Cardinal Vaughan is following in the footsteps of his predecessor in the field of Socinl Reforms; but he is a stronger personality in some respects than Manning, who at last became prosy, and therefore feeble on the platform. Cardinal Vaughan's recent speech at the Stockport Conference of the Catholic Truth Society, on the wrongs of the poor, has created a quick and deep impression, especially his remarks upon defective housing. He says that nearly a million of the London poor need re-housing; that millions of human creatures are housed worse than the cattle and horses of many a lord or squire. We Hhave known all this for a long while, but when such truths are rubbed into' the public conscience by " man so eminent as the Cardinal, they astonish numbers of people with' all the force of discoveries. Simultaneously with this deliverance is the publication by the Queens's Printer of the report of the select committee on the Cottage Homes Bill. The two should be read together, because the latter makes practical suggestions as to certain details that directly apply to the general tone of the former. For example, the select committee recommend that guardians should provide special Cottage Homes or suitable outside accommodation for married couples, and respectable old persons whose poverty is not their own fault, but the result of misfortune, After all, will anything come of this latter-day stirring up of sympathy for the aged and deserving poor? Is it to be great ery und little wool once more
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.