What English Catholics are Contending for,
AND WHAT AMERICAN CATHOLICS WANT.
Mr. A. Langdale in a letter to the London Daily News puts the Catholic view upon the education question with accuracy and yet with refreshing terseness. "We can accept," he writes, "no compromise, and must have our own Catechism, taught to our own children, in our own schools, by our own masters. We will accept a 'conscience clause,' and open our schools to all comers, and, as a fact, do. We will open our schools to Government inspection, and gladly abide by payments by results. All we desire is a fair field and no favor. One thing we can't and won't do, and that is to suffer our children to receive religious instruction which is not our own, and equally to accept teaching as a system in which religious teaching is not included. Now there are doubtless a great many who think we ought to be contented with unsectarian religious instruction, and some who even utter something of not having any Popery taught. Quite so, and to the end of all time the opinion of some will be opposed to the opinions of others. Well, we say our religion is at stake, and we can accept no less, and it is oppression and tyranny to deprive us of our rights. We pay our taxes, we pay our rates, we even provide our own schools, we educate our own teachers, and subscribe largely to our schools, all under Government approval, and we submit to a conscience clause. All we ask is that our secular teaching shall, under Government inspection, be paid for at the same rate as similar teaching is paid for in any other school. We say this is our first and paramount interest and liberty; to refuse it is persecution. I and thousands more are true Liberals heart and soul, and yet are forced to go as a matter of primary duty and do violence to every wish of one's heart, and support a Tory solely because the Liberal candidate refuses to recognize any Denominational system. It is no Liberty, but a cruel imposition of a religious intolerance."
Ingratitude of France in the Irish Struggle.
Not the least remarkable, though perhaps accountable, feature of the present Anglo-Irish crisis is to be found in the thinly disguised hostility with which our struggle for independence is viewed by the nations of Europe. One might at first be inclined to think that gratitude to the countrymen of those splendid fellows, without whose heads and hands the long series of English triumphs since 1688 over her bitterest foe had ne'er been broken, would have secured for us, if not encouragement, neutrality on the part of France. Not so, however. Spain alone, of European States refuses to take sides against us (Russia, for obvious causes, cannot be regarded as unbiassed); and Spain, as many of us know, claims a kinship with Ireland hardly less strong, if more legendary, than that which exists between America and England. As a matter of fact, our precious "sister" has been plying the hose with exceptional success. She has so saturated and stunned the Continental public with the thick stream of falsehood about Ireland and her people that the poor creature, half befuddled by the whole business, commits itself to approval of an act which calm reflection might convince it was indefensible. This gullible public has been taught by England to believe that we are a race of treacherous and incorrigible savages, ignorant of and indifferent to the common decencies of life; a nation of brawlers and beggars, loafers and drunkards. We are, moreover, in sympathy with those scourges of its own lands, the Communist, the Nihilist, the Socialist. What wonder then, that it should consider the humiliation of England, gratifying though it might be in itself, even a boon too dearly purchased at the price. We think it well that Irishmen should be constantly reminded of the degree in which they are indebted to their neighbor. But in doing so, we deem it of importance to guard ourselves carefully from misconception. Nothing is further from our desires than to keep an old sore running, simply to gratify an unchristian passion for revenge. Quite the contrary. At the same time we hold that in laying bare the hideous malice, the systematic meanness, with which our pious master has smirched the name of Ireland before the eyes of the world, we shall be deservedly rebuking an amiable but spiritless class, whose meek outpourings have become a nuisance. We would advise persons of this class to bear two things in mind. In the first place, that after the cession of an Irish Parliament (yielded, of course, only as the alternative to rebellion), the initiative towards reconciliation must be made by England, which is in the wrong, not by Ireland, that has suffered from the wrong. Secondly, that partnership in business does not necessarily imply either friendship or affection in private. Those who are most strongly opposed in politics and religion often pull well together when there is no help for it, and when they see that to do so is for the promotion of their mutual interests. So may it be with nations; and so, please God, will it be with Ireland and England, until that day when the latter is able to come forward and say to us, "I restore to you your escutcheon, which, trampled and spat upon by me of yore, I have since by my tears washed whiter than the driven snow."
Dublin Freeman's Journal.