The New Zealand THURSDAY, JULY 26, 1906. ANOTHER MARE'S NEST

New Zealand Tablet, 26 July 1906, Page 21

The New Zealand THURSDAY, JULY 26, 1906. ANOTHER MARE'S NEST

§HERE are sundry men in clerical attire who are morbid secretions on the social life of the Mother State of Australia. They usually manifest themselves with greatest virulence when the circling year brings around the recurring hysteria of mid-July. If mare's nests— like Lowell's pious editors' ' prinserpuls '—had ' a solid vally,' the clerical firebrands across -..the water would now be multi-millionaires. Exposura does not shame them. Experience teaches them no lesson. Little Barnums in black, they are gluttons for self-advertising. And they have the eager and indiscriminate appetite of the shark for every sort of offal that falls from the foul-smelling slop-tub of NoPcpery. * The latest No-Popery mare's nest has been ciiscovered by the Orange firebrand in Sydney who is Known to fame

in. these countries as the ' ehapla.in ' of the notorious Coningham pair. It was announced amidst flowing declamation at an Orange gathering in the Sydney Town Hall, and was greeted with a fer\or far surpassing that with which the brethren would have welcomed the discovery of the fifth dimension or perpetual motion. Here is the substance of one report of the ' lind ' :—: — ' He said that in the hall was one of three girls who had made their escape from a con-vent near Sydney. The girl was originally Presbyterian, but she went as a servant to a Roman (Jaiftolic presbytery in the country. While there she became a Roman Catholic. At the end of six months she desired to come back to Sydney. The priests tried to persuade her not to rctuin to the city, but she persisting, they gave "her a letter to the Mother in charge of a convent near Sydney, ostensibly to provide her with a home. The Mother" Superior took away the girl's clothes and her money, and put her under lock and key. For a year and nine months the girl was forced to work from four o'clock in the morning till' eight o'clock at night, without payment. Eventually she .and two other girls made their escape disguised. These girls had furnished information that, about a hundred girls were in that con\ent under similar conditions, engaged in laundry work, and some of the inmates were only nine years of age. He promised that the rest of the story would be told later on.' Another report oT the platform tale was in some respects .more detailed. It gave, for instance, the name of the ' Roman Catholic Presbytery ' a s that of Bathurst ("N.SWV.), and the ' convent near Sydney 1 a s that of the Good Samaritans, who do for fallen women the -work which is so admirably done in New Zealand by the Sisters of the Good She[herd. The fraudulent ' kolporter ' was oily a nd pious ami eloquent when he tried to ' unload ' a spavined nag upon Josh Billings. But the cautious philosopher was ' not edzackly disposed tv swaller, without stirring ', all the horse-vendor said. A similar caution would have saved Coningham's ' chaplain ' from another of the exposures that have dogged his tales ever since he engaged in the cowardly but congenial task of hanging Catholic women. A sane and fair-minded man would have stirred the story before swallowing it. A telegram of inquiry to Bathurst, a three minuses' conversation over the telephone with the Superior of the Good Samaritans, would, indeed, ha\e deprived the Saffron Sashes of one of the spasms of sens-ation that they love so dearly when the dog-star is in the ascendant in ' that part of Scotland which is called Ulster '. But it would have spared the clerical firebrand the humiliation of being again pilloriod as a defamer of devoted women whose lives are a reproach to him. The exposure of the story resolves itself into two sections. The first was provided by Monsignor Long, Administrator of the CathedraT, and (in the Bishop's absenoe) of the diocese, of Bathurst. The remainder of the business was done in thorough-going fashion by the Sydney ' Freeman's Journal 'of July 14. Monsignor Long testified in the public press that no such incident as related on the Orange platform in Sydney had taken place in the Bathuist presbytery. And he was "borne out in his statement by the Rev. E. J. Flanagan, ' who had been intimately associated with it for the past seventeen years '. The rest of the dynamiting was done by the ' Freeman,' on detailed information obtained — where the accuser could and ought to have obtained it — at the Good Samaritan Home. Stated in the most summary form, it runs as follows : (1) The girl referred to came to the Home, not from the Bathurst Catholic presbytery, but from the Bathurst gaol. (2) Neither her clothes nor her money were taken away at the Home ; for the simple reason that she reached the place without a penny in her pocket and with no clothes beyond those that she stood in. (3) The story of being c put under lock and key ' is a fabrication. (4) So is the story of the ' work from four o'clock in the morning till eight o'clock at night '. The hours of work (which are very moderate) arc -clearly set forth in the 'Freeman', and they are shorter, and more broken, and the work far less

exacting, and sustained than that which is performed every day by house-mothers in the homes of workers throughout New Zealand. And the supposed ' martyr ' was one of the least diligent workers in the Good Samaritan Home. (5) ' She and two other girls made their escape disguised '. (a) There was no need to ' make their escape ' . 1 hey simply walked' out in the customary way, by the unlocked front door— a right which they were free to exercise at any time. And they did this with the full knowledge, though not with the approval, of the Superior, and with money furnished by her in their pockets, (b) The Bathurst ' victim ' had not been in the Home for fhe period stated. On her first admission (after her discharge from prison) she remained a short time, left the institute, returned, and, by her own request was received back again. (c) The three girls left the institute in the dress of the place, which, so far from serving as a ' disguise^, was calculated to direct attention to them. And tfius the whole frippery of the latest ' yellow ' sensation falls to the ground.

Will this fresh exposure teach ,those cowardly calumniators of Catholic women a lesson of caution ? There is not the smallest hope that it will. Men of normal mentality believe by evidence and reason ; the ' yellow ' clergy by the interest or passion of the hour. And all too fully they have absorbed the principle of their spiritual father, Luther, who declared : ' Against the Papacy I esteem all things lawful.' In its marsupial animals, Australia still retains some of the relics of Trias-life that have vanished from almost every other clime under the sun. And, in an analogous w a y, the Saffron fraternity retain the monstrous feelings of religious hate that belong to an evil day that is now happily gone for ever over the greater part of the world that believes in the gentle Gospel of Him Who would not crush the bruised reed .or extinguish the smoking flax. And thus amid the clamor of ' Kentish fire ' we still hear, at the annual orgie,

' In words that sound as if from human tongues Those monstrous, uncouth horrors of the past That blot the blue of heaven and shame the earth As would the sauri a ns of the age of slime, Awaking from their stony sepul.hres And wallowing hateful in the eye of day '. ' More light, more faith, and the schoolmaster abroad— these will at last rid the earth of those principles of oath-bound hate that ' shame the earth ' vastly more than ' the saurians of the age of slime '.