(6) The Parliamentary committee on Conventual and Monastic Institutions (originally designed by its mover, Mr. Newdegate, to inquire into the 'existence, characters, and increase' of those institutions, but restricted, on a motion of Mr. Gladstone's, to inquire into 'the state of the law' respecting them) held its sittings May 17 to July 25, 1870, and Mr. Hope-Scott's attention seems to have been much occupied with the subject. During the earlier stages of the affair he was at Hyères, but his correspondence shows how carefully he was kept informed of what passed. A letter to him from the Duke of Norfolk (dated Norfolk House, April 21, 1870) gives an idea of the line Mr. Hope-Scott had taken: 'I was very glad to receive your letter' (the Duke writes). 'It had great weight with our committee to-day, and we decided to ask Government for nothing, but to resist inquiry in any form.'
(7) To services like these, in which he was the trusted counsellor of those who were acting for Catholicity in general, might be added illustrations of the many instances in which Mr. Hope-Scott's legal knowledge and experience were applied to the business affairs of priests on the missions, or of convents, if such cases were not, from their own nature, uninteresting except to those immediately concerned, and implying also the same confidence that belongs to other privileged communications. The words of a valuable letter, from which I have more than once quoted, are here in point: [Footnote: Lady Georgiana Fullerton to Lady H. K.] 'What I always admired in him was his patient charity—not so much the alms he gave, considerable as they were, but the manner in which, busy as he was, and often exhausted by his professional labours, he gave time and attention to all sorts of cases of distress and perplexity, or of importance to religion. "Consult Mr. Hope," was the advice given to numberless persons who had no claim whatever upon him but that of needing what no one else could so well give. One of the titles of our Blessed Lady, "Auxilium Christianorum," might in one sense have been applied to him.' Under this head of charity may well be included his undertaking, at the cost of time so precious to himself, the guardianships of bereaved families, of which a list has been given in a former chapter (p. 130).
2. Of Mr. Hope-Scott's pecuniary charities in England (in the Catholic part of his life) I am not able to give a special account; but I may mention one characteristic trait, that he felt it his duty to do more for Westminster than other places, because it was there that he earned his money; following the excellent principle of helping, in the first instance, the locality in which Almighty God has placed one. Accordingly, at Westminster he gave ground for Catholic Poor Schools, with property endowment of 50_l_. per annum; and gave great assistance to the Filles de Marie, a community of religious ladies so employed in the Horseferry Road, in the same district.
A large proportion of his private benefactions seem to have been of a description especially in keeping with his tender and thoughtful mind, such as giving a mother the means of going to visit a daughter whom she had reluctantly allowed to enter a convent; enabling sick priests to go abroad for their health; setting up a poor schoolmistress with the means of purchasing a school; paying the expenses of a funeral; and so on.
Like all men either wealthy or reputed to be so, he was continually importuned with petitions for pecuniary aid, sometimes asked for by way of gift, sometimes as loans. To particularise such in any recognisable manner would of course be impossible, for fear of wounding the feelings of persons who were the objects of his kindness; but, avoiding this as well as I can, I may say that there were instances in which Mr. Hope-Scott cleared people out of overwhelming difficulties by gifts of lavish generosity—hundreds of pounds, and in some cases as much as 1,000_l_. I could produce an example of the former in which the prompt liberality shown was only equalled by the delicacy and forbearance; for it may easily be supposed that the difficulties thus relieved were not always free from blame on the part of those involved in them. Seldom, perhaps, can it be otherwise; but what would happen if all charity were measured by the deserts of the recipient?
What may have been the actual amount of Mr. Hope-Scott's charities during his life it would be very hard to conjecture; but this much I can state, on the testimony of one who knew the fact from his own personal knowledge, that in twelve or thirteen years (from 1859 or thereabouts) he gave away, in charity of some form or other, not less than 40,000_l_. It is right to observe that, quite towards the close, as he was retiring from his profession, there was a great diminution in his charitable expenditure; for, instead of the ample, though merely professional, income he had enjoyed for a great part of his life, he had become, relatively speaking, a person with very limited means. Believing it still to be his duty to provide for his 'son and heir,' and for his other children, of course he had no longer the power of doing all that he had done under circumstances altogether different.
Missions on the Border; Galashiels, Kelso, &c.
Mr. Hope-Scott's zeal for the support of Catholicity was naturally felt most by places near him in the Highlands or on the Border, where he built churches and schools, and aided struggling missions. Of those on the Border, the most important was the Church of Our Lady and St. Andrew at Galashiels, which, as a manufacturing town, has a large Catholic population. True to his organising genius, he intended it should be a centre for smaller out-missions around it, as Selkirk, Jedburgh, Kelso, &c. It was completed gradually, and the following extract from a letter of his to Father Newman (dated Abbotsford, December 30, 1857) shows, in a pleasing and simple manner, the heart which Mr. Hope-Scott threw into the work he was offering to Almighty God:—
I hope that ten days or so will render [the church] fit for use in a rough way; and I hope it will be so used, and that I shall not be hurried in the decorative part, which I cannot afford to do handsomely at present, and which I think will be done better when we have become used to the interior, and have observed what is to be brought out and what concealed. The shell I am well pleased with. It is massive and lofty, no side aisles, but chapels between buttresses—and no altar-screen—more like a good college chapel than a parish church. The whole plan, however, has not been carried out, so the proportions cannot be fairly judged of. Some day perhaps I may finish it, or some one else instead; and to keep us in mind that more is to do, we have a rough temporary work at the west end (not really west), with square sash windows of a repulsive aspect.[Footnote: There are readers who will be glad of the preservation of the following dates connected with Galashiels Church. The plans were completed July 1, 1856; first payment, November 1856; last account rendered, February 1858; the church was opened on Candlemas Day, February 2, 1858, by Bishop Gillis; finished finally in 1872, and opened in August 1873.]
Mr. Hope-Scott lived to finish it, and the work, I have heard, can hardly have cost him less than 10,000_l_. He also gave to the Jesuit Fathers at Galashiels a library of books, chiefly on civil and canon law, in value about 500_l_. The last cheque he signed with his failing hand was one for 900_l_. in discharge of the last debt on Galashiels Church. The mission at Galashiels was held at first by the Oblate Fathers, but from the end of July 1863 by the Jesuits.[Footnote: There is a letter of Father Jos. Johnson, Provincial S. J., to Mr, Hope-Scott, dated February 24, 1859, from which it appears that the Society, in consequence of the many demands upon them, were unable to accept the mission of Galashiels at that time.] The following letter (worthy of preservation also because of the writer) will show that Mr. Hope-Scott had wished, almost immediately on finding himself a Catholic, to have a Jesuit Father at Abbotsford:—The Père de Ravignan, S.J. to J. R. Hope, Esq., Q.G.