and then if any one can honestly say that it is no griev ance, and that he would not mind it if it were to befal himself and his children, we at least shall not be able to say that the case has been prejudged.

When a Protestant enters a workhouse as an inmate, his religious advantages and opportunities are materially increased. Hitherto most probably, considering the class from which he comes, he has not been a very assiduous church-goer; it is not likely that his personal intercourse with a clergyman has been very frequent; and his supply of religious books has hardly exceeded some casual tract. But now all this is changed. By the mere fact of his admission into the workhouse, he has been brought into the closest connection with his religion that could be devised for him. There is a religious service daily at which he is bound to be present; his Sunday Church is under the same roof with him, and he frequents it as a matter of course; religious books are provided for him, and there is a chaplain whose special duty it is to look after him. Before this, if he wished to speak to a clergyman, the probability is that in most cases he would have had to take the initiative; but now the pain of breaking the ice does not befall him, the mauvaise honte, so general amongst the English poor, need not stand in his way, the chaplain will seek him out and speak to him; and if he has any care at all for the religion in which he has been brought up, or if it is capable of affording him any consolation, he will now put it into practice, and he will receive comfort from it, if from it alone, as he becomes in his old age a pensioner on the compulsory alms of others. And if he has children about whose souls he feels any anxiety, he knows that they are not only receiving a fair education, in some cases an excellent one, but he is assured that they are being carefully and regularly instructed in the religion which he believes to be the true one. There is harm enough and corruption enough in work houses: the promiscuous assemblage of so many, and their freedom of intercourse must necessarily do a great deal towards bringing down the morality of all to the level of the more depraved; but as far as the Church of England has any religious machinery and organization, it is all brought to bear with the view of influencing religiously the workhouse system.

But if the pauper be a Catholic, what a contrast in this respect his position presents to that of a Protestant! All

this machinery which is a help to the latter, and appeals in every way to his religious associations and feelings, is as alien as possible to the convictions of the Catholit. The words that he hears, the hymns that are sung, the very look of the minister, all bring back to the mind of the Protestant any religious impressions he may have ever received; but these same things produce exactly the opposite effects on the mind of a Catholic. The words he hears, if they convey to him any meaning, very likely sound to him what the Church that he reveres has taught him to avoid as false doctrine, and the "parson" by no means personates the Church, is no persona ecclesiæ, to him. And in most cases, before he knows where he is, he is in the midst of this religious system. The board of guardians, the relieving officer, the master or matron, the wardsman, the chaplain, are all Protestants; if he finds a Catholic, it is in the same position with himself, and he must have not only a deep faith, but a resolute and fearless heart, to profess his religion under such circumstances. If he has not been forewarned that he need not go to the services of the Protestant Church, he will not be aware that he can claim exemption, and he will thus find himself present at religious services, which he has never in all his life regarded as the way in which he ought to worship God, at the same time that he is dissevered from all that he accounts holy and deserving of reverence; and he is therefore left in this dilemma, that he must thus continue, acting what his conscience tells him is the part of a renegade to the religious convictions in his soul, or else he must make a declaration of his faith, which, considering the influence of human respect, is little, if at all, short of heroic. The very organization that calls into life any latent sense of religion in the Protestant, is simply a snare to the conscience of a Catholic,

And how could it be otherwise? The two religions are held by all, for good or for evil, by friend or foe, to be poles asunder, and that which is most advantageous to the adherents of the one, will be most prejudicial to those who conscientiously believe in the other. Here indeed, what is one man's meat is another man's poison. Would not the Protestant think so if a Protestant or two were to be introduced into an Irish poor-house, and to find there none but Catholic authorities, a Catholic priest for chaplain, all the inmates attending Mass, and he

himself expected to do so unless he had the courage to declare himself an exception to all about him? Such a workhouse nowhere exists. In Ireland the law has carefully provided every safeguard for the religious freedom of a Protestant, though he should be the only one in the house; and rightly has it so provided; but how long must we wait before a Catholic in an English workhouse has the same religious liberty given to him that a Protestant has long enjoyed under the Irish poor law? Great as this contrast is between the religious provision made for the adult Catholic and the Protestant inmates respectively, the difference of treatment to which the children are subjected is very much more grievous. The result then of the boasted fairness of our Protestant legislation and Protestant government is, that there is one measure for the Protestant and another for the Catholic. What they would have done to themselves they show us by doing it for themselves where they have the power, as in Ireland; but the state of things in England shows that they have not done to others as they would be done by. In the appointment of chaplains for the army perfect religious equality has obtained; the committee of Privy Council on education treat all religions alike; but under the poor laws no such thing as religious equality exists in the country. In common honesty, and from an Englishman's horror of hypocrisy, let us remedy the evil now it is pointed out, or let us cease our professions of equal justice and the same laws for all the subjects of the Queen.

On the admission of an adult into a workhouse he is asked a number of particulars, which are entered by the master in a book termed the Indoor Relief List. Amongst

*Sec. 48 of the Irish Poor-Law, 1 and 2 Vict. cap. 46, enacts that "the commissioners shall take order for the due performance of religious service in the workhouses and for appointing fit persons to be chaplains; but nothing therein contained was to authorize the commissioners to appoint more than one fit person, being of the Established Church, and one being a Protestant Dissenter, and one being of the Roman Catholic Church, chaplains at any one time in any Workhouse; and the commissioners were to fix and regulate the salary of such chaplains." Russell, p. 30. It is needless to say that we consider of the very greatest value and importance the provision by which the chaplains are subject to the Poor-law Board only, and not to the various boards of guardians throughout the country.

such questions as, What is his age? Where was he born? he is asked, What is his religion? His replies are noted down, and then the book is shut up and put by. As far as any practical effect is concerned in the majority of cases, amongst which are to be included all the metropolitan workhouses, it is as though the entry had not been made. There is, it must be remarked, a variety of practice throughout England in this as in most other of the points we shall shortly notice. There are workhouses in which the priest is able to see all who are registered as Catholics, but such cases are unhappily exceptional, nor is there any means whatever of enforcing such a practice. On the contrary, the Act of Parliament is usually taken to mean that it requires a direct and personal demand on the part of the pauper, to enable him to see the priest. But, small as the advantage is, the existence of what we may call a Creed Register, the fact that each adult is asked on his admission what his religion is, and that his reply is recorded, is very important, as the foundation on which all new regulations, which attempt to secure religious liberty to the pauper, should be based. That this Indoor Relief List should be kept, is not ordered by Act of Parliament, but by an Order of the Poor Law Board of the 17th March 1847, and this only as binding the workhouses under* their jurisdiction. Wherever, therefore, the establishment for paupers is not a work house, or where the workhouse is exempt from the authority of the Poor Law Board, this Order is not obligatory, and the very first step has to be taken towards treating the inmate as if he had a religion. It is difficult to ascertain whether in these latter cases the Creed Register is kept or not, but it is believed that in the District Schools, where above all places it is of the greatest consequence that so vital a provision should be observed, no such thing exists. It is no doubt far easier to keep a list of the half dozen children or so, whose parents or kinsfolk have gone through the vexatious formalities required in order that the children may see a priest, than to enter after due enquiry the religions

* Under the Poor Law Amendment Act there are 610 unions and single parishes; under various local acts, Gilbert's Act, and the 43rd Elizabeth, there are 138 unions, &c., making a total throughout England and Wales of 748 unions, &c. In the schedules of the Order are enumerated 591 unions, &c.

of all in a document, which might before a Parliamentary Committee furnish startling evidence of the extent to which the proselytism of children has been carried on. We ask, as our first demand, the fairness and moderation of which none can gainsay, that the rule laid down by the Order of 1847, be extended to all workhouses and to all establishments for the reception of paupers. If it be a proper rule for some, it is proper for all. And as the Poor Law Board seem to have been endowed with very slight, if any, powers of enforcing their rules, it would be better that this rule should form a clause in an Act of Parliament-in the much-needed, long-sighed-for Act for the Amendment of the Poor Law.

There is a great deal more to be said as to the application of the system of registration to infants, but we will return to this portion of the subject, confining ourselves for the present, for the sake of clearness, to the condition of adults. Of these we have already said that, having been asked their religion, and that having been written down, which has taken as long and produced as much impression as the question whether they are married or single, widow or widower, the new inmate goes to join the other denizens of the workhouse; and that he is expected to be with them not only in their secular occupations, but also in their religious services, unless he makes a protest to the contrary. Let us now see, supposing his love for his religion to be of the deepest, and his courage the most undaunted, supposing fear and human respect not to exist in his heart, and that he is determined to avail himself to the utmost of every assistance of his own religion-let us see what is the most that the law permits him to enjoy.

The Act of Parliament runs thus: Nothing "shall oblige any inmate of any workhouse to attend any religious service celebrated in a mode contrary to the religious principles of such inmate ;" and it also provides" that it shall and may be lawful for any licensed minister of the religious persuasion of any inmate of such workhouse, at all times in the day, on the request of such inmate, to visit such workhouse for the purpose of affording religious assistance to such inmate.' Our Catholic pauper having availed himself of the first of these two provisions, to the extent of absenting himself from all services conducted by the chaplain, and having perhaps felt himself no little perplexed in conscience by his presence at prayers read