The New Zealand TABLET CATHOLICS AND THE CIVIL SERVICE.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXX, Issue 50, 11 December 1902, Page 16

The New Zealand TABLET

CATHOLICS AND THE CIVIL SERVICE.

* To promote the cause of Religion and Justice by the ways of Truth and Peace.* LEO XIII. to the N.Z. TABLST. THURSDAY, DECEMBER 11, 1902.

*- BOUT a year ago, on the occasion of a byeelection at. Caversham, one of the candidates, with a view to capturing the somewhat large Orange vote in the electorate, openly raised the cry that the Government of thia Colony, in return for the promise of Catholic support, had been and were still 'stuffing ' the various de- »• ' partraents of the Civil Service with members of the Catholic body. The editor of the N.Z. Tablet at once publicly challenged the statement, and called upon the author to produce his proof. No proof waa forthcoming, and Father ' leary then went fuither and undertook that if a Royal Commission were appointed to inquire into the matter he would bring abundant evidence before the Commission to show that not only was this charge not true, but that the very opposite was the case, and that Catholics

were really, receiving very far short of their fair share of appointments in the Public Service of the Colony. Subst^uently tbe N.Z. Tablet, on its own account, caused inquiries to be made *nd figures to be collected in all the chief centres ; and although the returns sent in, and subsequently published, were not official and were not therefore absolutely unimpeachable in every detail, yet as they all pointed in one direction the general conclusion to be drawn from them was beyond question, and these figures completely and folly substantiated the statement made by Father Cleary. Sinoe then the bigots and political agitators have not been able to raise thia cry so openly and loudly as before, but they have not, unfortunately, had the good sense and common decency to abandon it. They have raised the cry in a quiet underground sort of way, which is just as effective for their purpose and .which is, from the Catholic point of view, even mpte difficult to meet. During the Ute election, wherever a candidate was a Catholic, or supposed to be a fr}epd to Catholics, this bogey was quietly bub effectively raised, and was worked for all it was worth. Whenever such a candidate appeared word was at once pasued round that he was in touch with the Catholics, that there were too many Catholics already in the Civil Service, that he would put more Catholics in and would put the Protestants out, that the whole country would soon be in the hands of the Catholics, and so on — most pitiful unmitigated rubbish, yet quite sufficient during the excitement of election times to influence crowds of wavering voters and to inflict undeserved hardship and injustice on candidates against whom the weapons of honest criticism and fair fighting would have been levelled in vain.

Nor has this particular form of attack on Catholics been confined to this Colony. The cry has been raised with even greater vehemence in several of the other colonies, and the underground agitation which we have to contend against here is little more than the back-wash of a semi-organised movement which has been going on in Victoria and New South Wales for some time past with the object of arousing public feeling and frightening the Governments into practically boycotting Catholic applicants for public appointments. The leaders of the movement in New South Wales are two clergymen belonging to the Orange fraternity, the Revs. Rutledge and Dill Macky. These gentlemen are pretty well known as strong anti- Catholic fanatics, but, as the mouthpiece of a body calling itself the Protestant Defence Association, they made so much noise lately that even a reputable paper like the Sydney ' Telegraph ' at last professed to take them seriously, and devoted a ponderous leading article to their charges. Referring to Protestantism the * Telegraph * said :—: — * There may be circumstances under the pressure of which there, is nothing for it but to organise for defence, as the lesser of two. evils, the other of which is moral and material subjection. The Association alleges that such circumstances exist. ... It charges primarily Roman Catholic " influence " at Parliamentary and municipal elections, undue influence in connection with appointments to the Civil Service and dread of it amongst business men ; in fine that " Roman Catholicism is becoming a tyranny." ' And the Sydney daily concluded its article thus :—: —

'It is for the Government to clear itself and show that it stands in the position of unsectarian .independence, which alone is honorable or tolerable in this country. The association manifesto alone . . . needed in the public interest an answer from the Government which it impeaches. ... It forms part of an indictment which, if untrue, ought to be rebutted, and, if true, reveals a state of affairs which ought to be exposed in order that the tolerant and liberal-minded majority of the people may clear the political ground of the noxious weeds of sectarian meddling, and in the future act freely for themselves.'

Fortunately the challenge issued by the ' Telegraph ' was repeated in Parliament, and the Government was called upon to furnish an official return disclosing the trne state of affairs regarding this matter. The Government statist was accordingly instructed to prepare~a return showing the exact position of the various denominations with respect to the number of appointments held by them in the Public Service departments of the Colony. Mr. Ooohlan soon had his figures ready, and the return, which has now been

published, has given the bigots the most crushing blow they have received for many a day. Bee are the official figures and they speak for themselves :—: —

Ihese figures are very instructive and very significant Assuming it as common ground amongst all the parties that each denomination should be represented in the Civil Service in proportion to its percentage of the population, what do we find. We find that, on the basis of population, the Church of England has 71 more than its share in the Service ; the Congregationalists, who are a mere fraction of the population, have 247 more than their due proportion ; the Presbyterians, to which body the Rev. Dill Macky himself belongs, have no less than 783 more than their share ; whilst the Catholics, who are supposed to dominate the Service, have actually 854 less than they are properly entitled to. These figures are all strictly official and therefore absolutely conclusive and bejond dispute. They show that the public Service in New South Wales is being ' stuffed ' indeed, but not with Catholics. The issue of this return affords a splendid opportunity to the Protestant Defence Association for displaying to the world the genuineness of its claim to be actuated solely by a sense of fairness and love of justice in the action it has taken. The representatives of the Association have been loudly demanding that each denomination should have its fair share of Government appointments, and, in the face of the figures just quoted, our contemporaries on the other side are, naturallyenough, now appealing to this professedly justice-loving association to use its influence with the Government to remedy the injustice which has been done to Catholics and insist on the retrenchment of all the superfluous Presbyterians, Congregationalists, etc. Our contemporaries' appeal will, of course, be in vain, but it will serve at least to bring out the insincerity and inconsistency of the representatives of the Orange faction.

* Although there is no necessary connection between the state of affairs in New South Wales and the position of things in our own Civil Service the publication of this important return will no doubt act as a salutary warning to the bigots and agitators in our own Colony. Seeing how their companions in arms on the other side have been ' hoist With their own petards,' our local mischief-makers, so far as this particular cry at all events is concerned, will probably ' lie low 'to avoid a similar fate. But the issue of this return has a direct lesson for ourselves. The N.Z. Tablet has already shown that, with the exception of the Police Department, there is not a department of the Public Service of the Colony in which Catholics have anything like their fair share of representation, and it is about time that official figures were published here also to show our fellow-citizens exactly how matters stand. Catholics have not, like the

Protestant Defence Association, called mass meetings and made great noise and clamor about the injustice they have suffered, bufc there is a peaceable constitutional method of bringing that injustice before the public, and it is high time they availed themselves of that method. We earnestly hope that when the new Parliament meets a return will be called for similar to that prepared by the New South Wales statistician, so that this • stuffiing * question may be finally disposed of and the mouths of the bigots, so far as this odious ciy is concerned, may be stopped once and for all.

Denominations. a §'43 a <s 9)i-j «1 ••3 ~1 a IN IS JA <O §5 tj I3horch of England toman Catholic Methodist Presbyterian ... Saptist Jongregationalist jutheran Church of Christ Salvation Army Jnitarian )ther Christiana ! p. ct. 4658 25 96 10 29, 991 124 186 •55 •26 •72 •06 •05 •48 •60 '26 •01 •34 •13 p. ot. 4738 2349 9 87 12 58 113 269 •20 •25 •30 •17 •68 •14 •09 •37 •02 •58 •06 14,547 7,212 8,081 3,863 346 825 61 78 91 51 208 42 27 115 6 127 20 378 14,476 8,066 3,198 3,080 385 578 171 81 224 19 233 149 186 81 3 106 40 Fewa i )ther non-Christians ... ..I freethinker, Agnostic ...j ndefinite ... ... ...! denomination ?o religion ! )bject to state and unspecified Totals I 1100-00 I 10000 31,078 31,078