Current Topics

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXV, Issue 18, 2 May 1907, Page 9

Current Topics

Everything is Caesar's Dr. Starbuak, an eminent American Unitarian di\ ine,^ sets forth as follows the motto of the French Gambettists : ' Render unto- Caesar the things^that are Caesar's. ; and understand that everything is Caesar's '. • Fatal Guides ' ' ' Divine pxaise, according to Sacred Writ, is perfected in the onouths of babes and sailings. Ami wisdom sometimes . leaps from the mouths of. children as a crystal spring often bursts from rocky ground. There \ lay a deep and probably unconscious philosophy in the answer of the child who said, in reply to a "question 1 why that tree grew crooked ' : i Somebody trod on it, I suppose, when it was a little tree' How many little lives are permanently bent and twisted and deformed by the crushing examj le of wicked or unworthy parents : Pagan though he was, Juvenal besought fathers and mothers to refrain from evil— if from no other motive—' ne crimina nostra sequantur ex nobis gemiti ' (Jest their children might imitate them in their sins'). ' 0 fatal guides ! this reason should suffice To win you from the slippery route of vice, This powerful reason : Lest your sons pursue Th© guilty track thus plainly marked b-" you ! For youth is facile, and its yielding will Receives with fatal ease th' imprint of ill.' ' ' Children,' says Jou,bert in his ' Pensees,' ' have more need of models than of critics.' And of all mankind, they learn most and fastest and best "or worst in ' the school of example. Good parents, like the good pastor of Auburn, 'allure to brighter worlds.' But, like Mm, they do better still : they. ' lead the way.' A Cowardly Government ' The French Government,' says the ' Catholic Times,' ' instead of being ashamed— as they should' be if they had any sense of what is due to the national honor— of the seizure of the Pope's representat ye's papers, are making use of a venal and comtemp-JLble- - press" to publish hints and insinuations to the effect that evidence of intrigues against France has been discovered in the documents. . . Many other assertions, hints, and rumors of this kind have been put in circulation. We need not warn our readers against crediting any of them, If the French Government can only make accusations by stooping to unworthy artifices and subterfuges, it is not difficult to appraise the accusations at their true value. The whole affair is disgraceful to the French Ministry. Had the Pope a standing army like the Kaiser, Monsignor Montagnini's papers would have remained untouched. . . The intensely anti-Catholic correspondent t who represents the *'' Times " in Paris never loses a n opportunity of shrq'wing out a hint or insinuation prejudicial to • the Holy Father. He has made the discovery that the, announcement as to the publication of Monsignor Montagnini's papers has produced a "real panic" at the Vatican. The wish is father to the thought. But the correspondent, being in the secrets of the atheists and Freemasons who conduct the Government of France, has at his disposal the means of knowing that the Vatican has not the slightest cause for panic. There are several strong reasons why it should feel no anxiety. The first is to be found n the denia, by them "Osservatore Romano '"' of the French papers' statements with regard to the contents of the documents and the alleged interference of the Vatican in ' questions affecting France and Spain alone. The next is the knowledge that by common consent a wide" latitude is allowed to writers of confidential communi-

cations. And the third reason is that there need not be the slightest fear of honorable people, who are acquainted with the recent proceedings of the French Government and' their campaign of persecution, believ•ing anything that may appear in their newspaper - organs. If they are failing in their fight against Christianity, they at least have ' succeeded in degrading French journalism.' A ' Clifton/ Romance During his wanderings in search of adventures, Don Quixote ' rescued ' the boy . Andres from hts master's lash. The only result of the ' rescue ' was this : that Andres— who, had not the ' rescuer ' appeared 1 , would have got off with a few blows— received the father and ■ mother of a weltin-g, that sent him to the hospital for repairs. And the Knight of the Rueful Countenance hpd such biting sarcasm flung at his impetuous head, that the gamdn Andres almost laughed thereat, even while the hot blows rained upon his unprotected cuticle. When, later on, the lad met his ' deliverer,' he addressed the Knight of La Mancha in these words : 1 For the love of God, Sir Knight* Errant, if you meet me again, don't succor or help me, even if you see me torn to pieces (aunq.ue yea que me hacen pedals) ; but leave me to my misfortune, which, however great it may be, will not be worse than that which will come to me from your help.' Then, invoking a malediction" on the Don and on ' all the knights errarit that were ever born into the world,' the hapless Andres vanished from the scene. * The happily rare obscurantis Is in New Zealand who object to the Irish people having control in their own house, have long, been under the gently-falling lash of the progressive and 'liberal-minded thought of the Golony.. Some weeks ago an ex-legislator in Waiimaite clapped on- the helmet of Mam-blnno and set his goosequill lance in rest to do battle (professedly) against Home Rule. But unlike th© Rueful Knight, he did not even score a momentary success. The blows which in Cervantes' sto-y fell upon the farmer's urchin, rained instead at Waimate upon the shoulders of the ' deliverer ' ; and' those for whom he did battle speedily realised that the worst seivioe which it was in his' power to do to their cause was to set up as its ad>vocate. It so happened that the pretended onslaught on Hoowe Rule was,- from firs<t to last, nothing more or less than a rough attack on the priesthood and the Catholic laity of Ireland. The assailant was one of those who fancy that a display of oratorical fireworks is the only way -in which it is possible to make their dim light shine before men. Dean Regnault had an easy task in dealing with the amazing misstatements made by his fiery and precipitate opponent. The ex-legislator made a crowning featu~e of a story to the following effect : 1. He asserted that a violent and unprovoked attack was made on a meek and inoffensive minister of the Lord at Clifton, Co. Fermanagh', Ireland, a nd that a report of the proceedings appeared in the ' Weekly Irish Times' of September 13, 1906. He soon found it necessary to eat up this whole sto y, without salt. 2. He then changed the venue. The unprovoked assault took place at Clifton, in G-a'lway County. And it was reported in the ' Weekly Irish Times ' of October 13 (not September 13), 1906. The ex-legislator soon found it necessary to swallow this slander on the peaceful inland village of Clifton, Co. Galway. 3. His next story was that the unprovoked and dastardly assault upon a meek and lamb-like evangelist took place at the seaport town of Clifden, and that the( details, of it were- to be found in the 1 Weekly Irish Times ' of October 13, 1906. Each of the . shifting- tales was accompanied by strong asseverations of the ' truth ' and ' accuracy ' of the writer's statement s.

The collapse came when the former law-maker learned that copies of the ' Weekly Irish Times 'of the dates mentioned were all along in the possession of his serene and smiling opponent. The game was then up. The most extraordinary part of the whole affair was the confession of the ex-legislator that, all the time that he was spinning his various versions of the 1 Clifton ' romance and pouring a rain of hot-shot comment on it into the columns of the ' Waimate Times,' he had in his possession the ver7 copy of the 'Weekly Irish Times ' that dynamited the soul and substance out of his story of outraged evangelical innocence. -, Here is a slice from the last word in the controversy —Dean Regnault loquitur :— • 'There are (according to Mark Twain) 769 ways of conveying a falsehood. One of the very worst of these is the suppression of the truth that is in one's possession. Till I intimated to your readers that I had the " Weekly Irish Times " of October 13th, 1906, in .my possession, and was prepared to lay its version before the public, my opponent held back from your readers the following vital facts, which (he tells us) have been in his possession for the past three months :— (a) The police swore that the preachers in Clifden (not Clifton) were acting illegally (or at least against strict Government ' regulations) in preaching where they did. (b) It was sworn that one of the preachers assaulted the 1 priest, (c) It was sworn that their " language and other conduct " was " most offensive " and " most insulting "to Catholics, (d) The Bench officially declared that " the street preachers had caused the people great provocation. " (This is in full accord with the language used regarding street preachers in yarious other parts of Ireland by Judge Adams and others). Bear in mind that all this is in the report of the Intensely antflCatholic " Weekly Irish Times." And this is the famous case that is to damn Home Rule for ever and a day ! It matters not a jot whether my opponent agrees or does not agree with the police evidence, the evidence of Canon Mac Alpine, and the pronouncement of the Clifden Bench. Having fas he admits) this most important side of the question in his possession, it was his duty - in justice and honor to place it all from the first fairiy and manfully before your readers, instead of misleading them with fantastical romances and with shockingly "mutilated and one-sided versions of the "Clifton" affair.' We dealt briefly some time ago with this ' Clifton ' romance. We have pleasure now in giving this further notice of the affair, more especially in view of the mendacious and envenomed versions of the incident that have been circulated by the Protestant ' Defence ' Association in the Auckland Province and by over-credulous enthusiasts elsewhere in the Colony. It is a bankrupt cause that cannot stand upon the bed-rock of truth, 'but must call in falsehood as its ally. A New Era ■' Nitor in- adversnm ' (II strive against adverse'circumstance ') might well be .taken as the motto of Irish national sentiment. It has had a long, a-'tiluous, uphill struggle. But it kept on and ever on. And now, after more than a " century, the Irish people find (with Christina G. Itossetti) that the uphill is best escaped ' -by never turning back. ' ' Between two neighboring States a deadly hate, Sprung from a sacred grudge of ancient date,' now bids fair to burn itself speedily out. ' Blind bigotry at first the evil wrought.' Then, followed the evil of governing the weaker wholly in the interests of the stronger nation. Next came the folly of ruling people of one set of traditions and religious and racial sentiments by institutions devised for them at long-range guess-work by people with qiuite different traditions and racial and religious sentiments. It was assumed that these institutions (including the irresponsible Castle system) must be good enough for Ireland. And the repugnance of the Irish people to them long seemed to numtiers of ev,en sincere Englishmen incomprehensible, and evidence that Ireland was at fault, or that the nature of things had somehow gone awry.

Ministries may come and Ministries may 'go. But neither peace nor progress nor mutual good-will was possible while the principle prevailed that Ireland was on no account to be ruled in accordance" with' the ideas and aspirations of its people. While tied to that capital blunder, it might be said of each successive Administration :—: — Ille sirciatrorsumi, hie dextrorsum abit ; unus utrique' Error, sed variis" illudit partabus-i' Or, as a British poet has freely Englished it :—: — ' One reels to this, another to that wall ; "Tis the same error that deludes them all.' There was too long a substratum, of truth in the caustic saying of a witty Irishman : that, where the western I&le was concerned, the only chance you had of impressing an English Minister was to come before him with the head of a landlord in one hand, and the tail of a, cow in the other. Except during the Melbourne Administration, reasonable popular demand® were till now granted (when granted) onLy under unreasonable popular pressure. Catholic Emancipation— promised as an immediate compensation for the destruction of the Irish Parliament— was delayed till 1828. And even then it was blestowed only when the greater part of the population was strongly disaffected ; .when (as Peel declared) five-sixths of the infantry force 'of the United Kingdom were ' occupied in maintaining the peace and in police duties in Ireland" ' '; and when (as he further declared) this locking up of the forces would have had a paralysing effect upon military operations in the event of war with a foreign power. The Tithe Commutation Act of 1838 gave small relief indeed to the Irish peasant. But, such as it was, it was won only by the long struggle known as the Tithe War, which drenched the soil of Ireland with blood. In 1865, while Britons were (says John Stuart Mill) ' 'basking in a fool's paradise,' the Fenian movement suddenly 1 burst like a clap of thunder in a clear sky, un-looked-for and unintelligible.' ' ' Ahi ! then and there was hurrying to and fro. . . And there was mounting; in hot haste : the steed, The mustering squadron, and the clattering, car, Went pouring forth with impetuous speed, And swiftly forming in the ranks of war.* The harbors were occupied fty the fleet. Swift cruisers patrolled the coasts to prevent the landing of Irish veterans of the American war, Mr. Gladstone and Lords Granville, Dufferin, and Derby bear witness to the fact that the panic into which the Government was thrown by the Fenian scare led to the disestalP lishment of the Protestant State Chulrch in Ireland in 1869 and to the. Land Act of 1870. The (for Ireland) revolutionary Land Act of 1881 represented the Government's surrender to Charles Stewart Parnell au'd the triumphant Land League. ' I must make one admission,' said Mr. Gladstone, ' and that is, that without ttoe Land League the Land Act of 1881 would not at this moment be on the Statute book.' Fixity of tenure (according to Lord Derby) was won for the Irish farmer by the disconcerting strenuousness of the Land League, and by the industrious and resourceful . obstruction tactics of the Home Rule Party., in the House of Commons. ,_And (added Lord Derby) ' the Irish k>nqw it as well as we. ' " > m Hen>ry G rattan laid down a useful principle both-for political and social use whea he said : ' What you "refuse, refuse decently ; what you give, give graciously.' Few of the popular rights that were demanded by the .Irish people during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were either decently refused or graciously given. It is this melancholy feature of the relations of the two countries that led Lord John Russell to exclaim to his fellow legislators ;— ' Your oppressions have taught the Irish people t 0 hate, your concessions to brave you. You have exhibited to them how scanty was the stream of your bounty, and how full the tribute of your fears.'

'It is always,' says John Stuart Mill, in his ' England -and Ireland, ' ' a most difficult task which a people assumes when it attempts to govern— either in the way of incorporation, or as a dependency— another people very unlike itself.' In the whole complexion of their history and • social economy it would be difficult to find two European nations ' so far -apart as- England and Ireland. An attempt by the stronger nation to force its modes of thought and maxims of government upon tfo-e weaker one, is -like the action of the famous Attic highwayman Procrustes, who lopped or racked out the lirmbs of his captives till they just fitted the length of his iron bed. ' Aiore than a generation has elapsed, 1 says Mill •in the work already quoted, ' since we renounced the desire to govern Ireland for the English- 1; if at that epoch we had begun to know how to govern her for herself, the t>wo nations- would by this time have ty:en one. ' But chas-terting knowledge -comes better tardily than not at all. No political party in Great Britain iiow stands b)y the old methods of ruling the ' sister ' isle. 'It is part of a brave man,' said Bismarck in announcing the close of the .Kulturkampf against the Church in Germany, ' to fight on when the conditions demand it ; ''but nd real statesman desires to make combat a permanent institution.' The long political Kulturkannpf against the Isle of the West is now well-nigh past. And the new measure of peace which is soon forthcoming has not been— as* former concessions of popular rights were— wrung 'by menace from unwilling hands. It seems rather- to come as the free act of men who, like William' Ewart Gladstone, humbly and frankly confess the ghastly failure of the too long continued .attempt to rule the spirited and quick-witted Irish people otherwise than in accordance with Irish ideas. The first faint tints of the rainbow of peace ,are already adorning the dawn of the new day that is breaking on the relations of the Saxon and the Western Celt.