The Sun.
London, England, 1867-01-17 00:00:00

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article in the number for December last, under the
very Arcadian title of " Irish Birds'-nests."
(Laughter.) In Ireland there are no less than 31
what I may call prisons for little children, and
thousands and tens of thousands of English money
are collected every year for the purpose of founding
and supporting refuges, orphanages, ragged-schools,
nurseries, convent relief funds, ragged school relief
funds, sleeping asylums, and " birds'-nests." for the
sole purpose of perverting poor little Catholic
children. (Oh, oh.) There is one of these " birds'-
nests," in Kingstown, and a Catholic who visited it
last summer held this conversation with the
manager :

" Have you many Roman Catholic children
here?—They are all Roman Catholic children..
How many are there ?—One hundred and fifty-sir.
Have their parents turned Protestant ?—No ; per-
haps one or two. Do the parents object to the
children being brought up Protestants ?—lt would
be no use if they did ; they know it will be done
when they bring them in here. What is the reason
that the parents send their children here ?—Princi-
pally poverty. Have you any difficulty in getting
the Roman Catholic religion out of those children's
heads?—Yes—(load and prolonged cheering)—the
greatest difficulty sometimes, but it is our first en-
deavour; all our efforts are directed to it ; con-
troversy is the first lesson of this school." (Shame.)
I have no desire to bring the name of any per-
son who in private life may be estimable and
of good intentions before such a meeting as
this, and therefore in the example lam about
to give I suppress the names of those concerned
and refer you to the Month. There was a poor woman
named Roney, who had three daughters, and she was in-
duced to go before the magistrates and give up her chil-
dren to a Protestant lady to be put into a "birds'-nest"
Some time after, her conscience reminding her night and
day—as I have no doubt it did, being a Catholic—of the
sin she had committed and the peril to which she had ex-
posed her children, she made an application to recover
them, which application was refused. (Shame.) At last
she applied to the Court of Queen's Bench, and then the
lady wrote to the matron of the " birds'-nest"—" Madam,
—Please to give Mrs. Roney her children, on paying you
the expenses incurred for them ;" and in the same hand-
writing came—" Mrs. Roney, Dr. to the Birds'-nest Insti-
tution, for one year and six months, £33155." (Laughter.)
One other case. A poor woman named Hogan put two
boys into a refuge, intending, as many of these credulous
and self-trusting parents do, to take them out before any
mischief could happen, believing the children to be too
young to suffer perversion, that the faith in them was too
vivid to be easily extinguished, that the time would be but
short until she could recover them and put them again
under Catholic instruction. Year by year she was unable
to do it, because she was unable to support them. At last
she demanded them, and was refused. She then wrote a
letter uuder direction—a lawyer's letter—and the secretary
wrote to her, saying the children should be given up to
her on payment, as by agreement, of £6 a year, that was
£9O. I grieve to add that one of the boys was irretrievably
perverted. Such is the way in which a minority can act
towards a majority. I must add another fact. There is a
sleeping asylum, where boys aro received and taught trades,
and I have no doubt are treated kindly, as far as the mere
kindness of material charity; but there is a rule that any
boy who leaves without finding a substitute to be perverted
cannot take with him his clothes. To show you the kind
of flowers that flourish beneath the trees on which
the birds' nests hang, one Scripture-reader writes, " We
have here the rare phenomenon of a Romish congregation
very ready, even well-disposed, to oppose their priest. Out
of the Island and South Coast Extension Society's report I
take these words :—" The people of this island have been
latterly more willing to receive instruction. The loss of
their potato crop has humbled them. (Laughter, and
" Shame !") An Anglican clergyman of a true and manly
heart, the Rev. G. Webster, Chancellor of Cork, wrote that
he was an eye-witness on Sunday morning of large quan-
tities of bread being given to Roman Catholicsfor learning
a verse of Scripture, and these same people in his presence
went away cursing the persons who gave them the bread
and taught them the verse. This is done by Greatßritain
—a country which, above all others, proclaims just dealing
to every man in matters of conscience, in a land which is
entirely Catholic, devotedly Catholic, always and inter-
changeably Catholic--(cheers)—in a Catholic land that has
been spoiled of all its endowments, reduced to the utmost
poverty, which out of that poverty has, since the beginning
of this century, expended five millions of money in covering
the face of the land with Catholic churches, Catholic con-
vents, Catholic schools, Catholic works of charity, of every
kind of magnificent proportions--these people are so treated
by those who possess the wealth that once was theirs.
(Cheers.) I wish no more than this, that that religious
minority had to support its own pastors, build its own
churches, maintain its own schools, and that it had less
overflow of wealth to use in the perversion of little Catho-
lic children. (Applause. I will add a few words from the
" Life of Archbishop Whately," recently published. Under
his own hand we have positive proof that the system of
education in Ireland was designed by him to undermine
and enfeeble the faith of the Irish people. I will read the
words of one of the most philosophical and greatest states-
men Englhnd has produced. In the year 1795 Mr. Burke
spoke thus :—" In Ireland particularly the Roman Catholic
religion should be upheld in high respect and veneration,
and should be in its place provided with all the means of
making it a blessing to the people who profess it." (Cheers.)
Again, he said, " Let them (that is the Irish) grow lax,
sceptical, careless, and indifferent with regard to religion,
and so sure as we have an existence it is not an Anglican
or a Scottish Church, but Jacobinism which will enter
into the breach." (Applause.) And I add, show me an
Irishman that has lost his faith, and I will show you a
Fenian. (Prolonged cheering.) Every lax, sceptical
Irishman is a Fenian. The inundation that is now settling
upon Ireland is not a flush of water from the coast of
France, but the Gulf stream, which traverses the Atlantic
from the shores of America. (Applause.) For this
reason I rejoice that we have passed from the iron and
brazen period into one which, if it be not golden, at least
is silver, that we are coming to a time when equality,
justice, fairness, equity, consideration for the conscience,
the heart, the feelings of Catholics is pervading thesociety
of England and Ireland. (Applause.) That it is pene-
trating into the Legislature, that it is directing the course
of public events, that it is softening the hearts of the
administrators of public laws, that as sure as the frost
which binds hard the ground at this hour will give way
at the genial approach of spring, so the present temper of
men's minds will, whether they have the intention or not,
give way before the warmer and balmier influences of a
more Christian and a more equitable spirit- (Applause.)
The year 1866 has closed with a universal shaking of the
anhaltei
Intshoaft
wt hhei
oeharwtht;e
thTohuegr
he
ti stoo nbee
tphoei nf
et e
bailee
ente
ofu neml4o
thevo-
Holy See. (Much applause.) The Vicar of our Divine
Master stands by a power which depends not on emperors,
Inegisthelawtuaterers,(onhoereurup)o,neutahtaeiwneildl
feTrrooenu.dylinaesiteiews,enlidornugpuopno
by the Providence of God. It is the sole and only point
of stability in the world. If nations are to be stable it is
justice is to be done the religion of men
minujsutsbeticere and if
ed. Look at Australia and Canada. They
are peaceful and prosperous because perfect equality pre-
vails between Catholic and Protestant. The mother
country has to learn a lesson from her daughters. In con-
clusion, Dr. Manning said he hoped the result of the re-
union would be an increased interest in education, and in-
creased effort to promote it. " They that are learned shall
shine as the brightness of the firmament, and they that
instruct many to justice, as the stars to all eternity." Tile
Archbishop sat down amid much applause.

MURDERING THE WRONG MAN. The Court of
Assize sitting at Grenoble has just sentenced to 20 years'
hard labour a mountebank named Stenegre, for the murder
of one Rappelin, at a village fair in the neighbourhood.
There had been a quarrel in the course of the day, and at
night Stenegre, who had been badly beaten, went in search
of his antagonist. He didnot find him, but falling in with
Rappelin, who wore the same kind of dress, he used his
knife upon him with fatal effect.

FRENCH ACADEMY OF SCIENCES.—At the last
tShitetinygeaMr,
and Chxtevr.
DuneueilatOoaky the chair as president for
was appointed vice-president
in his stead by 27 votes against 23 given to MM. Bertrand,
Dupin, Charles, Serret, Fizeau, and de Tessan. A paper
was received from MM. Woehler and H. Ste. Claire
Devillo on graphitoid boron, an element which
they thought they had obtained in the shape
of hexagonal laminto of a pale copper colour ; but
this, they now tell us, was a mistake, the sub-
stance in question being, not pure boron, but a
combination of boron and aluminium. It is obtain-
' able by treating amorphous boron with aluminium at
very moderate heat, or else by keeping melted aluminium
in contact with the vapours of chloride of boron. Dr. Carus
sent in a note on the invasion of cholera which
took place last year at Zwickau, a town of Saxony
of 22,432 inhabitants. Some measures having been
taken by the Government to protect the house
of correction of that town from the epidemic, it hap-
pened to the surprise of every one that, while 250 persons
were attacked with the disease in the immediate vicinity of
the said establishment, and 119 of these died, there did not
occur a single case among the 1,286 prisoners, though some
of the functionaries were seized with the malady. This
extraordinary result, Dr. Carus informs us, was obtained,
not by administering medicines of any kind what-
ever, but solely by strict sanitary regulations, good diet,
and keeping up the spirits of the prisoners. If such was
indeed the result of these sanitary prescriptions, it is
certainly to be regretted that the advantages of thesystem
should have been reaped by the scum of humanity. M. do
P3rville sent in a description of a new electrophorous.
This is the third that has seen the light in the course of the
last two months.