ENGLISH NEWS.

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume XIII, Issue 1020, 29 April 1869, Page 2

ENGLISH NEWS.

A CONVENT SCANDAL. The Court of Queen’s Bench has been occupied with a case that at first excited the attention of the nation, but has from the monotonous squalor of its details long since ceased to interest anybody but the court, the counsel, the unfortunate jury, and the parties. The trial is called “ Sanrin v. Starr.” The case is a Roman Catholic one, and the plaintiff is a nun. The defendant is the mother superior of a Roman Catholic convent at Hull. The complaint is that Miss Saurin, having incurred the displeasure of her superior, was subjected to such a fearful and protracted series of persecutions, menances, insults, and outrages, that her health was injured, and that these were a part of a conspiracy to drive her from the sacred convent. The answer is that Miss Sanrin was a wilful, wordly, “ disedifying,” “imperfect” young person, who revolted from the abject submission which she had vowed to practice, and that she exaggerated much that she had undergone, but that much of it was necessary to tame her proud spirit, and make her truly pious. The details are afflictingly paltry, and whichever way the verdict goes, it is clear that convent life in the present day must be a wretched business, fit only for the smallestminded women. jMiss Saurin claims heavy damages. It is not.likely that the verdict will be given in time to be forwarded by this mail, but it is just possible. Sir Alexander Coekburu has intimated that he shall ask the jury, first, whether there was a conspiracy to drive out the peccant nun by the mode she describes, or secondly, to do so by submitting, as it is alleged was done, false charges against her to the bishop. But if, on the whole, the jury think that the superior and her assistants acted honestly, according to their lights, they are not to give the plaintiff a verdict merely because common sense revolts at tbe convent system. The enormous length of the trial invests it with a fictitious import ance, and it is really a case that ought to have gone before an inferior tribunal. [Latest telegrams from England announce a verdict for plaintiff, damages £SOO ]