The Press.
London, England, 1856-11-08 00:00:00

THE PREMIER AT MANCHESTER.

THE proceedings at Manchester in which
Lord PALMERSTON exhibited his histrionic
powers were very amusing. When the " im-
mortal Boz," for one night only, by " particular
desire," figured 'at Drury Lane with the
Administrative Reform Association,the Premier
quizzed his " private theatricals," and Mr.
Boz replied by some Sam Wellerisms and
sneers at the " Comic Old Gentleman." Lord
PALMERSTON bore the infliction of Mr. Boz's
disapprobation with mirthful levity; and
though a crowded audience cheered his cen-
sor, Lord PALMERSTON'S long experience of life
told him not to care about what popular "
meetings might say or do.

And now, down at Manchester, the Premier
is feted in the capital of Radicalism. So much
for the popularia aura! On the one side there
was nauseous provincial adulation of a real
live Premier, and some of the devotees to the
new object for idolatry at Manchester, showed
the Americanised character of a portion of
that community. No one toadies an English
" Lord " like an American, and the Whig-tail
at Manchester, in that respect, shows its con-
geniality with the Democrats of the United
States. For our own part, we heartily admire
and respect the community of Manchester,
and we do not forget that there is a powerful
Conservative interest in that great city. We
know that at the last election the proportions
in the constituency of Conservatives to Radi-
cals stood as four to five; and many years will
not elapse before two Conservatives sit for
Manchester, unless there be great local mis-
management of the Conservative resources.

This present visit of Lord PALMERSTON may
be taken as partly personal, and partly political.
It has long been known that a certain Unita-
rian clique at Manchester has entertained a
great personal dislike to Mr. BRIGHT; and it is
very remarkable that some of that particular
connection have been forward in getting up
this reception of the Premier. Any one
mixing in the higher commercial circles of
England must have often heard the most
peculiar way in which certain Unitarian Libe•
rats at Manchester have talked about Mr.
BRIGHT, and these persons have gladly seized
the first opportunity open to them of giving

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an effective side-stroke to " Bright and Co.'
Nothing better could present itself to them
than a reception of the statesman who once
sneered at Mr. BRIGHT as "the honourable
" an'l reverend gentleman."
It is worth notice, also, that the moral tone
of Lord PAntErts-ros, in his addresses at
Manchester, was exactly calculated to please
his Unitarian patrons in that quarter. The
stereotyped Unitarian formula of " Frogresaive
" improvement is the law of our moral nature "
was harped upon iu his three speeches ; and
our readers must recollect that our Premier
long since told England that " all children
"were born good." Take the speeches as re-
ported in the Timed of Friday, and let them
be read with reference to the " cant of per-
fectibility " so much in vogue amongst Uni-
tarians, and the result will show the charac-
teristic looseness of Lord PALMERSTON, and the
superficiality of his philosophy.
In perusing these artfully ambiguous
speeches we ct.uld not help recalling what one
of Lord PALMERSTON'S shrewdest literary cen-
sors wrote some years ago :—" Of the sort of
" quasi-philosophical language, the slang of un-
•' defined but developing democracy, which
" pleases the crude, unformed minds of those
" who are self-chosen to decide on public
" affairs, Lord PALMERSTON is a master. He is
" clever at setting traps for such vain and
" voluntary dupes. Vague and vapid gene-
" ralities become, under the magic influence of
" his congenial intellect, high-sounding and
" inspiring principles." His ovations at Man-
chester justify that description. The logic
was cloudy generality, and the rhetoric was of
the sort known as " superfine slipshod." He
mixed up courtly platitudes with well-sugared
Liberal cant. It passed off well enough with
audiences not familiar with his artifices ; his
buoyant, animated manner gave it an appear-
ance of intense Liberality; but read afterwards
it is a mass of mawkish condescension and
electioneering claptrap.
Conscious of the weakness of his position
with the mercantile and industrial interests of
England (for his reception at Manchester was
organised by a clique, and is not a boni-fide
" popular" ovation), the Premier makes a
desperate attempt to cajole those classes whom
he cannot convince. Was it not because the
Grey Liberals feared in 1846 to intrust tho
Foreign-office to Lord Pstmeasrox that the
achievement of Corn-law Repeal was given to
Sir R. PEEL, and not to Lord JOHN RUSSELL?
Is it possible that Free-trade Manchester can
forget that memorable fact" And does Lord
PALMERSTON think that he can make the great
interests of the empire forget the extraordi-
nary personal escapades connected with his
name, not to speak of the unparalleled dis-
respect which his Lordship showed to his
Sovereign in transactions to which we need
not more specially revert ?
Yet this is the statesman who now seeks to
frighten these great interests about the inse-
curity of the present peace If the peace be
insecure, whose fault is that of having made a
hollow truce ? And why was the army
reduced so suddenly, and some of its corps
"disbanded," as Mr. F. PEEL phrased it? We
see plainly by those speeches that Lord
PALMERSTON is at his old pranks. How aptly
do these harangues at Manchester illustrate
the felicity of Prince METTERNICH'S description
of the speaker—" a diplomatic demagogue.'

The Times of Monday had the following :

FRENCH DIPLOMATISTS AND THE Cwt. The
Observer of last Sunday contains the following, dated
St. Petersburg, Nov. 1 :—" Count Walewski, the
French Foreign Minister, a Pole, is to have the
Polish estates of his family restored to him again for
his services to the Czar in the late war."

The Constitutionnel of Thursday replied by the
following paragraph :—" The London journal, the
Observer, announces that the Emperor Alexander, in
order to recompense Count Walewski, the Minister
of Foreign Affairs, for the services rendered by him
to Russia during the war, has restored to him the
estates which they say belonged to his famil3. M.
Walewski possesses no estate in Poland, and the
Russian Government has never confiscated any
lands belonging to his family. The intelligence
given by the English journal is, therefore, in every
sense incorrect. It is to be regretted that journals
which ought to have self respect should make them-
selves the echoes of calumnies."

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Sortigit 6orrrspanbcitte.

BRUSSELS, Nov. G.
M. VERIIAEGEN, in his speech on the opening of the
University, made the following observations :
It was the practice, formerly, to stop free opinion by
putting the opinionists to death, and therefore the rack of
Innocent I I 1., the axe of Philip 11., and the arquebuse of
Charles IX., were called into requisition. Public opinion,
fashioned by philosophy and morality, arrested the cruel
tyranny of popes and kings ; and the progress of instruc-
tion, in teaching the true principles of social virtue, has
developed the human intellect, and led to civilisation. It
is against the one and the other that the Roman priest is
at war.

An edict of the Inquisition, of which the following
is an abridgment, has been officially placarded on
the walls of Rome, and forwarded to the ecclesiastical
authorities in Belgium and elsewhere:—

A GENERAL EDICT OF THE HOLY OFFICE.

(At the head appear the pontifical arms, sur-
mounted by the triple crown, with the keys of St.
Peter. On one side are the gures of St. Peter and
St. Paul, and on the other is a two-edged sword of
decapitation.)
We, Tommaso Vincenzio Airaldi, of the order of
preachers, professor of holy theology in the towns
and dioceses of Ancona, Osimo, Cignoli, Jesi,
Sini3aglia, Loreto, Itecanati, Macerate, and Tolen-
tino, dzc., Inquisitor-General of the Holy Apostolical
See, and especially charged with the extirpation of
heresy,—

De4rous, according to our sworn duty to the
Roman Catholic faith, without valich, as St. Paul
writes to the Jews, there can he no salvation, that
such faith should be pure, immaculate, and free from
heretical stain or contagion, and, moreover, experi-
ence having taught us that there are divers per-
verted, malicious, sinful, and disobedient persons
who do not, as they are hound to do, denounce
heretics to the Holy Office, and, abstaining from such
pious act, thereby wickedly injure the cause of the
Roman Catholic religion,—We order and decree,
that not longer than a month from this present,
each and every one shall denounce to us, to our
vicars of the Inquisition, or to the other officials of
the Holy Office, regular and secular, those ,who are
heretics to the Roman Catholic faith, as follows, that
is to say :
Those who are heretics, or supposed so to be, or
defenders, or supporters, or connivers of heresy, or
who shall pracuse the rights of Judaism, Mahome-
tanism, Paganism, or who shall have otherwise pro-
testantly apostatised from Roman Catholicism.

Those who by any positive acts shall have made a
compact with the devil, in order to exorcise, &c.

Those who shall be familiar with the arts of

necromancy, dec.
Those who, not being priests, according to Roman
Catholic ordination, shall have sacrilegiously usurped
the privilege of administering the Holy Communion
of our Lord Jesus Christ, be they who they may, not
Roman Catholics.

Those who shall thus defile by abuse both the
holy elements and the holy places, contrary to the
decrees of the apostolical constitutions.

Those who shall hold secret assemblies and be-
long to associations adverse to the Holy Catholic
religion.
Those who, in hostility and in denial of the Blessed
God, of the Holy Virgin Mary, and against the
Saints in Heaven, shall have heretically blasphemed
them, or shall have insulted or caused to be profaned
the holy graven images (eacri immagini), set up
and sanctified for worship.
Those who shall interfere with or hinder in any
way the functionaries of the Holy Office in discharge
of their duly, according to the ball of Pius V., of
holy and blessed memory, beginning "Si to prote-
gendis."
Those who shall have reviled or published writings
against the Sovereign Pontiff, the Holy College, the
dignitaries of the Roman Church, or shall have in
any way defamed or called in question the Holy
Church or aught appertaining to her holy establish-
ment.

Those who shall have in their possession libels or
books containing heresies, bringing into doubt the
especial holiness and supremacy of the Roman
Catholic Church, and treatises "ex profess° " in
desecration of the one and only Roman faith (i.e.
of religion), and shall disseminate such wicked books
under any pretext.
Those who, without express permission, shall
themselves eat, or give to others to eat, meat. eggs,
or milk, on days forbidden oy the Holy Roman
Church.

Those who shall have participated in the crime of
aiding persons by persuasion or otherwise to depart
from the holy Roman faith, and to join an heretical
sect contrary and opposed to Roman Catholicism, or,
on the other hand, shall prevent Turk, Jew, or
Infidel, from being baptised into the Roman Church.
This present edict does not annul or alter any

THE PRESS.

former canonical and apostolical ordinance, or change
the other edicts of the Grand Inquisitors (whereby
fathers, mothers, husbands, wires, brothers, and
sisters, arc called upon to denounce each other, and
are subjected to the punishments of fire, rack, the
wheel, decapitation, &O. But it is again declared,
that unless the faithful denounce the delinquents in
the several cases above named, then excommunica-
tion and the other punishments decreed by the
Roman Church apostolical (as above) will surely
follow. It is ordered that this edict of the holy
Inquisition shall be publicly made known, and that
a copy shall be placed in all the churches and
chapels. It is further commanded that all book-
sellers, printers, custom•house officers, innkeepers,
publicans, and shopkeepers, shall have a fair copy
affixed in a conspicuous place in their several houses
and offices, and that the priests and curates shall
from time to time read the same in their parishes
and from the altar.