Irish News

New Zealand Tablet, 31 October 1912, Page 39

Irish News

GENERAL. •At Wexford Board of Guardians on September 7Lady Maurice Fitzgerald presiding—Alderman Ben Hughes, the oldest journalist in Ireland, was co-opted a member in room of Mr. Wm. Kelioe, deceased. The new parish church of Timoleague, County Cork, was dedicated by the Most Rev. Dr. Kelly in - the presence of a numerous and representative congregation of the parishioners of Timoleague, Barryroe, Kilbrittain, and the other parishes in the Carberries. Mr.-. Gerald Dease, Turbotstown, writing in the Irish Times, asks Irish Orangemen can they not see that their English confederates ‘ are simply laughing at their crazy bigotry, and egging them on as useful pawns in the game of dishing .the Radicals, and that they would sell them, and pass a Home Rule Bill of their own to-morrow, if they were in power, and expected any . party benefit from so doing Mr John Linehan, K.C., who was recently appointed County Court Judge of Tyrone, in succession to Judge Todd, transferred to Derry, adds another to the occupants of the Bench in Ireland who have been members of the Freeman’ s Journal staff. Mr Linehan, who is a native of Cork, began his career on the Cork Examiner, served afterwards on the Freeman’s Journal, and left journalism for the Bar in 1891. His Grace the Most Rev. Dr. Prendergast, Archbishop of Philadelphia, following a lengthy sojourn in his native land, left Queenstown for New York on September 7. His Grace was given a hearty ‘bon voyage’ by many friends who witnessed his departure, and among the assembly was his brother, the Rev. Father Prendergast, Dungarvan, County Waterford. His Grace’s secretary, the Rev. Father Walsh, who had been very ill during the visit to Ireland, returned with Dr. Prendergast, greatly inproved in health. A REMARKABLE MANIFESTO. Sir A. Conan Doyle (the well-known novelist), Rev. Joseph Hocking (a bitter anti-Catholic writer), Lord Pirrie (head of Harland and Wolff, the great Belfast shipbuilding firm), Sir Joseph West Ridgeway (exGovernor of Ceylon, and formerly connected with Dublin Castle), and Sir Frederick Pollock (the first living authority on constitutional law) have issued a manifesto stating that they did not support Mr. Gladstone’s Home Rule Bill, but they are convinced that some form of Home Rule is necessary, to remove the standing danger to the Empire.- The present Bill, they say, is an honest endeavour to solve the problem, and should be passed. DOMINICAN PI ALL OF RESIDENCE. A leading centre of education in Dublin is the the Dominican Hall of Residence, St. Stephen’s Green, conducted by the Dominican Nuns. This institution is recognised by the governing body of University College for women students of the college, and by several scholarships committees of County Councils. During the current academic year, 13 first-class honors, 11 second-class honors, and 7 exhibitions and prizes have been won by the students in residence, at the Arts Examinations, of which the results have already been announced by the National Universityor University College, The totals are almost half of the honors awarded to all women students. 4_ . . ) - RELIGIOUS AND SECULAR EDUCATION. The Sisters of Mercy, Clara, Leix, have just celebrated their golden jubilee. On behalf of the people of Clara and Horseleap, a deputation, introduced by County Councillor White, presented an address and testimonial, which were acknowledged on behalf of the nuns by Very Rev. M. Bracken, P.P., V.F. He joined in the tribute to the Sisters, and alluded to the instruc-

tion given in'the schools. Ho hoped that a system of godless education would never be imposed on Ireland. Statesmen who tried it would certainly fail, as they in Ireland had laymen, like the members of the deputation, determined to insist at all costs that religious and secular education should go hand in hand. ; GRANTS FOR SECONDARY EDUCATION. - The draft . scheme regarding new grants for secondary education in Ireland was issued in Dublin on September 9. The sum of forty thousand pounds is to be distributed by way of grants to schools which comply with certain specified conditions, the principal of which is the employment of one lay assistant teacher for , every forty scholars on the roll. ' The Very Rev. Dr. Watters, S.M., president of the University School, Lower Leeson street, Dublin, has given to the Freeman’s Journal a statement in which he says: Mr. Birrell’s scheme draws, for the first time, a line of discrimination between religious teachers and lay teachers. Such a line of demarcation has not been drawn before. ... DEDICATION OF A NEW CHURCH IN BELFAST. The new Church of the Holy Family, Newington, Belfast, was solemnly dedicated on Sunday, September 8, by his Lordship the Most Rev. Dr. Tohill, Bishop, of Down and Connor, and this important event in the North of Ireland marks the addition of yet another splendid temple for Catholic worship in the province of Ulster. The new church supersedes the wooden structure that has been in existence since 1895, and has accommodation for 1400. His Lordship Bishop Tohill returned thanks on behalf of the parishioners and of the Administrator to all who had contributed to make their imposing new church a concrete reality. The total cost of the structure was £5500, and of this sum only £IBOO remained to be cleared off. The. collection at the High Mass had realised £1563 19s 6d, so that after the evening devotions, said his Lordship, the church would be absolutely free from debt. The value of the gifts to the new church was estimated at £2OOO, THE ATTACK ON LORD ABERDEEN. The attack made by the Irish Times on Lord Aberdeen, the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, and his wife has done the Irish ■ loyalists ’ a. lot of. harm in Great Britain, and especially in Scotland, the home of the Aberdeens. It was an open secret that Dublin Castle was boycotted by the Irish Unionists because the representative of the King there was a Home Ruler. But the Irish Times’ attack has advertised the fact, and it is not at all gratifying to Unionist ‘ society ’ in England, which affects to be very tender in the matter of any slight put upon the Sovereign or his representative. The Unionist press in England gives no support to the Irish Times’ attack. It realises the incongruity and the tactlessness of a party professedly ‘ loyal ’ exulting, in the boycott of the representative of the Crown in Ireland, and, so far as Lady Aberdeen is concerned, the purity of her motives and the value of her work have never been questioned outside the Irish Timesoffice. Home Rulers in Great Britain regard the attack on the Irish Viceroy as another timely exposure of the contemptible fraud and hypocrisy of the thing called ‘ loyalty ’ by the Irish Unionists. A TORY MISSTATEMENT. Major Hope, in the course of a speech at Glencorse, was reported to have said that he believed that Lord Mac Donnell was at this moment opposed to this Home Rule Bill for Ireland. The Home Rule Council immediately got into communication with Lord Mac Donnell on the matter. His Lordship replied as follows to Mr G. Wallace Carter, general secretary of the council: ‘ I have to thank you for your letter of the 29th inst., informing me that Major Hope asserts that I am opposed to the Home Rule Bill. My opinion on the Bill is expressed in a series of articles contributed under my name to the Daily Chronicle shortly after the first

reading of the Bill. These articles have been since y collected and circulated in pamphlet form by the Daily Chronicle. In them I press for the transfer of larger funds to the Irish Government, and for the election of • the Irish Parliament by the method of proportional representation in the interest of the Irish Unionist minorities. But these (and a few other minor points) are obviously matters for adjustment in committee, and I have no doubt they will be satisfactorily dealt with then. In other respects I accept the Bill; and if Major Hope asserts that I am opposed to it in principle, you have my permission to give that assertion an authoritative contradiction.’ ORIGIN OF YOUGHAL POINT LACE. During an entertainment given in the Presentation Convent, Youghal, in honor of the golden jubilee of the Right Rev. Mgr. Keller, P.P., the venerable jubilarian said the origin of the point-lace industry in that convent dated from the years of the famine, when Rev. Mother Mary Ann Smyth, seeing all the poverty and misery that pressed on the people, asked herself how she could come to the assistance of the sufferers. She did not know how to make lace, but she set about teaching herself. She had in her possession a bit of old , family lace, and it occurred to her that if she could learn how to make the like she might be able to teach others, and so help them to make a living. She thereupon set to work, ripped up the piece of lace stitch by stitch, wrote down a list of the various stitches, observed their connection closely, and, having taken it all asunder, re-made it, and taught a few girls from the town how to do it. That was the origin of point lace in Youghal, Ever since that time the industry had been in existence there. Recently, of course, various improvements had been made in the shape of new designs, etc., till the lace had gained for itself a worldwide name. TRADES CONGRESS AND HOME RULE. The Trades Congress is the great annual Parliament of Labor for Great Britain, This year it was the largest and most important on record. The delegates present represented an increase in membership of the trades unions of nearly half a million, and the questions dealt with “covered nearly every phase of the workers’ programme. The president was Will Thorne, M.P., one of the ablest and most remarkable men of his time, whose career is one of the romances of the Labor movement, and who, like all the other Labor leaders, is a consistent and staunch advocate of Home Rule. His , opening address and the reception accorded to it put an end to any uncertainty that may have existed as to the attitude of the British workers towards Home Rule. The newspaper reports state that the president’s reference to the Home Rule Bill was greeted with general cheering: ‘lt is being bitterly opposed by the Tory Party,’ he said, ‘and some of the leaders are inciting the Ulster people to open rebellion. I deliberately charge those men with being responsible for the brutal and cowardly attacks upon Catholic trade unionists and Socialists in the Belfast shipyards some weeks ago. If the Government had done its duty those high-placed individuals would have been put where some thousands of Irishmen have been put for less violent language.’ Mr. Thorne spoke with heat, and the great meeting met his words half-way with great cheering.. At a later stage of the proceedings the question of the priority of the Home Rule Bill was discussed, and Mr. John Ward, M.P., another staunch friend of Home Rule, had the Congress with him when he declared ’ ■•'that ‘ they would be misleading themselves if they thought the movement in the country put the Osborne judgment before Welsh Disestablishment and Home Rule.’ The Congress has thus killed any hopes that the Irish factionists and their Unionist allies may have founded on a breach of the friendly relations which have always existed between the workers of Great Britain and their representatives and the democracy of Ireland, as represented by the Irish Party.