People We Hear About

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXII, Issue 15, 14 April 1904, Page 10

People We Hear About

1,, , The f ? llowin g is the record of I>he Hon. Edward BlaJce who told the HoMse of Commons recently that he had a longer experience of tine working of subordinate Parliaments than any other member. Mr. Blake entered Me Parliament of Ontario and the Dominion Parliament thirty-six years ago. He sat in the two Parliaments simultaneously for five years, and was Prime Minister of Ontario while a member of the Canadian Paihainent. He was Minister of Justice for Canada for a period, and left the Dominion Parliament in 1891 to enter the ' Mother of Parliaments.'

The Rev. Peter Amigo, whom the Congregation of Propaganda has recommended the Pope to appoint Bishop ol South warJk, is a native of Gibraltar. Both his parents were naturalised British subjects, and his mother still resides in the fortress. Born in, 1864, he went tjo England in 1878, his intention being to join the English Bar. He became a student of St. Edmund's College, Ware, and there abandoned his ambitions for, the Bar on finding that he had a vocation for the priesthood.

South Africa (says the ' Daily News ') is well blessed with Irishmen. Mr. W. St. John Carr, the fitst Mayor of Johannesburg, is an Irishman and a Catholic. The Mayoir of Pretoria is Mr. Bourke, whose name betrays his nationality. Mr. O'Reilly, a Limerick man, who was recently dn a visit to this country, was Mayor of Capetown a few years ago. Mr. Moses Cornwall, the Mayor of Kimberley before the outbreak of the war, ia a Dublin man, and attended the Convention of the Irish Race in his native city a few years agio as a Home Rule delegate from the Diamond Fields.

Mr. P. A. M'Hugh, M.P., who was one of the new members introduced at the opening of Parliament, and who was selected to move the Irish amendment to the Address, has been in Parliament for many years. His return on the present occasion occurs owing to bis bankruptcy m connection with certain legal proceedings taken by the Crown Solicitor of Sligo. When the seat was vacated and a new writ issued Mr. M'Htigh and his father were both nominated for the vacancy. The father's nomination took place to avoid any legal disqualification of Mr M'Hugh himself in case of opposition. When at the last moment no sign of any opponent was observed the father withdrew, and the son was 'declared le-elected for South Leitrim. Mr. M'Hugh was three times Mayor of Sligo, and just the same number of tunes in prison under different Coercion Acts.

Colonel wSaunderson's grandfather, to whose staunch anti-Union principles in the Irish House of Commons Mr Swift MacNeiU, M P., referred o,n the night of tiie Iri^h debate, is included in Sir Jonah Barrington's famoiiis ' Rod List ' of members who could not be corrupted by Lord Castlereagh's offers of pay, places, and peerages It is one of the ironies of Irish history that the ancestors of some of the most extreme Unionists of Ulster to-day were the sttdnge'st opponents 'of tihe \ct of Union, which was favored by many Catholic diajnitanes There are notable names in the Irish Peerage to-day representing ancestors or relatives who fought against the Union in the Irish House of Commons Members of the Irish Commons in the fateful 1800 who voted against the Union subsequently became Matrqins of Oimonde, Lord Farnham, Lord Belmore, Lord Leitrim, Lord Enniskillen, Lord Carbery, Lord Kingston, and Lord Plunket, who, by the way,, has two descendants m the Peerage to-day— Lord Plunket and Lord Rathmore

The new Duchess of Norfolk is descended from that Maxwell who made one of the most exciting escapes from the Tower of London ever recorded. He was Earl of Nithsdale, and, foolishly talking tihe paTt of the Pretender against George I , he was captured at the Battle of Preston, and was committed to the Tower. His wife, a daughter of the Marquis of Powis of the time, rode through the snow from the North of England to London, although she was a poor horsewoman, to entreat George I. for her husband's life All to no avail, although it is recorded that one day she hjung on to the King's coat-tails and was dragged on her knees the whole- length of a room while the King tried to escape, from her. The refusal of the King gave the family of Maxwell a story of ingenuity and breathless daring which they would no doubt be sorry to be without Lord Nithsdale was smuggled out of the Tower in the clothes of his wife's maid the night before the day appointed for his execution, and Lord Derwcntwiater and all the other prisoners who had not the advantage of being served by devoted wives were duly executed.