THE TABLET. A Weekly Newspaper an d Review .

DUM VOBIS GRATULAMUR, ANIMOS ETIAM ADDIMUS UT IN INCCEPTIS VESTRIS CONSTANTER MANEAT.S.

F rom the B r i e f o j H i s H o lin ess P i u s J X . to T he Tablet, June 4, i h j o .

V ol. 92. No. 3040. L o n d o n , A u g u s t 13, 1898.

P r ic e s d ., b y P o s t s & d .

[R e g i s t e r e d a t t h e G e n e r a l P o s t O f f i c e a s a N ew s p a p e r .

Page

C h ron ic le of t h e W e e k

-Imperial Parliament : The Vaccination B ill— The Lords Give W ay — Supply by Closure — England -and China—The Chronic Distress in the West o f Ireland — The Government’s Chinese Policy— T h e Alexandra Trust — Dublin and Mr. Gladstone — Peace Prospects—The Telephone Monopoly to be Ended— The America Cup — The Contest at the Cape— From Under-Secretary to Viceroy — 'Russia and C h i n a ......................... 237 L e a d e r s :

The Mission of Lord Charles

Beresford . . . . . . •• 241 The Vaccination Bill Vindicated 242 Era Girolamo Savonarola.. . 243 Encyclical Letter to the Catholics of Italy . . . . •• •• 245 <£To t e s ... . . — — . . 248

CONTENTS.

Page

The Works of Lord Byron . . 249 Dante at Ravenna . . . . . . 250 The Lives of the Saints . . . . 251 The Irish Difficulty : Shall and

W ill .................................... 251 C o r r e s p o n d e n c e :

Rome :—(From Our Own Corre­

spondent) . . ». —. —253 News from Ireland _ _ 255 News from France . . . . . . 256 News from America . . . . 256 L e t t e r s t o t h e E d it o r :

Allocation of the Aid Grant^ by

Voluntary Schools Associations 257 The Boulogne Pilgrimage . . 258 Our Catholic Orphan Girls . . 258 Unsectarian Teaching of “ His­

to ry ” . . . . . . . . 258 A New Testament Scholarship.. 258

L e t t e r s t o t h e E d it o r (Con­

Page tinued : A New Church for Hitchin . . 258 Mr. Hooley’s Statements.. . . 259 The Condition of Ita ly . . . . 259 The Work o f St. Teilo’s Society . . 260 Confession and the Church o f England 261 The Situation in Italy . . . . 261 Who First Gave Missions in England 262 A Great Bishop Remembered . . 262 The End of an Observatory . . 262 Hospital Work in South Africa . . 263 Catholics and the “ Open Bible ” 263 Catholic and Protestant . . . .2 6 3 The First Indian Eucharistic Con­

gress . . . . . . . . . . 264 Books of the Week . . . . 264 F rom E v e r yw h e r e O b it u a r y

S o c ia l a n d P o l i t i c a l

. . 264 ». 265 . . 266

SUPPLEMENT. Page

N ew s from t h e Schools :

School Prize Days :

The Breaking-Up at Stonyhurst 269 Convent of Notre Dame, Black­

burn . . . . . . . . 270 The Superiority of the Saxon . . 270 Benedictines at Oxford . . v 271 Cambridge Higher Local Exam i­

nation . . . . . . . . 272 The Bill on Secondary Education 272 St. Margaret’s Industrial School,

Mill H ill, N .W ............................272 N ew s fro m t h e D io ceses :

Westminster . . S o u t h w a r k ......................... Liverpool Nottingham ......................... Salford Menevia ......................... Friars Minor in Glasgow

272 273 273 274 274 274 275

Rejected MS. cannot be returned unless accompanied with address and postage.

CHRONICLE OF THE WEEK.

THE VACCINATION BILL. T

IMPERIAL PARLIAMENT

H E Session, which from the infrequency with which the Closure has been moved during its progress, may be said to have been an unusually placid one is closing peacefully, almost lethargically. After the House of Lords had agreed to the Third Reading Reading of the Vaccination Bill as amended, the Speaker announced the fact to the Commons, and Mr. Chaplin moved that the amendments passed in the Upper House should be considered. The sitting which -tip to that time had been singularly slow and uninteresting, quickly brightened. Members poured into the House in spite of the comparative lateness of the hour, the appearance o f the Ministerial benches becoming especially animated. After some verbal amendments had been allowed to pass, Mr. Chaplin proposed that the House should disagree with that by which the Lords h a i omitted Clause 2, which ■ exempted,under certain conditions, the conscientious objection from penalties. Mr. J. G. Lawson stated that he was -reluctantly compelled to vote agaiost the Government in the matter, but he had at any rate the consolation of know­

ing that in disagreeing with the Government of August he ■ was agreeing with the Government of March and July. He, therefore, hoped that Ministers would consent to accept from the House c f Lords their own original Bill. Mr. Monk in ranging himself with the Lords, denounced the vacillating conduct of so powerful a Government, and Mr. Griffith-Boscawen also hoped that the Government would avail themselves of the opportunity given them by the Lords to withdraw from an unfortunate position before it was too late. In reply, Mr. Chaplin after twitting the critics of the Ministry with ignorance of the provisions of the Bill they were discussing, reminded members that the change in the Bill was due to the change in the opinion of the House. When after the Second Reading coercion was advocated by a majority of ten, to one he could have taken action against local authorities for refusing to enforce the law, but when the House deserted him he could no longer persist in the attempt to secure even a mild compulsion. The only alternative, therefore, open to the Government was that which they were asking asking the House to accept. The situation gave Sir W. Harcourt a chance for some good-

N k w S e r i e s Vnr.. LX., No. 2,34.9

humoured criticism, in the course of which he likened the case of the Government to that of Actaeon, devoured by his own hounds, but said that up to the present the question of vaccination had not been treated as a party one at all. What they had always considered was how to promote vaccination, and they had still to consider that question. If the Bill failed, they would have to revert to the old system, which was a bad system. A ll chance of securing vaccination would be destroyed, and he had ventured to urge upon the House that they should take the course which had commended itself to them before. He believed that the Government had arrived at a sound conclusion that an allowance made in favour of tne conscientious objector would aid rather than obstruct the course of Vaccination. He should, therefore, cordially support the Government in the course they had taken. When a division was taken only 34 were found in favour of the Lords’ amendment, the Government being in a majority of 95.

— THE LORDS GIVE

WAY.

Such a majority, when compared with the majority of two by which the Clause had been rejected by the Lords, could not but have its effect when the Bill was returned to the Upper House. After the Nonconformist Marriages Bill had passed through Committee and been reported on Monday afternoon, and several other Bills had been advanced, Lord Harris moved that their lordships should agree to the Commons’ amendments of the Vaccination Bill. He pointed out that three sorts of parents were affected by Clause 2— the unwilling, the willing, and the lazy parent. Of these only the last class need be considered, and the Bill offered them the advantage of home vaccination, and put them to the trouble of going to Petty Sessions if they wished to evade vaccination. It was his honest conviction that the Bill as it stood would be a far more active encouragement to vaccination than the existing Act, or the Bill as it was originally drafted. Lord Rookwood led the chorus of opposition which then arose against Lord Harris’s proposal by wanting to know why the policy of conscientious objection was not allowed in the dogmuzzling order. After Viscount Galway came Lord Zouche, who thought that the Clause if passed would be found unworkable. In this respect he pointed to the difficulty which the magistrates would have in ascertaining to their satisfaction whether an applicant really had a conscientious objection, and to the absence of any specific form of declaration. He complained that the Clause had been sprung upon the House o f Commons and the country. Lord Stanmore contrasted the arguments used by the nobl