16 APRIL 1864, Page 2

Yesterday week Mr. Newdegate raised a purposeless sort of per-

sonal quarrel in the House of Commons, by moving for a select com- mittee to inquire into the character and number of monastic institu- tions in England and Scotland. He based his case on the fact that the Oratorians of St. Philip Neri had buried three persons in a private burial-ground at Sydenham, for which they had received a licence from the Home Secretary. It appeared also that a Mr. Hutchison, a convert to Romanism and a member of the Oratory, who is one of the three buried at Sydenham, had expended a large fortune in promoting Roman Catholic schools and other institutions, and had left the remainder, by a will signed three years before his dead; to Dr. Faber, then the Superior of the Order. The will has been already disputed under the Mort- main Act in the Probate Court, and Mr. Newdegate had no case to go upon except his own personal alarm, which appears to have been so infections that eighty members followed him into the lobby, his motion being defeated by only 113 to 80. The feature of the debate was the defence of the Duchess of Norfolk by Lord Edward Howard from a very silly attack, in which Mr. Smee, a relative of Mr. Hutchison, had indulged. Her Grace, it appears, went to Mr. Hutchison's funeral, and stood, said Mr. Since, "by the grave of my relative, as the cold clay, sod by sod, was thrown upon his noble form, in a kind of ecstacy at the music of the requiem." Lord Edward had some difficulty in exculpating her Grace from this formidable charge, which appears to have consisted partly in being an accomplice to the coldness of the clay and partly in her enjoyment of the music. Some sensible men, like Mr. Neate, voted for the inquiry, but it must have been from general dread of monasticism, and in spite of the absence of any ostensible ground in Mr. Newdegate's speech.