confessor. I said, I thought it would be contrary to honour and to every regulation to do so. She insisted, and I said, I did not remember exactly what the priest had said.

The Lord Chief Justice asked-Did she ask you what the priest had said to you, as well as your confession to him?-Witness: Yes, my lord.-She then continued. She told me she would give me time; that I should go away and come back next day, to try and remember in the interval. Next day I still refused to do so, saying, I thought it would be a breach of honour to reveal anything that had been said to me in confession. She asked me several times during that day, and said, no other sister in the house had refused her. After this I saw a change in her manner to me. She said I had shown great want of confidence in her.*

The Lord Chief Justice.-Did she assign any reason for wanting to know your confession ?—None, my lord.

Miss Saurin then went on to detail the cruelty and injustice with which she was treated from that time. In crossexamination three days later she repeated:

I was on the most intimate terms with Mrs. Star down to the year 1860 or 1861. There were no complaints against me, up to that time, except faults general to all the sisters. No unfriendly feeling existed that I know of. The first breach occurred between us in 1860 or 1861, when Mrs. Star asked me to tell her what my father-confessor had said in my confession. She also wanted to know what the priest had said to me. I would not say that; to reveal what is said in confession is contrary to the rule of the Catholic Church, because Mrs. Star had told me that sister Mary Alayois [sic], Mrs. Ryan, had told her. I cannot say whether there was any one present when Mrs. Star asked me to tell her. It was in the convent in Willow Street, Hull, she asked me. I had never before been asked to reveal my confessions. I did not think it a very extraordinary thing to be asked about what had passed in confession. I should say it would be a breach of honour to have revealed it. I do not know whether it would have been a breach of rule. She gave me time-quarter or half an hour-to remember what I had said, and came back to ask me. I do not know where Mrs. Ryan now is. Mrs. Star repeated the request several times. It was during one of the "manifestations of conscience" that she made the request the second time. I do not know how often she asked me. I mentioned the matter in confession, as I was in doubt whether I had been guilty of an act of disobedience.

*We have quoted these passages as they stand in the "sole unabridged and authentic report, with a preface by James Grant, author of 'God is Love!"" partly because, without a fair sample, it would be almost impossible to give any idea how careless and slovenly this “sole authentic report" is. For that purpose, a few lines taken at random anywhere, would suffice. For instance, all the world knows that the jury found for the defendant on the two counts for "assault," and for "imprisonment." This "sole authentic report" gives in inverted commas, as a professed copy of their verdict “the jury find for the plaintiff on the count for assaults (the stripping and imprisonment); they also find for the plaintiff on the counts for libel and conspiracy,

Mrs. Star swore that she had never" either in 1860 or at any other time," asked Miss Saurin any question about her confessions, but said, "she was in the habit of volunteering information about her confession till I stopped it." The whole story about "giving time," &c., she denied in minute detail. It appeared that Mrs. Ryan (the nun whom Miss Saurin named as having revealed her confessions) went to Australia in 1859 every other sister who was asked, positively declared that nothing of the kind had ever happened to her knowledge or belief. It was also proved that Miss Saurin herself, in a letter to the Bishop, had given another account of the beginning of the quarrel inconsistent with this, and before the Bishop's commissioners (appointed to inquire into the case) a third account inconsistent with either of the other two. So much was this felt that the Solicitor-General, after having insisted in his opening speech upon this point,her being required to reveal her confession-as a matter of great importance, and as the one cause of all that followed, did not venture so much as to refer to it in his answering speech (which the Lord Chief Justice called "one of the most able and eloquent speeches that he remembered in the whole course of his experience, which now extended to a remote period, and which treasured up the experience of the greatest men the bar of England ever produced"), and tacitly abandoning the truth of that charge, contented himself with a vague assertion "that it was making a mountain out of a molehill to say that the plaintiff had given three versions of the origin of the coldness which had led to the unhappy results that followed."

The Lord Chief Justice specially pressed this point upon the jury. He showed them, that as to all the charges of ill treatment, conspiracy, assault, imprisonment, &c., they all rested upon the oath of Miss Saurin, and upon that alone; so that unless her oath was fully worthy of absolute credit, the whole case fell to the ground. He showed, also, that if her remembrance of what had passed were correct, then they must conclude, that every one of the nuns (twelve in all) had been guilty of deliberate, gross, wilful, and repeated perjury. He pointed out the extreme importance, with this view, of ascertaining what the "real origin of the difference between the parties. was, and particularly called their attention to the entire discrepancy upon that point, between the opening speech

with damages £500, that is to say, £300 the dowry paid in by her, and £200." In the same page, the Lord Chief Justice is made to say, "It is all nonsense to talk about the common law, and that, under the common law witnesses could not be examined in this country!" A more worthless report we never remember to have seen.

of the Solicitor-General and his answer. In the answer, he said, "the Solicitor-General to my astonishment, departed from his own words and the words of his client." He carefully repeated the whole of the detailed statement made by Miss Saurin upon this subject, and said, “Now, this is a simple, plain, and consistent statement. The question is whether it be a truthful one. It appears to me a matter of very considerable moment, for enabling us to judge upon which side the truth really lies." The attempt of the SolicitorGeneral to undervalue the importance of this single point, he called "playing fast and loose with the jury and with himself," and declared that he "could not allow it ;" and then repeated, that the one question was, whether that statement was true. Then, after saying, "now let us see by what evidence the story of the plaintiff is met, and then form your judgment as to the circumstances," he went at length into the evidence, which showed that Miss Saurin had been discontented and unhappy, and that great complaints had been made as to her conduct, not only since the alleged quarrel about her confession, but at every period since her profession; and that her brother (who was not forthcoming) had received from her such an account of her superiors in Baggot Street, that he had described them in a letter as "her torturers and tyrants." He showed that her statement, that she was sent to England, at the "pressing solicitations of Mrs. Star," was distinctly contradicted; so were all her representations about the schools at Clifford, when she was employed in them, and what she did in them. After showing how much more likely was Mrs. Star's account of the matter, he said, "I will tell you something far more important," namely, that

Her uncle, Father Matthews, came forward for her protection. He interposed and communicated with the Bishop. We know he saw his niece, and that he had an opportunity of conversing with her upon those matters; especially questioning her about the issue of the commission. In every inquiry which he made he says she made no complaint and no countercharges against the sisters. I ask you, as reasonable men, is it possible to believe that if she had had it in her mind at that time that all this treatment to which she had been subjected had its origin in this refusal to communicate what had passed in confession, she would not have made the circumstance known. Why should she not? She looked to him as her natural protector. If she had so communicated to him, either in these visits, or when about to appear before the commission, do you for one moment believe that Father Matthews would not have communicated the statement to the Bishop, or brought it prominently forward as one of the charges to be made against the defendants? What a lever would it not have proved for Father Matthews to use with the view of overthrowing the conduct and authority of the (in

the report his) superior. Do you think he would not have used it to the Bishop when spoken to with reference to the complaints his niece had to make against the superioress, if such matters had indeed existed in reality? Under these circumstances you have an oath against an oath, and it is for you to say what you believe. Is it true that there was this endeavour on the part of the defendant, Mrs. Star, to extract, or rather I should say to extort, from this reluctant sister what had passed between her and her confessor ? . . . Is this story true? If you disbelieve it, it is a most inauspicious point from which to start in considering how the rest of the plaintiff's story arose. . . . If it is as the plaintiff suggests, Mrs. Star's conduct was almost too abominable to be considered with patience and endurance.

We have not space for more than a very small part of the judge's charge, and have been obliged to omit in our extract parts which were evidently, as he spoke them, the most important of all, because they are made absolute nonsense in the vile report before us. At a later part of his charge he called attention to the fact that it was Miss Saurin's

Misfortune to have twelve witnesses against her, eight of whom had given such evidence that if they believed it her case must be demolished . evidence was not to be taken by numbers but by its intrinsic weight; by weight rather than by tale and if they believed, though she stood alone, that she told the truth, they would give due weight to it.

And then after speaking of the importance of hearing and seeing the witnesses in order to judge of their credibility, and saying that he believed he had gained, by long habit and experience, the power of judging when a witness was speaking the truth, he added:

He must say he had never heard witnesses give their evidence in a manner to claim the respect of the judge [more] than had the sisters who had been called in this case. They all concurred that Mrs. Star was by no means arbitrary or unjust to any one; and that she had acquired the esteem and affectionate regard of the whole community except the plaintiff ; and if Mrs. Star had been of an arbitrary disposition, that fact would have been known to.... the other sisters.

In a word, the Lord Chief Justice told the jury that the only question was, whether Miss Saurin's impression on the facts was to be believed in opposition to the oaths of the whole community; that upon one most important point it was impossible for them, as sensible men, to absolutely accept Miss Saurin's evidence; that they should bear in mind that circumstance when they came to weigh her remembrance on the other points against the oaths of all the other sisters; and, lastly, that those sisters had given their testimony n such a manner that it was impossible for a man of his

experience to doubt that they were speaking the truth. How her evidence had been given he did not say.

Like everybody else who has had anything to do with this case, we have found the single point we have selected for notice occupying far more space than we intended to give it. We must therefore pass over what we had intended to say on other points, only mentioning that the Lord Chief Justice repeatedly told the jury that the papers sent in to the Bishop were "privileged," and therefore would not be libels even though Miss Saurin were guiltless of the charges made against her, if Mrs. Star and Mrs. Kennedy had made them believing them to be true; and so, also, that there would be no conspiracy unless the two had combined to drive her out of the convent by unfair and unlawful means.

A paper which was very violent against Mrs. Star, said, very truly, that if the jury had been guided by the charge of the Lord Chief Justice, they would have returned a verdict for the defendants without leaving the box. Their verdict was for the plaintiff. How are we to account for so unusual a circumstance?

For our part we do not for a moment suspect that the jury intended any injustice-that they meant to go contrary to the oath they had taken, to give a verdict according to the evidence. It was their duty to weigh the evidence; and in weighing it there was a single circumstance which may have seemed to them decisive. Miss Saurin had left the convent, and the witnesses against her were nuns. Their first principle was, that a nun, however good, upright, and religious she might be, would feel it not merely allowable but a duty to perjure herself if perjury was useful in defence of her order. The whole of the evidence against Miss Saurin, therefore, they simply laid aside. They were sure that they could have known beforehand what it would be. It was simply worth nothing. It was to be regarded as if it had not been given. Her own evidence, therefore, was all that they had on the subject. No doubt the Lord Chief Justice had shown them that as reasonable men they could not receive it implicitly on one important point; that was to be regretted. But all the witnesses against her were sure to have perjured themselves on all points, because they were nuns.

We are sorry to say that the Solicitor-General condescended to suggest this. The Lord Chief Justice indignantly rejected it. The jury no doubt sincerely believed that the SolicitorGeneral was right and the Lord Chief Justice wrong.

Another à priori conviction fell in with this. It is to the English mind so certain that the superior of a convent is