That Looting Charge Again.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXIX, Issue 49, 5 December 1901, Page 18

That Looting Charge Again.

A cable message in Monday's rrornirg papers runs as fol lows — ' The Chamber of Deputies. Paris, at the Premier's instance, rejected by 311 to I'i3 a motion of coiult inning the alleged plundering of Peking after the siege by the Frei.ch bishop and missionaries.' The French bishop referred to in the message is Monsigror Favier, Vicar-Apostolic of Pekin. Bishop Favier has, both in his diary and in the most public manner unclaimed any participation in or responsibility for the acts of spoliation that were committed by Westerns in China during and after the Boxer disturbances, We have already published the bweeping vindication of the popular and beloved Vicar- Apostolic that appeared in the American Protestant Press over the signature of the non-Cathohc missionary the Rev. Dr. Ament. himself a self-confessed looter. The vote of bo rabid an anti-clerical body aa the French Chamber of Deputies is a fresh vindication of his character. In the courne of the noble letter of conciliation issued by Bishop Favier to his flock at the close of the recent disturbances, he says — ' Justice requires that you should receive compensation for all tho wrongs which you have suffered, and compensation will be given to you. for the mandarins have made a definitive arrangement about the matter Do not try, therefore, to 6btain any indemnity for yourselves, but wait until a few months hence when you shall receive it through me. Try and forget the horrors of an unjubt persecution, and do not for the future reproach the pagans for what has already pasted.' These are not the words of a looter.