THE COLLECTION FOR ST. PATRICK'S COLLEGE.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 4007, 26 May 1884, Page 3

THE COLLECTION FOR ST. PATRICK'S COLLEGE.

[To the Editor op the Daily Teleoraph.] (Sir, —When I last condescended to let a ray of light and charity break throngh the clouds of selfishness, ignorance, niggardliness and natural perversity that seemed to obt'usticate that terribly local individual Mr X., I persuaded myself that by a quiet and homely explanation of facts and circumstances he would be ashamed of himself, and would never open his mouth to put his foot so disagreeably in it again. But I have been mistaken ; lie lias bounced on the turf once more ; he has yawned, snarled, and opening his ponderous jaws, has invited your readers to a taste of his red herring that would seem capable of lock jawing a more phlegmatic subject than Diarmid.

With a brilliant parade of his eelf-im-portance, with his local ingenuity with ins dictatorial and fatherly spirit, with his display of bisr words and abusive epitaphs, he thinks he has completely physiced the benighted Catholics of Napier with such a long- strong draught from that ''bolusholSs " which he has agam filled to the brim with ignorance and poverty, indifference and would-be philanthropy, uncalled-for compassion and charity without a name. But since he has slung out his red herring, and has invited us to the hunt, let ua give him the gratification of a chase for his very existence. Here goes. Let us follow, if possible, the track of Mr X.'s argumentation and dissect it. He objects to the object for which the collection was made; he objects to the way by which the collection was made ; he objects to the whole thing on the ground that no money on no account should leave his darling Napier, because Napier herself, the big angel, might want a little. He first objects against the object of the collection because its object was to build a school for young men whose parents can afford to pay for their education. _ Now, we will take the scales of his short-sighted-ness and tell him again that the object of the college is not only to educate those who can pay for themselves but also to _ educate the poor but most deserving Catholic young men from all parts of the colony whose conduct and ability would merit a special education. Mr X seems terribly compassionate and affected on account of our Catholics, who are also poor after his calculations, making such a very honorable and veryvoluntary display of generosity for such an honorable object, and his fatherly _ and loving heart is not broken, nor is his philanthropic voice heard over the land to awaken the dwellers in these fair young isles to witness the appaling fact that out of the £400,000 annually spent by the Government on education the poor Catholic and nonCatholic of the colony arc bounced, bullied, and forced in real earnest to annually contribute many thousands of pounds to build and endow magnificent colleges and high schools for boyri, and girls of the wealthy exclusively, for children of the poor can reap no benefit whatever from them, since their parents cannot afford to keep them at school. They require them at home to earn their bread by hard and earnest toil, and help to support their master's children in one of these attractive colleges partially built by their hands. Is ho so ignorant as not to know this great injustice and misfortune ? Is he so cruel, so uncharitable, and unjust, if knowing it, not to fearlessly denounce it? But be that as it may, ho is malignant, unreasonable, and dictatorial enough to stamp as unfair and unjust the voluntary contribution made by the Catholics of Napier in behalf of St. Patrick's College, where the children of the poor will find a home, an education, or profession, and where those of the rich will acqnire science, the training and position by which they can do honor to and obtain justice for their poor brethren. And does the fact of his denouncing the object of the collection and mode of making it as unfair or dishonorable prove that they are really so ? His words and his will seem his only arguments, as we tell him that neither one nor the other reflects great credit on him, but I suppose he has been bounced by somebody during the course of his strange and selfish existence, and that is why every good quality seems completely bounced out of him. St. Patrick's College will help to regenerate the colony, and will do what every Catholic college in every country and in every century and in every land has succeeded in doing—that is, to produce a body of religiously and highly educated men. Tho colony, indeed, wants regeneration badly, and our great local Mr X, like many others, requires a good wash, and to have his hair combed, if we can judge from his physiognomy in print. Mr X has said it, and Diarmid has said it also, that St. Patrick's would turn out some zealous priests, clever lawyers, doctors, statesmen, and big locals like Mr X himself, and if they do not help to regenerate these islands, well they must be past all regeneration. But I suppose our big pet thinks that a Catholic college cannot contribute to the advancement, enlightenment, and prosperity of the State, or turn out big men of the stamp just mentioned. But if he had even the slightest knowledge of history he would have convinced himself that Catholic schools and scholars have regenorated and civilised the world, and that without them it would have remained as they found it, even to our days. What did not the schools of Rome, of Antioch, of Caeserea, of Damascus do for the East ? Without them where would we find those giant intellects, St. Basil, St. Gregory, St. Jerome, St. Chrysostom, St. Augustine, who have thrown a halo of immortal glory over religion and science, that has gemmed the Eastern world even to our days. What did not the Catholic colleges of Paris, Bologna, Salamanca, of Oxford established in 895, of Cambridge in 1280, of Prague in 1358, of Vienna in 1365, do for the world's prosperity and advancement ? Were they not homes of science ? Were they not the mothers of those men whose equal we cannot now produce ? These Catholic schools were then tho only lighthouses of the scientific and moral world, the centres from which science, justice, and truth spread their wings over Christendom, there offspring becoming great men, and then great men making great nations. But march on to glory, and keep steady on the trail. Mr X is terribly annoyed that any man, woman, or child should dare give a farthing to any mortal outside of Napier for any purpose. It must be he wants it all for the new breakwater. But no, he says we must give every cent of it to support our Convent, where the children of the rich and poor see such good example, and receive such a superior education. Tho good ladies of the institution must feel flattered at this noble display of Mr X's gallantry, generosity, and goodwill towards them. But our helping them will not prevent us from helping to build up an institution from which will come the best defenders, sympathizers and benefactors both of the convents and the people. Mr Xis very local, he is conviuced that charity begins at home, but he forgets that it does not end there. Charity docs not coufine itself to any locality; it is universal; it stretches from sea to sea, from land to land; it is not the offspring of a red herring barrel, as Mr X would have it. If all the world only took Mr X's advice, and never did anything for other localities or other people, what a queer world we would have. General wants require general support, and if we were never to look farther than our own nose, like Mr X., we would never have any universities or colleges, no railroads, no telegraphs, no steamboat companies, no prosperity, no real advancement in science or wealth, the world would be at a standstill in a short time. Bnt Mr X does not see this. His notions of men and things make me believe that he must have been rocked and reared in a herring barrel. But we must be charitable and generous, and we are determined to show these our good feelings to Mr X in a very substantial way. We all owe him a great deal; the colony is indeed indebted to him for his rebuff of their generosity ; the rich Catholic and otherwise for his depreciation of these charity and liberality ; the young are indebted to him for his desire to give them a higher education, and the old for his desperate efforts to prevent them from doing good; the parsons are indebted to him for his vivid sketch of their persuasive ability ; the whole district of Napier is indebted to him for the enlightment and example he has given it. And the best way for all to show our great gratitudo to our great friend and benefactor Mr X is to send him down for a special year's study and training in St. Patrick' h, where ho will file off the absurdities of his nature, where ho will be bounced into a right way of thinking and writing, "when his vocabulary will be enlarged, and he will not be forced to rise so much bosh, and where he will learn a noble lesson that may save him from putting his head in the barrel to get pickled and slung up to the scornful gaze of intelligent and liberal-minded men by his devoted admirer DIAKMID. Napier, 2Gth May, 1881.