Our paupers are really taking a high-handed line with their
superiors in the workhouse. They are beginning to claim, it seems, the right to excommunicate the master of the workhouse if, in their judgment, his private conduct is not that which entitles him to read prayers without hypocrisy. An inmate of the Hert- ford Union, named Bourchier,—the son of a clergyman,—has refused to attend the Union prayers, not because he felt any con- scientious objection to the prayers, but because he felt a conscien- tious objection to countenance such a man as the master in read- ing them. He insisted that the master was not a Christian, and that he could not and would not attend prayers when read'by such a man. This is really claiming a little too much. Did ilrnot almost amount to the publication of a libel on the master of the work- house? But apart from that, what harm does it cause to a saint to pray even with a lost soul ?
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