Passive Resistance

New Zealand Tablet, 23 August 1906, Page 10

Passive Resistance

It is rather a-wkward to evoke a ghost and be -unable to ' lay ' the ' execrable shape ' when the immediate purpose of his apparition has been achieved. This is the dilemma in which the course of legislation on education may possibly place the Nonconformists of Great Britain. They evoked Passive" Resistance. If the present Education Bill becomes law, Passive Resistance will have served its turn. But instead of permanently ' evanishing at crowing of the cock ' when its contract is completed, Passive Resistance promises to be a much more terrible spccLie in the liands of Catholics and iVnglicans than it ever was wh-en in t/he employ of the Nonconformists, who called 11 torth from the vasty, deep. 'The Bill,' says the London 'Tablet', 'not only robs us of half our schools at a stioke, but makes the existence of the other half absolutely depend upon the will of the local authorities, if the Bill becomes law as it now stands . . . the Catholic schools which come under the four-fifths exception can have Catholic teachers, only by accident or by an evasion of the law '. The first line of defence of the religious schools having broken down, the ' Tablet ' outlines what the Catholic aclion will be in the event of the Bill of confiscation becoming law. ' This time ', it bays, ' the Government will have to deal not with, the antics of a handful of passive rcsisters, but with people who, if they are driven to it by injustice, are quite strong enough to wieck any Education Act Parliament may pass. It shall suffice then to say, here and now, that we will have nothing to do with these licences to starve, that we are not going back to tlie old hideous days when our schools were made dependent upon pingpong- matches and jumble sales. If Parliament takes* our rates to support Protestant schools, then we call for an equality of treatment in regard to> the Catholic schools. If Protestant children are to be allowed <to receive Protestant religious instruction in the elementary schools of the country, and at the public expense; the barest justice requires that Catholic -chil-dren should be allowed to receive Catholic instruction under similar conditions. That is our last word.' * The Edinburgh ' Catholic Herald ' publishes .an ultimatum in terms that arc just as unmistakable. 'We do not,' says the 'Herald', ' desire to talk violently or to use strong language But one thing is certain, and that is that we shall never submit to the extinction of our Catholic schools while -we are called upon to pay for Protestant schools. We shall nevei' submit to our children being deprived of religious instruction while we ax*e compelled to pay for religious instruction for the children of our 'neighbors. We shall never submit to have non-Catholic teachers forced upon our children— teachers hostile to their crctd, and likely to

undermine it. Whether we shall close our schools and turn our children adrift ; whether we shall resist the payment of rates and taxes, and fill the jails of the country ; or what shall be the form of our protest, is matter for debate and discussion and decision ; but that we shall resist to the uttermost, let Ministers and politicians undeistand, once and for all. We have appealed to the sense of justice to our neighbors, and that sense of justice seems wanting. Very well. But Dr. Clifioid and his friends have done something to show how how Passive Resistance can be worked. It will be our business to better that resistance tenfold. We shall make a fight, on this Education business for liberty of conscience and fair play compared to which the Nonconformist resistance will appear a hollow mockery.' * - **■ We are not of the people who are never at peace unless when they are at war. We do not believe in fighting for the sake of fighting. But neither are we believers in the maxim of ' peace at any price.' There are times when it is cowardice to take grave and radical injustice prone and unprotesting and unresisting. And when your baci is to the wall, and you must strike in necessary sell-defence, it is, as a general principle, good policy to hit with all your might. Circumstances all too frequently arise in which justice can be secured in no other way.