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them not be heard, except within five years of their profession, and then they shall not bring the case before any except their own Superior and the Ordinary, but if any put off the frock of their own accord no allegations shall be heard, but being compelled to return to the convent they must be punished as apostates.'

So that a nun who has taken the vow cannot obtain her freedom, cannot even obtain a hearing, until five years have passed. Then, broken in spirit and will, the only appeal she can avail herself of is to her Superior and the Ordinary. She may have taken the vow when scarcely more than a child; she may long for liberty in vain. It may be said that under the Habeas Corpus Act no individual can be detained in any place in the United Kingdom against her will. But how can the will of a nun, who is not permitted to see her relations, be ascertained? The cloistered nun is dead to her friends. The active nun, engaged in outside work, what of her?

Granted that freedom is possible, what does it entail? Rebellion against the all-powerful Church, the curse of priests, the shrinking horror of friends and relatives, terror of the hereafter, the hell which awaits the apostate nun. In spite of real fear of the unknown hereafter and the consequences of leaving the Church, a few have escaped and freed themselves from convent life. And these state emphatically that many nuns would be thankful to come out of the convents if they had any place of safety assured to them. As it is, the world outside offers no refuge; friends and parents turn with horror from the nun who has proved unfaithful to her vows, the poor victim of superstition who has to face shame and reproach from all her world.

These young girls have sacrificed everything-friends, youth, worldly interests and duties, the innocent pleasures which are the birthright of youth, the possibility of happy wifehood and motherhood, for a religious ideal. They do not dream that the life they are going to may be empty and unsatisfying; they do not realise what the long years of silence, prayer and meditation, and the loneliness, entail. How can they-mere girls, with no experience of life, no realisation of their own possibilities of human passion?

How terrible if the ideal should prove unsatisfying, if they find themselves in the years to come unfitted for the cloister, because they are virtual prisoners for life, physical prisoners, mental and moral prisoners. They can have no will, no thought, no desire apart from their convent life. The heart which should be filled with pious ecstasy and mystic love may be bursting with rebellion, with smouldering desire for freedom, which is sacrilege in itself. They cannot escape, they must live their life behind the grille until the end. Many are satisfied, assured of their own salvation and happy in the belief that their mode of life, their prayers, are

helping to save the souls of those who never breathe a prayer for themselves. But many others, after only a few months, realise miserably that they are quite unsuited to the life. What of them? Are they not prisoners in a free country? They are cloistered nuns and the world cannot hear their cries, cannot know of their longing to escape. Are we not called upon to help them? Is it not the duty of the State to extend to them the same protection as is afforded to the inmates of our prisons and asylums? Can it not be made an illegal act for any Order to retain a nun who has stated that she desires to return to the world?

Imagine the effect of convent life upon the physical and mental health of these girls. The nervous tension generated by penance and perpetual prayer, the physical suffering entailed by the scourgings and disciplines, the insufficient diet, the lack of exercise and fresh air, all contribute to undermine the health. Many of the nuns are neurotic and highly strung in the first instance; they belong to the type which dreams dreams and sees visions, the type which, in suitable environment, develops the delusions and hallucinations of religious mania.

A certain number would be certified as insane by any medical man who examined them. That cases of insanity do occur in convents is acknowledged by the authorities. In such cases the fate of the girl is entirely in the hands of her Superior. She may be kept for years a prisoner in her cell, like Barbara Ubryk, the Carmelite nun of Cracow, who was imprisoned for twenty-one years in a filthy dungeon of the convent, a report of which appeared in The Times of the 26th of July 1869. She may be conveyed to any of the asylums for insane nuns which are under the control of nuns. No outside opinion need be asked; no certificate of insanity obtained from unprejudiced medical authority. It rests with the abbess or the priest to call a refractory nun insane, and to decide upon her fate as they please.

With regard to tubercular disease, the Roman Church recognises that the death rate from phthisis and other pulmonary affections is high in convents. In the Daily Chronicle of the 12th of December 1906, a statement appeared to the effect that the Pope had decreed the abolition of the conventual law of strict enclosure in the case of religious communities of nuns engaged in educational work, obliging the Sisters to take walks abroad at least twice a week. The motives which produced this order were mainly hygienic: Evidence amassed at the offices of the sacred congregation reveals the prevalence of sickness and an appalling death-rate among women leading a cloistral life, particularly from consumptive diseases.' In view of the infectious nature of consumption and the need of isolating all cases for treatment, inspection of convents is urgently required.

And when deaths occur in convents what happens? In many cases no report of the death is issued; no inquest requires to be held when the cause of death is unknown. The present unsatisfactory state of the registration of deaths and burials is one of the most important arguments in favour of initiating inspection and control of these places. At the present time there is no specific report of the deaths in monastic and conventual institutions. Nuns can be buried in secret without any interference from the State, and there can be no doubt that the existence of private burial grounds belonging to such institutions presents facilities for concealment of crime which should not be allowed by the State.

In the second place, inspection is required in order to protect the interests of the women and children who are associated with the Active Orders of nuns, the laundry hands, the seamstresses, the orphans, the children in the Convent Schools.

There are nearly 200 different orders of active nuns, and in connexion with these orders are schools, orphanages, and penitentiaries for fallen women, who are generally occupied in laundry work. Many of these places are paying commercial enterprises, carried on by means of unpaid labour, and sources of profit to the order with which they are connected. As the convent authorities pay no money wage for work done, they can compete unfairly in trade and manufacture with companies who contribute to the taxation of the country. The competition of richly endowed and charitably assisted convents seriously interferes with the earnings of working women, and adds to the growing industrial problem of the present day. They compete against our schools and teachers, our seamstresses, and the large number of widows and married women who try to make a living for their families by 'taking in washing.' Inspection under the Factory Acts is called for in justice to the women against whom they compete.

Further, as convents are free from inspection, the health, welfare and happiness of the girl and child workers associated with them are entirely dependent on the Superior of the Order. So long as convent workers are not under State protection, sweating and overcrowding can exist without hindrance. The workers may be employed under the most adverse conditions of health and sanitation. The Superiors are untrammelled by State regulations and the Factory Acts, and have the power of employing labour under any conditions they please. The laundries are maintained by the unpaid labour of penitents, fallen girls, whose penitential toil in many cases is but one degree removed from hard labour for life. They can be compelled to work at any hour and for as many hours as the nuns in charge may desire, in insufficient space, in ill-ventilated, insanitary buildings; they can be kept washing till nine o'clock at night, shivering in the wet and cold.

It may be said that the Superiors of convents are good women, who would not take advantage of their unrestricted authority. But the very essence of their religion is to ignore physical suffering if spiritual benefit may be attained, to aim at enrichment of their Order and the good of the community at the expense of the individual. Further, in all such communities, even when the majority are women of fine character, there are necessarily some of lower type in whose hands undisputed authority is a dangerous weapon. What is to prevent sweating under such circumstances? Who is to safeguard the interests of the young girls engaged in needlework, and to undertake that permanent damage to their eyesight will not result from sitting hour after hour making the fine garments and exquisite laces which can be so cheaply bought from the convents in this country? Some of these convents are insanitary, with insufficient bathroom and lavatory accommodation. The sleeping accommodation and the bedding would not be permitted to exist in our workhouses and prisons, and the health of the girls and the orphan children suffers as a result. Many of the children are tuberculous, but no steps are taken to isolate and properly treat even the worst and most infectious cases. Anæmia and malnutrition are also prevalent in consequence of the sedentary life, the insufficient food, and the lack of fresh air which exist in a large number of these places. In 1902 an inquiry was made concerning an English convent by the Local Government Board, and it was found that of 212 Poor Law children sent to the convent only forty-nine were free from ophthalmic disease, and nearly all were suffering from malnutrition, from body sores and verminous heads, as a result of neglect. The matter was put right, but that such a condition of affairs is even possible offers forcible illustration of the need for strict inspection of these places, so that steps may be taken to prevent children of ten and twelve years spending hours daily at eye-destroying tasks, and at work, such as washing and scrubbing, which is beyond their strength.

The best way to ensure adequate protection of the convent worker, and the nun as well, is by efficient and regulated inspection of all such institutions. The only inspection of convents at present existing relates to convent laundries, and as the law provides that no inspector can examine an inmate of a convent laundry save in the presence of the Superior or the priest, it is an inspection not worthy the name.

Inspection of convents ought not to be a party question. Many votes depend upon the maintenance of secrecy, but the tactics of party should not be allowed to retard this humane reform which is so urgently needed at the present time.

ELIZABETH SLOAN CHESSER.

THE WEST AFRICAN SLAVE TRAFFIC

BRITAIN'S DUTY TOWARDS ANGOLA AND SAN THOMĚ

THERE appears every probability that the next few months will witness a vigorous effort to rouse public opinion to a sense of our national duties and responsibilities towards what has been described as the labour question' in Portugal's West African possessions. An examination of the problem and of the British connexion with it may not, therefore, be amiss at the present juncture.

The Portuguese possessions in West Africa consist of a vast area, more than half a million square miles on the mainland, known as Angola, the small enclave of Cabinda and the volcanic islands of San Thomé and Principe-these latter of remarkable luxuriance and fertility, eminently suited to the cultivation of tropical products. The administration of so large a dependency as Angola would, under any circumstances, involve considerable effort and expenditure on the part of a first-class Colonial Power able to draw freely upon a trained body of public servants. The decay of Portugal's national genius, her inability to keep pace with modern requirements, and her increasing poverty, combine to emphasise the hopelessness of a task beyond her capacity or her means. Portugal lies charged to-day with grave maladministration in her West African domains. But fairness compels the admission that this maladministration is less deliberate than inevitable and is deplored by many honourable Portuguese. No one who has seen Portuguese at work in Africa can contend that the spirit of resolution and initiative is lacking in individual Portuguese. Similarly the allegation of cruelty for cruelty's sake often made with regard to the Portuguese treatment of the native is not, in the opinion of the writers, just. In some respects the Portuguese, like all the Latin races, have a keener sympathy with and understanding of the native mind than the average Anglo-Saxon. Their outlook is less rigid, more patriarchal, often better fitted to ensure simple conditions of happiness among native races. But it is as a Government that Portugal fails, through weakness and lack of money, to ensure protection for her subjects or respect for her laws; and nowhere in the world,

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