CARDINAL MANNING ON GENERAL BOOTH'S PLAN.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XIX, Issue 17, 23 January 1891, Page 27

CARDINAL MANNING ON GENERAL BOOTH'S PLAN.

His Eminence Cardinal Manning, in an interview with a repreeentative of the Liverpool Catholic Times, made a most important statement on the subject of General Booth's scheme. Asked what was his opinion of the proposal, his Eminence in the first place, guarded what he had to say by restricting it entirely to the social aspect of the question. There was no discussion on the Salvation Army as a religious and missionary agency, and all that was said bore only upon the proposed plan of a great campaign to rescue from their sufferings the helpless thousands of " Darkest England.' Touching the first portion of General Booth's book, his Eminence said tbat he lelt quite sura tbe General's facs and figures as to the extent of the existing misery were not exaggerated, that they were if anything withia thetruth, and tneu the Cardinal wenton to«iy :— " 1 have no words to express the indignant impatience with which I have for years regardtd tbe refusal of the authorities to acknowledge the existence of the enormous misery suffered by the families of honest workingmen, especially in winter, through want of employment. Beyond this periodical misery there is the perpetual degradation and consequ-nt suffering of the helpless, the worthless, ihe vicious, the criminal, who neveitheless ought not by a Christian people and in a Christian land to be lelt uucared for by the rich and by responsible authorities. "(Jpnpral Rnnth'w nlan " tbm rSrHJnoi nnn t; n ,i^ ti :- i . - r -> - -- -—.-..„„. u ..uuoj, is a ICBUIUie effort tv save the lost, and as such is worthy of all sympathy. The many schemes he prjposes will ba assailed and obstructed as transient pallia. ivos, but by them multitudes may be saved, and a part of the remeiy is better than a heartless refusal to help the lost." With reference to the stereotyped criticism on such a scheme that the gralual progres<of bociety will in due time solve the difficulty and that such things are beat left to the operation of natural laws the Cardinal taid . " 1 look upjn the theory that soc'ety will in the end absorb all tbe unemployed to be a cruel mockery. It can only be accomplisned in a generation, even if theu ; in the meau while men womea and children -jvill die by hundreds of thousands in extreme misery. The law of God condemns euch a heartless policy. I there. , fore wish General Booth's work all sue cess."

To a suggestion that General Booth in his book seetmd hardly to taken sufficiently iato account existing agencies, the Cardinal replitd *-V amp was so to some extent, bot attributed it to the point of view tak^n the book. The book is a proposal Jfor a general campaign against the hopeless misery of the slums, a campaign which would be something very different from the isolated efforts, excellent as far as they go, of such agencies for instances as Toynbee Hall and the University missions in the East End. As to Catholic action in the same direction the Cardinal said that our priests and nuns were already domg an immense amount of work in this very direction of succouring and saving the hopeless and tbelost, but it was work done for those already at least nominally within the bonds of Catholic unity. Bo far we had not been able to attempt anything for the masses outside, and it was these masses that the General was trying to help. B Striking out a new line of thought, the Cardinal added that be was heartily glad the book had been published, if only because it would do so much to wake people up to the necessity of seriously facing the question of common action for the very poor, the unemployed, aud even tbose whose idleness is a cause of their misery. " It is one more shock," he said, » to that false political economy of which we nave been having too mnch for years back. What is sound political economy but a dealing with the affairs of the community as v We !. e - a hon9ehol!l - That is what the word means. Well, hare in Kngland it has been taken to be a dealing with the affairs of the community as if it were not a hoasehould, but a counting-house, a place where the one question is profit and loss. One would think, to listen h?™?-* ? nT P ro ? e88O «>. that speculation and business were the wnole life of tbenation instead of one of its inner departments. But happily the time ib over for the doctrine of buy in the cheapest market and sell In the dearest, and buy your men's labour at the cheapest rate to which companion can beat it down. The true political economy takes into account the value of human life, and I am glad to see in this scheme of General Booth's one more useful contribution to the solution of the great question of the day."