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    oblige his personal acquaintances , and the subject was heard of no more . Is that the courage or the principle of a Liberal representative f The man useful in the House of Commons would be one who , cautious as well as bold , would never allow a trick of finance or jx > licy to pass without , reprobating and exposing it . The Exeter Hall meeting was important , although , in a platform sense , a failure . It was more than a metropolitan demonstration .

    From northern and southern , maritime and midland towns and counties came the deputies of local committees , pledging themselves to act with tie utmost energy in aid of the Central Association . Only one sentiment was expressed , and that an unmistakable resolve not to submit to the imposition of the war ninepence for another year , and not to tolerate the tax to any amount unless readjusted upon principles of equity . The nation has begun to study finance , as well

    as foreign affairs . It perceives , ' . though as yet dimly , what profits accrued to the agricultural and ecclesiastical orders during the late war ; how the corn averages are balanced ; how property is fenced round with exemptions ; how the industry of hand and brain , the field that never lies fallow , is worked for the benefit of the Exchequer ; how , indeed , laws axe still class-made , with class objects , excessive burdens balanced against unfair immunities .

    The Income-tax question is only part of a larger question , which , again , affects the general interest of the nation in a reform of the House of Commons . Could Sir Cobxewall Lewis quibble over a date , and dishonestly interline an Act of Parliament in the presence of a real ^ Liberal party ? Legislation of that character would be impossible

    were it not for the carelessness , incompetency , and insincerity of some who occupy the independent benches . We may abolish the war ninepence ; we may repeal the tax altogether ; but , if we would be safely and wisely governed , we must do that which will not be done by t he Cheapside Association , active as it is , and excellent as are its objects .

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    WORIC WANTED . "When thirty-five thousand men are in a state of destitution , in London alone , they are told to emigrate , blamed for not having saved money , ridiculed for assembling to deliberate upon their unhappy condition . But the point is , they are in want of the means of life—they and their families—and know not how to procure them . We Tepeat our advice that they should work the Poor-law to its full F » vtfim

    They are essentially ' casual poor . ' The law of settlement , therefore , does not apply to them . Irrespectively of settlement , they have a right to relief in whatever parishes located . Should it be opposed to their claims that they must dispose of their tools and furniture before subsisting on Poor-law allowances , they have only to increase their pressure , and technicalities will give way . They may , without impropriety , demand to be maintained , unless society can provide

    them with employment . Let us not be told that the working classes are idle or improvident . They labour as long as there is labour to be had . They save while there are wages to receive . There are thirty-five thousand benefit organizations in this country , supported by working men . The unemployed artisans in the metropolis have saved , and have spent their savings . Is it thought by the comfortable cynics who talk of Australia and Socialism , that these are the first days of destitution in London this winter ? Far from ib . Work

    was wanting for thousands many weeks ago ; they have been suffering in silence until now ; and the well-fed Malthusians inform them , in a merry way , that it ia by no means an unusual tiling for the poor to havo neither bread nor lire during tho coldest and most hungry months of tho year . They know it , themselves , woll enough ; but they ought to remember the Midland precedent , tho thousands flocking to tho Unions , and being sujpplicd , not only with food , but employment also . Poverty is not always identical with pauperism . The independent labourer , cut

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    of habeas corpu * to bring Makia Cla . » ke before the Court of Queen's Bench , that she might be delivered to lier mother , and the writ was opposed by Mr . O'Ma .: li . et . The main argument in bar of the delivery was this : —The father had always brought up his children as Protestants , and attended a Protestant school ; he had always attended the Church of ^ England ; eight months after their father ' s death the children attended

    Protestant school and worship , the mother going with them . This was the way she had interpreted her husband ' s wish that she would " do justice" to his children . They had been placed in Protestant schools with her approbation . She avowed that it went to her heart to take the children away ; but some gentlemen " would not do anything for the boy , unless she took away the girl also . " Her object was to place the child under the

    care of priests , which would frustrate the father ' s dying wishes ; and therefore , urged Mr . O'Mai / ley :, the child should be educated in the religion , of the father , and not surrendered to the mother . If it were the primary object of law regulating the relations of parent and child that a child should be brought up in the Protestant faith , there is no doubt that Mr . O'MaIiI . f / t was right , and that Alicia Race ought not to be surrendered to her mother .

    were rational , but to deny it , if we disputed the motives , and to hunt up the motives behind the express declaration of the parent . "What endless litigation , interference , and perversion of all domestic authority would result from the establishment of any such principle . One of the strongest averments is , that the girl herself " prefers" the Protestant faith ; but to admit this plea would be subversive of all authority in the family . The opinion of a child , ten years old , is received in

    contradiction to the opinion of the mother . No doubt the tutors of the child , the managers of the school , and the Royal Patriotic Fund sustain the infant ; but what then ? Is it to be allowed in England , that a child can stand forward and say that it disapproves of its parents' theological tenets ? Is the opinion of the parents to give way before the opinion of the child , plus the opinion of some schoolmaster and some charitable commissioners ? If the rule holds good because Aiicia Bace

    happens to be in a school where her theology and the theology of the teachers and commissioners agree , it would equally hold good for a child , actually in parental custody , who might claim to depart , and seek her home and guardians as seemed best to her own judgment . And it was Englishmen , admirers of our constitution , of our civil and religious liberty , that , in horror at the idea of seeing AiiiciA B-ace become a Catholic , would have made a wholesale sacrifice of

    maternal authority to rescue that one child Let us ask what would have become then of all the other little children of England now happily in . charge of their mothers ?

    But in the eye of the law the Protestant and the Hotnan Catholic' faith are equal . Parents have a right to choose the one or the other . However wrong the one faith may be , and the other right , that freedom is conceded . We may try this principle by reversing the circumstances of the case . Let us suppose that AiiciA IRiA . ce had been the daughter of a Homan Catholic father , and that her mother , having placed her at a Homan Catholic school ,

    had afterwards changed counsel and proposed to take her away : would there have been the same difficulty in conceding the paramount force of parental authority ? We doubt it . At all events , the principle involved in the case would have presented itself much more clearly to those who have discussed it with an expression of " regret" that the Court of Queen's Bench should have been compelled to carry out the law 1

    It is said that the same rule should be followed as in the Greenwich and Chelsea Schools—namely , thab the child should be educated in the religion of the father ; but that is not the question . It is not the case of an orphan who is found in the school , and respecting whom an impartial State desires to determine that choice of faith which a cliild cannot make for itself : the decision is then left for presumption , a presumptive conjecture of the parent's probable clioice , and the rule laid down is the nearest approach to justice which can be made .

    ALICIA . RACE . The case of the Queen versus Mahia CiiABKB has been confused in the minds of many honest people , partly by the prejudice naturally excited in a conflict between Protestantism ' and Catholicism , and partly by permitting the main principle at stake to be mixed up with collateral and subordinate considerations . The story is simple . Alicia

    -Race is the daughter of a sergeant who perished in the battle of Petropaulowski . Before his death , he made a will , bequeathing the care of his children to his wife ; he was a Protestant , the wife a Boman Catholic . She procured admission for the boy to the Sailors' Orphan Boys' School , in Dorsetshire , and for the girl , Alicia , to the Sailors ' Orphan Girls' School , at Hampstead . [ Recently , however , Mrs . Race has altered her

    views respecting the children , and she required them to be delivered up to her . The boy was surrendered , but the authorities of um ! irlB * Bcho ° l ttt Hain P ste » d refused . The child , who is ton years of age , wrote a letter , begging that she might be permitted to remain m the school , and saying that she declined to be surrendered to her motherthat

    ; Ju Feferred " to worship the Lord Jesus" in the Protestant manner , and did not wish to worshi p the Virgin Mary . This letter , it was said , had been written by her without any compulsion , and was , in fact , her own free choice . Tho authorities of the school were supported by tho CoinmisBionors of the Patriotic Fund . Mrs . Hack moved for a writ

    The mother herself , it is remarked , had originally determined the choice of a faith in accordance with the presumed wish of the father , whereas she has now changed her mind ; but parents havo a right to change their minds . It would introduce a totally new principle into English law if the State , or some other persons , had a right to interfere with the charge of children , on the display of vacillation , inconsistency , or even gross caprice in parents . Some parents would soon have police ov ' commissioners ' entering their street doors !

    Another argument is , that Mrs . Hack has been tampered Avii ; h , —that tho application for the surrender of her children is not spontaneous on her part , the motives are not ; hers , but that sho is moved by some other persons . This again is introducing a still more novel and dangerous principle into the regulation of society . It would call upon uh to admit parental authority , if tho motives

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    84 THE LEADER . [ No . 357 , Satprpajt ,

• Citation
  • Leader (1850-1860), Jan. 24, 1857, page 84, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2177/page/12/