THE PRIESTS AND PEOPLE OF IRELAND SLANDERERS SCORED

New Zealand Tablet, 23 August 1906, Page 12

THE PRIESTS AND PEOPLE OF IRELAND SLANDERERS SCORED

The Very Rev. Dean Itegnault delivered a lecture on the above subject to a very large audience on Monday evening, August 13 (writes a Waim&te correspondent). The Dean said he felt diffident about speaking to thorn on Irish affairs ; but pamphlets had lately been circulated, repeating all the old and oft-refuted calumnies against the Irish people. These were the work of a briefless Dublin barrister, who, failing to make a living at his profession, ami having lost his faith, had taken to the less difficult, but, more profilable business of slandering his fellowcountrymen. The accusations may be reduced to the following : Irish Catholics aie ignorant because they aie priest-ridden and belong to a Church which has never prospered except by keeping its people in ignorance and intellectual stagnation ; Irish Catholics are poor because they are priest-ridden and have no liberty of conscience , they spend their means in erecting churches ; they are devoid of energy and without thrift arid industry ; Irish Catholics are superstitious, because they are priest-ridden and belong to a Church that is one vast network of superstition. Thus, for the ignorance, poverty and superstition, for thf decay, degeneracy, and lum that everywhere prevail, the priest is set forth as the unheisal cause. The Dean denied that the Irish were more ignorant than their neighbors and that, in spite of the Penal Laws, which proscribed learning and the liish language in order to Protestantise and denationalise the Gael. lie gave an histoiical sketch of Ireland, showing liow in the early ages Ireland liad been the university of Europe, and had sent missionaries to all parts thereby earning the titles of 'Lamp of the West' ami 'The Island of Saints and Scholars.' The Penal Laws shut out Catholics from every office, civil or military ; debarred them from having any say in the elections or government of their country, and forbade education. There was a price on the head of the Catholic schoolmaster. 'Yet at the risk of his life— a penalty too often paid— the priest set up hedgeschools, which, despite the awful risks, were eagerly attended, so innate is tlie love of learning in the Irish character. From these hedge-schools came some of the brightest ornamenis of Irish history, an-<l the proudest place of honor in the records of that distressful countiy belongs to these hedge-schools. Yet the priests are accused of keeping the people in ignorance ' The establishment of the National Schools, with the object of ' weaning the children from the superstitions of Popery, 1 was then mentioned, artd the .struggle of the clergy to grapple with this new danger; how they succeeded and turned these schools into a blessing for liish youth. Sir John G-orst spoke thus at a meeting of the Education section of the British Association . ' Teachers should be recruited from Ireland , the genius of the Irish people was one that lent itself to the teaching profession.' That does not look like ipnoi ance— unless it proves the ignorance of the slanderers of the Irish race. The lecturer then went on to show what the religious Orders had done and were stiil doin-g in education ; how they had built and equipped schools which more than hold their own. Speaking of the Catholic intermediate colleges, he showed how they more than hold their own with the State endowed non-Catholic colleges, and their victories were increasing year by year. Kven non-Catholics— amongst them Dr. Archdall, Protestant Bishop of Rillaloe, and Dr. Bunbury, Protestant Bishop of Limerick— have openly admitted the superiority of the Catholic intermediate education. In University Education the Catholic colleges had to enter the lists in their poverty against the well-eindowed non-CathoLic v colleges, yet from 1891 lo> 1903 inclusively, the Catholic colleges obtained 371 fust-class distinctions Queen's College, Belfast, 242, Queen's College, Galway, 86 and Quern's College, Cork, 20. Of the studentships (£300) the Catholic colleges >n the same period won M— the three Queen's Colleges just 13. The Junior Fellowship in mental and moral science went to the Dublin Diocesa.n Seminary. One student of the Catholic University of Medicine competed for the studentship in pathology and -won it from the Queen's Colleges. The stune success has been achieved during the last three consecutive years. Once more, on 'which side is ignorance ? Is it fair, is it honest on the part of the enemies of Irish Catholics, first to rob them of education, and then to revile them <and accuse their Church of nursing them in obscurantism ? We may say, with proof in hand, that in proportion to population, no country in the world 3ias dur-

ing the last century made greater progress than Ireland in the most important branches of primary and secondary education. We fling back the accusation of ignorance in the face of the slanderer, and we hail the day, which is fast coming, when Ireland will again oe called the ' Lamp of the West,' and ' The Island of Saints and Scholars.' The next point and the most important to be treated is the charge of poverty made against Catholic Ireland. That charge of poverty, said the Veiy Rev. lecturer, 1 will not deny. Since the Act of Union was passed— an Act which Fox characterises as one of the most disgraceful Acts in English h*stoiv and Gladstone as a ciirninal Act brought about byvile and blackguardly means, an Act of which Lecky says that it is a tissue of brutality and hypocrisy scarce-ly surpassed in history— since that Act was. passed, Ireland was united to England and governed by a British Parliament and Biitish officials, Ireland has dwindled in men and resouices. England, Wales, and Scotland have increased enormously, but Ireland is like one who has been wounded, lying with hands bound, and bleeding from every pore. I know of no other instance in which a nation has decreased by one half of its population in sixty years. Why Poland has been better oil under Russian rule ; for within the last twenty years Warsaw, its capital has doubled its population. The lecturer then gave' an account of the different Acts passed for the supiession of Irish industries— manufacturing, agricultural pastoial and fishing. It has been said that a countiy will sooner lecover from the effects of war invasion, rebellion, and massacre, than from laws discouraging its manufactuies, stifling its industries and breaking the hearts of its people. And so it has been with Ireland. It was long the settled policy of the English Parliament to cnpple, to ruin, and 1o kill eveiy liish industry. So the Navigation Act was passed, which prohibited all exports from Ireland to the Bntish colonies. Then the cattle trade was niohilnteri, because it interfered with the English cattle raiser. It was the same with wool, with the linen mdustiy, silk and glass manufactures, and the fishing trade. Speaking of agriculture, the lectuier gave an account of the measuies taken to suppress it. It is unnecesoaiy to speak of The Confiscation and Paitition of liish Land. Catholics were disabled by law fioni renting land except on shoit leases, and the land was let a.n-d sublet and sublet again until m some cases six lents had to be provided. Fioude tells us that the tenants in their leases were forbidden to break or plough the soil. The landloid was v. spotting himself m Piecadilh or the Bois de Boulogne. Oiten has he been enabled not only to live in luxury, but to spend foolishly enof^ mous sums which his land had never produced but winch had been sent from America and the colonies by their sons and daughters to enable the old father and mother to remain until death in that home which they loved so well, notwithstanding its wielchedness Ihe landlord always had an agent who took a great interest in the tenants' affairs, and every sign of taste even a few flowers in the gaiden or the tenant's daughter wearing a pair of boots to Mass or buying a piece of nbb/on at the fair— was evidence that moie levenue could be squeezed from the farm which had cost him oi his ancestors not a penny. When the tenants found they could not pay the exorbitant rents the landloids began the process of what was called ' clearing ' their CSfc^?, S - «The 7« The 7 ' clealed ' them by helping the famine to .lull off the people by sen-ding the food belonging to the starving tenants abroad ; they ' cleared ' them by evictions which (as Gladstone said) were often sentences of death, and which throughout the nineteenth century have left recorded in characters of blood and oi cruelty unpaialleled one of the darkest pages in the history of the human race. Notwithstanding the ruifn of industries and agnculture, money has been raised i n o re i a u nd durm 6 the last century. Where has it gone to ? The money spent on The Erection of Catholic Churches since the beginning of the nineteenth century to the Kf n^nnn^V 55 ' acc ° rdiu E to expert testimony, about 55* ISMS" l°™ thls sum we ma y certainly deduct £.1,000,000 contributed from abroad, particularly America. Haw far would that sum have contributed to the prosperity of a nation during a whole century ? And this money meed never have been spent had not the Catholics been robbed of their churches by the dominant Protestant creeds. On the other hand, before the r^ *l" r £ 8 Came> I lish Catholics h*ve paid, in rack, rents which were not in justice due, more money in one year than would have been sufficient to cover the ™i,? nA clhurchesc I hurches erected in Ireland during a tZ nLJi Z 7 ? a f e l d 0 not ap P ear t0 be blamed for the poverty of Ireland, yet have they not had more

than their share in fleecing the country ? O'Neil Daunt says : ' That in over-taxation, absentee rents, money spent bringing English manufactured goods owing to the destruction of home industries, an amount of thirteen million pounds sterling has been transferred from Ireland to England each year. The Financial Relations Commission's Reports revealed the fact that Ireland has been paying £3,000,0U<J a year in taxes more than her just shaie, The English. Government imposed the Union on Ireland, and, adding insult to injury, t.hey saddled the counliy with the whole cost of the transaction— £l,soo,ooo alone being spent on bribes. (Conclusion in next issue.)