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New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXVII, Issue 24, 15 June 1899, Page 1

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A T HOME AiYD A BUG A D, . + The bountiful ignorance of New Zealand ' bishop ok THE which characterises the British and American parish ok dun- Press, coupled with their unacquainlancr kdin. with things Catholic, finds a clumsy illustration in the following extract from a Denver (Colorado) paper to hand by the last mail. It appears under the heading ' The Man from New Zealand ' :— ' Just going beck to the old sod for a bit of rest,' said Rev. Michael 7/erdon, bishop of Duuedin pariah, New Zealand, as he g-ave the bell boy at the Brown Hotel directions touching the bestowal of his luggage. ' Have you any special end in view, father ?' was the next question put to the reverend g-entleman. ' Oh, no, not at all. I've beeu away, you know, for a long time, and I'm to have four months in Europe — and that's all I have to say, thank you,' he added. • Bishop of the parish of Dunedin 'is tolerably fair. The Denver reporter might have done worse. Did not one of his London confreres represent Cardinal Vaughan as approaching the High Altar of Kensington Pro-Cathedral wearing a pair of mitres on his feet and a thurifer on his head '! We ought, perhaps, to be thankful for the Denver youth's small mercies.

Part ot the fighting is over, and the storyTHE sort ni' tellers are having their say — shouldering boys tmky their crutches and showing how fields were wanted. won. Some of the American magazines arcswarming with ' incidents.' One of the best of these is told by a sailor of the cruiser Boston, who was with Dewey at the battle of Manila Bay. The story runs as follows :—: — The most affecting incident which occurred, and which all the sailors will remember through their lives, was the action of a powder boy. These boys act as aids to captains and lieutenants in carrying messages and doing errands. When the order was given to strip tor action, one of the boys tore his coat off hurriedly, and it fell from his hands and went over the rail, down into the bny. A few minutes betore he had been gazing on his mother's photograph, and just before In- look his coat off he had kissed the picture and put it in his inside pocket. When the coat went overboard he turned to the captain and asked permission to jump over and get it. Naturally the request was refused. The boy then weni to th:. 1 other side of the ship and climbed down the I.idder. He swam around to the place where the coat had dropped, and succeeded in getting it. I believe it was still floating when he got there. When he came back he was ordered in chains tor disobedience. Alter the battle he was tried by court-martial for disobedience and found guilty. Commodore Dewey became intf-rcMed in the case, lor he could not understand why the boy had risked his life and disobeysd orders for a coat. The lad had never told what his motives were. But when the Commodore talked to him in a kindly way, and asked him why he had done such strange things for an old coat, he broke into tears and told the Commodore that his mother's picture was in the coat. Commodore Dewey's eyes filled with tears as he listened to the story. Then he picked the boy up in his arms and embraced him. He ordered the little fellow to be instantly released and oardoned. ' Boys who love their mother enough to risk their ives for her picture cannot be kept in irons in this fleet,' he aid.

The Manila incident recalls another of a somewhat similar nature which took pla:e amidst the smoke and ruin of the second capture of Paris in 1871. The dreary siege of the Communards who held the city ended in the entry of the Government troops on May 21. For some fourteen days and nights a desperate conflict was carried on in the streets, ceme-

tr-ries, houses, cellars, and even the city sewers. For a time no quarte r was either asked or given on either side. Among the Communards boys fought like demons and women like tunes. Prisoners were placed in scores by the nearest walls and shot down. Among one batch of prisoners was a boy who had been captured while fighting like a ti^er-cub at one of the b'trrirades. Marshal McMahon happened to be at hand. The boy stopped mil, saluted him, and a^kt-d permission to his widowci mother in .1 neighliniirin^ Mrrcl. • 1 promised M br: back with her at hall-p-i-^t two,' sml lie. ' I will return here immediately, Gi'ner.il. 1 McMahon gave him the necessary permission. In a tew minutes the lad returned to take his place among his doomed eompanions-in-arms. He saluted the General. 'Here 1 am, mon General!' The plucky youngster was about to take his place in front of the levelled chassepots, when McMahon exclaimed with the best show of anger he could assume : ' Now, then, you young rascal, begone home, and don't let me see you here again ! '

Another war story was supplied to the another war New York Tribune, by Corporal Montalvo, story. of the Utah battery, which is still pounding away at the unspeakable Aquinaldo and his men. Montnlvo's story runneth thus : — ' Alter the surrender on August 13, the Colorado men in pait advanced on a company of Spaniards which still held out. General Hale summoned to his co mm md what Spanish he knew and demanded a surrender. Great was his surprise when the reply came in a broad Irish brogue: " Divil a bit I'll surrender!" The Spanish captain was an Irishman. I met him afterwards, subsequent to the surrender, which occurred despite his protestations. He had married a Spanish woman aid so found his way into the Spanish army. There are many Irish in Spain. Any number of Irishmen have married the fair daughters of the proud Castilian race. Because of this incident the officers around General Otis came to regard as a proverb the saying that " the only Spaniards who can fight are Irishmen." '

* * ♦ Irishmen have been associated with the Spanish army and court ever since t he fall of Limerick. One of the exiled patriots became a Marshal of France. Another became Prime Minister of Spain. In his p. dace at Madrid he had the pleasure of being assiduously courted by the ambassador of George 11., and ot bidding defiance to the ambassador of George 111. General Wall, ari Irishman, became Prime Minister under Ferdinand VI. He introduced the woolen industry into his adopted country, and started a mail service between Spain and her American colonies. Count O'Keilly was commander of the Spanish forces and Governor of M idrid under Charles 111. Th«? Duke ot Tetu-in, late Spanish Minister for Foreign Affairs, is an Irish Chieftain in his own right — -Lord of Donegal. He was born in 1^34 and bears the strong Milesian name of Charles O'Donnell. The Duke is very proud of his Irish name and descent. Two and a half years ago, when speaking at a distribution of prizes to military cadets— among whom were two O'Neills, an O'Connor, and a Maher — he said •. 'We Irish, in settling on the Spanish plains, and offering our swords to Spain, merely returned to our ancestors' ancient home. The Milesians went from Spain to Ireland. We have merely come back to live among our cousins.'

We are getting on. Many of our readers 'mttlr white will remember the sickening report laid slaves.' betore the Hou?e of Commons by a Parliamentary Commission on the condition of tvhat Lester terms 'the intant and female slaves ' in the English coal mines. ' Young creatures, both male and female, six, seven, eight, or nine years old, stark naked in some cases, chained like brutes to coal-carriages, and dragging them on all fours through sludge six and seven inches deep, in total darkness, for ten, twenty, and in special instances thiity hours successively, without any other cessation, even to get meals, than is casually afforded by the unreadiness of the miners.'

• Tens of thousands of these children,' said the Earl of Winchelsea, 'have been destroyed by this brutalising and severe labour.' One result of the Commission's work was the abolition, by Act of Parliament, of child-labour in what Ruskin terms, in his Fors Clavigera y - those hell-pits.'

A speech delivered by Sir John Gorst in the House of CommonsonMay 2 proves, however, thattheabuseof child labour in England has by no means ceased. New Zealand newspapers recently published complaints as to the prevalence of wearying child labour in some of the dairying districts of the Colony. But Sir John Gorst has a more woful tale to unfold. He was speaking on the Bill for raising the school age at half-time schools to 12. years. (A cable message published in last Saturday's papers announced that the Bill had passed through Committee). He characterised as * a sickening document ' a return on child labour recently presented to the House of Commons. The return shows that there are over 145,000 children entered as full-time scholars who are nevertheless employed as wage-earners. As many as 130 of these ' little white slaves ' — as one school manager termed them — are under six years old. ' One of these (said Sir John) was employed at the task of peeling onions at a wage of eightpence per week., Another boy, also' under six, delivers" milk during twenty eight hours each week, for which he obtains two shillings. Another in Leicestershire, of a. similar age, is rewarded with sixpence a week for a twenty hours' occupation at hose-turning. One child, also under six, works in a brickfield, and adds three and sixpence per week to the budget of his household. Surely a record earning for infant labour ! A little girl, under six, has to carry milk for for her -parents, farmers, for thirtyfive hours weekly. Another child, of the same tender years, earns sixpence a week for fifteen hours' labour, as a messenger.'

According to Sir John Gorst, ' over iooo of those little toilers are aged between six and seven ; 4000 between seven and eight; 11,000 between eight and nine; and over 20,000 of them have not yet reached their tenth year. No fewer than 34,000 of them are girls — 27,000 of whom \vork from twenty to thirty hours per week. Of the other school-child wage-earners, 3000 have to put in an average of forty-five hours' work per week ; over 700 have to labour over fifteen hours per week ; while there were 75 employed more than seventy hours each, from- Sunday to Sunday ! A boy under ten was returned as 'a farm laborer,' who has to wo k for seventy-two hours a week for a remuneration of half-a-crown ! Another, aged, twelve, is awarded three shillings for eighty-seven hours' weekly work on a farm.' Summarising 1 the wages of the children dealt with in the return, Sir Johnshowed how 17,000 of them worked for under sixpence per week ; 47,000 ior irom sixpence to one shilling ; 40,000 for under two shillings ; 19,000 under three ; and 8000 below four shillings. The average wages of all the little ones j whose early lives are thus dealt with is about one shilling per week. Ireland, with all its poverty, has no such record of child misery. And, as our Scottish contemporary, the Edinburgh Catholic Herald, says, 'we might ransack the social and educational records of the most retrograde Latin country in Europe without finding anything so pitiable' as is revealed in the facts laid before the House of Commons by the recent Parliamentary Copimission of inquiry. The- voices of the little ones cry again to man lor pity or to Heaven for vengeance.

Many readers of these lines remember the 'robbery,' hurricane of feeling that swept over the 'plunder,' North of Ireland and a part ot England in 'spoliation.' 1868-1869 during the agitation ior the disestablishment of what was known by the strange title of ' the Church of Ireland.' — i.c , the Anglican Church in Ireland. The cry of 'plunder,' 'spoliation,' 'robbery,' was flung at Mr. Gladstone and tlv: Liberal Party from a thousand pulpits and platforms. Tho Orange Lodges went into a state of screaming hysteria. The chief spokesman of the party of hysteria was the Reverend ' Flaming' Flanagan. He soared to his highest flights cf oratorical skyrocketing at an Orange meeting held at Newbliss, County Fermanagh, ,on March 20, 1868. He roundly declared ,that if the Queen dared to sign her name to the disestablishment of 'the Irish Church,' she would ' perjure herself.' And, said bp, 'we must tell our most gracious Queen that ii' she'break her^path, she has no longer a claim to the crown.' In the height of his fervour the orator of the day declared that if the Disestablishment BiV became law, he and his ' loyal ' fellow-Orangemerl would • kick the Queen's crown into the Boyne.' This sentiment was received with vociferous applause, and became the watchword dt the yellow party during the remainder of the agitation.

Thirty years have stolen quietly by since the Disestablishment of ' the Church of Ireland ' became law. The General "Synod of that Church assembled recently in Dublin. Figures

were laid before the assembled divines illustrative of the financial position of the Disestablished Church. These figures have been published. They show that its total assets on December 31, 1898, reached the magnificent proportion of £8,077,246 10s 2d. This is exclusive of some hundreds of churches, cathedrals, rectories, schools, parochial buildings^ and Trinity College — with its revenue of £60,000 per annum-^| which is under Episcopal control, and) is to all intents and purpose's an Anglican ioundation. Of this sum of more than £8,000,000 — chiefly despoiled from Irish Catholics — our Irish Protestant friends have £7,393,663 invested in safe securities which yield an annual income of £306,702. Voluntary contributions average a total of £170,000 a year, and the Representative Body of the General Synod acknowledge having received from this source alone, since Disestablishment, the tidyfortune of £5, 189,876. Altogether a tolerably good thing tor a Church which represented, in 1891, only 602,300 persons out of a total population of 4,704,750. If all this is ' plunder ' and ' spoliation,' .we wish to Heaven' some benevolent individual or Government would come this way and ' spoliate ' us. And yet one of the leading lights of this Church — Dr. Salmon of Trinity College — has the coolness to fling cheap and nasty ridicule at the claims of five-sixths of his fellow-countrymen for a Catholic University.

Per head of its membership, the financial a comparison, position of the Anglican Church in Ireland is better than it is even in England. And yet the enormous wealth of the Establishment in England is a matter of notoriety. The latest official census, made in 1851, brought out the fact that the number of persons present at the principal service on a given Sunday was larger in the Dissenters' places of worship than in those of the Church of England — in the former 3,384,964, in the latter 2,971,258. Whitaker's Almanac for 1896 says that there are about 13,750,000 Anglicans in England and Wales ; the Statesman's Year Book estimates the number at about 16,000,000. Whitaker's estimate makes the Anglicans a minority of the population ; the Statesman, a bare majority. The total income of the Establishment in England and Wales was estimated by the Statesman's Year Book for 1898 at about £7,250,000. Of this amount £5,469,171 came from ancient Catholic endowments. The estimate here given is exclusive of sumfc raised by voluntary contributions, which — according to the Church Year Book for 1897 — reached, from Easter 1895 to Easter 1896, -the sum of ? 750,000, exclusive of offerings made direct to societies and independent of the parochial clergy.

The enormous wealth of the Established . Church is one thing. Its distribution is quite another affair. There ,are about 14,000 parishes. In over haif of these the income is less than £130 a year. According to Dean Lefroy, 400 beneficed clergymen receive less than £$0 a year ; 3000 less than £100 a year ; 7000 less than £130 ; and others a little over The Church, in its way, reflects the social condition of the country, with enormous wealth side by side with squa.lid poverty. At the other end of the ecclesiestical scale we find the following salaries :—: —

The Archbishop of, Canterbury, £15,000 per annum; the Archbishop of York and the Bishop ot London draw each ;£io,ooo a year — the same salary as the President of the United States ; the Bishop of Durham, £7,000; the Bishop of Winchester, ; the Bishop of Ely, £5,500 ; the Bishop of Bath and Wells, £5000 ; the Bishop ot Worcester, £5000. The Deans of St. Paul's (London), York, Durham, and Exeter receive each £2,000 a year, The services of the Dean of Oxford are valued at £2,500 per annum. The services of the Vice -President of the United States only bring 1 him in £1,600 a year. In Ireland, Protestant episcopal and decanal tevenues are not so great. The Archbishops of Dublin and Armagh draw each £2,500 a year. The Bishop of Limerick — who enjoys the highest salary — receives .£3,015 ; the Bishop of Cashel stands lowest on the scale at £1,175 — and mighty little to do. The Protestant Episcopal Church in Ireland has no such bloated salaries as those possessed by the Established Church in England. But neither has it such scanty salaries. Protestant curates with £50 to a year are unknown in Ireland. 1«. England such inadequate salaries are still freely accepted! They form a startling contrast with the enormous emoluments enjoyed by the favoured few.

The following memorandum was made public the pope arbi- by the Washington State Department on TRATES AGAIN. May 2 :: — • The strained relations existing- between, the republics of Hayti and Santo Domingo caused by a dispute over the boundary line between those two countries are in a fair way of settlement. The whole question, with others involved, is to be referred to the Holy See, Pope Leo XIII., at Rome, to adjust. The statement that each country was massing troops on the frontier was untrue.

This is just as it ought to be. Pope Leo XIII. is a firm believer in the principle of international arbitration. Only two years ago he settled a boundary dispute between the two South American Republics of Chile and Argi ntina. A short time *reviously he composed the quair.'l between Germany and pain over the Caroline Islands. It is but a partial return to an older and better order of things. After the disruption of the Roman Kmpire, the papal head of Christendom became, as Sir Chailes Russell, Lord ( hiet Justice ol Kngland, declared, the inleipulei, aiu! ahnu-t llie cinbu«li..n.iU of intcrpit'":"' l law. The Popes of the Middle Asjfo dctrimiivd many a hot dispute without the need ot blood-It tting t<i swoi J-haekin^. Several years ago Mr. Stead declared m the Review of Reviews that the world would be v.T-tly be ndiK'd if all international disputes were referred to the Pope fnr atbiti ition. His suitability for such a task could hardly be q'iost,oncd by an> fairminded man. He is venerated tin ought, ut th.- <i\ il seel world. He has no territorial caics or worries , no v poli. - \ ut c \pa:>-ion ' to excite international suspicion or jealousy, iieis at the same time every inch a king. He relies on moral force only, anJ can act independently and according to the dictates ol conscience. The Disarmament Conference may efiect sonuthing without him. It would effect vastly more with his co-operation. But the most and best they can hope to do is to put into habitual exercise the very principle of international arbitration of which he has been the warm and unceasing exponent.

In one of his speeches the Karl of BeaconsTHE godless field pointed out to his audience that order school. and cleanliness are not matters of instinct : they are matters of education, and like mathematics and classics, you must cultivate a taste for them. It may be humiliating to confess all this, but we may just as well do so. The ugly fact is but too well known both to parents and educators. The misery of the thing is that people so often fail to recognise the fact that the exercise ot the high moral principles that go to form a good man and woman are just as little natural to our budding citizens who arc at school. The inculcation of these principles is thus neglected, and the Almighty shut out of our public school life, just as if arithmetic and geography, and such like were the be-all and end-all of a child's education. As far as our system goes, it develops the animal side of a child's nature at the expense of the monl. Its tendency is to produce beings somewhat akin to Frankenstein — a creature endowed with musculai slicngth, active life, animal passion, but without ,' human soul. Those who are interested in the spread of Secularism worship ' our National System ' (with a big S) as it it were a tetish. I >ut a large body of sober-minded educationists who have mwn much thought and attention to the question ol godlc-sncs-, i.i the school, have condemned it in good, round, set terms.

Among the latest of these is Julian Hawthorn^, sen ol liiu celebrated writer, Nathaniel Hawthorne. In an article m the Nortli Amei'uan Review on 'Public Schools and Parents' Duties,' he scores and cross-hackles the An-.Uican s\stcm in words of solemn warning that should be framed .uid set up as a warning in every household m Xew Zealand His article is the outcome ot two years' study ut the public school children of New York. ' Go among these pupils,' he says, ' and you would think that not the children ol our solid citizens, who must presently carry on the business of the Republic, but a lot ot naughty little toughs and hoodlums were on the tamp-i<jc It is no exaggcrationtosayth.it the wholi- school t uv.irds the level of the most wretched little scall'iw.i^ m it, or ili.it tin \ can pick up in the street outside. I am not over-drawing the case; it could not be over-drawn — in print. And, when the poor little things go home they add hypomsyto their other accomplishments, and modify their speech and actions to suit the conception which their parents have formed of whit their children ought to be. Therefore, each parent believes that, however bad other children may be, his own aie all right , and since, according to our Christian standards, no parent is concerned for the weltare of any but his own children, impi overwent is impossible.'

' This essay,' he continues, ' is not an indictment ag unst M\- public schools. They may not be, as has already been perfect. The principles on which they are administered may in some respects be faulty. The means by which those principles aie carried out may be susceptible of improvement. But, upon the whole, the Stnte does, mote or less well, what it contracts to do. It implants in children's mcmoiics certain classes of facts ; whether the facts be wisely or foolishly chosen is a minor question. It teaches them arithmetic and geography and other things of the kind ; it prepares the child to " pass" certain examinations. But, having thus fulfilled its contract, it stops and does no more. It takes no cognisance of the children's minds, rightly so called ; of their hearts, souls, moral and social ideals. Training in morals, decencies, elevation of thought and conduct, cannot be administeied to chil-

dren in the mass, but must he separately adapted to each individual. American parents take it for granted, however, that because the State instructs then children in arithmetic and geography and other things, it must teach them all the Christian and social giacts into the baivain. The consequence is that the children grow up knowing more than the hoodlum of the slums, but knowing also what the hoodlum-, know, and thereioie worse ott than it they were ignorant altogether. We already S'-e tl.c eltect's ot this in our national life. ' I'uMic wh'vi] < Hlr]-on '«v nrpp <mr shopkeepers, lawyers, politicians, contractoi s, saloon men, bank clerks, brokers, manufacturer.-,, mi'.liui.aae.,. Thc> wear good clothes and appear respectable — are respectable in m.my cases. But a certain, not small, percentage of them aie base in character, rotten in pt inciple, loving; mean actions, pursuing degrading ambitions. Our most d mgrrous criminals are not the htreiiitar) class, but graduate ot our public schools. Most of the men whose careers disgrace their country, either in a small or a conspicuous way, have been public school boys. Most of our women who go astray have .mended public school. These people aie gradually giving a tone to the entire community; their tendency is to sap the foundations of our national honour and freedom.'