Passive Resistance

New Zealand Tablet, 30 August 1906, Page 10

Passive Resistance

The storm which has been aroused by the English Education Bill is highly calculated to have a chastening effect upon its author, Mr. Birrcll. 'The Bill has passed through the gates of tribulation into the hands of a probably hostile House of Lords ; and the upshot may possibly be the placing of this new scheme for the endowment of Nonconformity under a glass case and preserving! it merely as a legislative freak. Mr Birrell's pat-h in the House of Commons, 1 says 1 the ' Cafch olic Times ', ' has not been too easy ; his Bill has

been a burden to him. It will be a greater burden to him when it goes to the Lords. Lord Lansdowne, discussing the course of Government business, said bluntly that as several of the provisions in Mr. Birrell's Lill had not -beon discussed at all .in the Commons, they would have to be discussed thoroughly by_the Lords when the Bill came before them, and, where necessary, amended. It seemed inconceivable to him that a Bill with such a Parliamentary history should pass through the Lords entirely without amendment. The House of Lords, he declared, would abdicate its position as a Chamber of Revision if it did not discuss the Bill with the object and the intention of amending it where amendment might prove to be necessary. Evidently the Lords do not propose to be frightened by any talk about -dealing with their rights to revise Biils sent up from the Commons. And most probably their amendments to the Bill will be the end of it. Mr. Birrell will protest to his Nonconformist friends that he has done his best for them, but that he has failed. The Cabinet will diop the Bill, for they can hardly submit to take the husk once the Lords have extracted the kernel. And -we may be sure thai the Lords will never consent to endow and establish Nonconformity as the national religion, which is what the Bill does.'

In the meantime, our English Nonconformist friends have been giving Catholics a lesson in the usefulness of passive resistance as a weapon of political delence ageftnsti unqqual and unjust treatment. In the last resort, English Catholics can save themselves. 'We respect the consciences of others ', says the London 'Tablet ', ' and we demand the same respect for our own. We ask no favor, but an equal justice dealt equally to all. We stand on impregnable ground when, paying our rates and taxes into the common pool, we demand our rightful share in return '. Judging by the spirit tmat animates our co-religionists in England, Nonconformist passive resisters will be as inert and sluggish as dabs of putty compared with Catholics, if these are tltiven to this last re so it in defence of their just rights.