CARDINAL VAUGHAN ON CATHOLIC DISABILITIES.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXVII, Issue 10, 8 March 1900, Page 10

CARDINAL VAUGHAN ON CATHOLIC DISABILITIES.

ENGLAND SHOULD REMEDY DOMESTIC TROUBLES.

The Catholics of Birmingham held their annual re-union on Monday evening, January V>, when the Bishop of Limerick, the Bishop of Southwark, and the Bishop of Clifton delivered addresses, and a resolution was passed calling on the Government to adopt prompt measures to redress the grievous disabilities under which the Catholics of Ireland labour. A letter was read at the meeting from his Eminence Cardinal Vaughau, in which some plain truths regarding the duty of English statesmen to Irel md were expressed. His Eminence said : —

I am in sympathy with the claim that will ba urged by the Bishop of Limerick— the claim of the Catholic population of Ireland to have an Irish University that shall be in harmony with their conscience. lam glad that the claim is being boldly pressed from Ireland in our great English centres of public life. Last year it was in Manchester ; this year it is in Birmingham ; later on I hope, it will be in London that the eloquent voices will be heard Prejudice is slowly yielding to the pressure of justice. The Church of England, represented by the Archbishop of Canterbury and other prelates, acknowledges the legitimacy and force of the claim put forward by Irish Catholics. It is the less enlightened section of English Protestants, some Dissenting bodies, who have yet to learn that

IT WA^ WRONG AND TYRANNICAL

to force upon the Irish people the principles and prejudices that govern certain classes of English Protestants. They will learn in time that it is not by violence of this kind that Ireland can be successfully governed or England be made a type of popular liberties Two considerations pre-ent themselves The first is that the policy pursued by the^e earnest Dissenters towards the educational claim of Ireland is the tame that they are steadily pursuing towards the elementary schools of Anglicans and Catholics in this country They hope to obtain a political majority iti order to supplant our schools by universal Board schools. Failing this, they keep our denominational schools in a position of inferiority by a process of liuanciil starvation, in the hope of forcing them to surrender through exhaustion The same blind prejuJico, the same disregard of othf rs.the fame one-sided view of liberty, and the same spirit of religious rancour run through the policy that combats denominational schools in England and the policy that blocks University education in Ireland, But there are already signs of a change of feeling among many of the more sober-minded Liberal Nonconformists'. Such meetings a» you are holding in Birmingham will help forward this change. There is another consideration which I, as an Englishman anxious for the maintenance of the British Empire among the nations of the world, have a right to insist on, and it is thi.s : The present tiino of conflict abroad is

AX INVITATION" AND A AVARNIXG TO ENOLAND to close up domestic strifes and dissensions, not to perpetuate and enlarge them ; to unite the governing rices of the Empire, the people of these two islands, in mutual confidence and good-will'; in a word, to make the Empire strong by concord within such as can be all 'lined only by treating all great sections of these kingdoms with becoming respect and dignity. It is not the time, while Irishmen are generously pouring out their blood in defence of the Empire, for groups of English Nonconformists to occupy themselves at home in rejecting the claim and thwarting the conscience of the Irish people, continuing to hold them down to a position of educational inferiority. I say without hesitation that an Englishman who conducts himself after this fashion is unpatriotic. He subordinates the welfare of the Empire to his own narrow prejudices, and is dv facto, an enemy to his country's good. It is not thus that the chief leaders of the two great constitutional parties comport themselves. They have declared that tho educational demand of Ireland is just and ought to be conceded. Why do their followers still hesitate ? Are they waiting forsorrow.s to come upon them, or for what ? Let us hope that the lessons of the present anxiety and the common desire to maintain the integrity of the Empire may teach us to extinguish just causes for discontent at home. The blessings of liberty and education must be dealt out equally. Important minorities must bp recognised, not crushed. Educational disabilities on account of religion must be swept away both in Ireland and England. It is only by equality that we can be a really strong and united people