THE ROMAN CATHOLICS AND CONVENT INSPECTION.
[TO THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR."] SI11,—You express surprise that the Catholics do not desire to have their convents inspected ; suggesting that ladies might be appointed as inspectors, and that their reports would dispel the monstrous delusions which prevail so widely among our country- men to their discredit.
Perhaps they might ; although, for my own part, those delusions seem to have so little connection with the intellect, and to depend so absolutely on the will, that I find it hard to believe that they could be dispelled by any intellectual process.
But whatever the effect might be, it is impossible that we should consent to offer so foul an insult to persons whom we so deeply love and venerate. I do not expect Protestants to enter into the peculiar feelings of veneration with which we regard religious ladies. But, to say nothing of these feelings, they are, to say the least, our sisters and daughters. Is it possible that we should, for any prudential considerations, accept an institution which not only contemplates it as possible that they are harlots and mur- derers, but also that, compared with other women, they are exceptionally likely to be so ? Is there any Protestant gentleman in England who would not rather shed his blood than submit to have such an outrage offered with his connivance to his own sisters or daughters? Why should it be assumed that we alone are to be without the feelings of honour which are common to all our countrymen?
If, then, no personal insult is intended, let it be enacted that lady inspectors should be appointed to examine periodically all houses in which any unmarried ladies live together without the fathers or brothers of any of them. Such a law, if applied equally to women of all religions, would be an insult to the women of England, and a violation of our national liberties ; but, at least, it would not imply the selection of those Catholic women who have specially devoted their lives to God as the objects of an exceptional insult. On this very account, I fear, it would not meet the wishes of those supporters of the present demand who are capable of calculating at all.
Mr. Winterbotham complained the other day of the social dis- advantages of Protestant Dissenters, as such, in our country dis- tricts. What would he say if it should be proposed in Parliament to enact a law by which a legal presumption should be established that every Baptist woman is a harlot and a murderer until she can prove that she is not ? The proposed inspection of our convents would establish that presumption in the case of that class of Catholic women whom we venerate more than any other.—I am,
Previous page
