The Sun.
London, England, 1868-08-04 00:00:00

THE SUN, LONDON, TUESDAY EVENING, AUGUST 4, 1868.

CATHOLIC EDUCATION FUND•

The following is the second report of the
Westminster Diocesan Education Fund, re-
cently issued by the Archbishop of West-
minster :

There is, however, one drawback with regard
to the ultimate benefit of the work, viz., the
great work of kind and judicious supervision
when the children leave the school. Many of
them are orphans, without a friend in the
world ; others have bad homes in either case,
if a girl from any cause (and very often it is
not her own fault) leaves the situation where
she has been placed, having no friend to whom
she can turn, her only alternative is to enter
a low, cheap lodging-house, where she is im-
mediately exposed to bad companionship and
to all the nameless evils which follow in its
train. If some ladies from charity would look
after such girls, and thus assist in or undertake
this portion of the work, they would be instru-
mental in preserving many young souls most
dear to the Sacred Heart of Jesus."

3. Poor-Law Schools.

(1.) Under this head may be classed S.
Mary's Orphanage at North Hyde, inasmuch
as it is certified under the Poor-Law Board
for the reception of boys from Workhouse and
District Schools, although it also receives boys
of other classes.

The School contains 170 boys. The late
Vicar-General, the Very Rev. Canon O'Neil,
whose long life of good works has endeared his
memory to the diocese at large, bestowed on
this school his special care. It may be said that
through him it has been raised from a state of
less than inefficiency to a high point of excel-
lence, in good order, peace, and health. It
was he who introduced into the school the
Brothers of Mercy, and to their kind, wise,
and patient care, the present satisfictory state
of the school is immediately to be ascribed.
One of Canon O'Neal's last acts was to build
another wing to the school, capable of receiv-
ing 100 additional boys. In the new building
are two large and excellent dormitories, with
complete ventilation. The work was executed
from the designs of Messrs. Willson and Nicholl,
and has been thoroughly well done. The cost
amounted to £2,100, of which £l,OOO has been
contributed by the Diocesan Education Fund.
In November last a full set of brass instru-
ments was provided for the school; and in the
last fewmonths a full band has been trained,
which has already attained great proficiency.
The moral and religious state of the school is
highly to be commended.
(2.) St. Mary's, Walthamstow.
This school, for girls, transferred from
Workhouse and District Schools, is capable of
receiving about 100 children. It contains, at
this moment, only 25. The cause of this is
to be found in the unjust conduct of those who
detain our poor Catholic children in the Pro-
testant District Schools. Year by year, till
our patience is wearied, we have striven to
obtain the bare justice due to our Catholic
poor. Year by year, Bills have been intro-
duced into Parliament, and either mutilated
at last, or thrown over to another session.
It is right here to say that from the late and
present presidents of the Poor-Law Board, and
from their officials, we have met with the most
kind and equitable treatment ; and also that
the Guardians of the Strand Union, of Chelsea,
Fulham, and of St. Giles's, have manifested
an equitable and kindly disposition.
The children at Walthamstow are in every
way in a very satisfactory condition. No one
who has not watched the children received from
the 'Protestant district schools can conceive
the profound mental and spiritual injury suf-
fered by our poor Catholic children, When
they are released at an early age, they more
easily regain the practice and spirit of their
faith ; but in many cases, and almost always
in the case of those who are grown to a certain
age, the difficulty of training them back to the
practice of their religion is very great.
(3.) St. Helen's School, Brentwood.
This most interesting work, for boys under
seven years of age, has been formed by the
generosity of Miss Tasker, to whose charity
the diocese and the poor already owe so much.
On the transfer of the first set of boys from
the Strand Union School to North Hyde, it
was found that some were too young for the
Orphanage, and some almost infants. It was
necessary, therefore, to provide a school ex-
clusively for boys under seven years of age.
This has been completed, under the care of
the Very Rev. Canon Kyne, at Brentwood,
in a building enlarged and adapted to the
purpose, on the land immediately adjoining the
church and presbytery.
4. IV-oat-certified Schools.

(1.) Elizabeth House, Hampstead, under
the Sisters of Providence of the Immaculate
Conception.
The school contains 20 orphan girls.
The zealous community have lately, by their
own efforts, and on their own responsibility,
purchased a freehold property consisting of
house and grounds, for the extension of their
work.
(2.) S. Elizabeth's Home for Poor Children,
attached to the Franciscan Convent, Portobello-
road, Bayswater.
The Franciscan Sisters have built upon their
own land a house capable of holding 80 poor
children, of whom they will undertake the
management. The building is roofed in, and
will be completed, it is hoped, by the Feast of
S. Francis in next October. The Sisters, by
collecting in the diocese, have already raised
£1,600. A further sum of £370 is required
for the cost of the new building. This amount
they have received partly from the charity of
the faithful and partly from the generosity of
those who, though not united with us in all
things, have shown a kind and ready will to
help them in this good work.
lII.—In the Report of last year we pub-
lished Pupil Teachers. In
rud22 schoolmasters have
a scheme for the encouragement of
tche re t icfiocuartseed
ofM
theaste asters e
aa
received a grant of £2ll Bs. 2d., and 16 pupil
teachers have received £B5. The importance
of this application of the Diocesan Education
Fund is very great, and will be fully appre-
ciated by all who have watched the vicissitudes
of our education in the last twenty years.
From the letter of the Principal of S.
Mary's Training College, it will be seen that,
at the examination of the pupil teachers this
year, out of 38 candidates, 7 were placed in the
first class and 18 in the second. This satis-
factory result may be in a great measure
ascribed to the prudence of the Poor School
Committee in forming the preparatory class.
Lastly; a suin of £331 18s. 3d. has been
given in miscellaneous grants, towards the
maintenance, clothing, and education of desti-
tute children.
In our efforts to provide for individual cases
of destitute children, we especially need the
help of all charitable persons ; and we are the
more encouraged to ask it by the knowledge,
that in the year before last many responded
to the appeal we then made. Instances, too,
are known to us of persons who secretly, out
of their small means, and it may be truly said
out of their poverty, with much self-denial
undertook to maintain a poor child in some
of our schools, and continue to do so to this
day. We would earnestly invite all who have
the power to do the same ; and to encourage
their children to learn betimes the happiness
of denying themselves for the poor, and of
caring for the salvation of souls, by under-
taking, either singly, or by uniting together
with others, to maintain a destitute child.
IV.—ln bringing this report to an end, we
cannot refrain from saying that the work of
education vital at all times, is even more urgent
now. It is certain that systems of education
will be hereafter tried, and perhaps forced
upon the country, which will render all our
efforts to maintain a pure Christian and religi-
ous education all the more imperatively neces-
sary. The people of England in all their divi-
sions are, nevertheless, to a great extent,
agreed in regarding the union of religion and
education to be essential. They still believe
that education must develope not the intel-
ligence only, but the conscience And the will ;
that this cannot be done by instruction alone ;
and that it can be done only by Christianity
pervading the whole training of the chilli and
the whole discipline of the school. Cathoics,
of all men, are bound by every principle and
by every instinct cf their faith to this obvious

truth. But holding it, we must act upon it.
We must show that we mean what we say,
by doing what we declare to be necessary. If
we be negligent or slack, we shall have only
ourselves to blame, when the relentless ad-
vance of secular education and local rating
shall hereafter pass over us.
We began our report by rejoicing over the
great and steady growth of numbers in our
schools. We must end it by an expression of
profound anxiety for the thousands of our poor
children who as yet are perishing in the streets.
Every day brings ns evidence of the multi-
tudes who for want of training are lost. May
God so awaken us to this terrible havoc of
souls, and of our poor innocent little ones, that
we never relax or give ourselves rest till, by
an effort persevering and wide-spread through-
out London, we shall have gathered the last
of our poor children under the influence and
guidance of a thorough Catholic education.
There remains but one other topic. At the
beginning of this fund many engaged their
generous assistance for three years, some for
five, some for more. We enter now on our
third year. At the end of it our income will
be reduced by one-half. But in the last two
years our work and our liabilities have been
greatly increased. We earnestly pray, for the
love of God and of souls, that you renew your
subscriptions for another three years. A little
self-denial, a trifling privation, will be enough
to enable most of you to do so with ease.
Happier for you if it cost you some sensible
denial of yourselves for the sake of our Divine
Master. Deal generously with Him, and He
will not be outdone in generosity. Your offer-
ings will return upon you and yours a hundred
fold in every good gift of grace, and in the
eternal reward of His kingdom.

HOUSEHOLD SUFFRAGE AND THE
ANGLICAN ES7ABLISHMENT.

From the old Parliament, on the eve of
dissolution, the minds of men in hope or fear
are turned to the new ; some regret the consti-
tuencies created by the Reform Act of 1832,
others contemplate with joy the prospects of
more vigorous action from household suffrage.
The Reform Bill of 1832 was undoubtedly a
revolution in the constitutional balance ; it
weakened the power of the Crown, of the
House of Peers, and of the Anglican Establish-
ment, and it threw the governing power prac-
tically into the hands of the middle classes.
This balance, disturbed by the Reform Bill
of 1832, will, as it seems to us, be in a mea-
sure readjusted by household suffrage ; the
larger admission of the Democratic element
into the franchise will indirectly increase the
power of the landed interests and of the great
employers of labour. Middle-class predomi-
nance, exclusively represented under the Re-
form Bill of 1832, and destined to perpetua-
tion by Mr. Gladstone's "hard and fast line,"
is rendered next to impossible by household
suffrage. The masses of the people admitted
to the franchise are more open to influences,
good or evil, than a class so self-sufficient and
so exclusive as that from which the new Re-
form Bill has wrested the supreme power.
The question to be considered is, and it is an
exceedingly grave one, How are the masses to
be influenced for good ?—how are the evils
to which Democracies are prone to, in every
country and in every age, to be averted ? Com-
munism, war, revolution, are the disturbing
elements in a State where power is confided
exclusively to the hands of the people, but in
a nation like England, where ancient institu-
tions and time-honoured traditions are deeply
rooted—where hereditary monarchy snd a
vigorous aristocracy flourish, the admission of
the people to a larger share of power is not
likely to produce the mischief predicted of
pure Democracies. There is danger, undoubt-
edly, and more especially on account of the
almost entire absence, in the labouring classes
of England, of religion, the great promoter of
order and of the stability of States ; but it
is a danger which exists, whether the people
be excluded from political power or not. To
treat them as the outcasts of society is to
make them so; to put confidence in them may
be one step towards reconciling them to reli-
gion. One thing, however, is evident, that
this conversion to Christianity of the masses
of the working people admitted by the new
Reform Bill to a large share in the govern-
ment of the country cannot be effected by the
Anglican Establishment. Between the Esta-
blishment and the people there is no sympathy,
no point of contact ; Anglicanism is the reli-
gion of the respectable classes ; it does not de-
mand much from them nor give much in re-
turn beyond the stamp of respectability. It
allows as great a latitude in faith as in practice.
With the least possible inconvenience, the
sacrifice of two hours once a week, and on occa-
sions a handsome subscription or two, men
may pass their lives as honoured members
of the Established Church, and on their death
be entitled to a decent funeral And to a lauda-
tory headstone in a conspicuous position of a
country graveyard.
Now, such a religion—of course, we are
speaking of Anglicanism proper, not of Ritual-
ism in any of its shapes of Catholic develop-
ment—has not hinc, in common with the work-
ing classes. How they are to be converted is
another question, which we cannot enter into
here ; but at least so much is certain that in a
Parliament, in which the voice and feelings of
the masses of the people of Great Britain and
Ireland find a response or exercise an influence,
the Established Church, whether in Ireland or
in England,. is doomed. It has struck no
roots into the soil ; it is an exotic which
flourishes in the hothouse of social influence ;
it is true to its original seed—Royal favour.
As long as the middle class were in the exclu-
sive enjoyment of political power, the Anglican
Church was sure to flourish, for it was closely
connected by interest, by tradition, by family
ties, by property with this large and influential
class. It had gradually collected around it
also many sympathies—a little of the moss of
antiquity was visible here and there at the foot
of its walls, in retired corners and pleasant
nooks of the country. In the golden age
of English literature the Anglican Church was
enriched with an accidental glory, in the same
way as it is still indebted for many of its
most sacred reminiscences to a liturgy not
its own, and to ancient cathedrals and village
churches• raised for a worship which, in its
pride, it denounced as alien. But what avail
are mere reminiscences, decaying traditions,
or class-interests to a Church which does not
possess the hearts of the people, and has lost
its hold on the intellect of the country? With-
out roots in the soil, can it Stand for an instant
against the wrench of the popular will ? Like
a tree whose roots have been cut, it may wither
for awhile above the ground, but the day is no
longer distant when its remains will be carted
away. And shall we regret the disappearance
of this great heretical Establishment, though
under its ruins the remnants of unadulterated
Protestantism remain, or more hideous forms
of error spring up ? Why should we do so,
for is it not itself the breeder of heresies ? Is
it not sacrificing to the spirit of infidelity in
its own ranks, and to the intellectual unbelief
of the day, the fragments of the Christian
faith it long held as divine ? 'Whether the
Parliament of household suffrage be destined
to work out good or evil in the country, this
much at least is certain, that it will not long
endure that the Anglican Establishment, the
Church of a class, shall enjoy the rights of
a National Church. Freed from the shackles
of an Establishment which they loathe, and
from a position which is degrading to them,
the Ritualists will gradually but surely find
their way home to the Catholic Church, the
sole representative of dogmatic truth in the
country. At the removal of this ancient adver-
sary, at all events a clearer field will be opened
to the Catholic Church, and she, brought
once more face to face with the nation so
long estranged from her presence, will know
how to reconcile the masses to the doctrines
of a lost Christianity.—Westminster Gazette.

A bill exempting property of blind persons,
amounting to $3,000, from taxation, has been defeated iu
he Connecticut Legislature.