CELEBRATION OF CECIL'S HOLIDAY IN AUCKLAND, A.D. 1876.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume IV, Issue 203, 23 February 1877, Page 15

CELEBRATION OF CECIL'S HOLIDAY IN AUCKLAND, A.D. 1876.

A bHOKT paragraph appeared in the 'Herald' to the effect that the 271 st anniversary of the Gunpowder Plot was celebrated in Auckland as usual on the sth November. This little announcement seenis at first sight, and to the general reader, a very trivial and innocent matter, not worth serious notice, and, no doubt, was inserted without the most remote intention of iniuring any one. Yet it may excusably be viewed in a serious light, as tending most cruelly and unjustly to load with infamy, the memory of the general body of the Roman Catholics who lived in the ieign of James 1., and to insult the feelings of the Roman Catholic subjects of the Queen in our day, and expose them to unjust odium and suspicion in the eyes of their fellow-subjects of other creeds. The paragraph referred to, short though it be, and harmless though it seem, may be said to contain a whole volume of most injurious historical misrepresentation, damaging to the memory of the dead, and unjust towards the character of the living members of the Roman Catholic Church. It implies, if it do not actually assert, that the Gunpowder Plot was the work of the Catholic body collectively ; that, at all events, they who planned and attempted to put it in execution had the sympathy of the leaders of the Catholic parcy ; that Catholics generally wished it to succeed, and that such a scheme is sanctioned by the tenets of the Catholic religion. All this, if I mistake not, is implied in the annual celebration of the Gunpowder Plot. Yet it is the very opposite of the truth. That a most diabolical plot was concocted by some nine men, reputed to be, or professing to be, Roman Catholics, but who in realty were no Roman Catholics at all but sons of Belial, and fanatics more fit for a lunatic asylum than anything else, is a well attested historical truth . But the respectable leaders of the Catholic party, and the Catholics generally, had no more connection with it or guilty knowledge of it than the man in the moon. They regarded the conspirators and their attempted plot with horror and indignation. The first respectable Catholic who got any hint of it, Lord Monteagle, immediately communicated with the. Government, and led to the exposure of the plot ostensibly. But there are not wanting respectable Protestant historians, who have, entertained,

and expressed a strong suspicion that Cecil was at the bottom of the plot flimself ; that, to use their words, "it was forged on Cecil's anvil;" that the conspirators were his tools and dupes, and consequently the plot could never have issued, in misohief to any one. He pulled the wires himself, and by his emissaries could pounce on the conspirators at any moment. TTi« object was to turn the King and the nation against the Catholics, and to fix a lasting stigma on their name and religion. The King himself, after the discovery of the plot, in his address from the throne, acquitted the Catholic body of any connection with it, and said the guilt of it was chargeable only on the few desperadoes who were engaged in it. The tenets of the Catholic religion sanction no such schemes. Hpw effectually the crafty Cecil has succeeded in. casting unjustly a lasting stigma on Catholics and their religion by means of this his plot, if the suspicions of Protestant authors that it emanated from him be well founded, is shown by the above paragraph in the ' Herald/ penned nearly three centuries after Cecil's death. James I. used to call the sth November " Cecil's Holiday." He knew well Cecil's object in instituting such a holiday. The Gunpowder Plot, " Cecil's Holiday," is not now commemorated in England as it was at no distant period, by a " special service" in the Church of England, and by Government ordering the firing of a royal salute to thank God for the pretended or sham " deliverance" of the King and Parliament from the horrid " Papists." But the day, as we see, is still celebrated publicly, and the celebration announced through the press. The little boys on the streets who celebrate the day have some notion of it — a vivid, though false notion, such as I have exposed above. They will in process of time, grow up to be electors, or possibly some of them members of Parliament, and they will carry with them, into the polling booth or Parliament, those unjust prejudices against their Catholic fellowcitizens which their false historical readings and impressions are calculated to produce. Errors and prejudices imbibed and fostered in youth are difficult to shake off in after life. In some countries, Ireland for instance, party demonstrations of an irritating and offensive kind are forbidden by law, and properly so, as they may lead to a breach of the peace. In England or the colonies there is no risk of any breach of the peace from the insulting.demonstrations on "Cecil's Holiday." But is it the correct, or respectable, or manly thing to insult publicly any person's feelings, or permit them to be insulted, merely because it may be done with impunity ? Perhaps the Government, the head of the police, and the press will answer that question. It is most extraordinary to see with what brazen assurance some editors in this colony publish the most groundless and injurious statements respecting the clergy of the Roman Catholic clergy, from the Pope downwards. One would fancy a respect for their own reputation would restrain them from doing such acts. A Dunedin paper tells its credulous readers, that Pius IX. has actually fulminated a degree ordering certain persons to be burnt. Laic.