ABSTRACT
KIIIrIl,h.,oman'. a."""'1 Dttc.mblr !feh, Jl18. TIle .Agar-Ellis Ca8e. 54,3, a~peal from his conclusion as to the particular church hiS children should attend, the particular sermons they should hear, or the particular religious books to be placed in their hands. He is quite as likely to judge rightly as we are to judge for him. At all events, the law has made him, and not us, the judge, and we cannot interfere with him in his honest exercise of the jurisdiction which the law has confided to him. This being his right, haa the father abdicated that right and submitted the whole matter to the judgment of the Court by being himself party as next friend to the institution of the action making the children wards, and himself seeking the directions of the Court as to their education t Weare of opinion that if the father had the power so to delegate his duty, which we doubt, it would not be fair or right to hold that he had unwittingly surrendered his right by a proceeding evidently taken for the enforcement of it, and for obtaining the assistance of the Court in vindication of it. We come now to the consideration of the last point, and the only point on which we have any doubt-viz., whether the Court should interfere at all; whether the Court, recognizing the father's undoubted authority as master of his own house, as king and ruler in his own family, can be called on by him to be ancillary to the exercise of his jurisdiction, and whether he ought not to be left to enforce his commands by his own authority within his own domain; and that was throughout the argument and at the close of it the very strong inclination of our opinion. We fear and feel a difficulty about the Court's enforcing an order of a private person which it disclaims the right of examining. But it is not a question between the father and the Court; it is a question of the wards. And. being of opinion that the father has retained his right to direct the religious education of his children. and the. father being minded that they should not be taken to mass, confession, or the like, the causing or permitting them to be so taken, in direct disobedience to the father's commands, is a wrong to them as well as to him. I perceive that the injunction is confined as follows:-' To restrain the mother from taking the infants or any of them, or causing, procuring, or permit-
ting them or any of them to be taken, without the consent of the father, to confession, or to any church or places or place of worship where worship is performed otherwise than according to the rites or ceremonies of the Church of England as by law established,' and that injunction is in accordance with precedents which have been produced to us. The Court has in other matters and under other circumstances protected wards by strengthening the hands of guardians, and it is safer not to disclaim or narrow its right or duty in that respect. We think, therefore, that the injunction of the ViceChancellor ought to be sustained. But, having regard to the ground on which we base our decision on the main subject-viz., the power and jurisdiction of the father-we think the declaration ought to be omitted, so as to throw on the father the whole responsibility of doing now, and during the remaining years of his children's respective minorities, what is light and proper. He ought to discard, and we have no doubt will discard,. all thought of personal dignity or personal supremacy or of triumph in a personal struggle. The law trusts to him that he will, rising above all such petty feelings, have a sole regard to what he conscientiously believes. to be for the temporal and spiritual welfare of his children. And we, pronoullcing what we deem the law t<> be, must leave the matter to his sense of parental duty and to his conscience.
