They Rule

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXIII, Issue 25, 22 June 1905, Page 2

They Rule

Inl his ' Arabian Society in the Middle Ages,' Lane gives some curious instances of the extraordinary love of poetry that filled the hearts of some of the Khalecfchs or rulcrsi of Bagdad. Some of them gave a thousand, ten thousand, thirty thousand or more gold pieces for a few verses I—and1 — and even for a single couplet — by poets of such renown as El Asma'ee. Gifts of like value— to the tune of $165,000— were bestowed by Carnegie upon his friend Dr. Henry S. Morton in 1897, wnen the latter wrote a little poem on the occasion of the birth of the millionaire's daughter. The poem had the long-drawn but now well known title : ' The Hand that Rocks the Craidle Rules the World.' The sentiment is a good one, and in its intended sense represents both sound morals and piroven fact.

In our last issue we showed how the Catholic people of French Canada promise to be the future possessors of the Dominion heritage. In his recently published book, ' Canada As It Is,' John Foster Fraser, a strongly non-Catholic writer, says • — ' While population in France is practically at a standstill, population in Quebec Province is astoumding. Families of eleven and fourteen are common. Quebec Province has its own French ("nil Law, and only the Legislature at Quebec, overwhelmingly French, can change it. The Roman Catholic Church is recognised 'Ijy law and its privileges kcot intact. The education is in the hands of the French, though, ri&Mly enough, there is provision for the Protestant minority ' Commenting on this extract from ' Canada As It Is,' the ' Outlook ' (Presbyterian-Methodist) says : ' There is thus great significance in the fact that Sir Wilfrid Laurier,, the Premier of Canaida, is a Frenchman, that iwo millions out of six million Canadians speak French as their mother tongue, and that the increasing French population in Lower Canada is the dominant factor in Canadian politics to-day. The French Canadians not only hold the balance of power in the Dominion, but Quebec Province regulates the representation in the Dominion Parliament. For "' French-Canadian " nut " Catholic," and the situation is seen at a glance. A colony in which the Catholic interest is paramount. . . is the colony which aspires to be the paramount partners among the nations of the British Empire. What possibilities does not this foreshadow ? '