GAMBETTA.

Temuka Leader, Issue 1083, 15 March 1883, Page 2

GAMBETTA.

Gambbtta, the great French statesman, the idol of his distracted country, must hare been a most miserable and pitiable wretch. He was the greatest persecutor of religion known in modern times. There was nothing he left undone to destroy religion, so far as in him lay. He expelled the monks from their monasteries, the nuns from their convents, the priests from their churches, and prevented religion being taught in the public schools. He even appears to have carried his spleen against religion into his own domestic circles, for the story goes that, when his mother was dying she asked for a priest to attend her in her last moments, but Gambetta refused, and so the poor woman passed away without the consolation of religion. In short, it would appear there was nothing too hot or too heavy for him to do in the way of crushing religion out of the country, and yet it appears now that he himself all this time was in the habit of going stealthily into the church oi, Notre Dame des Victoires to pray for the repose of the soul' of bis mother. After his death the whole truth came out, and it indeed places him in a very unfavorable light. It appears that it was his step-mother he prevented from receiving the consolations of religion, and that the mother he used to pray for had died when he was very young. It appears also that it was to please the popular taste, and by that means to attain power and Wealth, that he persecuted religion, and did so much to destroy its influence in the land. The man capable of resorting to such means to attain power ought not to be looked upon otherwise than as a miserable, contemptible miscreant, and, instead of

being honored, his memory deserves being held in everlasting execration. If a man is an atheist and cannot bring himself to believe in anything else, ho his a right to his opinions, and if he does good he ought to get credit for it 5 but the man who believing in religion privately, and in order to pander to popular taste denies and persecutes it, is too base to be remembered otherwise than as the lowest ot. his kind. The London Times.is our authority for the statement that he was in .the, habit) of going into church secretly, and when; this statement was questioned tl vicaire of the church proved that it was a fact, and that he ' used to buy candles for the purpose of burning them before the altar. Poor miserable, wretch ! Ho mast, doubtless, have * been trying to do penance for his misdeeds, We are told also that he led a most reckless life. He appears to have kept two. houses and two wives, and lived a debauched profligate; but! what else could be expected from a man like him ? It was one of these wives killed him in the end. She had been the wife of another man, but she left him for Gambetta, whose wife was then living. Subsequently Gambetta’s wife and this woman’s husband died, and she then wanted Gambetta to marry her. Gambetta, however, was putting the marriage off until at last it leaked out that he was going to marry another woman. This so enraged his mistress, that she shot him in the hand, and the wound terminated his dishonorable life. All this, would be quite uninteresting to us in this colony only for the lesson it inculcates. It teaches us to place little confidence in those who denounce religion , and never allow ourselves to be led away by, them.