Two 'Little Bills'—A Contrast

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXI, Issue 34, 20 August 1903, Page 1

Two 'Little Bills '—A Contrast

Some years ago several hair-raising extracts went the rounds of the Orange press and platform in Australia. They were credited to two ' Romish papers ' published in Barcelona (Spain)—' La Bandera Catohca ' and' Lo Bon Cnstia.' Our local knowledge of Catalonia's capital, and our communication with some Spanish lay friends and the late Bishop of , the place (Monsignor Catala y Albosa), enabled us to dynamite those * elegant extracts,' and to prove that the two miniature journals in question were, during their brief career, the reptile organs of a violent anarchist-socialist gang in Barcelona, that they were fierce enemies of the Christian faith, and had been placed under the ban of the Church by official episcopal proclamation. Spain has today—or had a few years ago— another journalistic wolf in sheep's clothing. It is an anti-Catholic publication, issued, we believe, under Protestant auspices, and entitled the ' Revista Cristiana.' A passing importance has been given to this little ' Christian Review ' by the fact that it has been quoted by one Mr. McCabe, a mateTialjst, in a violent and ill-tempered no-Popery article in the latest issue to hand of the ' Contemporary Review.' •The editor of the " Revista Cristiana, 1 says Mr McCabe, ' some years ago calculated that the Church of Spain spent 29,200,000 pesetas a year on candles and incefnse alone.' This works out at about £1,210,000. It puzzles us to know on what principle the estimate could have been arrived at. Mr. McCabe does not vouchsafe

any information on this interesting point. We are painfully familiar with the religious enthusiasts who travel through Catholic countries with a Baedeker in one hand and a vinegar-cruet in the other. But Mr. McCabe has not got even so far as this. He did his journeys in Spain as Mark Twain did his mountain-climbing in Switzerland— by proxy. He never set foot on the soil of Spain. He knows nothing of the language, manners, or customs of its people. But he is an eager snapper-up of all sorts of anti-Catholic and no-Popery whooping and gos.sip, and it is from the contents of a tip-tilt of that sort of rubbish that he made up his evil-tempered article in the ' Contemporary Review.' The wholesale unreliability of his second-hand, third-hand, and tenth-hand ' information ' has already been sufficiently demonstrated by us in our editorial remarks on other statements made l>y him regarding the Church in Spain.

The current number of the ' Austral Light ' (Melbourne) puts Mr. McCabe in the pillory and shrivels up the venemous nonsense which that easy-chair traveller presumed to write about a country of which he has as little real information as he has of the mystic kingdom of Tibet. Dealing with the question of candles and incense, the ( Austral Light ' says : ' If the unsophisticated Spaniard spends freely in the service of God, and for the beautifying of divine worship, the Spaniard, though poor, can afford it, because he spends but little on intoxicating drink. Therein he differs from his English Protestant fellow-human. The candles and incense will not make his head ache, or cause him to beat his wife, and starve his family, or to hang himself from a rafter. " The Spaniard," says Mr. Scott, a Protestant writer, " looks upon a drunkard with the most undisguised horror and contempt. There are few mortals more abstemious and less given to excesses of any kind than the people of the Peninsula." The Spanish nation is so sober that Spain does not seem to appear in the world's statistics of deaths from drunkenness, while another Catholic country, Italy, gives one death from drunkenness in every 10,000 deaths to Protestant England's 21, Stockholm's 90, and New York's 75. The " Quarterly Review " (October, 1875), calculated that 60,000 die annually in England from the effects of drink, and that there were no less than 600,000 habitual drunkards in England and Scotland. One out of nineteen of the adult male population of England, between the ages of thirty and sixty, dies of drinking. Drunkenness in England has extended to women. And the conditions of living in London and the other large centres of population are fearful in their horror. . t . The drink bill of the

United Kingdom is £189,000,000 or ovei £4 10s per annum per head of the population. The incense and candle bill of Spain, translated into our money, is, roughly, (allowing McCabe's figures to be correct), £1,210,000, or less than Is 6d per annum per head of the population. That is, the Englishman spends on drink in one week more than the Spaniard spends on candles and incense in a whole year. The Australian spends (per head of population per annum) as much on intoxicants in 10 days as the Spaniard spends on candles and incense in 365 The flourishing totals of Mr. McCabe dwindle to very mean proportions under analysis.'