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THE ARCHBISHOP AND THE DECEASED WIFE'S SISTER BILL.
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THE HONGKONG WEEKLY PRESS AND
IRISH AFFAIRS.
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[Feptember 7, 1907. God for it. But there is a kick left in him; | a government like the present, whose only he is only scotched, not killed. Reuter hond of union is that each man has got a informs us that the ARCHBISHOP OF CAN- grievance of some sort or other, however (Daily Press, September 2nd.) TERBURY has recommended the clergy not dissimilar, finds itself, as a government, ECCE ITERUM ECCLESIASTICUS. All who Lo celebrate marriages with a deceased utterly unable to grasp. I don't know, said have given the subject any consideration, wife's sister. In other words, he urges the gentleman of this calibre in the days of and who are not in thrall to any sacerdotal servants of the State Church to refuse the Tichborne claimant, whether he is Sir fetich, have probably felt pleased that com. to obey State laws. This is an impropriety | ROGER or is'nt; but this I know, I don't monsense should have prevailed at long to which we might more strongly object, | like to see a poor man done out of his rights. last, in the matter of the Deceased Wife's were it not that there is a silver lining to This, as a little consideration will show, Sister Bill. The opposition has come mainly the cloud. Let them do it. It will but was the inducing motive with Mr. BIRRELL, from those whose intellects abide in what a help to swell the number of civil marriages, and others like him, to bring in the Irish witty controversialist. has called "the and to bring nearer the time of disestablish- Council Bill, avowedly not for the purpose furnished lodgings of tradition": : from mennent, when the things that are Caesar's will of removing evils but that every Irishman who do not go to the well for truth, but be rendered, free of tithing, and men may be might have the opportunity of doing na he have it delivered, diluted, at their doors; | born, and schooled, and married, and buried, liked. Of course, if the population of from men whose thinking is done for them, free of the arbitrary trainmels of a eul Ireland consisted only of Irishmen of Mr. on the hire system from men who have sidized superstition.
REDMOND'S, or even of Mr. FARRELL'S not a single conviction that was not got.
type, there might be something to be said secondhand, and something the worse for
in favour of a bill enabling them without wear. Their enthusiasm in opposition to the
outside interference to act the part of the reform-and they have certainly fought
Kilkenny cats; but it has been hitherto hard, with all their might and with all their
the good fortune of Ireland that though a number, possibly counting merely heads a bishops has been based on grounds that
majority, are prepared in this respect to a Chinese could probably understand very well. They have shown a most conservative
follow Mr. REDMOND's lead, there is remnaut and the number of it is daily dread of change, and a quite Oriental veneration for the aged, pinning their faith
increasing-who are by no means ready to be en a nearly four hundred year old compila.
dictated to by the agitator, and whose in- tion, made by men who probably believed
stincts and feelings are entirely on the side that the world was flat, that witches should
of order; who are in many respects more be roasted, and that an uubaptized baby
English than the English themselves, having learnt by sad experience the must endure the tortures of an eternal hell.
evils of agitation for Englishmen were legally forbidden to marry
an imaginary nationality. which never existed, nor the sisters of their deceased wives by that prince of morality, King HENRY VIII., who
ever can exist. It is time in the inter- must have chuckled sardonically as he added
ests of these, who though in a minority of his signature to the Act. For nearly sixty
heads, are actually in a vast majority of vears the Marriage Law Reform Association
brains and intelligence, that something has been fighting to get this Bill passed and
should, however tardily, be done by British the Commons have passed it several times,
statesinen. Relying on their own right generally to be rejected by the Lords. At
hands, and amidst the frowns of a section Last both Houses have passed it. Britain
of unworthy pretenders to the name of has advanced to the position of enlighten-
Englishmen, these men even when fewer ment occupied by some of its Colonies, aud
numerically than at present, have hitherto the joss men and medicine men are
preserved for the British Empire this part of its possessions. It is an ominous sign of squawking indignantly at the rest of the tribe whom they have hitherto led by the
an approaching break up that the leaders of nose. A good inany anomalies have been
disaffection should now be found, not amidst wiped out, and troubles and disabilities
the open exciters to disorder but in the ranks removed from many families; but we do
of a professedly British Cabinet. not think we could have been persuaded of the importance of this success if it had depended upon the proportion of people directly benefiting. This view, that there are after all comparatively few men anxious to re-engage the same inother-in-law, has doubtless helped the forces of the opposition by persuading men that it did not matter much either way. It did, and does, how Cycr. To us the successful passage of the Deceased Wife's Sister Bill signifies the knocking off of one of the last remaining fetters put on by a particularly objectionable and dangerous tyranny. All such purely arbitrary prohibitions, not warranted by ethics or sensible consideration of natural consequences, should have been exploded long ago.
Until we are rid of them all, our self-respect suffers. The priestly ban on the deceased wife's sister is on all fours precisely with the "tabu" of the island savage. Indeed, many cases of tabu have greater reason and warrant. The King cught to bestow a Peerage on the first man who marries his deceased wife's sister, especially if he marries her in Leut. He a subject, medical records will tell us, will have done more for the progress of how impossible, almost, it is to eradicate civilization than the man who syndicates the notion, eveu from minds ordinarily sane. ad captandum press, or contributes Once it gains the mastery in a weaker brewery dividends to the Party purse. We subject, it generally succeeds in following can respect the priest as a minister to the the patient to his grave. Of course the spiritual needs of the people, but as a law- worst thing the physician can do under the maker or administrator thereof we do circumstances is to try and humour the utterly loathe and abominate him. As such weakness. The wise physician seeks to he is really to be feared. The signs now engage the patient's attention on other are that he has had bis day, and we thank more profitable things, but this is what
严重
(Daily Press, September 3rd.) That Mr. BIRRELL, and the Cabinet acting under the leadership of Sir HERRY CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN should have at the eleventh hour had the courage to lock no Mr. J. P. FARRELL, Nationalist. Member of Parliament for Longford, North, and forty of his followers, is an item of news that will be received with satisfaction by all lovers of order-only one subject of re. that he did not do so a gret remains year sooner, when there could have been no As a mistake as to the import of the act. fact the party led by Mr. REDMOND, of which the Member for North Longford is but an insignificant individual, will put down the belated return to reason of Mr. BIRRELL, as but a poor attempt at revenge for the contemptuous manner in which Mr. REDMOND kicked his Trish Council Bill down stairs last May. Mr. BIRRELL had fatuously forecasted his wretched Bill as intended to give "Irishmen the right of managing their own affairs: which Irishmen of the forcing house species interpreted as applying to themselves personally, the scheme in the end only proving a lame copy of GLADSTONE's celebrated Home Rule Act, with a little extra pap admixture for specially good children, Mr. REDMOND looked upon himself as victimised. He had expected to he made dictator, he was only confirmed as agitator general. Now, of course, and this is the lesson in statesman- ship that neither GLADSTONE, nor any of his disciples were erer capable of learning, it is the easiest and simplest thing in life to make a people, especially an excitable and inexperienced people like the native Irish, discontented. There is no necessity to make bad laws, no occasion for harsh treatment or injustice. You may sit at your ease at home, or utter a few words from your place at St. Stephens calling your Irishman a member of a down-trodden people, and the thing is done; and the role of injured innocence assumed as if it were
the most
natural thing in life to be oppressed. In fact few things prove how completely unready, as yet at all events, your true born Irishman is for self- government as this perpetual imagining of oppression. Once let the disease of
maltreatment
hold get imagined
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Doubtless some feelings of their duty to their country, even when opposed by the in- trigues of a party incapable of compreher.d- ing the claims of loyalty, still lingers in a few of the present advisers of His Majesty. It is to be hoped that this last incident may be looked upon as a commencement of a return of the tide, and that the present dissaffection, having no ground-work in any ill-treatment or tangible cause of complaint, instead of being fanned into dangerous prominence by ill-considere and disloyal sympathies, will be treated in a more honcst and statesmanlike way, and be steadily and consistently repressed, as a dangerous and nauseous weed, fatal to all progress, and inimical to the best interests of the people themselves.
THE HONGKONG FISHING INDUSTRY.
(Daily Press, 4th September.) Shadowy sails of fishing junks, silhouetted against a sunset sky, processioning out of
to their accustomed Hongkong harbour
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fishing grounds, make a picture that one seeing is unlikely to forget." Apart from its a spectacle, from its picturesqueness esthetic stimula for the lover of the beauti- ful, it seems it can be suggestive to the mind practical, to the materia ly-minded person who rarely overlooks such considerations as those of dividends and chow. One such the other evening saw the oft-repeated scene, so