ABSTRACT
The Morning Chronicle complains of the gross injustice which, it assures us, is committed towards poor Catholic soldiers, in the condition on which children are admitted to the Duke of York’s Military School at Chelsea, who are not, our contemporary declares, allowed to go to mass or make confession whilst domiciled in that establishment. There is scarce a single mis-statement affecting Roman Catholics and their grievances, which finds its way into the public newspapers, that does not acknowledge a Catholic priest for its author; and the case in question is no exception to the rule. The remarks of our contemporary, than which we regret to be obliged to say nothing can be more fallacious or absurd, profess to be founded on a long and querulous letter which appears in its columns from Father Lisk, of the Catholic Chapel House, Chelsea. We have not the rules of the excellent establishment which his reverence has sought to calumniate at hand; but we remember enough of them to convict him of falsehood out of his own mouth. He tells us of a poor Catholic soldier with four children who has lately been “driven to the alternative of his paternal feelings being outraged, or his children being thrown ignorant and neglected on society,” because, unacquainted with the existence of any obstacle when he applied for the admission of his children into the institution, “he was informed that it was confined to the doctrines of the Established Church." We will not encumber our columns with the long speech indulged in by “the poor Catholic soldier” in reply to this communication, because the whole of the anecdote is a circumstantial fabrication. Originally the Duke of York’s Military School admitted the children of soldiers during the lifetime of both their parents; but the accommodation being found insufficient for a tenth part of the candidates, it was subsequently restricted to children only one of whose parents were living at the time of their admission. For some years past, however, the benefits have been limited to orphans who have survived both father and mother. 5 The whole of the story, therefore, about the “poor Catholic and his four children” is one of unmitigated falsehood. The Royal Military Asylum was founded for the reception of Protestant soldiers, as Maynooth, although supported by Protestant funds, is devoted to the education of the sons of Roman Catholics. We see no more hardship in the exclusiveness in one establishment than in that of the other. It is false that it stands indebted for its institution to Roman Catholic aid, nor has Colonel Williamson, the commandant, nor any other person connected with its management, the right to deviate from the regulations on which it was founded. Other Protestant establishments, Greenwich for example, are, his reverence assures us, conducted upon the same principle. No doubt they are, and if the regulations on which they were founded, are similar, there can be little ground for surprise. The subject of the admission of Roman Catholic children in the Royal Military Orphan Asylum was investigated by Lord Howick two or three years ago, and found to be impracticable without totally breaking up and reorganising the institution. The assertion of the Morning Chronicle that the Catholics form a majority of the British army is preposterous, and must have been made in total ignorance of the fact. We doubt if they constitute a tenth part of the British military forces.―STANDARD.
