CO882-(4-5) — Page 77

PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE

Reference :-

C.O. 882

ALLY WITHOUT PERMISSION OF THE BE REPRODUCED PHOTOGRAPHIC- COPYRIGHT PHOTOGRAPH-NOT TO

5 PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE, LONDON

74

No; they bowed their heads again, these men who pretend to serve better than I do the interests of my country. My energy astonishes them.! That is intelligible.”

15. All the members of the old Council who were thus attacked by Mr. Antelme, four or five months ago, are now to be found in the majority of the new Council, with whom he and his co-memorialists are also in disagreement on many subjects, including my treatment of the Indian population.

16. Two other pages of the memorialists' letter deal with what they call my vexatious interference with Bishop Scarisbrick, the Roman Catholic bishop. But the complaints they now make to you on the bishop's behalf had already been, made by the bishop himself to your predecessors and disposed of by them. Here they certainly give particular instances, but not particular instances that are well founded.

17. The first charge they lay against me on this head is as follows:-

(I.) He has continued the salary of two Roman Catholic priests, Reverends McDonald and Boucherit, who were interdicted by their bishop on account of bad conduct, notwithstanding that the bishop refused to sign their pay sheets, and he even granted them leave of absence on full pay and half pay.'

As a matter of fact when Bishop Scarisbrick got into conflict with those priests and wrote to me requesting that their names might be erased from the establishment of the Colony and their salaries stopped, I referred his letter and the whole case to my Execu- tive Council, telling them that, for obvious reasons, I would prefer that they should deal with it than that I should deal with it myself. The resolution that was then communi- cated to the bishop to the effect that I could not stop the salaries of the priests at his request was the independent and unanimous resolution of the members of the Executive Council. The grant of the leave of absence of these two priests to proceed to Rome to defend themselves against the charges of the bishop was also the unanimous and independent act of the Executive Council.

18. Bishop Scarisbrick wrote to Lord Derby complaining that I had not stopped the salaries of the priests and that I had granted them leave of absence on the usual terms as to pay. Lord Derby, however, supported the action that I, on the advice of the Execu- tive Council, had taken, and he even extended the leave of absence on salary that I had granted to these two priests.

19. As regards the statement of Mr. Antelme and his co-memorialists, that these two priests had been interdicted by the Bishop on account of bad conduct, it is due to the priests to mention that after their appeal to Rome, they sent to me copies of the certificates of the Cardinal Prefect of the Propaganda to the effect that nothing whatever had been found inconsistent with their character and conduct as good priests, and they are now, on the recommendation of the Propaganda, both engaged in the sacred ministry, one of them being a curé in the British Colony of Trinidad, to which he was appointed by Archbishop Gonin.

20. The second particular instance the memorialists give in their complaint respecting Ecclesiastical matters is as follows:-

*(II.) He maintained his protection to one of these priests while the latter continued, notwithstanding the interdict pronounced against him, to say mass, and to make use of a church which had been ordered to be closed, which in the eyes of Roman Catholics is a double sacrilege."

Here the memorialists are also mistaken. When I heard that the cure in question, acting on legal advice, was keeping possession of the church, I at once sent a senior priest to him requesting him to give up the key to the Bishop, and this he did forthwith.

*

21. The third particular instance under this head is as follows:-

(III.) He started the pretention that the Bishop, without the Governor's authority, could not transfer a priest from one parish to another."

Long before I came to Mauritius, it had been decided that the Governor's authority was necessary for the transfer of priests ou the State Establishment from one parish to another. It was no pretention of mine, nor indeed of any Governor, but simply the law of the Colony. In answer to a question in the Council of Government Mr. Pellereau, the Procureur General, publicly stated, on the 11th August 1885, that such had always been the law. The Secretary of State has recently given a ruling to the same effect. The Bishop recommends a transfer; it is for the Governor to authorise it. In every case in which Bishop Scarisbrick recommended a transfer, I have at once authorised it.

22. The fourth particular instance of my alleged interference with Bishop Scarisbrick is as follows:-

(IV.) He has sustained the pretention of Abbé Curtin to be Vicar General, although the Bishop had named Abbé Cox to that office."

75

This is also the reverse of the fact. After the death of the late Vicar General, the Bishop wrote to me proposing Abbé Cox as Vicar General. I accordingly appointed him, subject to the Secretary of State's approval, and I wrote forthwith to Lord Derby in my despatch of the 1st December 1883,* sending him the Bishop's proposal, and my sanction to Abbé Cox's appointment, and saying: "I have to ask your Lordship's approval of the sanction I have provisionally given to the Bishop's proposal."

understand that many leading Catholics thought that Abbé Curtin, owing to his seniority and for other reasons, was entitled to the post, but I did not interfere in the matter, beyond supporting the Bishop's nomination of Abbé Cox.

23.. Another particular instance of interference with the Bishop is thus described by the memorialists:-

"A priest interdicted by the Bishop having published in the papers a forged letter stating that the original was in the hands of the Governor, the latter remained silent and did not deny the fact, although he was challenged to produce the document."

This is also a fiction as far as I am concerned. I saw no such letter in the newspapers, and I never received any challenge to produce any such document, or heard anything

about it.

24. The memorialists also say:

"He accused the Bishop, in an official despatch, of having sold the Catholic Church by according the precedence to the Protestant Bishop, while he knew that such was not the fact, and that he had said himself to the Bishop that his conduct in the circumstances had been admirable."

Here the memorialists make two mistakes. The despatches in question were called for and published in the session of 1884. They begin with a despatch from Lord Derby deciding that Bishop Mouard, the Roman Catholic Bishop of Seychelles, should rank before or after the Anglican Bishop of Mauritius according to the priority of appoint- ment in order of date. I thought that a just decision, and recommended Lord Derby to extend it to Mauritius. But in his Lordship's reply, he said:

"After further consideration I do not think it desirable to disturb the decision arrived at in 1875, in accordance with which the Bishop of the Church of England in Mauritius would always take precedence of the Roman Catholic Bishop in the Seychelles, an arrangement which ain glad to understand was entirely acquiesced in as regards Mauritius by Bishop Scarisbrick."

I subsequently transmitted to Lord Derby a letter from the "Union Catholique" on the subject, adding: "Your Lordship will see that it is asserted that Bishop Scarisbrick "did not consult the Roman Catholics of this Colony before abandoning what they "conceive to be a just claim of the Catholic community." I expressed no opinion of my own on the Bishop's conduct, and certainly did not say in that or any other despatch that he had sold the Catholic Church in this matter. I need hardly add that I did not tell the Bishop that his conduct, had been admirable. When Bishop Scarisbrick told me that he had entirely acquiesced in the principle that in an English Colony the Bishop of the Church of England should always take precedence of the Roman Catholic Bishop, I remained silent. I need hardly say that their statement about an effort to bring the Bishop before the Court of Assizes is a groundless fabrication.

25. The last statement made by the memorialists about the Bishop is that I refused to grant a Roman Catholic priest the means of visiting Diego and other dependencies. They do not say at what time or under what circumstances. Some days before their letter was received the Bishop made an application for a free passage for a priest to visit Diego. His letter was sent to the Audit Office for a report. The Auditor General pointed out that there was no fund out of which such a passáge could be defrayed. When the papers were submitted for my decision I wrote a minute to the effect that I would take the responsibility of sanctioning the cost of the passage, and would move the Council of Government for a special vote to cover it.

26. As regards the support the memorialists give to some representations of Abbé Cox, I do not refer to them, as Abbé Cox already brought them to your predecessor's notice, who decided that it was not necessary to pursue the matter any further.

27. Though it is difficult to be much surprised at anything Messrs. Antelme, Coriolis, and Beaugeard may say or do, believe the Mauritian community will hardly be prepared to learn that, of all the inhabitants of the island, these are the gentlemen who put themselves before the Secretary of State as the champions of a Catholic Bishop.

• Not printed.

K 2