Current Topics

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXVI, Issue 20, 21 May 1908, Page 9

Current Topics

Court of Criminal Appeal »ss? Tbe B brief lines cabled to these countries regarding the first sitting of the Court of Criminal Appeal a few days ago 1 , indicate an important improvement in British criminal law. Within living memory, jurors were, under British law, allowed to act as witnesses in cri'minml cases ; till a comparatively recent date no provision was made for the defence of prisoners unable to procure it for themselv es •, and the right of defence throughout the entire trial, even on a Capital charge, was not recognised at law till the year (1837) in which the late Queen Victoria ascended the throne. The world keeps moving. And though near in time, we -are far in feeling from the methods that obtained in the days of ' Satanides ' Carhampton, or even in those of "such eminent advocates of criminal law rel-oriri as Romilly and Mackintosh. t ♦ A Little Help ' We hay© a profound respect for the few Protestant clerical and lay workers who expend time and thought and personal effort to bring the knowledge of 1 Christ and of His law to the children that, sit in the darkness and the shadow of death of a secular or secularist- system of public instruction. But there are many others who, like David Harum's second ' equine wonder ', don't lay holt on our affections to the same extent. We refer to the easy-chair clerical ' bodies ' who wake up at conlerence-time or on the approach of general elections and slay the sccularity of ' the system ' with their mouths. Then they fall back into the cushions again, and so far as the active work of the religious instruction of tho little men. and maids at school is concerned, remain in a slate qf suspended animation till another synod or conference or assembly comes aronind, or a general election stirs then* from their long hibernation. And then their waking is as that of the dormouse of ' Alice in Wonderland '. * Auckland and Gisborne and a few other places have recently been furnishing us with some examples of the acihe and many of the dormouse variety of those who deplore the lack of religious training in our schools. The latter remind one of Thackeray's story of the unhappy Werthcr and of the phlegmatic Charlotte :—: — ' Werthcr had a love for Charlotte Such as words could never utter ; Would you know how first he met her ? She was cutting bread and butter '. Werther ' sighed and pined and ogled ' in vain, till one day ' he blew his silly brains out '. ' Charlotte, having seen his body Borne before her on a shutter, Like a well-conducted person, Went on cutting bread and butter '. Amidst the havoc wrought by lack of due religious instruction, so many of our clerical friends of the separated creeds are content to go on serenely ' cutting bread and butter ' as if the matter were no particular concern of theirs— waiting on in the vain hope that public officials may some day or other be forced to shoulder this elementary duty of the Christian ministry. There is not, after all, so very much to choose between fiddling over the burning ruin of a city and merely talking, talking, talking over the spiritual ruin that comes to children brought up in ignorance of the teachings and the duties of religion. That sort of periodical talk passes (to use Carlyle's phrase) like the snowflalce on the river or the foam of penny beer.- The old French couplet hath it that 1 Unr; chevalier, n'en doubtez pas, Doight ferir hault, et parler bas '—

a kniight of the cross should speak soft but strike hard —work much and talk little. 'Ah, thank' ee, neighbor', said a perspiring sheep-drover to one who ' shoo'd ' away (his flock from going down a wrong road ; ' tbankfiee— a little- help is worth a deal of pitying talk '. Heaven's blessing be upon those of our separated brethren that run and toil to ' shoo ' the lambs of Christ's flock from wandering down the wrong road ! And may wisdom come to those' who sit with folded arms and periodically talk pitying platitudes to the winds, when they ought to ftp giving a ' little help ' to keep the ' little flock ' on the narrow road that leads to Life ! Anti-treating In 'The Maltworm's Madrigal', Austin Dobson, tells of the love-lorn beer-swiller who drank of the ale of Southwark and drank of the ale of Chepe, and paid vain court to ' sweet Alison ', who greeted his comling with a ' Te-I-lee ! ' and a ' Fye on thy ruddy 'nose, cousin ! Why be thine eyes so small ? i Why {to thy legs lap-tappety, like men that fear to fall ? Why is thy leathern doublet besmeared with stain and spot ? Go to .' Thou art no man (she saith)— thou art a pottle-pot ! ' Nowadays the ' why ' of the ruddy nose, and the stained doublet, and the legs that go l a p-tappety, is largely to be sought in the familiar ' speech at the bar' — *• the same again ' : in the treating (or, in colonial, 'shouting') habit that, as Mr. Kettle, S.M., sometime ago denounced as ' the curse of the country '. We sadly need in this country an organisation like that which, under the title of the Anti-treating League, is doing so much for the cause of temperance in the Green Isle. ' The anti-trealing irorement ', said - Archbishop Christie, of Oregon, a few weeks ago, 'is the most practicable temperance reform that has been set on foot in this country. It must commend itself to every thinl in.g person.. It combines in itself two elements W'hidhi gi\e it value. In the first place it is a moderate movement. Hence it should be easily introduced. There are several countries of Europe in which the treating habit is unknown. There is nothing visionary in the hope that it may become obsolete here. In thesecond I'la c e, the anti-treating remedy applies 'the remedy to the real source of the drink evil. It is useless to deny that the social glass is responsible for most of the drunkenness and wasteful expenditure of money connected with the liquor traffic. The social glass is the curse of tho young man who has to m a ke his way in the world. It leads him, out of human respect, to contract the habit of drink — it leads him to excess in the use of intoxicants. It fosters prodigality in spending. I am convinced that the treating halbi't is responsible for the ruin of thousands of young men whose prospects for life were of the highest.' Pineal Gland Religion It is one thing to wear religion as a Sunday coat,, quite another thing to be steeped with it to marrowbone and pineal gland 1 . We try to infuse the pinealgland form of religion into the girls aoid boys and hobbledehoys at school, to steep them at school in a religious atmosphere, and not to make religion a matter of one or two half-hours a week. Our co-religion-ists itii (say) Belgium and the Tyrol do the same, anid the result is seen in the daily lives of the people— a result which we in these countries, where we are . a small minority in a population of^ very mixed religious beliefs, can hardly hope ever fully to attain. ' I know nothing ', says a travelled writer in ' St. Anthony's Monthly' (American), 'that saddens * ire more than to return to our country after having been, a little while in Belgium or Tyrol. There the poor people seem so wonderfully to live •in the presence o!

God,. If you were to go through a Tyrolese village at 6 o'clock in the evening, you • would hear from every cottage a bum like that of a hive of foees ; every one, father t mother, children, and servants, saying their prayers. It is much the' same at nooin, only then many of -the people' are out of doors in the fields or in their gardens. The church bell rings at twelve, and the mowers put down their- scythes, and take off their caps, amd fold their hands in prayer for about a minute and then go on with their work. One market day at Innspruck I was dining, and there was a patfty of farmers at another table having their dinner. The church bell rang the Angelus. Then they all rose up and, standing reverently, the eldest man in the piarty began the prayer and the rest responded. And the" women shopping were standing still in the market and those at the booths selling stood aslso with folded hands, and the men had their hats off, and instead of the buzz of bargaining, rose the murmur of prayer from all that 'great throng.' We have witnessed the same thing in Spain, in many parts of Ireland, along the Catholic Rhiineland, in Luxeimburg, in the, unspoiled places of Italy and France (notably in Brittany and the Auvergne), and among the French Canadians, not alone in the old provinces, but even in the settlements which they h a ve foirmed across the border in Michigan, and in the villages -which (liVe that of St. Albert) they have forrred in Manitoba and other portions of the young and strenuous West. Departed Chivalry When the Reds of the French Reign of Terror dragged gentle women to the scaffold and let the flying knife of the guillotine fall upon their unoffending necks., Edmund Burke declared that the age of chivalry was gone. There is a t least as little chivalry in the heart of official France to-day in its war against religion as was displayed by Marat ar.d his associates in the wild campaign against thione and altar that kept The Lady Guillotine busy during the Terror. Dieath was> then at least swift and the end came soon. Now, the guillotine no longer; falls on the bared neck of the Sister of Charity ; but the hand of the official burglar seizes her dowry, plunders the iron pots from the community kitchen, the sacred vessels of the convent altar— even the underclothing in the press and on the clot!he®-line— and drives the humble servant of the poor from her home of piety, penniless, into the world, to live or stane as circumstances may befall. * But the • chivalry ' of the burglar order goes still furthier. An instance of its legalised, operation was told a few weeks ago by an exiled nun— Sister Reparata, a gifted Irishwoman and descendant of John Philpot Curran— who recently arrived at the convent of the Sisters of St. Joseph, in Buffalo, from the religious house in Paris, from which she had been, driven out, stripped -of her habit and almost penniless. The convent in Paris was sold and is now a vaudeville theaGe. Sister Reparata relates an incident which is worth recording as an illustration of the new RadicalSocialist ' oMv'alty •'. When her community was disbanded, the Sisters driven out on the street, and the convent doors closed behind them, ' two Sisters returned to their father's house. The man ', says the Buffalo ' Catholic Union and Times ' (from which we take the story), • had given to each daughter a dowry when they entered the convent. Now the Government turned them out penniless, while the minions of the law proceeded to eat and drink his daughters' allowances. Nor did the French Government stop "there. Soldiers came to his house and declared one of his daughters must go elsewhere, as it was against the law for two members of a community to live under one roof. The distracted father protested that they were his children, his flesh and blood for whom a second

time he would provide a livelihood under his roof. It was no use. One daughter had to go.' She, too, fled to America to, seek there a home and a livelihood which— because of the faitb which she professed and the habit which she wore— -was refused to her by the modern atheistic exponents of French official ' chivalry '. * But in {rod's good time the tide will probably turn. 1 To admit ', says the learned Abbe Klein in the ' Atlantic ' Monthly ' for April, • that the Catholic religion ' must disappear completely in France would fail to take account of the laws of life. A great social force which has since early ages penetrated to the depths of the morals and of the soul of a nation, may be checked in its manifestations by mischievous law or decrees of public power— it cannot be destroyed b«y such means. The spring; in the earth which seeks a chance to escape may perhaps be stopped here and there ; but, " cut off from its outlet, it will succeed neverth^ess in liberating itself.' And the Pope recently said to the Bishop of Grenoble : ' I would like to be able to say - to you in the words of Our Lord, " Generatio haec nan praeteribit " ("this generation shall not pass »') ; but it is- not riven to nre more than to you to read the future. Will the trial be long or short ? I cannot say. But what I do believe, and firmly, is that it will end with the triumph of the Church, and not only of the Church itself— about which there can be no doubt at all on account of the promises Our Lord has made to her—tout of the Church of France, to which I have devoted and for which I shall always cherish a special affection. . . Tell your people, and never cease to repeal, that the first thing necessary is a return to the Christian life. There and there alone is salvation. Many look to great things from events which might le a d to a change in the policy of the parties in power. Vain hopes ! It is idle to change the Government without a change of heart— it is building on sand."