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Show FRENCH OPINION- OF BRITISH EMPIRE. A distinguished French journalist, M. Henri de Noussnnne, has written a brilliant history of the coming war, in which France and Russia will extinguish extin-guish England. This history is published pub-lished by the Monde Illustre of Paris. The war is represented as having broken out in the summer of 1900. For a few months the sea? are strewn with the wrecks of English shins, and the earth with tlie corpses of Englishmen. Then good-bye to the Union Jack forever! The- war begins- with an. attack, instigated in-stigated by the English, on a Ru'san railroad station near the Afghan frontier. fron-tier. Russian soldiers and railroad men are murdered. The Russian people- demand war. The Czar hesitates. The French Republic sends a special military ambassador, and this decides him to declare war on England. Russian troops advance, and by a daring stroke seize Herat, in Afghanistan, Afghan-istan, called the key of India. France declares war on England af ter Russia. The other nations rema'n neutral, following the lead of Germany. Ger-many. The French Mediterranean, fleet leaves) Toulon, and maFses on the African Af-rican shore. The Sultan, contrary , to his promises to the English, permits the Russian fleet to pars the Dardanelles Darda-nelles pnd unite with the French. The Admiral of the British Mediterranean Mediter-ranean fleet bombards Toulon, believing believ-ing the French still there. The- combined com-bined Franco-Russian fleet comes up behind him and destroys every British j ship but one. Admirals Sir John Fish er and Lord Charles Boresford are killed. Lord Kitchener lands in Normandy, is surrounded by the French and captured cap-tured after half hia soldiers have been killed. -Lord Roberts is defeated and killed by the Russians at Kandahar. Every English . man. woman and child in India i;r slaughtered by the Hindus. Admiral Rawson, commanding the British Channel squadron, I? led off on a. wild goose- chape in the Irish sea. and returns to find the channel blocked by the Franco-Russian fleet. He tries to break through and loses every ship. He blows out his brains-. The French submarine boats do such fearful exe cution on the English shins that the French admiral orders them to stop. The French land at Brighton, in England. Lord Wolstdey and the Prince of "Wales vainly seek d-eath at the head of the few remaining Englishmen, Eng-lishmen, but are taken prisoners. The English die until their bodies carpet the Sussex Downs. The author regretfully regret-fully allows Colonel Marchand of Fa-shoda Fa-shoda fame to be killed on the- French side. The French army enters London and Queen Victoria dies. Not a single inch of territory outside of Great Britain is left to her. Ireland Ire-land becomes a republic. Canada joins) the United States, but the Philippines go to Japan. Let the reader ask himself if this is only a Frenchman's dream. i CONSIDERATIONS ON CANON LAW. (Freeman's Journal.) The chief characteristic which differentiates differ-entiates the rectors of our missions from the European idea of a parish priest is the necesisty on the part of our rector of raising all the mon-y for all the works for a parish. In European Euro-pean countries the first step is to obtain ob-tain a fund from a government, a municipality, mu-nicipality, a prince, or from some other similar source, through the bishop s influence, in-fluence, to erect a church, to endow it with enough for the maintenance of the requisite clergy, and to provide for the necessary expenses; then the parish par-ish priest has mainly to look alter the spiritual needs of his people. In this, country a priest goes out to a district allotted to him by the bishop, but in true gospel style without a puise. or wherewith to procure, even the ground on which to fix his own dwelling. His first thought is to interest those for whom he is to work in the purc-han: of ground on which to build a church, and, when this is secured, to make eon-tracts eon-tracts f. r the building. Nominally he may be associated with the bishop and vicar-general and a -couple of laymen as co-trustees in the control of the temporalities of his parish, but. practically practi-cally all the burden of raising the money devolves upon his pers.nvU efforts, ef-forts, the others may act as a ch-ck upon hi? expenditure' of it. His own personal emoluments are resiri'ted by diocesan regulations, under sanction of the Plenary Councils. Thus whilst he-may he-may be entitled to a ceitHin fixed salary, sal-ary, by diocesan direction, this is to come from his own exertion, and is not I at all guaranteed to him. Each year he is to collect it as hct he may; if I the revenues derived through his solicitations so-licitations suffice to meet it, well and good: but otherwise he can make no claim elsewhere for it. If he finds after all his exertions that he cannot maintain main-tain himself from the income obtained, his remedy is: to present the statement rf his trouble to the bishop, who is expected ex-pected to provide either by the enlargement en-largement of the district, or at times where this may be thought due to some personal reasons, by the transfer to another more suitable place, whilst I a further-experiment may be handed over to a more ambitious man. All these neds of every variety for rectory rec-tory and schools and hospitals explain the numberless ways to which resort is had by the rectors of missions for obtaining the required funds. Generally General-ly to them this is the most irksome of all their duties, and the most arduous. To them it would be a relief if they were forbidden to have recourse to picnics, pic-nics, excursions, fairs and similar entertainment. en-tertainment. The proper Way for the j obtaining of th necessary funds for all I parochial purposes should be the cli- rect contributions in church from the people whose benefit is sought unfor- tunately too often this is a Utopian de-i de-i pendence, and without the aid of the other resources many of the important wcrks of a parish must be stopped. It is however, imperative that nothing should be done w hich should entourage wrong-doing or excess, of any kind at such festivals. Evil must not be done that good may come. Above all no rector rec-tor has the right to refuse his ministrations ministra-tions especially of the sacraments, to those who are per. Free access must be provided for them to Mass and to instruction in Christian doctrine. Whilst no humiliation must be pur posely caused them because of their poverty, yet they cannot reasonably complain of not having all the conveniences conven-iences which are given to others. This is the most troublesome of all the knotty problems presented to our rectors. rec-tors. Constant demands are made upon them for large sums to meet the needs of the parish; many, for whose benefit the work is done, shirk their responsibility responsi-bility for their share of the burden, which they strive to lay entirely on the shoulders of a few willing ones. Experience for many yeara in dealing with, parishes in large cities enables us to say that generally one-fifth of a congregation con-gregation bears four-fifths of the burdens bur-dens of the parish. Yet there is no more frequent cause of discontent in a pariah par-iah than this most troublesome of all the rector's duties- of raiding the money to meet its indebtedness. It is not wonderful that where contractors are pressing the rector for money due, he should in turn be extra-pressing upon some of the parishioners whom he considers con-siders able to do much more than they are doing. The hardship of this extra pressure does not usually make itself felt very much in parishes in the larger cities, where such things do not easily come to the ears of the neighbors neigh-bors or are not noticed in the midst of the ruch of many busy lives. This pressure becomes a serious matter in smaller places, where every one's business busi-ness is readily canvassed by his neighbors, neigh-bors, and where greater attention is paid to the smaller grievances of life. It Is not astonishing that there should be frequent friction, which in the I course of time may amount to serious alienation on the part of some, even to the extent of insuperable objection to the rector's spiritual ministrations. From a legal standpoint, he has often done no more than the bulk of the parishioners may applaud him for doing. do-ing. Yet things at times come to such a pass that whereas no charge can be brought against him for violation of any law, or even of any principle of justice, yet the good of souls may require re-quire "for administrative reasons," hi3 transfer to another field of duty. The bishop may even be convinced that the discontented parishioners may have no stolid ground, for their alienation, yet he may see that this is insuperable and incompatible with the welfare of not a few souls. The law re-quires in such teases that the transfer shall not, as far as human wisdom can provide, cauae humiliation to one guilty of no wrong, and that the choice cf the new-field new-field of labor will be of such honorable honor-able place aa to do away with any reasonable rea-sonable expression of punishment. A FRIEND OF LAW. I |