or that? For if you have,
you are not only unfit to be called a Christian; you are unfit to be
called a decent human being. And this, because there was every
reason to suppose that they had been doing it; and that they would
not tell of themselves, if they could possibly avoid it. So the
Confessional arose, as a necessary element for educating savages
into common morality and decency. And for the same reasons we
employ it among the Negroes of Trinidad. Have no fears lest we
should corrupt the minds of the young. They see and hear more harm
daily than we could ever teach them, were we so devilishly minded.
There is vice now, rampant and notorious, in Port of Spain, which
eludes even our Confessional. Let us alone to do our best. God
knows we are trying to do it, according to our light.'

If any Roman Catholic clergyman in Port of Spain spoke thus to me--
and I have been spoken to in words not unlike these--I could only
answer, 'God's blessing on you, and all your efforts, whether I
agree with you in detail or not.'

The Roman Catholic inhabitants of the island are to the Protestant
as about 2.5 to 1. {288} The whole of the more educated portion of
them, as far as I could ascertain, are willing to entrust the
education of their children to the clergy. The Archbishop of
Trinidad, Monsignor Gonin, who has jurisdiction also in St. Lucia,
St. Vincent, Grenada, and Tobago, is a man not only of great energy
and devotion, but of cultivation and knowledge of the world; having,
I was told, attained distinction as a barrister elsewhere before he
took Holy Orders. A group of clergy is working under him--among
them a personal friend of mine--able and ready to do their best to
mend a state of things in which most of the children in the island,
born nominal Roman Catholics, but the majority illegitimate, were
growing up not only in ignorance, but in heathendom and brutality.
Meanwhile, the clergy were in want of funds. There were no funds at
all, indeed, which would enable them to set up in remote forest
districts a religious school side by side with the secular ward
school; and the colony could not well be asked for Government grants
to two sets of schools at once. In face of these circumstances, the
late Governor thought fit to take action on the very able and
interesting report of Mr. J. P. Keenan, one of the chiefs of
inspection of the Irish National Board of Education, who had be