On questioning “The Mother Superior,” she said that the girls were not committed to the institution by the courts, but by “the church.”  The question then arose:  Has the Roman Catholic Church the right to give sentence of imprisonment with hard labor as a penalty?  For this is exactly what imprisonment in this “House of the Good Shepherd” means; therefore, if these girls so sentenced escape, what right has a city policeman to arrest and carry them back to this Catholic institution, which exists without the semblance of a State law and without an iota of moral law?  Are the policemen of the cities of Massachusetts servants of the Roman Catholic Church?  Have the courts the right to sentence prisoners to Catholic prisons, and after sentence, have the prisoners no right?  Many of them are kept for life, or until too old to work, and then they are set adrift to become public charges upon a Protestant country, after the Roman Catholic Church has made hundreds of dollars from the labor of these unfortunates.

We want to call attention to another flagrant case, which happened in the north end of Boston not long since.

A few months since, a Protestant Italian family in the north end of Boston was about to move to New York.  There were two children and the wife soon expected to become mother again.  She expressed the wish that some one would care for one of her children for a few weeks, until she got well and was settled in her new home.  A neighbor sent a woman to her who offered to care for the children, and when this little one was turned over to her, she took it straightway to the home for destitute Catholic children, on Harrison avenue, in Boston.  In a month the mother called for her baby and was told that it was “up in the country,” and was requested to leave it there for a month, and was told that it would be good for the child.  She consented to this, believing that the fresh air would be good for her baby, but she was an uneducated woman and was inclined to believe what others said, as she was an honest lady herself, but she did not know the trickery of the Catholic Church, so when she was asked to sign a paper, she readily agreed to it, not thinking that she was giving her own blood and flesh away.

In a month she came on from New York to get her baby and was told that she could not have it, and was further told that she had signed a paper giving it away.  Then the husband came on from New York and demanded the child, but was refused.  He then appealed to the pastor of the Italian Methodist Church, on Hanover street, Boston.  The two went to a very prominent Romanist office-holder, who was chairman of the trustees of this so-called “Catholic Home.”  This man draws seven thousand dollars per year from the city, and is elected largely through Protestant influence, simply because Protestantism believes that she can reform Catholicism by being liberal with her; but oh!  Liberty! what crimes are perpetrated