The Sun.
London, England, 1868-06-03 00:00:00

THE SUN, LONDON, WEDNESDAY kV

THE SCHOOLMASTER AND HIS PATRON.

The following letter appeared in the 1, reenian's
Journal yesterday. The state of things it describes
is so flagrant that we cannot but hope they may
be made the immediate subject of Parliamentary
inquiry

Sir,—l pray that the case of the Rector of
Caragh, near the Curragh, and his shoe-black
schoolmaster, as reported in the Freeman, be not
permitted to drop without proper exemplification
of the peculiar phases of Irish life involved in it.
If I mistake not, Rev. Samuel G. Cotton, rector of
that Anglican union, is son of the venerable plu-
ralist, Dr. Henry Cotton, author of the lima,
Archdeacon of Cashel, Incumbent of the Union of
Lismalin, and three united parishes, value £794,
Protestant population, 110 ; Incumbent of the
Union of 'Diaries, which embraces four parishes,
value £950 ; and also treasurer of Christ's Church
Cathedral, Dublin. Your Church ComlniSSiOn
(Cashel Diocese, p. 56) shows that this lucky d'g-
nitary has netted upwards of £60,000 during his
long incumbency of these livings, the one of forty,
the other of forty-four years. The venerable
archd aeon has piously devoted " young Samuel "
to the church of Kildare, in which the late Dr.
Whately appointed him to the living of Cangh, a
snug glebe house, with seven acres attached, in
the midst of a fine sporting country, a rent charge
of £143, and a congregation of only eight families,
consisting of forty-four individuals, having a
parish church for the few Church-goers affording
accommodation for 200 persons. The Catholics
who bear this heavy rent-charge-418 for each
Protestant family—number 1,745 souls, or about
forty Catholics to one Anglican. Utterly blind to
the circumstances of his position, this mistaken
zealot emplOys an unfortunate man named Flynn
as Colporteur, or Tract Distributor, and Scripture
Reader, and Parish Clerk and Schoolmaster, and
places him over a school for which he obtains aid
from the National Board, to enable him to further
the work of proselytising aggression upon the
Catholic people of Caragh and Prosperous. A new
chapel was being budt in Caragh. Mr. Cotton,
whose church, with 200 sittings for only eight
families, was built and is repaired by the Catho-
lics, whose surplice is purchased and washed at
the expense of the Catholics, avails himself of the
opportunity to post on the walls—walls besprent
with the bravest blood of Kildare in the hard-
fought battle of Prosperous, in '9B—an offer of £5O
towards the erection of the church, if the Rev. Mr.
Fury, the Catholic Curate, will disprove, from the
Bible, certain controversial theses advanced in this
ge. Flynn, the unfortunate man cm-
arious offices of bill-sticker, Scrip-
mpluoyraeldcflioarletnhe v
Scrip-
ture-reader, shoe-black, schoolmaster, parish clerk,
and scullion, at the Parsonage, was a Catholic who
taught a National School all day, under the mixed
system, patron, Rev. S. G. Cotton, from which
even the suspicion of proselytism was to be
banished—where, as a decoy duck, he might lure
the little Catholic " birds of a feather" to the
" waters of life," and, in the evening visit their
parents and let a faint gleam of Scripture light
into the Cimmerian darkness of the Popish homes
of green Kildare, St. Brigid, " the Mary of Ire-
land," giving name (Bride-church) to this very

disgusted even Flynn, his own col-
pe parish.
Artleru. to
parish clerk, against whom he cited to
the unbelieving Bench of Magistrates the highest
authorities in Canon Law in proof that he should
rC andot n
aid the Minister as bill-sticker to outrage the feel-
ings of the Catholic people. The Bench gave a
decree, with costs, against the Rector, for the
amount of salary due to the schoolmaster, with a
severe admonition that Mr. Cotton had been ap-
pearing at the petty sessions more frequently than
the Magistrates wished, or than was conducive to
the peace of the parish, to the dignity of his office,
or the promotion of Christian charity. History
and tradition seem alike sealed sources of informa-
tion to the last rector of the Establishment in
Caragh. From the lips of the presiding chair-
man of petty sessions, Sir G. G. Aylmer, Bart.,
he might have heard of the expensive and unsuc-
cessful enterprise; the last attempt at reviving the
Reformation in Kildare. Kilmeague, the very
little town in which the case was tried, was built
by the Aylmers, and colonized, at great expense,
with "waifs and strays," attracted by vistas of a
future city of the elect, which was to be more than
in fable, " the Blest." Rev. Mr. Preston, the
rector in char.- •
witnessed one or two Orange dis-
plays on the demoniac political festivals of that
imported faction, which constituted the sole suc-
cess of the Kihneague mission. A large expendi-
ture, a thriftless immigration, and a decreased
rental are the painful
recollections remaining to
the landlord whose missionary experience has made
him a wiser and a better man.
The National Board, like the sp-called National
Churol, both fitly united in this in the parson-
patron, case
Rev. &Ir. Cotton, will die hard, and, I fear,
impenitent. A Christian Brothers' School, for the
education of Catholic children, in Athy, is denied
all state aid. The nuns' school, in the next parish,
Naas, narrowly escaped withdrawal of the grant,
the Protestant head inspector having found an
image of a guardian angel in the school grounds, a
violation of rule evaded in another convent by the
Iconoclast subterfuge of breaking off the wings,
and pretending that it was an old man minding a
little child. The exhibition of the sign of the
cross—the symbol that seems such a scandal and
a stumbling-block to Mr. Cotton, as well as the
National Board, that
he refused to kiss it on the
Bible when being sworn—on a Catholic National
School would exclude it from further aid. Yet
here we have Mr. Cotton and his unfortunate
schoolmaster—colporteur, clerk of church, and
bill-poster—getting, as was deposed by the patron
of the school at the trial, " salary from the National
Board, from the Ecclesiastical Board, and local
salaries," in support of this wanton outrage upon
a Catholic population, whose taxes are misapplied
in sustaining a school under such a patron, and
ironically called National. It was in the next
parish, Ballysax, that another National School,
under another rector, so vindicated the liberty to
prosleytise the Catholic children that the late
bishop, Dr. llaly, had the children withdrawn, and
then denounced the subversion of the original
National System. It was in a neighbouring parish,
Brackna, that Rev. Mr. Dunn, P.P., had to with-
draw his flock from Lord Ashtown's National School
under an immoral teacher, who had been forced
into the parish in defianee of the priest's warning.
Athy is not remote from the Model Schools in which
the Cardinal Archbishop had to withdraw the Ca-
tholic children, some of the staff in which were
guilty of open profligacy.
Under the existing aspects of the National
System, I think Lord Abercorn might have applied
the principle of the Suspensory Bill, and not have
recently filled up two of the vacancies on the board.
No evil could arise from leaving vacant livings
filled by such men as Rev. Mr. Cotton or schools
directed by such patrons. Poor Flynn, in his re-
pentance, is now deemed to have been " a Jesuit
spy in Mr. Cotton's National School, and has
thrown himself on the Catholics again "—" a
broken tool, the tyrant's castaway." It is most
desirable that the correspondence between Mr.
Cotton and the Commissioners in Marlborough-
street, alluded to at the trial, should be moved for
in Parliament.--I remain, dear sir, yours truly,
CONLAETHUS.
Kildare, 28th May, 1868.

TIIE MAGNESIUM LIGHT.—King Theodore, it is
stated, advised his companions to attack the British
by night, but they declined, and descended to
their deaths by daylight. Had they obeyed, they
would have had a new proof of the power which
science cm bring to bear in aid of slaughter. Sir
Robert Napier had with him an apparatus for em-
ploying the magnesium light on a grand scale. At
a distance of tioo yards a bewildering blaze of
light would have been thrown into the eyes of the
Abyssinians, and the British, themselves in im-
penetrable shadow, would have shot down their
enemies at leisure and at ease. The poor Abys-
sinians would have been helpless as herrings with
the electric ray streaming on the shoal ! It is
hardly war, such a contest ; but it is better that
civilization should be armed than that barbarism
should lie,—Spectator,