Mr. Redmond’s Securities for Irish Protestants.—The Guardian, of 2nd June, says:—”Mr. Redmond has been making one of those consummately impudent speeches which suggest a profound belief in the gullibility of the English elector. Speaking at Woodford on Saturday he declared that ‘the most insulting of all things that could be said of his race was that as soon as it obtained Home Rule the Roman Catholic majority in Ireland would persecute and oppress their fellow-countrymen;’ and he offered every possible guaranty against such a possibility. But the Nationalist majority have not waited for Home Rule to ‘persecute and oppress’ the minority. They do it now. Is not
the League, with its shootings and boycottings and cattle-drivings, the organ of the majority? How many non-Nationalist and non-Roman Catholic members of County Councils are there? Less than seven score in the whole of Ireland out of nearly a thousand. In face of these facts it is idle for Mr. Redmond to talk about religious guaranties—they would not be worth the paper upon which they were written. But Home Rule is not obtained yet. When Mr. Redmond says that ‘in a few short weeks the Veto Bill will be law’ he is whistling to keep up his courage. Whatever happens Home Rule will not be wrested from England as easily as that.”
The Knox Club.—Councillor F. J. Robertson, Secretary of the Knox Club, has replied to Mr. Macartney’s letter in the Buiwark, an extract of which was given in our last issue. In justice to the Knox Club we notice that Mr. Robertson denies Mr. Macartney’s charges that nobody knows who considers applications for membership in the Club, and that no public meeting of members has ever been held to receive a statement of the accounts and to elect office-bearers, and, so far as these are inconsistent with fact, we regret having quoted the part of Mr. Macartney’s letter referring to these matters. But, in our estimation, the most damaging indictment against the Knox Club is the association of some of its leading members with the Roman Catholic Irish leaders. Councillor Robertson makes no attempt to deny this charge, for the simplest of all reasons—he cannot. One wonders what John Knox would have to say to the Secretary of the Knox Club were he still in the flesh. There might be some plain speaking about consistency which Councillor Robertson might not relish.
The Parliament Bill and the Protestant Succession.—”My readers will be glad” (says Mr. Walsh in the English Churchman) “that the House of Lords amendment to the Parliament Bill, excluding the Protestant Succession to the Throne, as well as Home Rule, from its operation, was passed by an overwhelming majority. It was thought by many that the Government would accept the Protestant Succession portion of Lord Lansdowne’s amendment. Had they done so they would have given real pleasure to many of their Protestant supporters; but in that case they would have offended the Roman Catholic Nationalists, and therefore they determined to do that which pleases the Church of Rome. Very little was said about the Protestant Succession in the debate in the House of Lords. But, surely, it might reasonably have been expected that one or other of the Bishops would have had something to say on this gravely important subject. But every one of them was dumb. Not a Bishop on the bench thought it worth while to say a word in defence of the Protestant Succession to the Throne! What are we to think of them?”
The Marriage Question in Canada.—The Protestants of Canada (says Mr. MacFaul, M.A., in the Vanguard), are thoroughly aroused over the effects of this iniquitous law. The Haney case in Toronto, where a priest entering the home, so influenced the husband, a Romanist, that the wife and daughters who were Protestants, in order to free themselves from priestly arrogance, were obliged to leave the home. The Hebert case in Quebec Province, where the Bishop separated a legally married couple, and was upheld by a Roman judge of the Province, on the plea that the marriage was null and void because performed by a Protestant minister. Dr. W. H. Hincks, of Toronto, a few weeks ago very forcibly said concerning the Hebert case: “The immorality of the marriage laws of the Church of Rome was seen by the whole Dominion last week when a marriage was dissolved in Quebec for no other reason in the world than the creed of the minister who married the couple. He happened to be a Methodist minister. Remember, before the civil law dissolved this marriage the Church had declared it invalid in conscience before God, that marriage of years’ standing was dissolved by the Roman Catholic Church; dissolved after the couple lived as husband and wife; dissolved after God had sent children to them; dissolved not for the sin which Christ taught makes the sinful one dead to the other; dissolved not by the sin of either husband or wife, but dissolved because the man who married them happened to be a Protestant clergyman. A marriage ideal which can so lightly break asunder what God has joined together is grossly immoral.” Mrs. Hebert has appealed to the Privy Council.