Current Topics. AT HOME AND ABROAD.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume 07, Issue 23, 7 June 1900, Page 1

Current Topics. AT HOME AND ABROAD.

Disraeli hit the mark pretty squarely when, travel in his Contarini Fleming, he said : ' Travel teaches is the great source of true wisdom ' ; and toleration, again : ' Travel teaches toleration.' In two conspicuous and recent literary instances travel has opened the eyes and broadened the sympathies of visitors to the Green Isle, and taught them to see the Irish sogart as he is, and not as he was represented in the romances of the -idle, worthless renegade, Will Carleton, and in the farcical, grotesque, and over-coloured pages of Charles James Lever. One of those literary converts was Robert Buchanan, the Scottish author of the Donegal story, Father Anthony. The other writer who has been taught wisdom and toleration by travel is Neil Munro, who is described by the Edinburgh Catholic Herald as ' the most recent notable addition to the Kailyard School.' After a tour in Connemara he confided his experiences to the Evening Neivs. Speaking of the Irish priests he says :—: — Priests, in Bpite of my being a heretic, were to sing me jolly and rjnsing staves of Irish minstrelsy over bowls of punch between intermittent puffs at long churchwarden pipes, as priests have ever done in the plays of the late Hubert O'Grady ; they were to be ebulliently witty and slightly, but interestingly, improper, with plethoric paunches and round ruddy laughing faces shining beneath their birettas. Here, too, I waa grievously disappointed. I had expected luxuriant abodes and well-stocked libraries, and instead I found them living meagre lives that must be a sort of martyrdom to men of intellect, in dwellings sparsely furnished and cold. They had never been to Dublin to learn humorous stories ; they had never been anywhere in their lives but Maynooth and Galway ; they had no libraries, and time for do reading beyond a weekly paper and the Douay Bible. I had expected to find the shamrockhearted Celts of their people oome in crowds to their door with gifts ; instead it was the other way round ; the ridiculous priests were pinching themselves for their parishioners. As a devout Protoatant I had dreaded that they might strive for my conversion ; but when we discussed, as sometimes happened, questions of Church Mid faith, they did not (as the priest of literature must ever do) allocate me to eternal perdition, but oonceded that there was always a chanoe that with luck and a good life I might scrape through to Paradise. No doubt about it. Travel does teach wisdom and toleration. Disraeli spoke well. It is hard to say nowadays what is to be old set definitely aside and labelled ' waste.' stamfs. ' Breeze,' paper, broken glass, smashed crockery, etc., are separated and turned to hundreds of industrial uses. A great hospital at Munich (Bavaria) is entirely supported by the sale of old steel pens and nibs, which are collected from all parts of Germany, sold to manufacturers, and in due time reappear in the shape of razors, pen-knives, surgical instruments, etc. me time ago we showed how a great institute of education and charity in Belgium is kept going at a merry swing by the sale of all sorts of odds and ends and unconsidered trifles, such as old iron, rags, bones, bits of glass, etc., which are daily

brought to the place by the pupih and friends of an enterprising and zealous community of nuns. A circular just received by us from Liege, Belgium, places before us one of the many branches of missionary effort that are maintained by the sale of used postage stamps. We refer to the Congo Mission department of the Catholic Seminary at Liege, which, in this respect, resembles the work of the Holy Childhood, which is doing such noble work in China, and the ' Bethlehem,' which educates poor children for the foreign mission. * • • A previous circular from the Liege Seminary informs us that in the one year 1896 over 30,000,000 used stamps were received from all partsof theearlh.andthat, when sortedover, the revenue from their sale amounted to about £320. The proceeds of eight ) ears' stamp collecting have sufficed to found and fully equip with churches, missionaries, etc., seven Catholic native villages on the Congo, in the deep heart of the Dark Continent. As many as 13,000,000 cancelled stamps have been received in furtherance of the great missionary work of Mary Immaculate, whose operations extend over China, India, and other portions of the East. The stamp collecting mania or hobby is said to be spreading, and hundreds of prominent people have taken it up in Great Britain and elsewhere. An enormous value attaches to some of those ' square inches of waste paper.' In his Dictionary of Statistics Mulhall says that four Mauritius stamps were sold in London in 1895 for £210, and one blue Mauritius twopenny stamp for £140. A London magazine recorded early last year the transfer of an insignificant two-centimes cancelled stamp of British Guiana, at Berlin, for There are two old stamps in existence which are said to be worth £2000 — they are specimens of the penny and the twopenny Mauritius issues of 1847. Mulhall gives in the last issue of his Dictionary of Statistics curious evidence of the enormous money value that may be represented by first-class stamp collections. One collection was sold in Paris in 1880 for £8000. The purchaser was the Duchess of Galliera, who is so noted for her benefactions to the poor of Genoa. Another collection changed hands in 1897 for It is described by the king of statistics as ' a collection of Australian postage stamps, begun in 1872 by Mr M. Castle, of London.' We have read somewhere that the Prince of Wales is the owner of a collection of cancelled stamps valued at £20,000. The stamp collecting hobby has a big literature all its very own ; it has outrun the short span of life usually enjoyed by fads; it shows no signs of abating; and it has been turned to such good purpose in the Catholic mission field that we may well wish it a long and useful existence. Those of our readers who wish to aid the Congo mission may forward their used postage stamps — in light tin boxes or strong lined envelopes (preferably registered) — to Rev. Marcel Spitz, the Catholic Seminary, Liege, Belgium. But so long as the present postal regulations continue, we entreat our readers to forward no used postage stamps to the office of this paper. We have more than once said that if the itnthe rat in postor Slattery and the female creature that a trap. accompanies him made in the witness-box the statements that they have published in their pamphlets and screamed out upon the platform, they would in due course find themselves under lock and key for

wilful perjury. But they are both shy of the witn<<;s-box and would rather look into the monstrous faces of all the Gorgons than into the calm eye of a cross-examining counsel. It was this terror that made Slattery bolt from Pittsburgh, when ' up ' on a criminal charge, 'jump ' his bail of 500 dollars — which his unfortunate and too trusting bondsman had to pay — and which leaves him now a fugative from justice with a warrant still in force for his arrest. In Hobart Slattery has given the local public some idea of how he would have collapsed under crossexamination could he have screwed up his courage to the bticking place of suing the N. 7. Tart ft for libel. He was brought up as a witness in connection with a disturbance that had occurred at one of his meetings. In the course of the crossexamination Mr. Clarke, who appeared for the defendants, greatly disconcerted the roving lecturer by handing him a photographic copy of the letter in which Cardinal MacCabe offered him an appointment to the curacy of Moone on the express understanding that he took the total abstinence pledge and that his faculties would ' terminate the moment it is violated under any pretext or advice.' Underneath Slattery, in his own handwriting and over his own signature ' most willingly and thankful!}' ' accepted the appointment on those conditions (see pamphlet, Joseph Slattery, p. 10). * * * Here was a golden opportunity for Slattery to prove that, in the words of the editor of the N.Z. Guardian, he is ' a much maligned man.' But the unfortunate man did not dare — in the face of a highly probable prosecution for perjury — to deny that the document was genuine, that he had been dismissed from the ranks of the clergy for drunkenness, or that he was a vulgar fraud, and the accomplice of a notorious female impostor. Instead, he whined for the protection of the court against a line of examination that touched him too keenly on the raw, and sought refuge from exposure or perjury in dogged and eloquently significant refusals to answer straightforward questions such as any ' much maligned man ' would court and not fear. The following verbatim report of this part of the cross examination is from the Tasmanian News of May 22 :—: — Mr. Clarke : Is that a photograph of your signature (producing a document). Witness : It looks like it. Mr. Clarke : Will you swear it ? Witness : No. Are these questions allowable, your Worships. (Laughter.) Why should these matters be brought up .' lam here to give evidence in connection with a disturbance that took place at the Temperance Hall. Mr. Clarke held that it was very necessary to know if the witness was put out of the Church or not, instead of as he stated, that he left because he had discovered that the principles of the Church were wrong. The Police Magistrate : MrPedder is the prosecutor and a barrister. He is conducting the case, and it is for him to object to the questions. Superintendent Pedder said it was the law to allow irrelevant questions. Witness : If I am bound to answer these questions I would like a legal gentleman at the side of me. The matter has nothing to do with the cape. Mr. Clarke : Witness gops round the country living on the game. I asked him a question as to whetht r that was his signature, and I want to know definitely whether it is or not. Witness : I submit that it has nothing whatever to do with the case. Mr. Clarke : I was perfectly prepared that witness would have a difficulty in answering- the question. Witness : The difficulty ib that the quet-tion has no bearing on the present case. The Police Magistrate said the Bench were of the opinion that Mr. Clarke had no right to introduce such matters, as they had no bearing on the case. The document was dated 18bH, and they doubted whether the circular should have been used in examination. Mr. Clarke asserted that the dosument contained conditions under which the witness was given another chance with a curacy by the Cardinal-Archbishop of Dublin. If he could show that witness did not leave the Church because he changed his views, but was dismissed through drunkenness, and could Bhow that they had jjot a man in the box who was prbctically nothing less than an impostor, that would establish provocation for the people of Hobart. He promised to take the pledge and was given repeated chances. Whereupon the Police Magistrate observed that there could not be stronger provocation to a breach of the peace than that which was supplied by Slattery's coarse and inflammatory circulars, which had been distributed broadcast over the city. In his hand-bills, circulars, etc., Slattery describes the female impostor that accompanies him as 'the escaped nun,' 1 formerly known in the convent as Sister Mary Elizabeth,' etc. When upon his oath in Hobart, and with a wholesome fear of the law before his eyes, he had to admit that he had no knowledge that she was ever in a convent, much less that she was a nun. The following is from the verbatim report of the Tasmanian News :— The Police Magistrate : You could not have stronger provocation than that contained in the circular.

Mr. Clarke : I could heap on the coals if allowed. (To witness) Do the proceeds of your lectures go to the Baptist Church ? Wirness : No, to myself. M-. Clarke : And the money from the sale of pamphlets ? Witne-s : I have a ri^ht to the profits from them ; they are my own publications. Mr. Clark * : You refer in your circular to the immorality of the confessional — did you ever use the confessional yourself for immoral purposes ? Witness : No. Mr. Clarke : You A wrib* 1 your wife as an escaped nun. Was your wife ever a nun ? Witness . I never rtw her in a convent. — (daughter.') I come from a different part to her. I met her in America. She told me ehe was a nun. Mr. Clarke : Did Mr. Joseph Winter, of Melbourne, offer you £100 if you could prove that your wife was ever a nun 1 < Witness : Yes. He had not a threepenny piece. [This statement is absolutely false. Mr. Winter ' put up ' £200 in connection with his challenge to Slattery, and could easily have enormously increased the amount. Editor N.Z.T.] Mr. Clarke : If £100 are loiged in the local Bank of Australasia within the week will you prove your wife has been a nun 1 Witness : How can I prove it ? I would have to go to the Catholics for my information. * • • The last-quoted statement of Slattery's is a further illustration of our statement that a liar needs a goods memory. For a professional Munchausen, Slattery has a very treacherous one, and, as a consequence, although he lies fluently, he also lies inconsistently, and in the present, as in many other instances, he is in flat contradiction both with himself and his female accomplice. If his former statements and hers have a particle of truth in them, there is not the slightest necessity for either of them 'to go to Catholics for information ' in order to prove that the female creature was once a nun. In her Cdnvent Life (which, by the way, Slattery claimed as his publication) the Slattery woman is made to state that she was seen and frequently visited in the Cavan Convent by such distinguished Protestants as ' Lady Morton,' her alleged cousin and ' rescuer ' ; by ' the Right Reverend Sir Robert J. Morton,' who is, she alleges, ' a bishop in the Episcopal Church, in Devonshire, England, and also a baronet ; and by other notabilities as well. In his scurrilous ' Open Letter 'to us, Slattery tells us that this ' Sir Robert Morton is contesting the will of his uncle, John Morton, in London, at the present time.' This state* ment was printed just two months ago. ' Sir Robert ' — assuming that he ever existed — is, presumably, still in the flesh and his evidence available. Slattery, in one of his pamphlets, adds (p. 12) two further 'eye-witnesses' of the Slattery woman's alleged stay in the Cavan Convent — ' Ellen Brady ' and 'John Stinson Wright.' But it so happened that 'John Stinson Wright,' when pressed for his address, had none other than ' care of Rev. Joseph Slattery, Protestant Alliance Office, London ' — he was probably identical with Slattery himselt ; ' Ellen Brady ' absolutely declined to reveal her whereabouts or identity — the name was probably one of the aliases of Madame Slattery ; and, as we have shown, the names of ' Lady Morton,' ' the Right Rev. Sir Robert J. Morton,' etc., are fictions pure and simple of the imagination of whoever compiled the tissue of falsehoods which purports to be the biography of the female fraud that is known as Mrs. Slattery. All this has been abundantly demonstrated in our pamphlet Mrs. Slattery : the Romance of a Sham Nun (pp. 13-16). It is, all the same, interesting to see the manner «n which Slattery once more eats his own words and at one blow knocks away the flimsy support of fictitious names which he had been to such pains getting together as a prop to the bona fides of his female fellow-swindler. Had we known that Slattery was likely to have appeared in court we would have cabled to Mr. Clarke a few questions which would have made the roving lecturer turn blue in the witness-box. But we can afford to ' bide a wee.' For the Slattery troupe will travel far before they get beyond our reach. • * « Meantime we commend the following paragraph from the Tasmanian Monitor, as well as the extracts from the Hobart News, to the attention of Slattery's Dunedin committee and of the rev. editor of the N.Z. Guardian who has been wasting so much energy in trying to whitewash the wretched impostor : A deputation of non-Catholic clergymen of the city waited yesterday on the Chief Secretary and asked him to pat an end to the SUttery crusade. The Chief Secretary in anawer said that there were no available powers to prevent Slattery from holding his meetings ; that it rested with the owners of public halls to refuse him the use of them, and that the Government conld not interfere. The request, we believe, came from the Anglican clergymen, and is only what might be expected from men who love the decencies of life, and who, in doctrinal and other disputes between themselves and those of other churches, observe the common ooujp tesies of civilised life. Of course we shall be told that this deputation of Hobart clergymen were ' terrorised by Roman threats ' into adopting this course of action with reference to those dangerous roving slanderers, who, in the words of our Tasmanian contemporary

•are pandering to religious passions of the lowest kind, who lie without shame, eat their own statements whenever they become in the least inconvenient, pretend to be what they are not, and on these pretences get the shekels of all who, as the Duke of Noifolk said, have an appetite "for the ill-flavoured food " the Slatterys " put before them." ' And we quite agree with the Monitor's further remark : ' It is strange (hat there is no power vested in the executive government of this island to put an effective stop to proceedings that are a blasphemy against truth, a fraud upon a gullible section of the community, and a menace to the public peace.' They do these things better in Germany, where under the law of Hud, a community is very properly afforded the same protection as an individual against the slanderer, and where, only a short time ago, a high-placed army officer received a severe and wellmerited sentence for an outrageous attack upon the good name of the Jewish body in the place where he was quartered.