Irish News

New Zealand Tablet, 3 July 1913, Page 39

Irish News

. , GENERAL. "" ; Ex-Sergeant Molloy, of Sligo, now aged 95 years, is stated to be the oldest Irish police pensioner. He retired in 1870 after 30 years' service • Sister Anna Magdalena, eldest daughter of the late Mr. John Naish, Lord Chancellor of Ireland, has been professed at the Assumption Convent, Rome. . The tape factory at Sherrygroom, about four miles from Cookstbwn, established and owned by the late Mr. John Henderson, was completely destroyed by fire on May 13., This was the only tape factory in Ireland. The damage was estimated at over £20,000. Sincere regret was occasioned throughout County Mayo by the death of Rev. Mother Bernard Davis, Superioress of the Ballyhaunis Convent of the Sisters of Mercy. Born 79 years ago at Leenane, Co. Galway, she was one of the oldest Sisters in the Order, having been professed 61 years; v,- V-^y-The present year marks the centennial anniversary of the Presentation Convent, Carrick-on-'Suir, which was founded in 1813 by three Sisters from the Waterford House of the Order. The convent has now attached to it splendid national schools attended by over 600 children. It has also an industrial school and lacemaking department. Buttermilk (says the Daily Mail) has had to be added to the list of refreshments obtainable at the House of Commons at .the special request of two Nationalist members, Mr. Murphy and Mr. Kelly. The demand at first took the catering department by surprise, but the committe gave way, and every day two bottles of buttermilk are provided for them. The libel action taken by some Belfast priests • against the Belfast Evening Telegraph, a Unionist newspaper, in connection with ,a statement made by it regarding a relief fund started during the shipyard disturbances, was heard a second time in Dublin lately. On May 13 the case ended in a disagreement of the special jury. A previous hearing gave the same result. It has been officially -announced that the Most Rev. Dr. Fennelly has been empowered by the Holy See to revive and add to the Cathedral Chapter three of the ancient canonries of the diocese of —viz., Lattin, Doon, and Killenellick. To the prebendaries thus revived his Grace had been pleased to appoint .the Very Rev. John Power, Kilteely; the Very Rev. John Kelly, Doon, and the Very Rev. J. J. Duan, Murroe. The Very Rev. Thomas Hackett, Loughmore, has been appointed to the place in the Chapter rendered vacant by the death of the Very Rev. Canon Meagher, P.P., Templemore. DEATH OF A MEMBER OF PARLIAMENT. The death is announced of Mr. Patrick Aloysius Meehan, M.P., one of the representatives of Queen's County. Porn in 1852, Mr. Meehan was engaged at first in journalism and afterwards in commerce. Arrested as a suspect under the Forster Coercion Act, he became immediately eligible for election to Parliament, since Ireland in those days made a national habit of singling out for any position of honor those who had been imprisoned under the Coercion Act. Elected in 1906 unopposed and in succession to Dr. Mark Antony Mac Donnell, brother of Lord Mac Donnell, Mr. Meehan proved a very useful and unobtrusive member of the party. A VENERABLE PRIEST. At the Parochial House, Dromore, Co. Tyrone, on May 8, the death took place, in the eighty-eighth year of his age, of Right Rev. Mgr. McKenna. Deceased was one of the most respected and venerated clergymen in the diocese of Clogher. Ordained nearly sixty years ago, he lived a life of ceaseless toil and incessant labor in the cause of religion and education. His early mission work lay most in the county of Monaghan, after which

he was for many years Prior of Lough; Dearg, where the famous annual pilgrimage takes placed From there, in 1878, he was transferred to the pastorate-; of -Dromore, where he remained till,; his death. DEATH OF THE DEAN OF CASHEL. On May 8, the Venerable Dean Kinane, of Cashed passed away at a patriarchal age. Born in Templemore in 1836, he was educated at the Irish College, Paris, and ordained in 1861, when he was appointed Professor of Philosophy and Physics in his Alma Mater. In 1865 Father Kinane was recalled to his native diocese by Archbishop Leahy, and was located in Templemore for many years, during which he wrote many charming devotional works, including The Dove of the Tabertuxcle, The Angel of the Altar, Life of St. Patrick', etc. In 1882 he was appointed parish ; priest of Cashel . and V.G., and was made Dean of the Chapter. In addition to his high scholarly attainments, for which he was deservedly held in admiration, : Dean Kinane was a man of most: kindly and genial disposition, and of deep, earnest Christian charity, and piety, and was greatly beloved by the people of Cashel, ' amongst whom he labored so long and so zealously. >- UNIONIST TACTICS IN WEST -BELFAST. At a smoke concert arranged by the Premier Covenant Unionist Club, held in West Belfast Orange Hall on May 12 (says the Freeman's Journal), /'Mr. Stewart Blacker Quin, prospective Unionist,candidate for West Belfast in opposition to Mr. Joseph Devlin, M.P., said he was not going to speak about Home Rule. The only .thing to be said about it was that they would not have it. He wanted to talk to them on a subject that was very near his heart, and" which was, he believed, equally near to theirs.. That was the winning of West Belfast. Now, how was .that to be done? It was better for them to frankly state the position and to realise .what they were up against. West Belfast would be won in the Revision Court. It would not be won by platform speeches or by cheering crowds, however excellent these were in their way. It could only be won by earnest individual effort. The Unionists had on the register an adverse majority of 500, or, to be precise, 490. That was very disheartening. But he did not wish to dishearten them. It was a problem, however, that they had got to solve, and he believed they had got the solution of it. * The women of West Belfast held the key to the situation. In Woodvale Ward alone there ~ were some 750 women inhabitant householders. Now, if there were sufficient houses they could get loyal men to come from the North and the other divisions and to. occupy those houses. But they had not the houses. Those women had them, and he was glad to be able to state that one out of every three of those women— 250 women, had agreed to transfer the tenancies to men. That wiped out half of the Nationalist majority. Then there were other women in West Belfast who were prepared to further augment that number and to make great personal sacrifices. . CONFERENCE OF- EXILES. The annual Convention of the United Irish League of Great Britain was held on May 10 in the Mansion House, Dublin, Mr. T. P. O'Connor, M.P., presiding. Amongst those on the platform were the Lord Mayor of the city, Mr. John Dillon, M.P., Mr. Joseph Devlin M.P., Mr. William Field, M.P., Dr. O'Neill, M P ' Mr. W. O'Malley, MP., Captain Donelan, M.P., Mr' Swift Mac Neill, M.P., Mr. J. J. Clancy, M.P., and Mr Joseph O'Loughlin, Speaker of the South Australian Legislative Assembly. The proceedings throughout were most enthusiastic. For nearly 40 years, the chairman said, he had been attending these Conventions, .and that was the largest in the history of the organisation. The number present was double that of the highest attendance at any previous Convention during its existence. ' The increased attendance was a sign of the times, and showed that .they in Great Britain who had an opportunity of studying the great conflict more closely than others, had but little doubt that in less than twelve months

from now their Irish Parliament would be sitting in College Green. That spirit of exultation and certainty also found its reflection in the record of their work for the last twelve months. Many extraordinary mendacities took the place of argument in the speeches of ; their opponents, but there was none so daring or so absolutely in contradiction with the facts as the statement that the Irish people either at home or abroad were weakening or slackening in the warmth of their enthusiasm on the Home Rule question. The figures in their report answered Lord Lansdowne and the other gentlemen who were making these very ridiculous statements. So far as public opinion in Great Britain was concerned the people regarded the battle as already won. .

Mr. O’Loughlin, the Speaker of the South. Australian Legislative Assembly, who met with a hearty reception, said he knew they did not give him that welcome so much personally as because he represented the far-distant country of Australia. He had not the honor, like the delegates, of being an Irishman, but he was the son of Irish parents who came from the County Clare. The Irish people had made a gallant fight, and they in Australia had done their humble share of the fighting. They had pretty well 80 per cent, of the English people on their sidethey had Scotland, Australia, and America. They had only got, so far as he could make out, a small section of their own country opposed to Home Rule. He believed that the people of Ulster would be the first to benefit by Home Rule. They had their industries in the Northern province working in full swing, and it would be the dutyand he thought they would do it—of the Irish Parliament to foster and develop these industries. Among the other speakers was Mr. John Dillon, M.P.,_who paid a tribute to the self-sacrifice of the Irish in Great Britain, and their loyalty in face of difficulties to the cause of Ireland’s freedom. It always appeared to him to be one of the cruellest of the difficulties which they had to face in their struggle for national liberty that the leaders of their own religion in "England had been consistently opposed to them. It was a cruel aggravation. He did not want the leaders of the English Catholics to desert their own party, but he thought that it amounted to a public scandal that men like the Duke of Norfolk should be seen on a public platform side by side with the leaders of the Orange rioters of Belfast, and that after the atrocious, cowardly and disgraceful outrages of last July in the shipyards not one word of remonstrance or repudiation came from the leaders of the Catholic party in England. It was one of the most grotesque sights to see the Orange leaders from Belfast trotting through the lobbies of the House of Commons under the orders of Lord Edmund Talbot, a Catholic, while in Ireland they professed that their main object in resisting Home Rule was to avoid being ground down under the tyranny of the Pope. It was a poor return and mean conduct on the part of these great Catholic leaders in England to the Irish, but for whom there would not be a Catholic school left in England to-day.