University of Virginia Library

VI-Popery and Protestantism in the Queen's Bench.

THE application to the magistrate was far from satisfactory. There had not even been an exposure, and the Windmill Bulletin gayly bantered the Detectoral Association. Meanwhile had happened the grand christening, of which a circumstantial account was in the hands of the council of the Detectoral Association shortly after the ceremony had

been performed. Here was a monstrous indignity to a Protestant child! The account was at once printed, together with a verbatim report of the application to the magistrate as well as one of "a conversation held with the mother by an agent of the Association.'' Board-men paraded the great thoroughfares carrying this appeal:—

[Description: A poster.]

PROTESTANT DETECTORAL ASSOCIATION.
—
NO POPERY!
Abduction Of an Infant!
Assault on the Liberty of the Subject!
Mysterious and Awful Proceedings!
Baptism of a Protestant Child in a Convent!

OUTRAGE
Upon the Nation by Foreign Mercenaries!
—
Every Father and Mother is Invited to Co-operate in
Maintaining the
PROTESTANT RELIGION,
The Sanctity of Home, and the Inviolability of
BRITISH FREEDOM!
—
NO SURRENDER!

If there was no coherency in this production, it should be noted how little that is of the essence of popular appeal. The metropolis was in an uproar. Meetings were held, subscriptions poured in, dangerous crowds collected in Winkle Street. When Mr. Dignam Bailey, Q. C., went down to Westminster, to move the Court of Queen's Bench, multitudes besieged it. Protestant champions and Papal ecclesiastics vied in their efforts to get seats. The writ had gone from judge's chambers returnable to the full court. Sister Suspiciosa, bearing the infant Ambrosius, and supported by two novices and Father Certificatus, had been smuggled into court through mysterious passages in its rear. Mrs. Ginx also, brought from Rosemary Street by the little man who provided her with a bonnet trimmed with orange-colored

ribbons, sat staring with red eyes at her child, now enveloped in a robe that was embroidered with little crosses.

Why need I tell you, how dead silence fell upon the Court after the stir caused by the entrance of the judges; how everybody knew what was coming when a master beneath the bench rose, and called out, "Re Ginx, an infant, Exparte Mary Ginx!'' How the Chief Justice, fresh and rosy-looking, then blew his nose in a delicate mauve-colored silk handkerchief: how he tried and discarded half-a-dozen pens, amid breathless silence; how in his blandest manner he said: "Who appears for the Respondent?'' and Mr. Dignam Bailey, Q. C., and Mr. Octavius Ernestus, Q. C., rose together to say that Mr. Ernestus did!

Mr. Ernestus was a Catholic. He was

assisted by half-a-dozen counsel. He riddled the affidavits on the other side, and read voluminous ones on his own; bitterly animadverted upon the absence of an affidavit by the father; held up to the scorn of a civilized world the course pursued towards his meek and gentle clients by the "fanatical zealots of the Protestant Detectoral Association;'' in moving tones referred to the shrinking of "quiet recluses, from the gaze of a rude, unsympathizing world;'' cited cases from the time of Magna Charta, down; called upon the Court to vindicate Protestant justice, ending his peroration with the aphorism of Lord Mansfield, Fiat justitia ruat cælum.

One cannot do Justice to Mr. Dignam Bailey's argument, when after lunch he rose to reply. He was logical and passionate, vindictive and pathetic by turns. He inveighed

against the Lady Superior, against her attorneys, against Father Certificatus, against Ginx,—"craven to his heaven-born rights of political and religious freedom,''— against the Roman Catholic religion, the Pope, the Archbishop of Westminster, the Virgin Mary. The Court knew, and every one else knew, that this was pure pyrotechny, and Mr. Bailey knew that best of all; but, though the Bench is swift to speak, slow to hear, it felt obliged, in a case of this public interest, to sit by, and be witnesses of the exhibition. Mr. Bailey concluded by a play on the aphorism cited by his learned friend. "He would say that if such justice were to be done, as his friend had urged, the Kingdom of Heaven in England would rush to its fall.''

The Court at once decided that, as the father had confided the custody of the infant

to the Sisters of Misery, and did not appear to desire that it should be withdrawn, they, disregarding the religious clouds in which the subject had been too carefully involved on both sides, gave judgment for the defendant, with costs.

As they passed out of Court, Mr. Stigma said to his clients, "Quite as I anticipated; you remember I told you so in my Opinion.''