The New Zealand TABLET THURSDAY, APRIL 22, 1909. MORE 'IRISH OUTRAGES''

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXVII, Issue 16, 22 April 1909, Page 621

The New Zealand TABLET THURSDAY, APRIL 22, 1909. MORE 'IRISH OUTRAGES''

tARK TWAIN once complained that he never could tell a lie which any one would doubt, nor a truth which any one would believe. But, then, Mark's ' terminological inexactitudes' had at least the merit of ' plausibility". -So had Chauncey Depew?s brilliant tales, of things that might easily have been. ' more so.' ' Your speech convinced me,' once said a- free - and independent American elector to Depew, ' though I lenowed all the time that it was the peskiest lie that, ever was told. I made up my mind to vote your> ticket; but I'd 'a', been willing to "bet a peck o' red apples that 1 no man could stand up and tell me such a lot o' convincing lies without having 'em writ out. You must 'a' had an awful lot o' practice.' The ' carrion crows ' of Ireland (as Chief Secretary Mr. Birrell aptly called them) — that is, the Irish Orange-Tory ascendancy party — have had 'an awful lot o' practice 3 at defaming their country as a political 'move to postpone_the fast-coming day when their disastrous and

irresponsible - and -tyrannous class domination will be brought.* to an end. .But they have not yet learned the art of lying- plausibly and- cleverly or concealing the great guiding motive of their impeachment of the most crimeless people in the British Isles. At this time of the day the true inwardness and. inartistic and palpable exaggeration of that disgraceful campaign of Orange-Tory vilification ought to be sufficiently well, known to wide-awake journalists in these countries. - Yet' we find the Grey River Argus of April 12 serving up to its -readers with apparently unsuspecting* good faith stories of 'Irish outrages' that were told to the Sydney' Daily Telegraph by its London correspondent, and picked by. the _ London correspondent from the Orange-Tory ' carrion-crow ' publication that invents or exaggerates Irish misdeeds in a manner that has time and again brought down upon it the severest official reprobation in the House of Commons. But with £3000 a year, a long-established, class monopoly "of place and pelf in. imminent danger, and (like Slteridan's termagant) ' a. free tongue and a bold- invention,' you can always make even the^most orderly "and crimeless people on the face of the earth appear to be a combination of apes and demons. And this all the more so if (like the Orange-Tory slanderers quoted at second-hand by the Grey lliver Argus) you take the precaution of making the ' outrages ' c happen ' in unmentioned places and to people -who have neither a local habitation nor a name. The New Zealand Tablet's latest and largest publication, An Impeached Nation, places ,in the hands of honest men a whip to lash those professional calumniators naked through the land. Will some of our Irish organisations, or others interested in defending the fair f ame of a faithful and sorely-tried' Catholic people, take steps to have copies of that publication placed in (say) all our newspaper .offices and public libraries? That would, we submit, be a very practical and useful' way of meetings the ding-dong of ' yellow ' calumny from oversea.