MRS. NORTH AND HER CHILDREN.
RELIGIOUS persecution of a very cruel kind still survives in England ; as we find by a case in the Vice-Chancellor's Court, last week. Mrs. North is the widow of an officer who died not long ago : just before his death, she had become a convert to the Roman Catholic version of the Christian faith ; and Lieutenant North appears to have followed her example, though he had only reached the degree of " catechumen" when death cut short his deliberations, and he performed no specific act marking his transit to the Church of Rome. Their eldest child had for some time been under the care of Mrs. Wilson, Mr. North's mother ; but after his death and Mrs. North's open admission to the sect of Christians not recognized by the British State, Mrs. Wilson and her daughter contrived surreptitiously to deprive the widow of her other two children. Mrs. North demanded them back ; but Mrs. Wilson and Miss North declared that they should keep the infants, in order to bring them up in the Protestant faith. Mrs. North sought justice from the law ; but the law, according to its present interpretation, countenances child-stealing for Protestant purposes, and has declared, by the mouth of Sir Henry Knight Bruce, that the best persons to teach the children their duties are the two ladies who took them surreptitiously from their mother. An appeal has been made to the Lord Chancellor, and the case is to be reargued.
It is difficult to comprehend upon what principle the law can sanction this cruel violation of personal rights. We know that the Chancery is the reputed guardian of all infants ; but that is for the custody of the property, the ward being presumed unable to take sufficient charge of the Sovereign's feudal rights ; and in this case there was no property. By the Vice-Chancellor's show- ing, it appears that the law of Equity has been extended in this matter beyond its feudal origin simply by the assumption of the Judges in the Court and the sufferance of the Legislature.
Of course it will not be much longer endured. Shelley's case was accounted odious enough at the time, but a revival of it now is an insulting anachronism against the temper of the day. It is too late to maintain the doctrine that waverers must be restrained within the pale of the Protestant Church under pain of having their children taken from them. In the absence of any criminal breach of morality, society wisely leaves to parents the responsi- bility of teaching their children on points of doctrine and morals, and interferes as little as possible. But here is a judgment which declares that those who are not firm to the State religion shall be outlawed from the laws which protect parents against child-stealers—that some one else making a more orthodox pro- fession shall have the right to step in and take away the children from a convert to Romanism ! The law which authorized a Pro- testant to take away the horse of a Roman Catholic was ac-
counted a disgrace even to the tyrannical penal code of Ireland; yet we still see this infinitely more cruel law actively operating m England. Lord John Russell, the champion of religious tole- rance, should watch the progress of this case.
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