FATHER STAFFORD IN IRELAND.

New Zealand Tablet, 2 March 1877, Page 9

FATHER STAFFORD IN IRELAND.

He went on to Wexford, and described the great work of a man named Devereux. This man was now eighty-tvo years of a<*e • but he heard Mass four times daily, and attended to his large business as regularly as he did forty years ago, and spent immense sums for the benefit of the poor. At the time of the famine he was in ordinary circumstances, and had a small mill which he ran free day and night for the benefit of the starving people. His fortune had since then gone on accumulating in a very astonishing manner^ and he had devoted immense sums to the good of his fellow-countryl men. He first spent $60,000 on a fine school-house for poor ohildren, and a residence for the Christian Brothers. He then built; another school for poor children at a cost of $7,000, and expended $11,000 in additions and extensions thereto. He next built au industrial S3hool and endowed it with $100,000. He handed the Bishop $15,000 sterling to carry on his work with. Then having done all th it was necessary there, he removed to another town and spent $100,000 in a similar way, and went oa to another town and spent as much more. And he still goes on devoting the profits of his ships and mills to the amelioration of the condition of his fellowmen, and particularly to providing an education for the poor. They say there is not, perhaps, in the whole world his equal'to be* found. In other parts of the country men are imitating his example to a limited extant. In Cork one man, who has made his money out of making smoking-pipes, has spent $6,000 in placing a suitable altar in a church there. He (Father Stafford) had gone into King's country and spent some hours at a fair at Tipperary. and was around among the men, and never heard an angry word spoken ; and was told that as regards liquor gallant Tipperary was one of the counties least afflicted with that curse. He visited Fermoy the magnificent buildings of which were described at some length' and was glad to see that good work was done in the convent there! The convent there was the one from which the Lindsay Convent had been founded, and he found that the Loretto nuns ranked f iremost among the first and best as teachers. At Cork he found churches, schools, and convents going up on every side. They were building, at a cost of $600,000, and had nearly completed, one of the largest churches in Ireland, and they had just finished a very magnificent church. In every part of Ireland he had found a state of things that would make one think Ireland was just after being converted or was recently settled- Everywhere there was progress, the like of which no country in the world had ever seen. The material progress of the country was something wonderful The agricultural interest of the country was, however, diminishing and the country was going into grass largely. This was to be regretted, for he would sooner see agricultural laborers than fat oxen. In that respect Ireland is going back. During the laet twelve months one hundred thousand acres of land had passed from tillage into pasturage, and that, strictly speaking, was looked upon as a misfortune. — ' True Witness.*

Nothing is too small or too large to engage Mr. Gladstone's attention One of his latest pronouncements his been on the question of vaccination ! An anti-vaccinationist, if we may use the word, wrote to gain the ex-Prime Minister's aid in the agitation which the Keighley Guardians have made for ever famous, and the answer was that the whole matter was one upon which Mr. Glad8 one will keep his mind " open." It appears^to us that after this it is of no importance whatever whether his mind is kept open or shut on any given subject. — • Nation.'