The Press.
London, England, 1854-01-28 00:00:00

THE SEAT OF WAR.

THE latest accounts from the principalities report
a succession of hasty incursions effected alternately
by Turks and Russians upon the left arid right banks
of the Danube respectively. Frequent skirmishes
are stated to have taken place, but no serious en-
gagement, and the invading troops in all cases seem
to have recrossed the river, and returned to their
encampments after a brief foray. Despatches trans-
mitted from Vienna stated that the Russians had
crossed in considerable force at Silistria, with the
intention of making a permanent lodgment ; but the
report has not been confirmed.

Another grand expedition was also said to be in
preparation against Kalafat, for which purpose Prince
Gortechakoff was concentrating his forces at Radovan.
The 18th of January was even mentioned as the day
fixed upon for the attack. By the latest accounts,
however, it would appear that the enterprise had
been postponed). and, meantime, we are told that
Omer Pasha retains possession not only of Kalafat,
but of all the fortifications on the intervening ground,
almost of Radovan itself, erected by the Russians,
but from which they were dislodged in the late
battles.

The Queen, Bellerophon, and Valmy, which had
been left at Buyukdere, have followed the combined
squadrons into the Black Sea. This movement is
supposed to be connected with the return of the
Retribution from Sebastopol, after delivering the
message to the governor of that port. By the latest
accounts the fleets were making sail for Varna, and
the Russian fleet was cruising off lialfa, at the en-
trance of the Sea of Azoff.

A bulletin published at St. Petersburg on the 17th
inst. shows that the Russian troops in Asia are in
winter quarters, within their own frontiers, and that
at present no military operations are in progress,
A letter of the 18th from the same capital states
that Count Orloff has received a confidential mission
from the Czar for the Courts of Vienna, Berlin, Paris,
and London. The Emperor is said to be greatly
irritated against those who had urged him on to war.
Another rumour says that he has sent to Prince
Menschikoff the order to operate at sea as if the
eozubined fleets were not there, and to continne the
armaments at Odessa.

SAMDAy
w..........„....___ P

Yesterday's Moniteew publishes the report of the
Minister of Finance respecting the flnancial.rendte
of the year 1853, by which it appears that the axons
and expenditure are nearly balanced, there being
only a deficiency of about 4,000,000 f.
In obedience to orders sent to the prefects by tie
Minister of the Interior, an inventory is about to
made of all the departmental archives previous
1700.
The Emperor has granted from his privy purse
sum of 3,000 f. to the Abbe Dares, director of the
Institute of the Deaf and Dumb at Soissons, for the
construction of a church.

The Gazette of Baden announces that the negetie.
lions begun between the Government and the deer
have failed, the Archbishop of Frieburg having di.
Glared that he would not give up any of his right,
From Madrid, on the 21st, we learn that the Sn.
preme Court.of War and Marine had been reorganised,
and placed under the presidency of the Captaie.
General, Villacampa.
The Queen was, on the 22nd, to preside over ,
council of ministers. The adoption in this council
of a measure for suppressing passports was con.
sidered probable. That measure would be very
popular.

THE INDIA Mitt reached Marseilles yesterday
afternoon. The steamer which brought it was
detained by contrary winds on her passage to Aiello.
dria, where the mail was consequently kept wait*
for several days.
Tun ADDRESS will be moved in the House of Lords
by Lord Carnarvon, and seconded by Lord Deck.
In the Commons it will be moved by Visoonnteastie
rosse (son of Lord Kenniart), and seconded by Mr.
Thomson Mulkey.
THE CONFERENCE on the subject of the pond*
strikes and lock•outs is appointed to be keld
Monday nett at the rooms of the Society of Arts .
John-street, Adelpbi. From the last balance sheet
issued by the operative committee it appears tbatthe
number of unemployed hands relieved from the
trades' union funds was 16,865, showing an increase
of 383 upon the previous week's return. The amount
distributed to the applicants was 3,0941.65. 9d. The
total expenditure from the commeneement of the
strike now amounts to upwards of 40,0001.
THE Loss or Two OTHER SHIPS was reported
Liverpool yesterday. The screw steamer Whole,
Captain Harem, which left on Thursday for the Bra-
zils, went ashore on the Furlong Hocks, near Holy.
head. The crew and passengers were saved. The
Olinda had a large and valuable cargo of fine goods.
The Lauriston, from Liverpool, for Ancona, was totally
destroyed by fire in Holyhead harbour. Her cargo
was all lost.

AN INQUEST was appointed to be held respecting
the late shipwreck of the Taylenr, but the heavy
gales rendering all approach to the island of Lambay
where the recovered bodies were lying extremely
dangerous, the proceedings have been postponed
from day to day, and were still uncomrnenced or
Thursday. Captain Walker, of the Board of Trade,
has arrived in Dublin, being deputed by the Govern-
ment to watch the inquest and collect inforteation
respecting the catastrophe. The latest statements
represent the loss of life as being even greater than
are related in our narrative given elsewhere. when
the Taylenr left Liverpool she had on board
passengers, 76 officers and crew, making a total
652. Of these there were saved 228 pw,sentler,s,
54 seamen, Captain Noble, and two officers, 282 •
all ; consequently there must have been 370 lost.
Lambay, men, women, and children. A subscription
has been opened in Dublin and Liverpool for i
passengers who were rescued, in many instances
a state of utter destitution, from the wreck.
GLAMIAKINO IN BFIRWI4.—The produce of
little kingdom of Belgium, the greatest glass-1w
clueing country in the world, is b0,000,0n0 fat
sheet glass annually ; equal to 22,300 tons, or 24
cent. more than is made in England of both town
and sheet glass.

FROM THE LONDON GAZETTE.
Tuesday, Jan. 24.
BANKRUPTCY ANNULLED.—JonN DAvisos, Telleshont
D'Arcy, Eases, surgeon.
BANKRUPTS.—Hnenv JLCRSON, Eton, linendreper—Entu
DUNIN, Westbourne-terrace, Hyde•psrk, machinist—lWO
CLARE TI mrsos, Woolwich, surgeon—l Ants Cowi.r.sov.
iseramith, omnibus proprietor—nmeuri. 601)FREY Rowell
SCC"VEKt Wood-street, Cbeapside, warehouseman Ogesst
HAINES, Kingstanley, Gloucestershire, iniller—Wri. VOW
Durrir.r.n, Heavitree, Devon, commission agent—Ws. 151011 r.
Bradford, Yorkshire, soap manufacturer—Boatel MIL
Doncaster, bailor.
SCOTCH SEQUESTRATIONS. —J. Tuonaoti, 011%'
mason—J. HENnius, Inverness, builder—A. Lau', '
me chant- WKsa, Oirvan, Ayrshire, grocer.
Friday, Jan. 27.
BANKRUPTCY ANNULLED.—EnwsaD Sewers, !Mr
Pool, innkeeper. tb tia•T
BAN lilltlYlS.—Hrater Citsrfcrt.i.ol, Great Yemen ,
—Luce MARTIN, Teignmouth, baker—Jscos Srost,
01:6;
Moor 44e, eosabinakar—rliznar HunsolliaddaB4l,
dealer—Tuomes PitoCios, engineer and isright.

JANUARY 28, 1854.
____...,-..

it tr at r.

Memoir of the Rev. Alexander Ross, A.M., and
a Selection from his Sermons. With a Preface
by the Venerable John Hayden, MA.,
Archdeacon of Derry. London : Hatchard.
THE publication of this volume, recording the
zealous labours of a distinguished minister
in the " United Church of Great Britain and
Ireland," gives us an opportunity for taking a
retrospect of most important facts in the
recent history of Protestantism in Ireland.
Nothing certainly can be more remarkable
than the change in public opinion upon the
question of the Irish Church. Twenty years
ago a discordant array of adversaries to the
principle of an Established Church clamoured
about the existence of the Irish Establish-
ment, and called for the confiscation of its
revenues. The advanced school of political
economists were prepared with fabulous sta-
tistics of its wealth, and infinitesimal returns
of its congregations. The Benthamites, at
that time very numerous, scouted its " utility,"
and muttered something about " the greatest
number." A large body of English Dissenters
desired that Ireland should be subjected to
the operation of " voluntaryism," and the
levellers of Radicalism, anxious to gratify their
desire for sweeping changes, shouted for
spoliation, although the Irish Church had
three centuries of prescription and the fifth
clause of the Act of Union in its favour.
Against these formidable assailants the elo-
quent voice was resolutely raised by a states-
man whose Protestant services can scarcely
be overrated. When Lord Grey's Cabinet, in
a fatal hour for its fame, resolved to coalesce
with the directory of the revolutionary party
in Ireland, Mr. Stanley (Lord Derby) exerted
the same powers of strenuous eloquence in
defence of the Irish Church which he had
displayed in the advocacy of the Reform Bill.
From first to last his views upon the whole
question of the Church have been perfectly
consistent, and he is rewarded by seeing them
finally approved of by the British public. It
is now nearly thirty years since he made his
first political speech upon this very question,
in which, in opposition to Mr. Hume, he con-
tended for the inviolability of the National
Church. The vigour of his argument extorted
the applause of one of the greatest reasoners
that ever spoke in Parliament. " I congratu-
' late the house of Derby on the new laurels it
" has gained," were the significant words of
Mr. Plunket, who then prophesied the future
fame of the youthful debater. Ten years
afterwards, in 1834, a similar line of argument
was followed by Lord Derby. Office was given
up, and the leadership of the " Liberal " party,
then within his easy grasp, was resigned in
deference to the conscientious calls of pub
lie duty. It was a hard thing to separate from
old personal friends and political associates.
The sacrifice was made, the certain rewards
of adhesion to (self-styled) Liberalism were
rejected, and the vaguely-violent impulses of
democratic Radicalism were encountered with
intrepid front and unfaltering principle.
It was not until then that the Conservative
cause was placed on a firm foundation. High
name, ancient lineage, and tried capacity for
great affairs, were not the only resources
which Lord Derby brought to Conservatism. He
introduced into it the principle of adhesion to
great national precedents and solemn religious
compacts. He successfully protested against
the vacillating principles of a sliding scale
being applied to the standard of English
Protestantism as accepted by our forefathers
and confirmed by their descendants. When
grievance-mongers talked of the majority of
Romanists in Ireland, Lord Derby replied to
them by pointing to the principle of a State
Church, recognised by the Reformation, en-
forced by the Revolution, corroborated by the
Act of Settlement, and affirmed by the con-
sistent voices of the predominant classes of
an united empire. Unlike other statesmen,
he boldly took his stand upon a natural and
religious principle. He acted upon the view
which was once enunciated by Burke, " that,
" unlike the case of arithmetic, two and two
" do not always make four in political compu-

THE PRESS.

" tation"7-a sentiment which is cognate with
the aphorism of Napoleon, " that in war the
" morale is to the physical as three park out
"of four." Lord Derby stood upon principle.
He declined to cast the Protestant institutions
of the realm into a lottery; he sturdily con-
tended that the doctrine of a Protestant State
and the establishment of the national religion
should be maintained. Let us now see for
what benefits we are indebted to his manly
and invigorating counsels.
First of all, let us look to comparatively the
narrowest part of the subject, the state of the
Church in Ireland. It will not be denied by
the most ardent Roman Catholics that of late
years Protestantism has been greatly on the
increase in Ireland. Not only have the num-
bers of the Protestant population been aug-
mented, but the influence of the Established
Church has been indefinitely extended. The
Ultramontane bigotry has been sapped and
weakened. The priests have been discovered
as unworthy of reliance, at one time shouting
to the Young Irelanders, and then shutting
the doors in their faces when the police were
at their heels. Paddy's shrewdness has come
to the aid of his private judgment. The bene-
ficial influence, also, exerted by the Protestant
clergy during the famine has not been with-
out powerful results. In the English Parlia-
ment the power of an Opposition has long
been recognised, and the (heretofore) undis-
puted absolutism of the priests has at length
been encountered by parsons acting as almo-
ners, their wives and daughters aiding as
" Sisters of Charity," the munificence of
English aid circulating through the arterial
system of an institution providing a pastor
and a poor man's friend for every parish. The
Church of Ireland has acted so as to reconcile
even the cold English utilitarian to its exist-
ence. It has been social and civilising, not
merely theological and proselytising If it has
not completely Protestantised, it has powerfully
Itnperialised, the Irish.
In order to appreciate the magnitude of
such results, let us suppose that the Whig-
Radical doctrine had been acted on in 1834,
and that the Protestantism of Ireland had
been put upon the slippery Peelite system of
" the sliding scale."
The affections of the Protestants would
have been alienated; holders of property would
have been alarmed ; the public mind of Ireland
would have been confounded. By the violation
of the Act of Union it would have been de-
clared that the "union" itself was liable to be
"repealed." Doubts would have been insinu-
ated where no distrust had previously existed ;
dismay would have slowly crept through the
thrilling nerves of Irish loyalty. The sound
and the orthodox would have emigrated,
while the weak and unscrupulous could have
reckoned up the advantages of conformity
with Rome. Protestantism would have receded
—the Papacy advanced. Then would have come
the " Repeal Year" of 1843, the French Revolu-
tion of 1848, surging in their influences upon a
population ripe for ascendant Romanism, and
ready for violent revolution. With Peelites
preaching and intriguing for Puseyism in Eng
land ; with the Papacy growing in audacity,
and launching its hierarchy, with the help of
the Gladstones and the Grahams ; with Irish
Roman Catholic demagogues boasting of the
accession of panicstricken Protestants, per
verts for expediency, what, then, would have
been the state of Protestantism in Ireland ?
We need not describe that side of the ques-
tion. Let us rather turn to another and more
cheering social prospect. Let us look at Pro-
testantism in Ireland as it is, to-day.
Freed from its abuses by the vigorous mea-
sure of internal reform, devised and carried
by Lord Derby in 1833 (Irish Church Tempo-
ralities Act), the Church in Ireland has rallied
its numbers by tens of thousands. In the
west of Ireland conversions have taken place
upon a most extensive scale, and in other
parts of the island hosts of Roman Catholics
have joined its standard. The character, also,
of the clergy of the Establishment has been
greatly raised within the last twenty years.
The divinity course at Trinity College, Dub-
lin, has been made more extensive, and the
theological examinations have become more
stringent. The aptitude of the young roer clergy
for their special vocation has impved, an

87

knowledge of the Gaelic dialect has been
added in many instances to classical erudi-
tion. The Protestant clergy of Ireland iu our

time do not at all resemble7their.predeeessora

of the last century. On this point let us ob-
serve the feeling way in which Archdeacon
Hayden speaks in his preface :
No one more willingly confesses his past blindness and
misdeeds than the man whose life has been reformed
under the transforming efficacy of divine grace. Up to
the period, however, of his real conversion- he is eager in
self-vindication, denies that he is any worse than his
neighbours, and often plumes himself on the proper fulfil-
ment of all the religious and social duties he thinks him-
self called on to discharge.
It is the same with bodies of men. No matter what
may be the amount of their shortcomings and abuses, they
will not admit, as just, any imputation of delinquency,
cannot even endure the least approach to censure or
remonstrance, till, as in the case of an individual, reforma-
tion has actually taken place. The Church in Ireland
has been no exception to this rule. It is a painful and
humihatine, though perhaps not unprofitable, task to refer
to her ierrowful history, and that at no distant period.
Royal and episcopal patronage grossly abused, the great
bulk of her ministers slothful, unlearned, secular, without
zeal and almost without shame, ill-qualified to spread the
truth of that Gospel which they but imperfectly compre-
hended themselves, and assailing, with bitter ridicule and
reviling, those few devoted men of their own order who
struggled to keep alive the nearly extinguished light of
scriptural truth in the land. There were, it is true, some
profound and accomplished scholars among her sons, but,
alas ! all their learning and talents were perverted "to
defend the Church," to prove her immaculate purity, and
to maintain her lofty pretensions.
And what were the results of such a state of
things ? The archdeacon answers :
The consequences were obvious. The lower classes of
the people were only Protestants in name. We wets re-
proached (our ranks were so fearfully thinned) with being
only the " staff of a Church " in Ireland, while Protestant-
ism seemed to melt away as a vision, and Popery to stttle
down with a deeper darkness over the land. Fe w now
deny these facts. They were, however, stoutly and angrily
denied at the time, and, if men are ready to make a tree
and penitent admission of the truth in these days, it is
(all praise to Him whose prevailing pits interceded for the
barren tree) because so great a change has taken place that
the Church herself is forward to confess her past unfruit-
fulness. There were, no doubt, peculiar causes in 01eru-
tiou in Ireland which continued to aggravate all the evils
of her spiritual condition, but England or Scotland can lift
up no eye of pride to heaven, as they contrast their past
state with the apathy and unfaithfulness of the Clnurli in
Ireland. What was the state of religion in England that
drew forth the touching appeals to the rich of Wilberferce's
tender but powerful pen, and led to the bitter opposition
to Hannah More's self-denying labours, to rescue the poor
from almost heathenish ignorance?

The archdeacon might have asked what was
the state of religion throughout Christendom
generally in the eighteenth century? Mural
apathy, "philosophical" frigidity, vague long-
ings after perfectibility, Voltairian levity, and
enthusiastic Rousseauism, characterised the
spiritual condition of many countries nomi-
nally " Roman Catholic." There is a letter
extant from the pen of the lute Doctor Doyle,
the titular Bishop of Kildare and Leighliu, in
which he records the Deism and Infidelity
which he met amongst Spanish ecclesiastics,
saying, " T trembled while I heard the very
" Hall of the Inquisition echoing the scoffs of
" Diderot and the infidelity of D'Alembert."
We regret, and we will not deny, the scandals
of the Irish Church in the last century, but iu
censuring them we must recollect the general
character of civilisation in those days of ro•
laxed principles and enervated morals. Even
in spite of these evils the Irish Church pro-
duced many shining lights. Amongst others,
Kirwan, the most eloquent of modern pulpit
orators, and Archbishop Magee, the author of
a theological masterpiece, "On the Atone-
ment," the precursors of Jebb, and Greaves,
and Archer-Butler, and other ornaments to
the literature of the Church of Englund.
Let us, then, rejoice that the Irish Church
has been preserved unbroken, and that its
social utility and its transcendent political
importance have been recognised by the opi-
nion of the empire. The views of Lord Derby
have been ratified, and his foresight has been
justified, by the present progress of Protes-
tantism in Ireland. He was the real defende
of our United Establishment: ho sacrifice
much (as we have intimated) when he threv:
down the gauntlet to the Whig assailants o
the Church, but his sacrifices have not been
without fruit. Never since the Reformation
has Protestantism been so powerful and pro-
gressive in Ireland as in our days. Never Ira
the Church possessed such active ministers ;
and when we recollect the recent revelations

1./
0
t
a
t
1