AUSTRIA AND RELIGIOUS FREEDOM.

Temuka Leader, Issue 229, 29 January 1880, Page 3

AUSTRIA AND RELIGIOUS FREEDOM.

- The Berlin Congress, as all the world -'"knows, manifested a great, and to say truth, a surprising interest in the .spread and establishment of religious literty. It w< s not without ash njshmrnt that the world saw the representatives of Powers which in this respect had never before f ccn remarkable fot their liberality to their own subjects, suddenly themselves concerned to enact that in the new Slates winch they proposed to .constitute or recognise persons, «d all beliefs or no beliefs should equally enjoy cirfi rights? and that nowhere shoo’d difference of belief be made a ground .of exclusion and incapacity. It was Loped that a great advance hud thus been secured by removing religious faith and worship hom civil and political regulations, and from the surveillance of the police, A year has passed . way, and at Basle another Congress is being held, not of Plempotentiarics,butof men from all parts of Europe and America who take an interest in religious liberty; and at this gathering a memorial has been presented, in which a number of facts are set forth showing that in the territories of at .last one of the Great Powers most prominent at the Congress of Berlin religious liberty is trampled on and religions persecution exists with the knowledge and connivance of the State, In a paper, every allegation of which is sustained by references to persons, times, and places, and which has -been prepared by the well-known American '/writer, ■ Dr. Thomson, on " behalf of the American Board of Mission it is shown that the local authorities in v various parts of Ausfro-Hungary refuse -Jto permit religious public worship .to any ■ who do not belong to the confessions recognised by law, and even ? send gendarmes into houses to interrupt ' worship in the family, ifj they believe that any stranger is present. At Stupitz, in Bohemia, where a farmer has seen fit to leave the religion in which , he was brought up, and bad been followed • in that course by some of his neighbours, the adherents of the new form of religion had been fined, imprisoned, and threatened with severe punishment, if they persisted in manifesting their faith. On one occasion at a funeral in the family i of a convert, as a prayer was about to be offered, a gendarme stepped forward and forbad it. Of course it may be said that these are such outbreaks oi local bigotry as may be expected ; but unfortunately they have" been brought under the notice of the higher authorities in vain. We cannot affect to lie surprised that the Austrian Government, which preaches religious liberty, Roumanians, Servians, and Bulgarians, should deny itto itsown subjects. Nor would weonany account desire to see it abate its efforts on behalf of the Jews in those Principalities. On the contrary, it may lie hoped that if the Austrian Government will only continue to preach re’igious liberty to others long enough, it may one day come to believe in that doctrine itself, and finally to come to practise it. But that is looking a long way ahead.