Irish News

New Zealand Tablet, 7 August 1913, Page 39

Irish News

GENERAL. ; Mrs. Hannah Forde has just passed away in Blarney in her 106th year. Thirty-five of her grand-children are living, and her son and daughter are over seventy years of age. > - -• '"•' v ' ' ~ ;; Over 20,000 ; people visited Kingstown on Sunday, June 15, to see the ships of war anchored there. On Monday there was only one case of drunkenness before the police magistrate. ; The total number of emigrants from Ireland for the first five months of this year was 15,961, as compared with 14,070 for the corresponding period of 1912, being increase of 1891. *- \ Long Tower Church, Derry, was on Sunday, June 15,- the scene of one of the most impressive celebrations of the Feast of St. Columbaever held in that city. A series of processions visited the church, in which it is estimated 20,000 persons took part/ - ' An impressive; Papal jubilee procession, numbering upwards of 7000 members of the men's confraternity, passed through the principal streets 'of.. Limerick on Sunday, June 15. - All the streets were decorated, and the processionists. wore ; their insignia and carried banners. ... Mr. Birrell, in a Parliamentary Paper, says that according to statistics for December 31, 1911, in 2380 schools in Ireland, having 131,576 pupils, Irish was being taught either during school hours or as an extra subject. In 1907 other schools, with 16,361 pupils, the teaching was bi-lingual. ..'. Mr. Robert Joseph McDermott, of Dalkey, Dublin, left personal estate in the United Kingdom valued at £25,771. He left £450 in annuities to two persons, £2OO in legacies, and the residue of his estate to the Archbishop of Dublin for distribution between St. Michael's Hospital, Kingstown, the Society of St. Vincent de Paul, Dublin, and the Mater Misericordiae Hospital, Dublin. Speaking at the annual distribution of prizes at Summerhill Cdlege, Sligo, the Right Rev. Dr. Coyne, Bishop of Elphin, said that a much larger grant for intermediate education was wanted than they at present possessed "■ Improvement was needed in the condition of both lay and clerical teachers, but they must object to hard and fast rules which would mean the compulsory retirement of several clerical teachers and the introduction of lay teachers, who might not possess the (necessary qualifications. Above all, they must insist _ upon the supremacy of Catholic control over essentially Catholic colleges. WEST BELFAST UNIONISTS. The Unionists of Belfast have formed a ' West of Belfast Anti-Home Rule Association' for the purpose of securing the defeat of Mr. Devlin, M.P. A circular was published recently addressed to the secretaries of all the Orange Lodges in Belfast, and asking ' a return of the names of members of your Lodge (now residing outside the West) who would be agreeable to remove and to live in the West Parliamentary Division.' The circular is the first step towards outbalancing the 500 of a Nationalist majority on the register. But before next election the plural voting will be abolished, and it is possible that there might be Adult Suffrage, so that the Orange Lodgers who move into West Belfast may find that they have had their trouble for nothing. CATHOLIC TOLERANCE IN LOUTH. Mr. W. A. Doran, the only Protestant member of the Louth County Council, in thanking that body for his.unanimous re-election to the vice-chairmanship, said that, considering the circumstances of their country at- present, he felt deeply honored that they, a Catholic board, should have unanimously elected him as vicechairman.. He thanked them on behalf of those Protestants who, like himself, were Liberal and Nationalist m their views, for having elected one of their members to so honorable an office. There was still in the country that immemorial clashing between Unionist and Na-

tionalist, but*' he hoped that when the County Council assembled at their next meeting that would v have ? passed into the limbo of : ; forgotten things. They -would . : then be ■•; all % Nationalists. At the back s of-„ the present campaign organised by Sir Edward-Carson there was a desire for the old ascendancy which still held a firm grip of "Ireland and England. Old feudalism dies hard, and the persons interested seized this question 1 ' with avidity, and were using it as a weapon to still'entrench themselves in ;the nation. Sir Edward I Carson knew that the idea of fighting in the North was absolute -nonsense.. Sir Edward and his prominent supporters were, however, playing a crafty gained There would be no fighting except the march was; commenced to Cork. They (Nationalists) wanted to live at peace with their neighbors. The recent spectacular seizure of ? arms in Dublin and Belfast was part of the game, and was intended to show what poor, down-trodden Ulster was prepared to do. 'I may say,' continued Mr. Doran, | that I am a member of a family who have been farming in your county for four-generations, and that"we have one continuous record of good relations with, our Catholic neighbors. There never was the suggestion of interference or oppression. Everybody : in the county knows that, but the Protestants of England and some 'in the North of Ireland may not know the true state of affairs. I am farming in this county, taking -part in public . life, working with Catholics, and employing Catholic labor, and never for a moment was the slightest distinction made against 1 ' me on account of my religion.' HOME RULE DEMONSTRATION IN GLASGOW. The procession to the Liberal Club at the close of the great Home Rule meeting on Monday evening, June 16, in'Glasgow, was unparalleled in the political history of the city, and the enthusiasm of the crowds that lined the route, which were estimated at 250,000, was unbounded. The procession, which was over a mile and a half in length; took an hour and five minutesto pass a given point. Those marching were members of all the Glasgow and district branches of the Liberal Association, the Young Scots Society, the .'Scottish League for the Taxation of Land Values, and the Glasgow University Liberal and "Irish; Nationalist Clubs. About fifteen hundred lighted torches were borne aloft, and numerous banners were displayed - bearing such inscriptions as ' Home Rule has never led to "religious persecution,' 'lreland and Scotland are united for Home Rule,' 'Grant Ireland's demand; Scotland's next,' and 'Erin's dark night is waning; the day's dawn is nigh.' Over thirty brakes and twenty motor cars and char-a-bancs conveyed many of those taking part, while the remainder marched six deep, the procession altogether consisting of forty: thousand men. At the head were six mounted policemen and the bprmgburn Rechabite Brass Band, and behind the first six brakes was a motor car, with Mr. W A Redmond and Mr. Thomas Scanlan, M.P., while the succeeding motor car conveyed Mr. John Redmond, Mrs. Redmond, Mrs. Scanlan, Mr. Joseph Devlin, M.P., and Professor Latta. The Irish Pipers' Band also; marched all along., the route. Great enthusiasm prevailed, and there was not the slightest hitch or accideil\. Th^ Was a vast assemblage at the Liberal Club an u\ Redmond in a brief speech from the balcony, said he had experienced one of the most extraordinary popular welcomes he had ever received in. any part of the world. / r , THE CARSONS AND HOME RULE. .. On April 19, 1870, a private meeting of men of all Irish political parties, held at the Bilton Hotel, O Connell street, Dublin, agreed that a movement for a federal Parliament— ' styled Home Rule —should be initiated. The meeting appointed a provisional committee to. form a Home Rule Association. On June 7 of the same year, the provisional committee issued a letter to all the representative men, professional men, commercial men, and clergymen in Ireland inviting their adhesion. The circular issued by the committee stated, amongst other things, that there was at present a great deal of dissatisfaction with the mode of managing Irish affairs, and an impression that V

necessity existed for a change. «The : absenteeism :of royalty, of the- nobility, and of a largo portion of the gentry,' the circular stated, ' determines a constant waste of the resources of the country. It enfeebles also the public opinion of Ireland, ana thus causes the disregard which is admittedly shown to that opinion by the British Legislature and the British public.' The document then goes on to say that the only adequate remedy for the defects of the present arrangement would be '-a measure which would give to an Irish Parliament the management of Irish affairs.' , This it was further pointed out, 'could be accomplished without any interference with the integrity or unity of Empire by adopting a federal arrangement under which the management of all purely Irish affairs might be conceded to an Irish Parliament, leaving it still to an Imperial Parliament to control and protect those Imperial interests in which the three parts of the United Kingdom are equally concerned.' To this document there are four hundred signatures, and amongst the first dozen was that of E. H. Carson, C.E., Harcourt street, father of Sir Edward Carson! At that time the present Sir Edward Carson was sixteen years of age, and presumably had come to the use of reason.' He evidently imbibed some of the ideas of. his liberal-minded father, for he joined the National Liberal Club in London after the introduction of the Home Rule Bill of 1886. Sir Edward, as a Unionist has tried to explain that awkward incident, but has failed to do so he hasn't even convinced his friends in regard to that very peculiar business. A TRIBUTE TO THE IRISH PRIESTS, a- X he i f ° nwin S tribute to the Irish priests from Sir Mark Sykes, a Conservative M.P., appeared in a recent issue of the London Daily Telegraph ■— ' A Catholic citizen of the British Empire cannot remain silent in the face of the statement that the Catholic clergy in Ireland exercise a monstrous despotism over the people, that the priesthood is tyrant over the body and soul of a whole nation, and that loathing and dread of the Catholic Church is justifiable in Irish Protestants, burely the history of Ireland for the last 200 years is a refutation of such cruel libels on the fair fame of a noble and devoted body of men. Irish priests may be drawn from a humble class, may be wanting in that polish which wealth and ease alone can buy, may be bv nature warm and loyal partisans, but these are faults so near akin to virtues that no man need be ashamed 7?" m, any ? ne read trough the pages of Lecky, and he will see how through persecution, terrorism injustice, pestilence, famine, and war one glorious band of brothers has stood by Ireland's poorest and most wretched people in the darkest hours of her troubled history The native Irish found in the Catholic priesthood a friend who alone remained to console the dying to bury the dead to help the living to live, and this fn spite of proscription, penal laws, and a whole library of inhuman statutes and enactments. To-day the S IT* Y ° f the Idsh Peasants ' their increasing thrift and temperance, are to be attributed to the I?XT* IC t ? ISh P / are doin S for the Iri* people. In the dark days of civil strife in Belfast it is the priest who pours oil on the troubled waters-who by cajolery and entreaties draws the infuriated people either from the orange and green fight or from the conflict between the civi power and the strikers. In the foulest slums t *£*■ -E? 6 ? AT S f6arleSS of sickness and contagion. In the wildest Atlantic weather it is he who leads the an Irish priest who gives courage to England's Catholic sSdierf P g i VGS C ° Urage t 0 England's Catholic of SonaH: ». torn asunder by the machinations of Nationalist secret societies on the one hand and virulent bigotry on the other. I have believed, and Si believe, Home Rule to be an impossible dream but T submit that " the cause of the Union is not served either by attacks on Christianity in any form or apnea s to S ptpl' ShUld now onl « «55Ttalf-