A Quackhead 'Remedy'

New Zealand Tablet, Volume 19, Issue 42, 19 October 1905, Page 1

A Quackhead 'Remedy '

Your physician and surgeon can broadly define the limits of their art— the boundaries of the services that knife .and cautery and prescription can do for suffering man. But no disease that flesh is heir to can ' baffle ' the vociferous q'lvack that drops his h's, and speaks with ungraxnniiatical lips, and knows about as much of human anatomy as does a medicine-man among the red-s-kmned Cherok«ees.. In an analogous way, your easy-chair journalistic qtuaek has his Pink Pill or Black Draught or OureHall TajbUoid ready in his vest piocket fo>r the msllaht ■ending of every political anid social evil. The latest '■remedy' for all the ills of 'holy Ireland, where the grass grows gr-een ' has been copied into one of our New Zealand contemporaries from the prescription of an editorial quack-head in ' famous London town ' : Wealth anid prosperity are promised to Irish ' Romanists ' if they will only forsake the faith of their fathers and embrace some one or other of the myriad Protean forms of religion that are known by the general designation of Pretest >ant ism !

I|?is prescription is advanced as an absolutely new and original addition to the British political Pharmacopaeia. But, worshipful good masters, it is as old as the days of Queen Elizabeth and the Sixth Edward. It was embodied in the Acts of Parliament of every reign from the days of Bluebeard the Eighth to those off the last George For three lnuidre<l years successive British Administrations endeavored — tout in "\ ain — to force the Pill down the throat of Erin at the point of the bayonet. And for three centuries proselytising associations sprained jawbone and hantl to make soupamdJlslc*n I ket ' cob verts ' of no'ipr-do-wells and of the

starving poor who were stricken with the periodical famines that were artificially produced in the country by a system of rule that swapped its fingers at everj principle of political economy. Here is how •' conviction ' grew upon a villajge loafer wbio joined the ranks o| ' That sanctified troop, Whoso souls have been chastened by flannel and soup,' and ' a full and complete suit of seoond-hand clothes ' from the Reverend Oliver Stiggins :— ' I felt at the moment the breeches went on, That half of my ancient religion was gone ; Much was done by a vest biuttomed up to the throat, But the grand hit of all was a rusty black coat. ' The bat was convincing, as one might expect, The necktie itself had a certain effect ; Then to pluck away error right out from the roots, He covered my " croobs " witih a new pair of 1 The newborn ' conviction ' almost invariably went the, way of Bob Acres' courage. It oozed out at the finger--tips when the soup had done its work, or the flannels had frayed, or better times had come. That was no fancy sketch which represented the starved fatbei of ten starved children kneeling ' afar ofi ' in his £>arfsh church in Black Forty-seven and bidding a tearful good-bye to his Hidden (iod ' till the huimger is over.' But the worst woe.s of Ireland are those which came upon her from the 'cross-Channel creed. And Patrick haa a longer memory than the London qiuacktoead gives him credit for.

*We have long memories,' said the distinguished Irish-American priest, Father Yorke, at the recent Aug'ustinian jubilee in Gahvay. ' Did not Henry 11. come to " civilise " us, aWd Cromwell to " save our souls " ? Hence, oven though they he sincere— anid sincere they well may be— friendship and good intentions cannot permai) us to let pass uncoti'tradicted a doctrine that is'false in fact aired ernotaiedus in philosophy. If we are ldoking for tJhe real causes of Ireland's backwardness in things matcinai, it, is not hard to find them. How co-old we have money w»hen the fruits of the land were confiscated twice a year for centuries by a worthless foreign garrison tin at never gave anything in return for the millions they exacted ? How caul'd we have progress wfoen we are saddled wit-h an anltiqaiated Executive, the most stupid anid most expensive, not alone in Christendom, but in tihe dominions of the Grand Turk ? How could we ha\e manufactures when our industries were deliberately destroyed by Government for the benefit of foreigja-

icrs, and, at the very time Europe was serving her i apprenticeship in modern methods, we were barred out -school of experience? How could we have i^raide when our chief asset, agriculture — which from the nature of things must be always our great Teliamce— was ■Sacrificed by alien laws to thie needs of the English manufacturing towns ? If men want to see the truth afbwit Ireland's decadence, they can find abundant reason \iu historical and political causes, am d will not 'be driven 'to explain, the facts that the Catholic religion of Belgium does not prevent that country from being one of ,I*© most prosperous and one of the most progressive joji the; Face of the eaith, and that Catftiolic Irishmen appear lia ,'sihlaire with honor the txutden o>f the greatest political offices and to manage with success the most'exte&sive business enterprises in every couintry'of the world except their own. 1