Lady Gertrude Douglas writes to the Times to say that
she was three years in a convent in Hammersmith, then in convents in Liverpool and Glasgow, and then on her own reqiiest released from her vows and allowed to return to her family. She would have rejected any aid from inspectors in opposition to the priests. She denies that she has ever heard an expression of discontent from any nun, though she has conversed with a hundred, and declares all statement's about compulsion to be false. This is good evidence as far as it goes, but it goes very little way. Even in a Roman convent, a daughter of the Marquis of Queensberry would be safe. Her birth saved Henrietta Caracciolo even in Naples. On the other band, Mr. Charles B. Mender, J.P., testified that he judicially inquired into the case of Miss Selby, who escaped from the Colwich Convent, was induced by Bishop Ullathorne to return, and finally, when offered the opportunity of leaving, refused, saying, "What could I do if I left ? All my relations and friends are Catholics, and they would turn their backs on me, and what do I know of life?" The suggestion is, of course, that at Colwich there was actual restraint, as the lady escaped over a garden-wall nine feet high, and at Shapehill moral restraint. With the latter the law is unable to deal, but the former must, of course, be prevented. The difficulty is to dis- tinguish between such offences in convents and ordinary families, where also they occur.
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