The Lessons.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXVIII, Issue 51, 20 December 1900, Page 20

The Lessons.

The melancholy story of the Stoke persecutions conveys to the Catholic body in this Colony lessons of the gravest import. (1) In the first place, we have learned that it is in the power of a little nest of noisy and organised intolcrants in a remote and dozy town to raise from end to end of the Colony an outcry which might, in a very possible set of circumstances, attain the intensity, if not the dimensions, of the no-Popery cries which sent a tremor through England in 1850-51, and through the United States during the mad campaigns of the Knownothings and the A. P. A. In the second place (2) the story of the Stoke conspiracy has given us cause for serious distrust in the administration of justice in the Colony. Airain : (:>) Th" campaign has been made the occasion of introducing into our Parliamentary institutions the dangerous principle that lies at the root of all penal enactments : legislation under the stns; of fanaticism or mere political passion. The n cords of the past six months prove that the danger of sectional legislation on sectarian lines is scarcely less pressing in New Zealand in the year of grace I'.MMJ than it was in the furibund England of l«r>() and IS.") 1. The w hole incident gives a 'fresh emphasis to our oft-repeated ath ice to Catholics to unite for the acquisition of the full measure of their rights. It has now become a question of defending those which we possess. One o( the first of our duties is to do what lies in our power to free our Parliamentary invitations — which ought to represent the pick of the wisdom and cool judgment of the country — from the political Hoolighans who are the worst menace to our liberties and to the peace and good order of the Colony.