The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1848-07-25 00:00:00

July 25, MS.

POPISH RAPACITY AND MODERN
MONARCHISM.

An appeal has just come before the House of Lords of
a character so extraordinary as to deserve all the attention
which we can bespeak for it.
On the 13th July, 1843, Alexander M'Carthy, Esq.,
died in Cork, leaving ten children and £lOO,OOO. Two
of these children had previously entered a religious com-
munity—the Professed Nuns of St. Ursula, of Blackrock,
Cork. Maria was the first to take the veil, and she car-
ried with her to her spiritual consorts a portion of £l,OOO.
Her sister Catherine contracted a like alliance, and with
a similar dowry, in the year succeeding. Four years after
Mr. M'Carthy died intestate, so that his eldest son,
Alexander, claimed as heir-at-law, and the remaining
children became beneficially interested in the personal
property of the deceased as sole nearest of kin. A month
after his father's decease Alexander took out an adminis-
tration, and divided the effects amongst the family, but to
the exclusion of his sisters Maria and Catharine. In
consequence hereof, on the 29th of December, in the same
year, Maria executed a deed of assignment of all her dis-
tributive share or interest in the estate of her father " to
Cecilia Fulham and Margaret Lynch (Superiors), of
Blackrock, aforesaid, spinsters, and their executors, ad-
ministrators, and assigns"—a surrenderwhich was followed
by a similar act of her sister Catherine's for the use of the
same parties. The representative of the convent accord-
ingly sued the administrator for the shares in the estate
thus acquired by the community, but were defeated by a
decision of the Lord Chancellor of Ireland, on the Ist of
December, 1846. Against this decision has been brought
the appeal of which the hearing will be resumed to-day.
The question is, not what were the legal claims of the
sisters in their own persons, but what is the value of these
claims when transferred• to such parties and under such
circumstances as the pleadings disclose. A mass of de-
positions shows that it was never the wish of the sisters
that the property should thus pass into the hands of
strangers ; and that, as they had neither the need nor the
competency to acquire wealth for themselves, they were
willing and desirous that their shares should be absorbed
in the dividends of the rest of the family. At the first
interview which Alexander obtained with his sister
Catherine, after their father's death, she told him, on
learning there was no will, " that she was sure the con-
vent would set up a claim to their shares ; that she was
bound by her vows to do as she was ordered ; but that the
Roman Catholic Bishop of Cork had power to authorise
her to dispose of her property as she thought.good."
For this authorization she subsequently applied ; but,
afer being bandied about, between the titular prelate and
the superior of the convent, she was at length told that
she " must observe her vow of obedience." On her
intimating gently that a court of equity would surely
protect her from the compulsion of distributing her pro-
perty against her conscience, the bishop is stated in the
pleadings to have replied—" If these are your ideas,
madam, let me tell you, I have lawyers in my family as
well as you, and this is too good a thing not to be looked
after." With regard to the execution of the assignments
in question, an express statement of Maria is alleged that
she signed the deed " with the greatest pain," and that
the " operation of her vow was like the presentation of a
pistol by a highwayman." Catherine's condition was not
dissimilar. When one of her brothers called to see her,
he was told by Maria " that she was undergoing punish-
ment." Subsequently, however, she did come down,
bearing " all the appearance of having suffered much,
both mentally and corporeally," when she stated that " a
pen might as well have been put into the hands of a
corpse as into hers when she signed the deed ;" and ad-
ded that she had "accidentally procured a book in the
convent containing the rules of the order, and that she
had found therein that the punishment awarded on the
continent for a serious crime was to be immured between
two walls in a standing posture, and be fed on bread and
water, and that in some cases parties had been known to
die from the punishment."
These extracts will lead our readers to a due apprecia-
tion of the audacity or the avarice which has impelled
Cecilia Fulham and Margaret Lynch into the presence of
a British House of Lords. It can never be decided that
the property belongs to the Blackrock Nunnery. The
question at issue is the civil competency of a nun, which
should be settled wholly one way or wholly the other.
If Catherine and Maria M'Carthy have enough of civil
life left to execute a deed, they have enough left to enjoy
property, all the ordinances of St. Ursula and all the
other saints in the calendar to the contrary notwithstand-
ing. They cannot be alive as regards the power of con-
veyance, and dead as regards the power of possession.