DIOCESE OF DUNEDIN.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXVIII, Issue 14, 5 April 1900, Page 6

DIOCESE OF DUNEDIN.

The ' Punoh and Judy show ' is the title by whioh the Slattery performances are now known in Dunedin. None of our readers need to be reminded of the singular aptness of the title, and of the amount of personal history that is contained in the four words that compose it. As already stated in our columns, the new Provincial Seminary at Mosgiel has been recently furnished, and will be opened within the next few weeks. Several students from the diocese of Dunedin have already offered themselves, and others are reported to be in readiness to come from other parts of New Zealand. Immediate application Bhould be made by intending students to his Lordship Bishop V^rdon. Gaelic sports are to be held at Milton on Easter Monday, and the Dunedin hurlers have been invited to compete for a £5 prize. In the evening a capital concert will be given in aid of the school funds. The following appeared in the Otago Daily Times of Saturday : — A deputation of some hundred persons presented themselves at the office of this paper last evening and waited on the sub-editor with a resolution in the following terms, which, they said, had been passed at a meeting in the Choral Hall addressed by a Mr. Slattery, who is now in Dunedin : — ' That this publio meeting strongly and emphatically protests against the attitude of the Otago Daily Times and Evening Star papers in refusing to insert the paid advertisements of Mr. Slattery's meetings, and demands that in this democratic country of New Zealand the principle of free Bpeech, civil and religious liberty, be upheld by the publio papers of Dunedin. The cub-editor undertook that the resolution would be brought under the notice of the editor, and that his reply to it would be made known this morning. It is necessary, therefore, to state explicity the causes that have influenced us in the course we have thought fit to pursue in the matter of Mr. Slattery's lectures. Mr. Slattery's avowed purpose is to attack one of the religions denominations in our midst. The effect must only be to stir up sectarian strife. It is no portion of the functions of the secular Press to assißt in fomenting religious bitterness, and, for our part, we positively decline to lend our columns to the publication of violent attacks upon any religious denomination which, in the nature of things, would cause great pain to the members of that denomination. In this particular case our decision was strengthened by the revelations which the inquiries we had made, prior to Mr. Slattery's advent in Dunedin, produced regarding the character of his lectures. Nor in this decision is there any infringement of either oivil or religious liberty. On the contrary, it aims at allowing full liberty to every person in the community to form his own views upon questions of religion. Neither does the course we have followed involve any violation of the freedom of Bpeech. The best proof of this is eupp'ied by the fact that Mr. Slattery is, we believe, nightly exercising his liberty to attack a religion that is professed by a large number of our fellow colonists. For the reasons, however, that we have mentioned, we have declined either to insert advertisements of Mr. Slattery's addresses or to report his meetings ; and in so doing we have adopted the course that has been followed by nearly every respectable paper in Australia and New Zealand.

If there has been any doubt as to whom the title of ' Champion Cyclist of Australasia' belongs, W. C. (Newhaven) Jackson seems to have fettled ie beyond dispute at the recent Sydney Eleotrio Light Carnival, where he ran rings around a field of such first-olass riders as Walne, Gordon, Forbes, Lewis, McDonald, and Morgan, winning the three motor paced tournaments, two two-mile hand'caps from scratch, four international scratch races, and establishing three Australasian records — viz., the one mile behind motor pace in lmin 41 3-dsec, the three mile motor paced in smin 12 4-56e0, every one of the three miles averaging lmin 44 l-Ssec, and the two mile competition in 4min 6 2-6860. Jaokson attributes much of his success to the easy running qualities of his Massey* Harris bioycle. — # %