The Sun.
London, England, 1869-02-26 00:00:00

THE CONVENT CASE.

For a score of days has the jury sat out the trial of
Saurin v. Starr. Yesterday the excitement in court, we
arc told, was intense, and Mr. Solicitor-General was lis•
tened to with great interest. He commencedhis speech our
Wednesday night. Apologising for the mean and con::
temptible trifles which had been brought before the court,.
he pointed out that as far as the plaintiff was concerned
these were necessary to her case. The issue to her was by.
no means a question of trifle. "Still," said he, "the:
time had not been wasted, for, however trivial.
and contemptible the details might appear, the
issue to Miss Saurin is one of social life or death. It is,
an issue whether she shall be permitted to continue in the
life to which she had devoted herself, and to which she is inti-1
mately wedded and passionately attached, and to which
she desires to consecrate whatever may be vouchsafed to
her of health, and life, and strength, or whether she shall
be flung back upon the world which she believed she bad
left for ever, and for which she is now utterly unfitted,
with a stain upon her character which no lapse of time,
can ever efface, and exposed to the contempt and dislike of
every well-regulated and religious member of the Roman
Catholic communion, after having been outraged—if her
story he true—with every ingenious accompaniment of
cruelty and oppression." There was another reason, Sir
iohn Coleridge went on to say, why her story was edify-
ing : first, as shewing that it is at least
possible to try a convent case, and to lay
bare the interior of the convent without revealing
the faintest possible trace of what is commonly called
" scandal ;" and next, that it strips off any veil of sanctity
with which the devout and heated imagination has been
found to clothe the so-called "religious life." To feed the
hungry and to clothe the naked, to teach the ignorant and
attend the sick and dying, to pray night and day to
Almighty God, to live simply by rule, and to use
the world as not abusing it—these are things, happily,
which Catholics and Protestants alike think right
and good, and are bound by the teaching of
their religions to practise. But to do this it is not
necessary to enter into a convent, and those who do
enter into a convent may find from this case that they do
but encounter temptations of a baser and a meaner nature.
Dragged into " the light of common day," judged of by
common understanding, this life loses all its romantic
character, and turns nut to be a very poor and ordinary
affair indeed. Little sins created by silly rules, foolishly
enforced, childish penances for childish faults, boots worn
round the neck-, and dusters worn upon the head, pins and
needles watch,d for as carefully as a miser counts up his silver
or his gold, all simplicity of character is destroyed by per-
r Anal and petty self-consciousness and self-watchfulness,
all independence of mind crushed out under abject
humiliation (which is a very different thing indeed from
true humility)—this is what, as it appears to us, convent
life has come down to in the 19th century--at all events,
as administered in the Convent of our Lady of Mercy at

In the powerful manner for which the Solicitor-General 15
notedhe went over the evidence, relating again the facts
and commenting upon them favour of his client. He
argued that she had been very harshly treated, and that
in respect of the letters which were withheld from the
plaintiff, Mr. Starr had told falsehoods. He adverted at
length on the cruelties which Mrs. Starr had committed,
the unkindness when Miss Saurin was in, the refusal to
supply sufficient clothing, the affair of the thimble, &c.
Was it not (he asked) unkind,unfeeling, and illegal to take
her and strip her as she was stripped ? He would not be
content, either, to accept nominal damages. "I submit ▪ that
nominal damages will not be a sufficient compensation for
Miss Saurin. The defendant's case necessarily is that Miss
Saurin was unfit' for the state of life to which she had
devoted herself, that she had no vocation for it, and tha7
from her conduct they were compelled for the benefit of the
community to put her out of the convent. But how d o you
account that every document and every incident in• her
conduct shews that, so far as she was concerned, she did
not agree with them, that she disliked or was unfit for
a conventual life. For two and a half years she was a
novice, during which time her temper was tried, penance,.
were inflicted, and a number of things were done that
test her fitness to go on with the life she had
undertaken. LTp to 1851 no one doubted she
was fitted for the life she had undertaken.
"The whole of the defence." he continued, "is want of
vocation, but there was no force in that part of the defence,
for there was no want of vocation discovered until 1860 or
1861 ; and that is very remarkable, because, if she gave
trouble after that time, then she gave none before ; and
why did they not discover it before? The necessary foun-
dation of the defence, when we come fairly to look at the
case, ml at fail altogether." Referring to the bishop's letter,
he pointed out how very serious the charges would seem to be
though the language was ambiguous. " I don't suppose
Miss Saurin is perfect. I am not one who believes that
she is that wonder. The world never saw a perfect per-
son, for I believe that she and women generally, like men,
have faults. I don't contend such nonsense as that she
has no faults, and when the defendants were asked
to explain them, I appeal to you whether the
explanations given were not the most childish.
Mrs. Starr, in the language she had used in these depol
sitions, was creating a false impression in the bishop's 11
mind with reference to Miss Saurin, and what right
tohasgive
an
si
Starr described the incidentwnigthte
rreetspaienc tt(
itanttt
the watch as a deposit of an extern, and a
on the part of Miss Saurin, by wishing
defraud the congregation, but can you believe otherwise
than that Mrs. Starr has told a tremendous lie about the
watch ? "

The Solicitor-General concluded his powerful address
to the jury at a quarter to two o'clock yesterday
afternoon, when the court rose.

Sir Dominic Corrigan has issued his address to the
electors of the city of Dublin. The Conservative candidate
has not yet been announced.
ROBBERY WITII VIOLENCE, AND " THE CAT,"..
At the Assizes at Newcastle, on Wednesday, three men,
Ralph Charlton, 34, Thomas Charlton, 24, and William
Fatkin, °l, all mincr3, having been found guilty the
previous day of as3aulEng and robbing Charlton Foster of
a sum of £l5 lOs., the moneys of the River Tyne Commis.
sionera, were sentenced by Sir W. Brett as follows :
Ralph Charlton to seven years' penal servitude, and the
other two to five years of the same punishment, and each
to receive eighteen lashes in addition.
DE ATI! OF MR. G. 17. BERGENROTIT. -- The
death of Mr. G. H. Bergenroth took place in Madrid on
Saturday, the 13th inst., from typhus fever. Mr. Bergen.
roth was well known to scholars as editor of some of the
volumes of " Calendars and Memorials of Early English
History," published under the direction of the Master of
the Rolls. He was for several years engaged in the search
andand csopllaeinc
re n of r
es
e ry e d lettersand
in
the Statearchivespapers
nf
s i
ni betweenaue
as. England3i
Mr
Bergenroth was a German by birth. He was btiliais
the pa4§4hatutnt mat= atSuthauGgi -