§ THE MARQUESS OF CLANRICARDE, pursuant to notice, presented a Petition from the Guardians of the Tuam Poor Law Union praying that deserted children may be registered as belonging to the religion of the majority of inhabitants of the Union charged with their support; and moved, that there be laid before this House, copy of the letter lately addressed by the Pool-Law Commissioners of Ireland to the Clerk of the Tuam Union upon the subject of deserted children in Ireland. The noble Marquess also asked, whether Her Majesty's Government have given their attention to this matter, and have in contemplation any Amendment of the Law concerning it?
THE EARL OF DONOUGHMOREsaid, that the proposition that deserted children should be registered as of the religion to which the majority of the inhabitants should belong would be inoperative in the case of those Unions where there was any equal admixture of Churchmen, Presbyterians, and Roman Catholics. It had been proposed that the religious education of the 795 children should be decided by the vote of the Guardians. That, he thought, was objectionable; for a battle would be fought in the board every time such a case came before it for decision, the effect of which would be to cause disunion among the members of the board. There was no statute law on this subject; but he believed the common law was that when the religion of the parents of the child was unknown the child should be brought up in the religion of the State. But in fact the subject had been maturely and carefully considered by the Government, and it was the intention of the noble Lord the Secretary for Ireland to introduce into a Bill for the Amendment of the Poor Law in Ireland, which was now in the other House, a clause which would be satisfactory to all parties; but as the clause was not yet settled he did not feel at liberty to state its provisions. He begged to add that in the same Bill it was intended to provide some means to check the enormous mortality among those children. It had been ascertained that five out of every six of these children died before the age of five years; and this frightful mortality was plainly attributable to the guardians not having the proper means in the workhouses at their disposal for the support of very young children when brought to them.
THE EARL OF LEITRIMsaid, the operation of the existing law had been beneficial, inasmuch as Roman Catholic parents, finding that their children, if deserted, would be brought up in the Protestant faith, came forward and maintained them.
§ THE EARL OF BANDONhad never heard of any difficulty as to the registry of children in the Union in Ireland with which he was best acquainted. A Judge who was second to none in Ireland had declared that boards of guardians had a right to bring up these children in the religion of the State. It was said that Judge Keogh had given a contrary opinion; but the case in answer to which his opinion had been given had not yet been published. It would, he thought, be found that Judge Keogh's was a limited answer, since it was confined to cases where it was known that these children had been baptized in the Roman Catholic faith. He trusted that no change would be made in what had been the law of the land for centuries, and that the apple of discord would not be thrown among the boards of guardians. The policy of the Poor Law Commissioners, and of all 796 who had been interested in carrying out the poor law in Ireland, had been to avoid these religious discussions, and he trusted that a policy would not now be inaugurated which would set parish against parish and neighbour against neighbour.
§ Petition ordered to lie on the table; return ordered.