To read prayers to the paupers before breakfast and after supper every day, or cause them to be read, at which all the inmates must attend; but if any of the paupers shall profess religious principles indisposing them to unite in such service, they are to be permitted to sit apart, and not to be compelled to join in the same.''

Now let our readers compare these orders and regulations with the section of the Act above cited, and they must be struck with the utter discrepancy between the spirit of the one and of the other, notwithstanding the affected conformity to the technical provisions of the law. This will be rendered still more apparent, however, if we look not at the precise phrasing of the orders, but at their intended operation, in contrast with the provisions of the statute. For example:

'§ 19 of Poor Law Commission

Act.

'No inmate of any workhouse shall be obliged to attend any religious service contrary to the religious persuasion of such inmate.'

It shall be lawful for any licensed minister of the religious persuasion of any inmate, &c., to visit such workhouse for the purpose of affording religious assistance to such inmates, &c.'

Edicts of Poor Law Commis

sioners.

'No inmate of any workhouse shall be suffered to be present at any religious service conducted by a dissenting minister, or to be present at an interview between a pauper and a dissenting minister, not of their own communion, how willing or desirous soever to join in such worship, or share in such instruction.

No such person' shall be allowed to visit the workhouse, except under the strict surveillance of the master or matron, in whose presence all conversation with the inmate must pass, and in a room separate from the other inmates; nor must he be allowed to speak a word of a religious nature to a single inmate who has not previously declared himself, on admission into the house, to be of the same religious persuasion, and has not moreover requested to be present at the interview. No Independent minister may visit the member of a Baptist congregation. No Wesleyan may administer religious instruction to an Independent. No Presbyterian clergyman of the Church of Scotland may address a poor Scotch pauper of the Wesleyan community.

'It would be improper,' say these Solons of Somerset House, 'that members of the Church of England, Unitarians, Baptists,

'Wesleyans, or Independents, should be either induced or con'strained to join in a form of worship which is not that of their own religious community.' Improper that they should be constrained, we all deem it; and if, by induced,' bribery or corrupt influence is intended, that would be equally improper; but do these gentlemen see no difference between constraining and allowing such inmates to join in a form of worship not of their own religious community? Is it then a thing not to be tolerated, that the members of different religious denominations, agreeing in all the essentials of the Protestant faith, should have religious intercommunion? Is the Poor Law to interfere and prohibit the Baptist dissenter from entering an Independent chapel, or the Roman Catholic from listening, even within the walls of a poor-house, to an heretical Wesleyan? Oh yes, it would be improper, say Messrs. Lewis, Lefevre, and Nicholls; and they cite Latin in proof of it. We scarcely know whether to admire more the pedantry or the pleasantry of their argument. So then, it seems, the feelings with which Romish priests regard all heretics, are those which are to be supposed to exist, and to be cherished by legislation, between the different sections of the Protestant church-even between Wesleyans and Church of England men! And it would be an undue breach of religious liberty,' in the estimation of these very enlightened arbiters of religious propriety, to allow an inmate the liberty of communing in sacris with a minister from whom he differs on the question of dipping or sprinkling, or on points of churchgovernment! Can these gentlemen be serious, or are they attempting to humbug (―we beg pardon for using the word) Lord John Russell and the public?

If they are in earnest, their regulations do not go far enough to prevent the mischief they seem so anxious to avert. We have seen how carefully they require, in their far-sighted wisdom, that, on admission to a workhouse, every pauper shall be called on to declare to what denomination of Christians he or she belongs. For the first time in his or her life, it may be, such pauper must make a profession of faith, from which, moreover, thereafter, so long as he or she remains an inmate of the workhouse, there must be no departure. For a Catholic to turn Protestant, or a Unitarian to become a Methodist, in a union poor-house, would be a monstrous evil, a breach of religious liberty and religious propriety. We can easily anticipate some difficulty, however, in obtaining a very distinct declaration of the kind required from the pauper inmate, when we find even well educated gentlemen, bred at our universities, and moving in high circles, so extremely ill-informed with regard to what may be called religious terminology. A Wesleyan pauper, for instance, might know no better than to declare himself a

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Churchman; a Unitarian might report himself a Presbyterian; an Independent might call himself a Congregationalist, or he might be an Independent Methodist; and another might know no more than that he was an attendant at some dissenting chapel, never having heard of its precise denomination. But we will suppose all these difficulties got over by a summary process, all doubtful cases being made over to the Church of England. The declaration made and duly registered, these inmates, of different creeds and communions, are allowed to associate together. May they not inoculate each other with their peculiar heresies? Is there no danger that a Roman Catholic inmate should be a jesuit in disguise, assuming the garb of pauperism, in order to make proselytes? or that some Methodist old woman should bite the regenerate of the Church of England, and communicate to them her own fanaticism? The Commissioners, with all their shrewd precautions against the dreadful evil of proselytism, do not appear to us to have adequately guarded against that danger. It seems to us that there ought to be separate wards in every union workhouse, in which Church of England paupers, Unitarians, Wesleyans, &c., should be kept apart. Any thing short of this would seem to be, in their own words, and in strict consonance with their reasoning, an undue 'breach of religious liberty!'

But to be serious: what occasion is there for exacting any declaration of religious profession from those admitted to the workhouse, or for any regulations founded upon it? What end do the Commissioners propose to answer by this officious and impertinent intermeddling? The reasons assigned in the above letter are a shallow pretext, so far as respects any regard for religious liberty, any anxiety to protect paupers living within the walls of a workhouse against the 'intrusion' of dissenting teachers, or 'annoyance' on account of religious belief. All the annoyance originates with their own regulations. The religious distinctions which perplex, and bewilder, and trouble the Commissioners, and which, evidently through ignorance of their nature, are connected in their minds with all the evils of sectarian conflict, polemical rancor, the zeal of proselytism, and rude 'intrusion,' would excite neither trouble nor discord among the inmates of either our gaols or union workhouses, if our legislators and rulers would leave such matters alone. The poor, when the gospel is preached to them in simplicity, gratefully receive the instruction proffered by unpaid teachers who put the New Testament into their hands, without caring to know whether the minister is of this denomination or of that. In numerous instances, under the old poor law, the clergyman of the Establishment and the Independent or Baptist minister took part, in turn, in the unpaid service of the workhouse, without any breach of

order or charity. Why should not this still be permitted? We cannot expect indeed, that high-church Boards of Guardians. should sanction such truly catholic arrangements; but why should Whig Commissioners step in to prohibit even Liberal Guardians from permitting it? Why should intolerance be made the law? Puseyism may abhor all such ecclesiastical irregularities; but do Messrs. Frankland Lewis, Lefevre, and Nicholls belong to the Oxford-tract school? And will Lord John Russell be so untrue to himself as gratuitously to take upon his own shoulders the odium of regulations conceived in the spirit of ignorant or fanatical bigotry? This must not be.

We have, thus far, been examining the Regulations of the Poor Law Commissioners, chiefly as they bear upon the access of dissenting ministers to the inmates of workhouses. correspondence with the Board of Guardians of the Braintree Union, we find the Commissioners arguing the point as to the appointment of chaplains to the union workhouses. It appears from a supplemental minute' of the Board of Commissioners, dated 14th June, 1838, and printed in the Appendix to the Fifth Report, that communications had been received from the Boards of Guardians of several unions, requesting that the appointment of a chaplain might be dispensed with.' This fact is deserving of attention; and it might have been as well, if those communications had been made public, either by the Commissioners themselves, or by order of the House, by which means Parliament and the public would have been enabled to form a better judgment of the reasons for objecting to such appointments, and of the strength of the arguments adduced by the Commissioners in support of their own determination. "The tenor of these communications,' says the minute, 'had led the 'Commissioners to the opinion, that there will frequently exist ' circumstances in which, from the limited number of inmates in the workhouse, and the accommodation which can be afforded in neighboring places of worship, those who would be prevented by age, bodily infirmity, or other circumstances, from going to church, would be so few in number as to render it ' unadvisable to charge the union with the expense of providing divine service in the workhouse on a Sunday by means of a paid chaplain. The Commissioners nevertheless think, that, ' in every case, some person should be appointed, and paid as chaplain to the union workhouse, in order that he may acquire the right, and undertake the responsibility, of giving spiritual aid and 'instruction to the sick, and to those who cannot go to church; and ' of superintending the religious instruction of the children who are educated in the workhouse.' The axiom, that no man can have a right to give spiritual instruction to the poor, who is not paid for doing it, is worthy of the Somerset House philosophy

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in which Mr. Chadwick's compositions so largely deal; and we beg our readers to mark the practical deduction which follows, namely, that the appointment of a paid chaplain bars even any other clergyman of the Establishment from entering the workhouse. In a case submitted bythe Poor Law Commissioners to the Attorney-General and the Solicitor-General for their opinions, the question is put, whether a clergyman of the Church of England is entitled to enter the workhouse, when not appointed as chaplain, on the application of an inmate under the 19th section.' The opinion given upon this point is: 'Where 'there is a chaplain regularly appointed, we think it was not 'the intention of the Legislature to enable each inmate to select ' and invite a different member of the Establishment for himself; but where there is no chaplain, we think it could not have 'been intended to exclude clergymen of the Church of England.' And therefore, they think, the words 'licensed minister' must be deemed to include clergymen of the Established Church.' This is not a very logical or legal conclusion. The simple truth is, we suspect, that it was not deemed necessary to make any provision to allow clergymen of the establishment to enter a parish workhouse. What would Sir Robert Inglis have said, had it been proposed to enact, that no rector, vicar, or other parochial clergyman, shall be admitted to any communication with his parishioners within the workhouse, except on the application of an inmate? Yet, the Commissioners affect to believe that, by the law, the clergy are placed on a less advantageous footing in this respect than dissenting ministers! They say (No. 6779, A.), The Commissioners are of opinion, that, as the law now 'stands, no clergyman of the Established Church, if not regularly appointed chaplain to the workhouse, can claim a right 'to be admitted to any communication with those of its inmates who may be of the Established Church, or to perform 'the Church service within its walls. The clergyman of the 'Church of England is, by law, placed on altogether a different footing from the licensed minister of a dissenting congregation: he, at the request of any inmate of a workhouse of his ' own persuasion, must be admitted as of right to communicate with such inmate; whilst, without the regular appointment of a chaplain, the clergyman of the Church of England can only 'obtain admission by the permission and consent of the guar'dians.' That is to say, in most cases, the clergyman being a guardian, by his own permission. Could the Commissioners imagine that any person of common sense would not see through this flimsy pretext for their compelling guardians, not to grant admission to clergymen, but to appoint one to the exclusion of all others? If the clergyman cannot claim the right by law, cannot obtain admission without the permission