Llorente, Secretary the Inqui sition. A capuchin sentenced by the ine quisitors a nunnery. fact. Now it is a well-known truth, that people are put to Roport of death by slow torture in convents. Llorente, the Secretary of Score of the Inquisition, relates the case of a capuchin, who was sentenced by that tribunal to be confined under discipline in a convent of his own order. The man, in great concern and fear, humbly besought them to change the sentence into imprisonment in the prison of the Inquisition, but the inquisitors told him that their sentence was the milder of the two. "Having been a provincial and guardian," said he, "I know better than you do the treatment which I shall have to undergo in a convent; it will cost me my life." The inquisitors did not think proper to commute his sentence, and his prediction was verified; he died in the third year of his imprisonment, after suffering her by more than death. According to Erasmus, the Franciscans murdered in buried one of their order alive! A few weeks ago, a curious room was discovered on the spot of the Franciscan convent in Cologne. "When the workmen were demolishing the Minorite's convent," says the Augsburgh Gazette," they found the old prison of the convent: a prison whose sole view reminds us of accursed ages and horrible deeds. This prison has been excavated twenty feet below the surface. Its walls are of an incredible thickness; the space is eight feet in length, and four in width. There is only one piece of furniture, a massive stone fixed to the wall. To this very stone is fastened a heavy iron chain, measuring five feet, and having a terrible manacle attached to it. At one end of the stone is an opening without a cover, in the form of a narrow funnel, going down to a deep channel connected with the convent sewers. At the other end is a small hole, intentionally made for the purpose of feeding the prisoner. Over the ceiling there is an aperture, through which the victim was lowered, with the executioners who had to chain him to his eternal bed. The floor was soiled with dust, and human bones were found therein." Mabillon, a learned monk of the Benedictine order, mentions a convent prison, which was called the Vade in Pace-the Go-in-Peace-a name perfectly describing the last judgment of man upon the fated prisoner. The Archbishop of Toulouse, in the fourteenth century, complained to King Jean le Bon, "of the horrible cruelty exercised by the monks on their brethren, the ermetics by sending them for life into a dark place, which they call a Vade in Pace." The King, notwithstanding the outeries of the monks and others, decreed that abbots and priors should visit The Archbishop of Toulouse complained to a King of of monks. Notlanp tondoro their prisoners at least once a week. In England these prisons had the same name, Go in Peace, the imprisonment being perpetual; and, in the reign of Edward III., the abbots of Northampton decreed "that, in every monastery there should be a Abbots of prison, in which great delinquents should be punished." One of the punishments among the Gilbertine nuns, near Lichfield, every Mowas perpetual penance and imprisonment, with severe discipline have a -meaning the whip on the bare back. Bale copies a shocking prison. instance of this severe discipline and everlasting imprisonment from Alfred of Beverley. nastry to crines per It may be easily conceived that the darkest crimes are syste- Horrible matically committed in these jealously-guarded and secret recep- mitted in tacles of daughters and sisters, whose presence in the world is Nunneries no longer desirable. Parliament, in rejecting the Bill to provide by Permis for the inspection of nunneries, sinned against humanity and Parlian.ent. Christianity, laid the law of England prostrate at the feet of human fiends, and left the weakest and most helpless of the weaker sex without a refuge and protection. Yet there could not have been a member in the House so feeble of intellect, that he could not understand the fevered alarm which was felt by the Romish clergy on account of that measure, which is no less necessary now than it was at that time. As to the habeas corpus, it can always be evaded by a Go in Peace in a different convent. In the cases of betrayed, abandoned, or tortured nuns, it is a mere farce to apply for that writ, which to all mankind else is a noble charter of English liberties. must be munhood daughters We wish this subject to receive the consideration it demands. People of It is one of great seriousness, and deeply interesting to all England English parents, whether in or out of the Roman Catholic watchful Church. If the people of England are not watchful, they will against find a system of kidnapping set up by these holy nuns throughout kidnapping the country. Their children will pass, by the advice of some of their ghostly confessor, into a nunnery school, and there be gradually for immoral kept back or removed to a distance from them, when they visit purposes. the nunnery for the purpose of an interview, until at last they will be spirited away to situations in France, "unbeknownst" to the holy mother, or any other of the simple and unsuspecting people who form her personnel.-Morning Advertiser, 13th March, 1856. (To be continued.) Afflicted treated wards of Chancery. TREATMENT OF CHANCERY LUNATIC WARDS. WE are induced for the better protection of the afflicted and and cruelly cruelly treated lunatic wards of Chancery, to give a greater publicity to the practice of the administration of the two Masters in Lunacy and the board of Chancery Lunatic Visitors than has hitherto been made, not doubting that they ought all to be removed, or that all their proceedings should be in public, and a more extensive power given to them proportioned to the vast extent of property, and the rank and character of the afflicted individuals connected with it. Chancery masters with the evils of Private Lunatic Asylums must be abolished. Naval Surgeon at Haslar Hospital on Lunacy. Improper The consideration of this branch of the Chancery Masters' duties is of the utmost importance, if only to clear the character of the Masters and the Board of Visitors, for while sixty out of a hundred pauper lunatics are restored to health, and twentyseven out of a hundred of lunatics placed in lunatic asylums kept by private individuals, recover, not one in five hundred Chancery lunatics are ever restored to their property, their family, or their home: although, a talented author states, "it is now known that insanity is as curable as any discase to which mankind are subject; that it arises from deranged bodily functions, not mental affections, and that by kindness and proper medicine, there is less difficulty in removing this malady than many others of which juster notions have been long entertained by the faculty." Dr. Scott, the late naval surgeon at Haslar Hospital, (see p. 55, of his Lectures,) says, "that it is exceeding rare, to find a man insane on many points at one period, and never on all points," so that the agony of the educated wards of Chancery when turned over to the tender mercies of irresponsible strangers who receive the whole allowances granted for their maintenance--who place their own creatures around these victims-who exclude the relatives from visiting them, or place them at their will in lunatic asylums, is surely a subject for the most serious enquiry. Of the individuals denominated committees there are two control over classes-committees of the estate, and committees of the person. property of lunatics by The parties thus called, seldom I believe exceed two to the Chancellor, estate, and two to the person of each lunatic, and are appointed the Lord by directions of reference from the Lord Chancellor to the masters, who most absurdly have the sole approval of the committees. The Lord Chancellor may object to a person approved of by the Master, but cannot appoint a committee. The late and doctors up the Chancery it- Dun geous. Lord Cottenham recommended the Master to re-appoint A., Lord one of the committee, the Master refused. A. appealed, but Cottenham. found the Lord Chancellor had no power to appoint him. The practice of the court has been to view with jealousy the nearest of kin, who have generally been excluded from being committees, although most interested in protecting the estate as well as the lunatic. Lawyers and doctors find that they can make Lawyers it too lucrative a concern to let it escape through their hands; interested and the Masters, from the difficulty of finding other honourable in keeping persons willing to undertake an office so undefined, have been driven to accept persons from those professions as committees. furnace and The committee of the estate has to pass the accounts before the Master, or his secretary, every year; this is done in a most imperfect manner, for the accounts only detail what the committee receives, and what he disburses, but not what is due. Take the following example-a committee has to pass his account on the 1st of February, he neglects to receive the January dividend, and by not being obliged to bring it into the account which he then presents, when he afterwards receives the January dividend, he retains it in his own hands until the following year. Mr. Brougham required committees to state what dividends were payable, and would not allow accounts to be passed without the committees stated also what was due, and first brought into their accounts the dividends that could be obtained. A solicitor and the mother were committee to the late Sir G― P— T—, we can easily understand how lucrative an advantage it must have been, if he, as a professional man, availed himself of this practice tolerated in the passing of the accounts of wards in Chancery. Lunatic's estate con A solicitor who is trustee of £100, refuses to pay the interest Master of a to the lunatic's estate, and though this is annually represented to the Master, he connives at it, on account of the expense that nives at the would attend a petition to the Lord Chancellor. peculation of a solici The expense of passing the accounts is so great, that the Master tor sometimes allow them to be passed only once in two years. This expense is occasioned by committees being obliged to bring in their accounts by solicitors, instead of themselves appearing with 500 and 600 Chancery it before the Masters or their clerk; but this is the practice in Between all the Masters' offices in Chancery. The presenting of this simple debit and credit account annually to the Masters, is an lunatics expense to the 530 or 560 Chancery lunatics of between £8000 and £10,000 a year, of which above one-third is paid as fees to Chancery. fleeced in the Court of Solicitors and medical Then are forced by the Master in Chaney upon sui tors against then will. cellor's power. A master in the Masters in Lunacy, and which might be wholly avoided or otherwise appropriated to the lunatics' benefit. In addition to the above sum, there is in this particular office one per cent., charged upon the income of all Chancery lunatics, which realises considerably above £3000 a year. Also in lunacy affairs a higher scale of fees for the office copies is charged than in the other Chancery offices, and they now charge fourpence a folio for what the law stationers charge three halfpence. Another source of expense is, the numberless and useless warrants charged on these occasions to the lunatics estate. The committee of the person is sometimes chosen from the nearest of kin; but in many instances solicitors and medical men are selected, being recommended by the Master to the Lord Chancellor, frequently against the wishes of the majority of the relatives. The Masters have a most difficult task to select committees owing to the system of affidavit, instead of virá roce evidence. The committee of the person, upon being appointed, are awarded at the Masters' recommendation a sum out of the income for the maintenance of the lunatic-this allowance the Lord Char committee receive, as a schoolmaster does a sum for the care of a lad. The Lord Chancellor may discharge a committee, but his Lordship, under the existing law, (as decided in the case of Drax versus Grosvenor,) cannot require an account of the money which they withhold from disbursing upon the lunatic. A Master once appointed himself committee to the person of a wealthy lunatic, but the court of late years has prohibited that, although there is nothing to prevent them appointing their own relatives and friends. Indeed, it is very natural for them to do so, because, exclusive of the means afforded to their friends of improving their incomes, the Masters may believe that they will take better care of their lunatics than any one else. The extent of this patronage may be surmised by a reference to the Parliamentary Paper, No. 505 of this year. Chancery forres him self into a committee. In 1843 the Masters had to appoint 28 Committees. |