The Sun.
London, England, 1853-06-22 00:00:00

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SUN OFFICE, Seven, o'clock.

IMPERIAL PARLIAMENT.

HOUSE OF COMMONS—(THIS DAY.)
The SPEAKER took the chair at twel're o'clock.
EPISCOPAL AND CAPITULAR ESTATES BILL.
The Marquis of BLANDFORD brought in this bill,
which was read a first time, and ordered to be read a
second time on Wednesday the 6th of July.
PRIVATE BUSINESS.

The Lords' amendments to the Leeds and Whiteha.
Roads Bill, and the Limerick Corporation Bill were con.
sidered and agreed to.
The following bills were considered and ordered to be
read a third time :---Crieff Junction Railway ; Galway
Harbour ; Galway Improvement ; Limerick Improve-
ment; North and South-Western (Hampstead and City
Junction) Railway ; South Devon and Tavistock Rail-
way ; United Guarantee and Life Assurance Company ;
Wakefield and Sheffield Road ; Westport Port and
Harbour ; Liverpool, Crosby, and Southport Railway.

PETITIONS.

Petitions were presented against the Nunneries In.
spection Bill, by Mr. Miall, from Oldham ; Mr. D. Sey-
mour, from Sunderland; Mr. Thicknesse ; Sir George
Strickland, from Preston ; Mr. O'Flaherty, from a place
in Irela:nd ; Mr. M'Cann, from Drogheda ; Mr. Swift,
from Wandsworth, in Surrey ; Mr. John Fitzgerald,
from places in the county of Clare ; Mr. P. O'Brien,
from a place in King's County ; Mr. Blackett, from
Newcastle-upon-Tyne ; Mr. Duncombe, from Islington ;
Mr. Bowyer, from various places both in England and
Ireland ; Mr. F. Scully, from various parishes in the
county of Tipperary ; Mr. G. H. Moore, from the
Catholic married women of Great Britain and Ire-
land ; Mr. Ingram, from Teignmouth ; Mr. Bass,
from Derby ; Mr. Sullivan, from a place in
Ireland ; Mr. M`Mahon, from places in the county of'
Wexford ; Mr. Monsell, from different places in Eng-
land, Ireland, and the Channel Islands ; Sir James
Graham, from Carlisle and several other places,- includ-
ing one from 22,000 Roman Catholics in London ; Mr.
Sergeant Shee, from places in the county of Kilkenny ;
Mr. P. Urquhart, from Westmeath • Mr. Bright, from
Manchester ; Mr. V. Brown, from places in the county
of Kerry ; Mr. Cobden, from various places in York-
shire ; Lord J. Russell, from Newhall, in Essex ; Lord
Edward Howard, from places in Wales and the south of
England, and 400 ladies who are at present the inmates
of convents, or who; had been educated in convents.
Amongst the signatures to the latter were one lady
who had three sisters, two aunts, and fourteen cousins
professed nuns ; another, who has two sisters and seven-
teen cousins nuns ; and a third, who had three daughters
two sisters, and 14 cousins nuns, who all highly approved
of the monastic life • Mr. H. G. Berkeley, from Bristol
and Clifton ; Mr. Fagan, from an aggregate meeting of
the Roman Catholics of Ireland, assembled at the Ro-
tunda in Dublin, and signed on behalf of the meeting by
Sir Thomas Esmonde, Bart., as chairman, and by James
O'Ferrall, Esq., Richard Davey, Q.C., and Jas. Burke,
Esq., as hon. secretaries ; and further, to move that it
be read by the Clerk at the table of the house. On the
motion of the hon. member, this petition was read by
the Clerk at the table. Mr. Cardwell, from 50,000 of
the Catholic inhabitants of Liverpool ; Sir J.Walmsley,
from 7,000 of the Catholic inhabitants of Leicester; Mr.
Berkeley, from places in Worcestershire ; Mr. Lucas,
from places in the county of Down, and a number of
Roman Catholic bodies in England--in all,loo petitions;
Mr. V. Scully, from places in the county of Cork ; and
Mr. C. G. Duffy, from Londonderry, and one from Bel-
fast, bearing 12,000 signatures.
Petitions in favour of the bill were presented by Mr.
J. Hastie, from Paisley ; Mr. Frewen, from places in
Sussex ; Mr. Muntz, from Birmingham ; Mr. Gore
Langton, from Bristol ; Mr. Warner, from Norwich ;
Mr. Millie, from Inverness ; Mr. Bouverie, from Kil-
marnock; Mr. Spooner, from places in Warwickshire
and Worcestershire ; Mr. Walter, from Nottingham ;
Mr. Forbes, from a place in Scotland ; Mr. Cowan,
from Edingburgh and Glasgow ; Mr. A. Hastie, from
parishes in Glasgow ; Mr. J. Berkeley, from Cheltenham
Mr. W. Kinnaird, from Perth ; Mr. T. Chambers,
from Wolverhampton and several places in Scotland and
the north ; Colonel Blair, from Kilmarnock.
Sir E. FILMER presented a petition from the inha-
bitants of Blackheath, in favour of ocean penny postage.
Mr. T. DUNCOMBE presented a petition from Fins-
bury, against the employment of the police as spies.
I'lr. HADFIELD presented a petition from 16 build-
ing societies in Manchester, against the Registration of
Assurances Bill, and also a petition from Tunbridge
Wells against the Education Bill.
Mr. A. PELLATT presented petitions from North-
amptonshire and other counties, against the Education
Bill.

Sir J. PAKINGTON presented a petition from
Droitwich, complaining of the restrictions placed upon
the import of salt into India, and praying the house to
take steps to remove those restrictions, as they were in-
jurious to trade and commerce.

DROPPED ORDERS.
The dropped orders were re-appointed.
RECOVERY OF PERSONAL LIBERTY BILL,

- - ---
On the order of the day for the second reading of this
!I

Sir R. H. INGLIS rose to move that the bill be
read a second time, and in doing so the hon. baronet
directed the attention of the house to the fact that
scarcely any of the petitions which had been
presented to-day contained the name of the bill.
This was a bill for the recovery of personal liberty in
certain cases, and in no way applied to nunneries in par-
ticular. It was intended, of course, that it should apply
to the abuses of such institutions, but it contained
nothing that could be in any way offensive to the pro-
fessors of the Roman Catholic religion. No one
would deny the possibility of the existence of
abuse, nor would any one shrink from the per-
formance of his duty in the event of such abuses
being established. Well, then, hecontended that a priori
—the existc ice of monastic institutions, where persons
of tender years were taken in, for the purpose of.
religious training, proved that abuses prevailed, and
since the Council of Trent had decided that no one
should be forced or kept in a convent against his or
her will, ho was at a loss to understand why the bill
shouid be resisted by Roman Catholics. A similar law
prevailed in many Roman Catholic countries on the Con-
tinent, and all that the promoters of this bill asked was,
simply, that the same protection of the law should be
extended to England. There were 300 nunneries
or monastic institutions in this country, and
who knew but what there were many persons
confined in them who were sighing for their personal
liberty. But though that was admitted, it was said the
law as it now stood was quite sufficient to meet such
isolated cases, and there was no necessity whatever for
any special legislation. The bill was not to extend only
to Roman Catholic institutions but to all religious houses
where persons were detained against their will, and he
contended that the existing
law wasinsufficient
the abuses that such institutions were liable to.
to meet

Mr. PHINN was bound to say that the bill, irre-
spective of religious questions, was as unconstitutional
as any that had ever been submitted to the house.

(Hear.) He felt it humiliating that any lawyer should
have proposed a, measure which began with a false recital,
and terminated in a provision which was destructive of
the first principle of English law—that every man's
house was his castle. He challenged the hon. mover,
as well as any lawyer in the house, to point to one sip-
gle instance in which the courts of law had been baffled
in the way in which the hon. member had suggested.
He (llr. Phinn) contended that the writ of habeas
corpus was still issued in a manner to facilitate the

liberty of the subject. (Hear.) It was impossible
to shut one's eyes to the fact that religious houses, not
only of Roman Catholics, but of Protestants who played
at Roman Catholicity, under the control of persons of
eminence in the Church of Fngland, and receiving part of
its emoluments, had very much increased of late years.
The irritation and angry feeling in the country against
them; however, was to be attributed to the practices at
the Protestant Institution at Plymouth, which was
under the patronage of an English bishop ; and the
Agapemone, or Abode of Love, at Taunton, which also
belonged to the Established Church. (Hear, hear.) The
existence of then societies had been dexterously used as