The Irish Lord Chancellor had to decide on Tuesday a
difficult moral problem. Dean McManus, of Clifden, a dignitary of the Roman Catholic Church, made an application with a view to be appointed guardian of a child, and to restrain her father, who was a Protestant, from interfering with her religious education. The father wished her to be brought up in his own faith, but her mother, who is dead, had her baptised as a Roman Catholic, and she lived for a time in a convent at Clifden. She, however, at one period of her life went to a Protestant school, and attended Protestant services, without objecting. When questioned by the Lord Chancellor, she said she was a Protest- ant, and did not want to go back to the convent at Clifden, where they were kind to her, but taught her about Purgatory and other things she could not find in the Bible. His Lordship, no doubt rightly, concluded that she had no settled ideas,—and that in fact, having a quick memory, she presented one view to Dean McManus and another to her Protestant re- latives. In these circumstances, he declined to consent to the ap- plication to withdraw the child from her fatb er's control. The policy of the law, which usually protects the conscientious convictions of minors against the express wishes of their parents, may lead to mischief, especially in the case of flighty girls or headstrong lads, who carry out their ill-considered opinions in the face of paternal reproofs ; but what is to be done ? If the law were different, tender consciences would be injured, and obstinate lads would still have their way.
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