Notes

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXIII, Issue 26, 29 June 1905, Page 18

Notes

A Costly Luxury ' During the year 1903, said Mr. Hanan, at t<he recent anti-consumption meeliitg in Invercargill, ' 730 deaths from tuberculosis occurred in New Zealand. Estimating each life at £300, and taking into consideration the loss to the State of each individual's services, and the outlay for nursing, etc., the cost to the Colony during the year was something like £304 t Boo.' A high pMce to pay for t*he blessed privilege of promiscuous spitting ! Our Forests In his speech from the throne on Tuesday, at the opening of Parliament, his Excellency the Governor touched upon a theme at which we ha\e been hammering away for many years. ' The rapid denudation of our forests,' said he, ' is a matter for your earnest consideration. At the present output from our kauri forests, it is estimated that they will be practically exhausted within 20 years ; consequently forestry and tre>e-planting should be more vigorously carried on. It is considered, too, that the reservation of some foreslts, the timbers of which are required for special industries, is worthy of your consideration.' A Costly Government A good many people, like Franklin's nephew, pay too dear for their whistle- Some do so from folly or inexperience ; some because the usurer's claws are upon their throat or the highwayman's pistol at them head. T,he Irish people are among those who pay the big price under compulsion. Their own particular whistle— comprehensnely known as ' Castle rule '—is, perhaps, the most costly administration in the world ; •and the wretched bit of rusty Brummagem cannot be got to play a solitary tune to which the impo'\eiished country can dance. 'We are of opinion,' said the Financial Relations Commission, ' that the excessi\e expenditure on Ireland which we have desciibed, although it may be no justification for the excessive taxation of Ireland, is at once a pecuniary loss to the taxpayers of Cheat Britain and a cause of demoralisation to Ireland.'

A recent -discussion in the columns of a northern contemporary gives a special opportuneness to the following quotation in point from a leading article in a recent issue of the veil known London evening paper, the ' Star ' It will serve to illumine both sides of the contro\ersy — ' Lord Dunra\en paints a picture of Ireland's present condition which ought to silence the bigot and shame the charlatan. 11 is the old, old story, with all the old miseries. After a hundred years of British rule, Ireland is still bleeding to death. In 1801 her population was 5,395,000. In 1001 it was 4,458,000. In 1801 the population of England and Wales " was 8,&92,0T>0. In 1901 it had increased to 32,526,000. r Jhose ghastly figures are an unanswerable indictment. They cannoit be gainsaid. Ireland is bleeding to death. The flower of her youth is leaving her by every American liner. Only the old remain in the doomed country. The "birth-rate is the smallest in the world, and the ratio of pauperism is well-nigh the largest. One out of every 100 persons is in the worknousc, and one out of 44 re-

ceives rate aid. This poverty-stricken country is saddled with one» of the worst and most costly governments in the world. Ireland pays £2,00,000 more than Scotland for her judicial system, which is a paradise of 1 Protestant place-hunters. She pays £1,000,000 more for her police, which are a military force, used like Cossacks to keep down the disaffection of the masses. The R.I.C. alone cost Ireland 6s Sd per head of the population. Is it strange that Irishmen are sick of the mismanagement) of their country? Is it strange that they should Semand sell-government ? They cannot make a more awful mess of Ireland fi-oni the business point of \iew than Dublin Castle has done.' This extract will serve as a useful tag to an article on the same subject that appeared in a recent issue of this paper.

Those 'Penitentes' Stories seldom lose in the telling and often, as they go, gather many a frill and gewgaw of fancy from narrators who (like Fronde and Macauley) are more intent' upon interesting their hearers than upon sending a tale upon its way as unadorned as they received it. A case in point is furnished in the following paragraph which has found its way into more than one New Zealand paper :— 1 Despatches from Colorado report some extraordinary proceedings on the part of a sect calling themselves the Penitents. One of the band, all of whom are Mexicans, is reported to have allowed himself to be crucified a t Torres. Residents of the latter cityj saw the victim die from exhaustion. They had, howe\er, been sworn to secrecy about the details of the aftanr. At Longs Uanon a large party of Penitents scourged themselves, and afterwards, with bared feet, carried a cross wound round with thorns up a stony hill.'

A non-Catholic writer in the Boston ' Transcript ' recently added, on his own account, the tag that the ' Penitentes ' axe representative Mexicans and ' good Catholics.' This bit of misinformation has not, however, appeared thus far in the New Zealand press. Here are the plain and unvarnished facts of the matter, which were supplied to the ' S.H. Review ' (Boston) on April 29, by the Rev. Father Marra, S.J., of Las Vegas', New Mexico •' — 'It is unhappily true that there exists in our midst a class of fanatics calling themseives Penitentes ami practising, especially during Holy Week, such acts as are described in the clipping you have sent me, except the hanging of one of them on a cross and leaving him to die. Some one may have died on some occasion, accidentally, but the death is not intended. The people pretend to be Catholics, but they stick to their superstitious practises more than to the precepts of the Church, or even the commandments of God, for all that is known of them. The Church has done all in her power to suppress them. Archbishop Salpointe went even so far as to excommunicate soma of their lodges or moradas, but to no purpose. They are stubborn and would sooner leave thejChurch than, the brotherhood. And no wonder since they arc abetted in their resistence to ecclesiastical authority by crafty; politicians, who need their votes on election, days, and so exert themselves to keep them together by every possible way. Some of these public officehuntcrs, though having a holy horror of scourging theic bucks until they bleed, and avoiding it most earnestly, yet join the ranks of these deluded creatures and behave in every other respect like most fervent Penitentes. Nor is tihis hypocritical trick peculiar to Mexican Catholic (?) politicians. Oh, no. We have seen an American Protestant become a Penitente and even Hermano Mayor, or Grand Master, we might say in order to dispose for years of the votes of the brethren' likd a unit. So this plague does exist here. But the Penitentes are no more the people of New Mexico than the Lynchers of some Southern States are the people of Kentucky, Tennessee or Texas.' «

There is scarcely anything new under the sun, even in the vagaries of religious fanaticism. The ' Penitentes ' ol New Mexico are simply the modem counterparty of the Flagellants of the fourteenth century. These self-sufficiqnt enthusiasts, like their modern Mexican imitators, placed themselves in open defiant opposition to the .Ckurch. They merited the terms of reproach flung at them by the University of Paris , A sect that is the enemy of God, of good report, and of salvation.'