle about them, they sank beneath the water.' Such heroism is one of the commonplace duties of a Catholic priest. 'There are,' says Church Progress, ' nearly as many such moral heroes in the Catholic Church as she has priests. The Catholic Church is the very home and hearth of the ideal. The highest heroism of which the world can dream is within her pale of such ordinary occurrence as to scarcely attract attention. It is so in all other spheres ; the highest that the separated can imagine is only the vestibule of her transcendant glories.' We might add that the first duty of a married clergyman, in such circumstances, -would be towards his wife and family. Catholic priests have, happily, no such hindrances to the exercise of a higher and broader charity.

It is a hoary old complaint, this question of State state School manners. A Mornington writer raises his school voice in the Dunedin Evening Star of August 26 manners. in fervid protest against a public and disgraceful exhibition of local larrikinism, 'We boast a good deal about our national system of education,' says the writer, ' but it seems to me a great pity that a little time is not devoted to instruction in manners as well as the three R'b. ' But me no buts.' Does the writer's indignation make him forget that ' our national system of education ' — or rather of bald instruction — is not intended to produce polite youths or mannerly itfidens ? For what, after all, is the solid basis of good manners 1 ' Manners are the shadow of virtue,' says Sydney Smith, and the inculcation of either the substance or the shadow of morality forms no inseparable part of that glorification of godleßS training which so many of our fellow-colonists seem to reverence as a fetish. If State school children preserve good manners, the credit will be due, not to the system, but to the private zeal of this or taat teacher

and still more to good example in the home. Catholic scc^ols recognise the fact that training in good manners is necessary o little Tommy and Em'ly as well as furnishing their minds with such necessaries as the three R's and with such pretty bric-a-brac as ' the accomplishments.' We have seen a goodly number of inspectors' reports of Catholic school, and we noticed with pleasure that, however other marks may have run up or down the gamut from • V.W. to ' V.G.,' that for ' manners' always sounded the top note of the register, ' excellent.'

' Doubting Thomas ' sends us a small printed Gladstone slip containing part of a report of an anti-Catholic and sermon that must have been delivered under the the Vatican, influence of the July fervour. Judging from the sample before us the sermon has a wind-power in it strong enough to lean your back against it. Our attention is specially directed to a quotation from one of Gladstone's antiVatican pamphlets which is- urged as conclusive and irrefragable evidence that the Catholic body were, in effect, mostly born on the first of April, and with a double concentrated dose of original sin. Obviously Mr. Gladstone was no more a final authority on matters which he grievously, though most probably unconsciously, misunderstood, than ' Doubting Thomas's ' perfervid preacher is on matters of theology or good breeding. The following passage, from Wilfred Meynell's article on ' Mr. Gladstone and the Roman Catholic Church ' in the Nineteenth Century for July, may be of interest to ' Doubting Thomas ' and to many others as well : — 'As for the anti-Vatican pamphlets which caused so muoh commotion, it is interesting to consider whether Gladstone withdrew the indictment they contained. In a sense it may be said that he did. A letter was written by Newman to a friend, in which he said that Gladstone would probably maintain he had been quite misunderstood ; that he had elicited satisfactory assurances of loyalty from Catholics ; but that his accusations still held good against " those at whom they were originally aimed " — the very persons, adds Newman blandly, " that I myself had spoken of as extravagant and tyrannous and as having set the house on fire." Anxious to have it on record that Gladstone acoepted this version, I sent him a copy of it, and I have before me Lis reply dated from Ha warden Castle, the 15th of October, 1892 :— '"I thank you for your note, and the curiously interesting letter of Cardinal Newman. Fully three-fourths of it, I think, are a true account. My opinion on the Vatican decrees was strong ; and it had been declared before the Pamphlets (though I was, I believe, Prime Minister). A book on Dr. Doellinger by Dr. Michael (Jesuit) says that up to that time I was considered to be kryptO' Catholic. Whatever I was then, lam ?ww. I may describe myself in a few words : strongly anti-Roman in certain respects, but profoundly reluctant to raise theological controversy in these perilous days, to the hazard of the common interests, which are far before the special. I was therefore most reluctant to write, and the motive was not theological, nor, I think, was the language." ' But if in words anything was wanting in the way of retraction, the deficiency was made up in deeds. The subsequent appoint* ment of Lord Ripon to the Viceroyalty of India was equivalent to a full act of faith in his loyalty to Queen and country ; as also, if in a less degree, was his nomination of his old and close friend, Lord Acton, to office in the Royal Household.'

Sydney Smith banteringly professed to see sparkles of nothing spontaneous in wit. ' I am convinced," wit. wrote he, ' a man might sit down as systematically and as successfully to the study of wit as he might to the study of mathematics : and I would answer for it that by , giving up only six hours a day to being witty, he should come on prodfgiously before midsummer, so that his friends Bhould hardly know him again.' This, we presume, is how the maohine-made wit of the comic papers is produced. Genuine Irish wit is of the spon-

taneoue order. It is in the air. It comes and goes like lightning but like liffntningr from the blue. And thiß is the source of it« perennial freshness and charm— its total unexpectedness. Some of its brightest twinkles are elicited, like the spark from the old flint and steel, by a blow — a methaphorical one, of course. Such are the sparklings described by an English tourist from ' heaven's reflex, Killarney,' in the Sketch of July 13! Let the tourist tell his own tale in his own way :—: — ' " Whatdo you get here for your poultry ?" asked the tourist. 11 We'd be after gettin' a sbillin' apiece for the likes of them, yer honour." '• A shilling apiece 1 Why, you'd get three shillings apiece for them if you had them in London." " Ay," he answered with a sort of scorn, " an' I'd get a pound a dhrop for the Lower Lake there, if I had it in hell !" In Cork, again, a friend of mine overheard this retort of a horse-dealer exasperated by his Saxon customer s depreciation of the beast on sale : " He's got a white face,'' objected the hypercritical Saxon. " Faix, an' it's a white face ye'd have yerself, if yer head had been in the halther as long as his ha 3 been," retorted the dealer, so viciously as to in? ply a wish that it had. It was a Corkman also — a noted Cork wit lately deceased — who made this happy retort to a friend who was deploring the plunging of a young fellow whose father had been a labourer at Clonakilty, but had made his pile in California. " Young N dropped £5000 at the Derby last week. He can't hold on long at that rate." " Unless he cuts the turf, as his father did before him." '

Gladstone anecdotes have lately been as plentiANOTHEB ful as blackberries, but the following — the latest Gladstone which has come under our editorial eye — deserves anecdot.s. to be framed in gold and brilliants It is a true story — a charming little cameo from the life of the great Christian statesman :—: — ' When Chancellor of the Exchequer, Mr. Gladstone regularly passed a certain crossing-sweeper on his way to St. Martin's Church. The man fell ill, and when the Vicar visited him and asked : " Did anyone come to see you during your illness?" he replied : ''Yes, sir, Mr. Gladstone." " Which Mr. Gladstone ? " " Why, Mr. Gladstone himself. He often speaks to me and gives me something at my crossing. Not seeing me one day he asked my mate why I was not there. He told him I was ill, and as my mate gave him my address, he came to Bee me and talked and read to me." '

Two weeks ago we dwelt upon the causes of the MEND IT OH perennial poverty that has been for generations end it. grinding and pinching the faces of the small holders over large areas of the West and South of Ireland. In a letter to Mr. William O'Brien. M.P., Mr. Davitt (M.P. for South Mayo) thus hits the nail on the head :—: — ' More land and better land for the people, who are only too willing to work large holdings, is the only remedy for this demoralising begging and relief and all the rest, and those who will not joiu in a movement which aims at the achievement of so practical a reform in the economic and industrial conditions of the " congested " areas will not be entitled to much sympathy if they prefer to wallow in their poverty instead of making a manly effort to escape from their present position.'

Theee are many ways of pointing a moral. A A BOOK NOTICE writer in one of our secular contemporaries has AND ITS lesson, struck a method which we fancied had hitherto been practically confined to a shady class of • lecturers ' whom the Pope has thrown over his garden wall. The writer in question devotes a lengthy notice to a recent publication which has been condemned on all hands as reeking with offensive animalism. He condemns the book with a five display of pious energy, and — concludes with a lengthy and offensive extract to prove that the publication in question is prurient to a degree, and therefore unfit to be read ! That writer is wasting his time and talents in drudging for the Press. He ought to be Minister of Education. The incident ought to point a moral to Catholic householders who play the part of destroying angels by placing such garbage in the hands of their children, and bar and double bolt their doors against the antidote which lies with n the covers of a Catholic paper.

Some things are kept alive in the interests of THE YELLOW science ; others in the interests of politicians. AGONY The Orange Society in Ulbter belongs to the latter OF ULSTER, category. Starving men will be glad to pick a scrap of potato out of the dirt. Hungry politicians will stoop lower to pick up a vote ; and it is no secret that weak Governments often prefer the interests of party to the claims of justice or common decency. The whole voting power of the

Ulster lodges ia under the complete, arbitrary, and irresponsible control of the Grand Master for the time being. Every ' brother ' ia bound, under the dread penalty of expulsion and all that it implies, to vote as the Grand Master directs him ; and this compact and solid phalanx of the slave-driven lodges is ever at the beck and call of the proper party. The Peel, Disraeli, and Salisbury Governments have wooed and won it in turn. The English Protestant historian, Rev. W. Nassau Molesworth, tells us, for instance, in his History of England how ' the whole Liberal party ' detested the fury of the lodges in the pre-Emancipatiori days ; ' nor,' he continues,"' were the feelings of Sir H\ Peel and the wiser portion of the Conservative party more favourable to them. They could not but feel how mach the Orangemen had done by their stupid bigotry to disappoint the hopes they had entertained of the beneficial results of Catholic Emancipation.' And here the love of the Orange vote came in. Molesworth continues : ' They could not however, venture to manifest the contempt and dislike they felt for men who formed the bulk of their supporters in Ireland, and were therefore obliged to wink at, and even to palliate, the bigotry of these mischievous marplots.' * * • Lord Salisbury's Government is in the same position to-day, with the result that a looting, house-wrecking, brick-and-mud-throwing Orange mob in Belfast ia handled with yellow kid gloves, while far more peaceable Nationalist gatherings in the South or West are treated to a course of leaden pills and have their insides probed with bayonets. Another source of encouragement to the yellow agony of Ulster is detailed as follows in Truth of July 13 :— 'So long as Protestant ascendancy is maintained at Dublin Castle, even to the extent of insulting the Lord Chief Justice and other leading Lords Justices of Ireland, so long will party rioting prevail in Belfast. The Orangemen are strong, and fully equal to maintaining a principle Dublin Castle sets them the example of upholding. The annual expense caused to the publio by their views on this subject is considerable, whether they succeed in upholding the ascendancy principle, or are defeated in the attempt. Whatever officials may say, and however they may aot, the Orangemen cannot but feel that they have a backer at Dublin Castle. Under the influence of this feeling, Orange rioting is vigorous and perennial. How long will the Dublin Castle system stand impervious to common sense and justice ? For how long will too much Lord Lieutenant and too little prosperity be the fate of Ireland 1 '