And in the same handwriting:

"Mrs. Rooney, debtor to The Bird's-Nest Institution

a year and six months for three children, at 67.

a year for each
Clothing ditto, at 30s. each per year

We

Though it seems hard on the purchaser that Popish children, bought expressly for proselytising, should be given up to their mother gratis, we cannot but rejoice that the three Rooneys were taken by force of law from the Nest, and were lately in good hands. But what would the indignation of the public be if any Catholic charitable asylum had positively refused to restore to a Protestant mother her own children, unless she could pay 301. for them? may easily see that many destitute mothers would have been effectually deprived of their children by this device. The income of The Bird's Nest is said to be 2,000l. a-year. The managers are, as may be supposed, "thorough." Two ladies went one day from it to visit the Catholic orphanage in the neighbourhood, and said that they wished to see what their enemies were doing. The Superior observed that she was not their enemy, and they replied: "We thought you hated us as much as we hate you."

Female Orphan House, North Circular-road, Dublin. This nest, which was opened in 1790 for "destitute orphans of all denominations," is one of the most richly feathered of any. By the report of 1863, it appears to have had a revenue of 1,5717. for the support of seventy-one orphans, all, or nearly all, Catholics. In 1800 Parliament voted 500l. a-year to it; in 1803 the grant was raised to 9781., and in 1835 lowered again to 5007. If it is still paid, as we fear it is, some 48,000l. will have been given to its managers out of the public taxes to be expended in the work of destroying the souls of Catholic children. It may well be asked in a Catholic report, "Is there no Catholic Member of Parliament to call in question this grant?" This establishment possesses about 8,000l. in the Funds, besides landed property.

The Orphan Refuge Society, 34 Upper Sackville-street, Dublin. -This was founded in 1830 for the support and education on Protestant principles of the orphans of mixed marriages. It does not receive a single child that has not at least one Catholic parent. Very few such children would be found in Ireland that had not been, according to the conditions of the marriage, baptised by a Catholic clergyman, and, if old enough, instructed in the Catholic faith. The Society's report for 1864 makes the remark that Catholics "are for

the most part willing enough that the children of purely Protestant parents should be brought up as Protestants; and hence it is that they seldom comparatively meddle with them; but it is far different when the child has one parent Roman Catholic. In this case Romanists consider interference a duty." The inference presently drawn is, "Hence the necessity for the Orphan Refuge Society." The inference that we should draw is, "Hence it is a matter of notoriety that Irish Catholics abstain from meddling with the education of any children except those who belong to them, and therefore the system of getting hold of their children to Protestantise them is an unprovoked aggression." The receipts of this Society in 1864 are put down at 2,214l. 16s. 9d., and the subscribers are congratulated on the yearly increase of its income. It had 2,2347. in the Funds, and was maintaining and educating as Protestants 220 Catholic orphans. Their excellencies Lord and Lady Wodehouse figure as patron and patroness. The majority of the children are placed in Protestant families, and, when old enough, apprenticed to Protestants. A few of the older ones are housed in a training-school in Haddington-road. In former years, although neither the children nor the families to whom they were intrusted were discoverable from the reports, a list was given of the parishes where they were being reared, which might in some cases furnish a clue; but in the report for 1865 we observe that this is omitted. There is a repeated allusion in these reports to the "safety" of the protection from Catholicity given by the society. Nevertheless, some of the birds do escape from this nest also. We give the following letter as a pendant to Lady King's. Like that, it illustrates the business-like way in which, on the purchasers' part at least, the buying and selling of Catholic infants is managed, and the resolute determination not to let a mother have her little ones back again, if there is any chance of her instructing them in her own religion. "Mrs. Hogan," we learn from the St. Brigid's Orphanage Report, "had no idea of making her children Protestants. She was very poor. She said, 'I can earn my own bread, but to support two children without their father I am utterly unable.' She put her two little boys into the orphanage, intending to take them back before they could learn to deny their faith. Year after year she was disappointed in her hope of being able to support them. Her conscience became alarmed, and she told her employer that if she could get any place for them she would withdraw them. Her employer applied at St. Brigid's. They were passed for admission. She demanded her children, and was refused. She then wrote a letter under direction, claiming the children, and received the following answer:

"THE ORPHAN REFUGE, OR PROTESTANT CHARITABLE ORPHAN UNION OFFICE,

'34 Upper Sackville-street, 20th October 1864.

'MADAM,-I am instructed by the committee to state, in reply to your application, that your two children, who have been under the care of this society since the 14th of April 1857, be delivered up to you, that they shall be given up to you, at any time you specify, on 'your fulfilling the conditions on which they were received, and which you, as a consenting party, signed, viz. that you shall pay for each of them at the rate of 67. a-year, from the time they were admitted, till such time as they shall be withdrawn by you.

'To Mrs. Hogan.'

'I am, madam,

'Your obedient servant,
'STEPHEN C. M'GUSTY,
'Assistant Secretary.

The poor woman, on reading this letter, despaired of recovering her children; for she knew that 901. was entirely beyond her reach. Left to herself, she would have rested here; and many Catholic orphans are despaired of and lost just at this stage."

So, we may observe, many are despaired of and lost in London whom, if there were any machinery for helping the broken-hearted, destitute mothers to it, a lawyer's letter might bring home to them. In Mrs. Hogan's case, we learn that, under a threat of further proceedings, her two children were given up, but that the elder one was already irreclaimably ruined. The younger had not lost his faith, and is carolling happily in a Catholic nest. We notice that "law-costs" is an item of expenditure in each of the two reports of this society that lie before us, to the amount of 597. 13s. and 407.

The General Orphan Home, 7 Richmond-street, Portobello.-This was opened eleven years ago "to all," in the language of its managers, "no matter of what creed or caste, provided the surviving relatives consent to have the child brought up by the written word in the nurture and admonition of the Lord, for that heavenly house in which there are many mansions." They had in 1864 sixty-four children in their hands, nearly all of them Catholics. The addition to most of the names of "totally destitute," or "father and mother dead," tells its own sad tale. "Father died in the Crimea" is still more saddening. The income of this society is 4007.

These proselytising nests are in addition to various other Protestant orphanages in Dublin that are really for Protestants, with

abundance of funds to support them; such as The Protestant Orphan Society, Percy-place, with 6,1281. a year, and The Masonic Female Orphan School, Burlington-place, with 1,9827. Of the former, which professses to receive only children both whose parents are Protestants, we have no wish to complain, although about a third of the children were once Catholics. Their admission there is probably owing to the fact of their parents dying while outwardly professing Protestantism for the sake of the bribes with which hungry Catholics are so incessantly plied in Dublin. Their children then rank as Protestants; and it is expedient to get them into a school such as this, leaving more room for others in the more avowedly proselytising nests. The Masonic School also contains some Catholic children; and their ruin is attributable only to the sin of their fathers in enrolling themselves in an anti-Christian society under the formal ban of the Church.

Again, there is a third class of establishments in or near Dublin, in which Catholic children are more or less vigorously proselytised, after the system that prevails in those workhouse schools in London from which the priest is not wholly excluded; such as The Royal Marine School, The Bluecoat Hospital, and especially The Royal Hibernian Military School. Some eight years ago, when this last was denounced, a deputation of liberal Catholics and others visited the school, took lunch there, and pronounced the school as well as the lunch quite satisfactory; as we have heard here in London of a Catholic going to see a district school in which the Catholic children are habitually set to work on Sundays in the furnace-room, instead of hearing Mass, and returning quite charmed with the courteousness and lucid explanations of the master. The Catholic chaplain, however, succeeded in getting the Hibernian Military School discussed in Parliament; and it was then shown that, although the Catholic children were more than a third of the whole number, every teacher, every monitor, and every officer in the house were Protestants, that the school-books were anti-Catholic, and that the most violent antiCatholic tracts were distributed among the Catholic children. We are afraid that the result was far short of a complete reform. There was probably the usual hope expressed, that "after such a concurrence of sentiments on both sides of the House, the managers would doubtless see fit, &c. without the necessity of legislative interference," &c.; and there was the amount of deference paid to the recommendation that decorum required.

We have mentioned the Luke-street Dormitory as a receivinghouse for more regularly constructed nests. It is also one of a number of institutions for bribing Catholic children by food and clothing

first into feigned, and then into real apostasy, which seem to swarm in Dublin, but which are spread all over Ireland. The arrangements for combining the collection of funds in England from the largest possible area with a system of barefaced purchasing of converts in Ireland, from which many of the donors would recoil, are somewhat peculiar, and forcibly remind us of analogous arrangements by which a candidate for certain boroughs is able to protest that he has not paid a shilling for any other than strictly legal expenses, while a friend or a partner advances the money required for direct bribery. There are several societies with very large incomes almost entirely raised in England, which either say nothing about temporal relief, or declare that their funds are never used in this way; and these are supplemented by other societies and institutions for providing food and clothes, and sometimes beds, for Catholics who can be thus induced to attend the schools and controversial classes which the first set of societies maintain for their perversion. Of the first kind are the Irish Church-Missions Society, with an income of over 26,0007.; the Church-Education Society, the receipts of which in 1863 were set down as 43,7027., and the number of Catholic children attending their schools in Ireland as 9,662; the Ladies' Hibernian Female School Society, receiving 1,7477., and educating 5,270 scholars, and boasting in 1863 of 186,000 children scripturally trained since its commencement; the Scripture-readers' Society for Ireland, employing in the same year fifty-seven men to go about insulting Catholics at an expense of 2,1831.; the Dublin City Mission, receiving 7681., and the Dublin Visiting Mission, 9947. These are all professedly proselytising institutions; but they say nothing of the chief means employed to effect conversions. On the contrary, the reports of the Irish Church-Missions Society, which is probably the most offensive of all in its mode of operations, declare that "not one shilling of the money collected in England is devoted to the purpose of food or clothes;" and the Bishop of Ripon is reported to have said at Bradford, "If it were possible by a bribe of a single farthing to win over 10,000 Roman Catholics in Ireland to the Protestant faith, the promoters of this society would scorn the very thought of spending that farthing." A large part of the 26,000l. contributed to the Irish Church-Missions is probably given by those who share in these generous sentiments. They really believe that the multitudes of Catholic children in the Protestant schools which they help to support, and the adult Catholics reported as listening with eagerness to the word of God, and gradually giving up their errors, are attracted by the force of truth. In the mean time, besides large sums raised by private application, there are various institutions, the in