THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 1, 1904. A DEPUTATION AND ITS LESSONS

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXII, Issue 35, 1 September 1904, Page 17

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 1, 1904. A DEPUTATION AND ITS LESSONS

fOME animals play, in attack, a game of bluff. It takes, most commonly, the simulated appearance of a certain portentous bulk, intended to create the impression of a physical force that is not really present. The work of a noted entomologist gives many droll photographic examples in point from the insect world. The erect hair and fur of some animals and the arched back and tail of ' the harmless, jieces^ary cat ' (' the arch enemy,' as Hood calls it) are familiar instances, from the lower mammalian world. Russia's threatening bluster about her thundering legions., a million strong, represents tlie same old policy of bluff in the lord of creation. Of the same ordjer was the first and middle and final argument of the Bi'ble-im-schools Conference when they advanced to the attack of the rights of conscience of other creeds in New Zealand- It was the bluff of numbers and brute force— a paean of 'whelming odds, of ' eighty per cent. of the p-opulation ' marching at their back, with hearts', like those of the ' loviers true ' of St. Valentine's day, ' beating as ' one ' in a ' wonderful unanimity.' It was the audacious braggadocio of Bombastcs or Bobadil. It served, however, one useful purpose. It added to the nation's gaiety in dull grey days when nothing else was happening. For the rest, the game of bluff failed to impress the big public who were awake enoftigh to wifc|ness— in the public press (secular and rcligioiugj, and in the meetings of Councils of the Churches and similar organisations— the storms that cross and renid the ' wonderful unanimity ' of the mythical ' eighty per cent.'

L'astt week another charge of gelignite still further shattered the riven fragments of the ' eighty per cent.' It was a deputation to the Premier (reported elsewhere itn this issue) oh the Bible-in-schools scheme. The deputation consisted wholly of h'on-Catholic clergy and laymen, differing widely (as their principal spokesmen remarked) ' on political, ecclesiastical, and theological cfuestiotife, but they all considered the proposals made by the Bible-in-schools Conference to be objectionable.' Briefly stated, their grounds of objection were the

following : That questions? of religion are outside the province of the Civil Government ; that the new scheme is an atteimpt to make the Administration a religipus teacher ; tihat the depfatationists object to ' paying for religicxus instruction from taxation imposed on all classes of tflie people ' ; that the Bible-in-schools scheme would be an injustice to teachers ; that it ' might land us in a State Church ' ; that a matter of conscience, s*uch as this,, should not be submitted to a plebiscite ; but that, if it was to be put to a majority vote,, it should be on a clear ar/d proper issue, and one very different from that proposed by the Wellington Conference.

Tlhe position taken up by the deputation is a benediction, from various points of the non-Catholic compass,, on the pronouncements of our Hierarchy. It is gratifying to find such real unanimity on so grave a question among persons of such widely diverse arid even opposite 'views on many other social, political, arid religious questions. The deadly sin of Mr. Seddoti's reply was his- re-statement of the anti-democratic principle that questions of conscience, like questions of tramway loans, may be settled by a count of polls, and that a majority has the right to ' bail up ' a minority and compel them, at the pistol-muzzle of legal compulsion, to deliver their purse to pay for tihe teaching of a form of religion to which the victims of this Dick TWpin school of statecraft obje*ct. Apart from this, tihere was a great 'deal of sweet reason ablemess in the Premier's reply, to which our readers are referred. At the close, ho planted a shell in the Bible-in-schools Conference's hull where its only armor-plate was a piece of transparent tissue-paper. He reminded them of their gross and flagrant neglect of the opportunities for religions insitiruction afforded under the provisions of the present Education Act. Mr. Seddon was sneaking by the book, having before his mtnd's eye the following official table which he, as Minister of Education, had presented to the House of Representatives on November 2, 1903 :—