Irish News

New Zealand Tablet, 12 June 1913, Page 39

Irish News

GENERAL. Mrs. Lennon, widow of the late Workhouse Master in Westport, has been unanimously appointed in his place by the Guardians. Arrangements are nearly completed by the Congested Districts Board for the purchase of the Barton Estate, at Glen and Fanad, Co. Donegal. The death has taken place at the Christian Brothers’ Monastery, Baldoyle, of Brother John Regis Clarke, in the eighty-seventh year of his age. A movement is on foot in his native parish of Stranorlar to celebrate this year the centenary of the birth of Isaac Butt and to erect a memorial hall.

A well-known figure in Lisburn has passed away in his 83rd year, in the person of Mr. John Ruddy, who served under Lord Raglan at the Crimea. A native of Killyman, Co. Tyrone, he ran the old mail coach for many’years between Belfast and, Dublin.

Two magnificent gifts have been made to the Claremorris Church of our Lady of Good Counsel. ' They consist of a beautiful pulpit and a rich and costly set of Stations of the Cross, the former presented by Mr. and Mrs. T. W. McElroy and the latter by Miss Begley, Claremorris.

Judge Todd, on receiving white gloves at Coleraine, said these were the third pair he received in the county at the present Sessions, and he was to receive a fourth pair at Magherafelt, showing the entire county free from crime. Judge Green was presented with white gloves at Armagh Quarter Sessions.

The Most Rev. Dr. Fogarty, Bishop of Killaloe, in referring to a recent shooting case in County Clare, said that people who committed such outrages were not fit to be members of the Catholic Church, and it had been forced upon him to inflict on that crime the highest penalty it was in the power of the Church to impose of excommunication.

The Most Rev. Dr, Foley, Bishop of Kildare and Leighlin, raised the first sod on April 17 in connection with the erection of the new church in Edenderry. The people of Edenderry, which is a comparatively poor parish, have in a little over twelve months contributed practically the whole of the sum needed to carry out the work, which it is estimated will cost between £BOOO and £9OOO.

At the opening of a new Town Hall in Ballinasloe, Most Rev. Dr. Gilmartin spoke of the value of such a building as a centre for the promotion of the welfare and happiness of the social body. A healthy public opinion was the breath of life of a community, and the good of the community should, he advised, be the direct object of public action. He looked forward to seeing the hall filled with farmers and farmers’ sons listening to practical lectures on the chief industry of the country. He rejoiced that the building was flanked by a national school and a temperance hall. He wished to see the hall a centre of refined and elevating recreation, and of cultured amusement.

On April 15 a fatal railway accident occurred at Strabane, resulting in the death of the Rev. Patrick McLaughlin, P.P., Iskaheen, Co. Donegal. It appears that Father McLaughlin, who was on a visit to the town of Strabane, was crossing the footway over the railway line at the station there, and, the weather being somewhat unpleasant, ho was carrying his umbrella open, and was thus unable to notice the approach of a train which was quite close to him. Before he could reach the opposite side of the line ho was knocked down by the train, sustaining severe injuries to one of his arms and one of his legs. Immediately after the occurrence Father McLaughlin was removed to Lifford Infirmary, where he died a couple of hours after admission. '■ A MARRIAGE CASE. * Ne Temere ’ has come home to roost in the Protestant Church of Ireland. A Protestant widower in Ulster lately got married to his deceased wife’s sister.

Now the Protestant Church in Ireland does-not sane* tion such marriage, although the Presbyterian Church in Ireland So, since the widower could not get married by his own minister, he very promptly sought the services of a convenient Presbyterian minister, and got married in a Presbyterian church, according to the Presbyterian rite. The Protestant Church in Ireland declined to regard the marriage as being a marriage at all, and, according to the Glasgow Observer , it applies to it the very ugly term of sinful concubinage.’ At a meeting of the General Synod of the Protestant Church in Ireland, the case was discussed, and it was resolved to maintain the rule of the Church against such marriages as being * the only way to guard the sanctity of the home.’ ‘ CATHOLICS AND PROTESTANTS IN ' MONAGHAN. ' ' V For the contention that the Irish Protestants are more progressive and succeed better in business than the Irish Catholics there is no substantial ground. Where the conditions are the same the decline in the Protestant population is as a rule quite as great as it is amongst the Catholics. In the Dublin Leader, Mr. T. Galloway Rigg gives a table showing the denominational losses in Monaghan since 1861, the date of the first religious census. From this it appears that between 1861 and 1911 the Catholic decline was 42.5 per cent, and the decline of the non-Catholics 53.7 per cent. It is not easy, says Mr. Rigg, to account for the Protestant being proportionately greater than the Catholic decline. No doubt there were local conditions which explain the fact. What is clear in this case, as in so many others of the same kind in which a close examination is made, is that the emigration hurts Catholics and Protestants alike, and that the Protestants ought to help the leaders of the national movement to put an end to it. The population of Monaghan in 1841 numbered 200,000 persons. By 1911 it had decreased by over 64 per cent. Although only 12 per cent, of the population, the Episcopalians hold the same number of public appointments in the county as the Catholics, who are 75 per cent. THE HOME RULE FUND. The second list of subscriptions to the Homo Rule Fund for 1913 is most satisfactory, and shows that the country is fully alive to the necessity of making this year’s total surpass all records. Cork has followed a splendid lead given by Dublin, and, in numerous other districts all over the , country, meetings have been held and arrangements made for taking up collections. In this matter, the branches of the United Irish League are, as usual, taking a leading part, and from the numerous divisions of the A.O.H. and the I.N. Foresters, and other organisations, the most generous and encouraging support is forthcoming. Support of the Irish Party and the national cause unites all sections of the people as they never were united before, and a spirit of energy and enthusiasm has been called forth by the progress of the Home Rule Bill which cannot but conduce most powerfully to the final passage of the Bill into law, THE ASCENDANCY PARTY AND THE WORKERS. . - At a meeting held in Ringsend on April 17, Mr. William Mills Forsyth, U.D.C., a non-Catholic, said the history of the Ascendancy Party was the same all over Ireland. In Belfast they held the majority in the palm of their hands, and they found the working men very useful, but what, he asked, had they done there for the working men? Not one solitary artisan’s dwelling had been built in the city of Belfast. What record had the two or three little counties in the North-east of Ireland which desired to set up a Government of their own, to show of how they applied the two Acts of Parliament, viz.—the Laborers and Artisans Dwellings compared with the rest of Nationalist Ireland It was well known that, so far as the working classes were concerned, the Ascendancy Party had never done anything to ameliorate their lot. ■ ■ - •

V- AN -HONEST ADMISSION. Noticing the tobacco-growing industry and how. it fared under British law, the London Times in its — ‘ Ix*eland was almost the first country in Europe in which ■ tobacco was grown, it having been brought over, along with the potato, by Sir Walter Raleigh and planted in his garden at Myrtle Lodge in Youghal, County Cork. Until 1660 it was grown in increasingly large quantities in Ireland until it was suppressed by an Act of Charles 11. •on the ground that“the colonies and plantations of this kingdom in America should be defended, protected, and maintained and kept up and all due and possible encouragement be given to them.’ And so for the benefit of British planters in America an important Irish industry was crushed by a British Act of Parliament. Observing on further legislation of the same kind, the Time's writer goes on to say: —‘lt is not possible here to rehearse again the story so discreditable to England of the sacrifice of Ireland’s industries to the interests of the British traders, Tobacco culture in Ireland was extinguished in 1660, partially revived in 1779, only when it had laboriously once more established itself, to be again deliberately annihilated to disappear for over a century. Here and there throughout Ireland are still found fields that have retained the name of “the tobacco field,” but all knowledge of the industry had vanished at the time when Sir Nugent Everard in 1898 drew public attention to experiments on tobacco-growing on his own land in County Meath.’ IRELAND’S FISHING. Writing on the ‘Variety and Importance’ of Ireland’s sea fishing resources, the London Times in its recent ‘lrish Number’ says;—‘The fisheries of the Irish seas were probably worked in 500 B.C. or earlier by the large craft of the Phoenicians. After them fishing fleets continued to come from the Iberian Peninsula up to the middle of the sixteenth century, when Spaniards had permanent fishing stations on the coast. All round the South-west of Ireland are islands and bays still called “Spanish,” and there are Spanish methods in building boats.’ As' to the commercial value of those Irish fisheries, the writer notes that: ‘ Fish commanded a good market on the Mediterranean coasts from the earliest times. The seas of Spain and Portugal were inconveniently deep the run to the Irish coast and back was easy, so the fishing grounds off Ireland were for the ancient world what the Banks of Newfoundland have become for us. Scandinavia, Holland, Flanders, and Brittany at various times attached great importance to the fishing in Irish waters, and in later years were ready to pay the British Government for this privilege.’