GENERAL

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXVII, Issue 24, 15 June 1899, Page 10

GENERAL

The Presentation Order. — It is understood in Rome (writes a correspondent) that the Very Rev. Brothers Shine and Shanihan, of the Presentation Order, now in Rome, are on business connected with the unification of their institute in Ireland. Increase in Bank Deposits.— lrish bank deposits last year were larger than in any former year, and were more than 'V 2 per cent, larger than in I^7. So much for the business banks. In the Bavings banks the increase of deposits over IS 1 .) 7 was more than half a million sterling, and the total deposits were larger than ever before. Developing the Tourist Traffic.— The Irish Tourist Development Syndicate (says an Irish exchange) must be congratulated on the successful issue of the effort made to get members of Parliament over to see Ireland s beauty-spots during the Whitsuntide recess. Over fifty M.P.'s have accepted the invitation, and the railway are giving free passes to the pleasure-seeking legislators. The British Representatives on the Venezuelan Tribunal. — The Queen bas officially approved of the appointment of Lord Russell of Killowen, Lord Chief Justice ot England, to be one of the British arbitrators on the Venezuelan Boundary Arbitration Tribunal, in succession to the late Lord Herschell. The second British arbitrator is Lord Justice Henn Collins. Both are Irishmen, one a Catholic, the other a Protestant. England's Food Sußply.— Were Ireland sunk beneath the Atlantic there would be a famine in Great Britain in a fortnight. England is fed from outside (says the Dunlin Fru mans Journal). and the number of live stock imported from America and other countries is nothing to that imported from Ireland. During 1.5'.)7 Great Britain imported from Ireland 2.24."i,5;U horses, cattle, sheep, and pigs, and although nearly two-thirds of the cattle are stores, many of them are ready for the butcher in a fortnight after being landed. This is why we say that the stoppage of the Irish supply would end in a famine in a fortnight. The Irish Poet Laureate.— A correspondent write as follows in the Lords and Commons — ' Mr. T. D. Sullivan is the recognised Poet Laureate of the Nationalist party, j..ht as Sir Wilfrid Lawson is the chartered verse-maker of the Liberals, but whereas the effusions of Sir Wilfrid usually find their way into a certain London newspaper, tho^e ot Mr. Sullivan are seldom seen in print in this country. An impression prevails that th • author of '• God Save Ireland' is a terrible and bio )d thirsty personage. The very reverse of this is the case. howe\er. He is one of the mildestmannered men ever returned lor an IrNh constituency, and that he has a keen sense of the humorous may be gathered from the following lines, which were struug together by him three yeirs ago. after a squabble in the House of Commons over the composition ot the Kitchen Committee :—: — The Jubilee Coercion Act.— Mr- Michael Dawtt, writing in the Melbourne Advocatt bays the Government -ustained a moral defeat of an unpleasant kind on Mr. Dillons Bnl tor the removal of the Jubilee Coercion Act from the Statute Book. The case made out for the repeal of this insulting law was crushing and complete There is no agrarian crime , judges have been repeatedly presented with white gloves in the south and west as testimony ol the peaceful character of the country; while the legislature lud cont erred county government upon the very people against whose liberties this enactment was sought to be maintained. There was not, because there could not be, a rational answer to this ease, and the Ministry were compelled, in their desperate resolve 1o stick to the Act, to fall back upon — what think you I Why, on the outrage-^ which took place thirteen years ago as a justification for the retention of coercion! The position in which the Go\ eminent thuplaced themselves was as humiliating as it was absurd, and a very large number of English Members who voted with (I am sony to have to say the very small number of) Irish Members for the second reading of the repeal Bill, was a significant protest against the shameless inconsistency of Ministers. Their action has played entirely into the hands ot the Nationalist Members, as it shows to all who think at all on the problem of England's rule in Ireland ■what a farce it is to call that constitutional rule which letanis coercive laws, passed under exceptional circumstances, for a country admitted to be crimeless, and to which a large measure of local selfrule has just been accorded. The Exclusion of the Gentry from the County Councils. In a large number of cases the Nationalist members of the new District Councils and Poor Law Boards have, not only in the distribution of honorary office, but also in the co-option of additional

members, displayed a wise spirit of toleration and conferred on the religious and political minority of their tell o*v-country men a representation winch they could not have hoped to secure by virtue of their own strength. This fact is one (says the Irish Catholic') which in itself testifies to the capacity of our people for the exercise of the right of self-governnieiK. and tor the satisfactory discharged of the obligations and responsibilities imposed on them by the provisions of the great and benelioient mtaiurr which Ireland undoubtedly owes to Mr. Gerald ISaltour and hi* colleagues in the existing Irish Government. It is "ratifying to be able to note that the great tranif'ereru-e of power, fro in the elapses to the masses amounting almost to a revolution, which is now taking place throughout the country, ha 1 * been, so far at all events, attended by no regrettable circumstances, and has bi-en conducted in a dignified and orderly way. We are not amongst, those who rejoice at the comparatively small representation which the nobility and gentry of Ireland possess in the new Councils, but we rt cognise in the fullest manner the nature of the causes which have produced an exclusion for which the excluded have themselves alone to blame. Come let us rejoice With one heart and one voice For a triumph so great and so glorious ; Let each musical band That we've got in the land Help to make the gay sjene more uproarious. Light up every village and city ! (.If you won't 'tis a shame and a pity) Since Ireland has two of her good men and true On the Englishman's Kitchen Committee.' A Regiment of Irish Guards.— a correspondent writes to the S/n i tut m — May 1 re-echo the wish for a regiment of Irish guards (Sjx< tutor, March 11) ' It was only in isoothat the Roman Catholic: Irish were allowed to enlist, and what they have done for the Empire since only students of military history can tell. In Sir William Butler's stirring words . ' Room for the hunted peasant. The room left lor him was in the front line of fight, and eagerly he stepped up luto the vacant place. Here at last he was at home. . From the terrible bieach of Badajos, and along the hillside of Fuentes d'Onoro, his wild cheer rang out above the roar of cannon in joyous token of his Celtic birthright found even in death.' Cou d not the famous hSth Connaught Rangers (who3e significant motto is (Juis •iijmrahit) carry their green facings into the special ser\ ice ot the Queen of England and their elephant badge into that of the Empress of India /