The Express.
London, England, 1851-03-17 00:00:00

THE EXPRESS, MONDAY EVENING, MARCH 17, 1851.

FATHER OAVAZZFS ELEVENTH ORATION
YESTERDAY LEI THE PIUNCESS'S CON-
CERT HALL.

loudly. Weeded than his previous more argumenta-
tive isgunitioce.

NUNS AND NUNNERIES.

CRURCII PRECEPTS."
Waling less in broad and comprehensive theories,
and descending into the practical working of a vs-
tem which he reprobates, the speaker addreascd
him- j
self to a host of minor details, which the still increas-
ing multitude of his Italian hearers palpably relished,
but which were, perhaps. less interesting or intelli-
gible to his numerous British auditors. 'With undi-
minished powers of illustrative elocution, and un-
abated energies, he entered into the minute bye-laws
lot. an oppressive, onerous, meddling, and frequently
immoral, legislation resulting from the irresponsible
sway of a priesthood ignorant of the wants, reckless
of the rights, and hostile to the feelings, of the laity.
It was not merely nations in their corporate capacity
that found a foe m the fox whose den was iu a Ito-

The following is the petition presented by Sir It.
Inglis whilt is referred to in our parliamentary report of
Saturday

"THE PETITION OP CRAVEN PITEItARDINGE BEREE!..ET

"To the Honourable the of the United King-
dom of Great Britain and Ireland in Parliament
assembled
" Humbly showeth,—That he intermarried with Augusta
Talbot, the widow of George Henry Talbot, who was the
half-brother to the present Earl of Shrewsbury. That the
sail George Henry Talbot lett two children him surviving,
namely, John, who was heir presumptive to the earldom,
and Au;usta, au infant, now of the age of 19 years and up-
wards. _

" Ilt it the said infant Augusta Talbot resided with
your petitioner and her mother up to the time of the
death of the tatter, which took place on the 26th of April,

man hill,
Quella Tolite the °kik in Vatican,
but families, homesteads, and individual wrongs bore
testimony to these sinister influences in ever active

WTI •at since that period, and up to the month of Sep- ,
Washer last, the said infant Augusto:falbot has resided with '
the Eul and Countess of Shrewsbury.
"That in consequence of the (tenth of the said John
Talbot, the said antant Augusta Talbot bicante absolutely
entitled to a sum of 80,1Xtt11., or thereabout:.
" That the said infant Augusta Talbot is a ward of tha
Court of Chancery.
Th d in the month of September last the Paid Earl and
Counte:s of Shrewsbury placed the said infant, Augusta
Talbot (notwithstanding she is a ward of court as afore-
said), ut the 6onvent called the ' Lodge,' situate at Taun-
ton, in the county of Somerset, not as a pupil or visitor, but
as a p: stulant, with the avowed object of allowing the said
Augusta 'Talbot to take the veil and become a nun.
"'That in the mouth of Septentber nest the period of pro-
bation or postu!nney will have expired, and the said inlaid,
Augusta Talbot, will be conr`ielksl by the rules and regula-
tions of the said convent and by the priesthood of the Boman
catholic church to take the white veil during her minority,
cud notwithstanding the said infant Augusta 'Talbot is a
ward of the Court of Chancery.
"That having taken the white veil, there is no retreat
for the said infant Augusta 'Talbot, and she will be coat-
polled to take the black veil in September, 1852, or shortly
afterward".
That on the 6th of June, 1852, the said infant Augusta
Talbot will attain her 21,t year, when she will become enti-
tled to receive the said sum of 80,0001.
"That being a nun at that period, the 80,00411. will be—
ams, confiscated to the said convent, or to the ieclesiastical
revenue, of the church of Rome, or to the endowment, en-
richment, or maintenance of sonic bishopric or deanery, or
other ecoe.M,tical bens lice of the said church of Row ; or
the said infant Augusta Talbot will be compelled by some
assurance in the law to twister all her right and interest

and evil'openition.
He traced to the utter extinction of the primitive
popular clement in Christian assemblies this disas-
trous change in the originally sound and beneficent
code of the canons. The ambassadors of kings
watched the doings of churchmen in general councils,
but the people had neither organ nor delegate there.
The Pope, by his rotten boroughs of bull-created
bishoprics, absorbed the whole representation of
Christendom, and the proacedings at Trent were a
gigantic sham. The present constitution of eccle-
siastical boards at Rome, presuming to regulate the
spiritual concerns of mankind, was absolutely revolt-
ing. The red-tapiats of a blind and unteachable
native court were reinforced by the dregs of Don
Miguel from Portugal, of Ferdinand the Embroiderer
from Spain, of the old Sardinian Camarillo, aided by
Neapolitan ignorance, the strings of the whole
puppet-show being pulled by an Austrian or Russian
ambassador in the name a the Holy Ghost. Such
was the actual mechanism of cathoheity--such the
eccumenical character of its legislation.
Marriage was an essential ingredient of civil so-1
clay ; to monopolise its arrangements and to usurp
its airection was a crying abuse on the part of the
priesthood. At this moment Piedmont is engaged
in a death struggle with Rome for the riddance of
its iutermeddling with conjugal contracts. and the
11U11160 MOll4llol' Boverio at Berne is seeking to in-
validate mixed marriages in Switzerland. England's
turn is appniaching. The pretence fur lids:einem*,
in wedded life, which in apostolic times never entered
the scheme of gospel morality, even pagan alliances I
being undisturbed by Paul, arose from sheer wan-
tonness of ecclesiastical tyranny or the more inglo-
rious greed of gain. The; speaker traced the rise of
truffle in dispensations, and showed what a power-
ful instrument of annoyance to kings, what a for-
midable weapon in the hands of the papacy, was the
assumption of a control over wedlock and the claim
to Mess or ban the nuptial bed from the days of
Robert of France down to the Reformation, when the
fatal engine recoiled on the pontifical engineer.
Capricious figments of spiritual or const rue t ive affinity
had been superadded to the Hebrew catalogue of im-
pediments, and their removal made a branch of fiscal
emulument. European maternity and the suckling
of legitimate offspring were regulated by the she-wolf
of Rome, and became the prerogative of that la's/ear.
The hardships and immoral results of this traffic in
its bearing on the poorer classes, and its attendant
scandals in the higher ranks of society, were ably in-1
dicoted, and the unimialy of the sacramental character
overriding and overthrowing the intrinsically social
and domestic nature of the contract learnedly de-
veloped.
The precept of fists and distinctions of food was
next anatomised, and its oppressive and unequal
pies-are on the various nations, climate's, and indi-
vidual abstuiners shrewdly illustrated. The absurdity
of enforcing fish diet on districts utterly unpiscuterial,
or a vegetarian regime on mountaineers whose only
resource was the goat in their unlananical ridges,
the undignified decrees on "dripping," and the pue-
rility of pastorals about eggs, only equalled by the anti-
climax of "in the name of the prophet, figs!"
the ludicrous result of orthodox Italy and Spain
being made to promote the herring fisheries of the
heretic 1 hitch, and work the cod-banks of northern pro-
testantism,through their fictitiously-created necessity
for Isierstlit, were topics which lust nothing in the
treatment of the orator whose versatility of style
equals his vehemence. The famous bull of the
erecada in the Spanish peninsula, bearing un the
operation of the precept, next Wheeled abundant
materials for alternate scorn and critical scrutiny.
Issued in the first instance as a stimulant to the war
of expulsion against the Saracens ("who were a sort of
medieval Austrians, fortify' intruders iu Spain,
but less brutal than Italy's modern Moors, far more
refined and not half so objectionable as our Croats"),
the scheme of compounding in hard cash for sterile
and unproductive abstinence was found, when the
crusade was over, too profitable a speculation fur
abandonment. Tickets of exemption were accord-
ingly, and are still, sold at lottery-offices in the pub-
lic streets, and the management of this monstrous im-
posture presents in Spain a regular organisation.
The head contractor with the court of Rome for this
gastronomic mining privilege—this California of
credulity—was, not long ago, the Jew Emanuele, to
whose thence-gathered wealth we owe the " Stabat
Mater" of Rossini, composed and paid for by his
order out of the proceeds of humbug. In point of
fact, the sale of these core-.ado tickets is carried on
after a fashion of pious quackery, by sound of trum-
pet, and with boast of their efficacy, such as Dellahirkame ra alone exhibits on the stage; and though
the commerce of indulgences was rudely checked
longer in northern Europe, brisk transactions still
continue in the same commodity southwards. Gre-
gory XIII.' to quicken the demand, issued a brief,
extending the convertibility of this currency, and
establishing its acknowledgment by the exchequer of
purgatory. The financial details in connexion with
this latter establishment the speaker dwelt on at
some length, evidently to the bewilderment of the
British portion of his auditory.
Saints festivals and the host of obligatory holidays,
in their consequences on industry and wages, gave full
scope to the denunciation of the father, whose pro-
tests in favour of the poor man's share in the benefits
of the repel were delivered with fearful energy, and
the claim of churchmen to curtail his already strait-
ened circumetances by the enforcement of compulsory
idleness, for the mere purpose of clerical glorification,
scouted as intolerable. As to the manufacture of saints
by the exclusive machinery of a Roman board, not,
as of old, by the spontaneous acclamation of the
people, he delivered his opinion with full argu-
mentative freedom, and, adverting to the unlimited
expenditure which the modern process of canonisa-
tion entails. and the grasping demon& of corrupt
officials in the chancery of Rome, he recorded the
remark of Count Borromco, when his great-uncle,
the Cardinal of Milan, was finally lodged in the
Empvreum by a papal decree, that another saint in
the family would be absolute ruin and downright
bankruptcy.
The penal injunction by which the Fourth Council
of Lateran sought to resider auricular confession ob-
ligatory at Easter, under menace of excommunication
and loss of Christian burial, was an enactment only
productive of hypocrisy and fraud. Billets tie e.afil-
siws were the most preposterous of all certificates; a
hideous object of transfer on the part of degraded
beings in Rome, where the sacraments of Christ
were made instruments of police, and the confes-
sional, like the ear of Dionysius, became a recep-
tacle through which tyranny gained treacherous
cognisance of secrets not its own. He would
reserve hit views on the origin and gra-
dual extension of this auricular system for
fuller development on another occasion : its foul
agency was not confined to the betrayal of patriot
honour, but was equally disastrous to maiden inno-
cence and conjugal purity. Finally, the canons of
ecclesiastical law on the subject of money loans and
usury were canvassed, and their self-contradictory
character demonstrated : whereupon the speaker
took occasion to discuss the circumstances wider
which the present priestly ruler of Rome nego-
tiated his late loan with the house of Rothschild,
which gave him an opening for a vigorous onslaught
on the papal restoration. its wents, and abettors, the
old abuses which had followed in its train, the horri-
ble oppression under which the territory groaned,
and the ever accumulating mass of hatred and exe-
cration whichil must inevitably overwhelm the
wretched papal court on the withdrawal of its Galli-
can j?niseePries.
Thu portion of his address was of course not less

--- said
in the ran of tio,oool.
That it is une of the doctrines of the church of Rome
that no member of the said church shall be is rmitted to

exercise •his or her private judgment in religious matters ;
but that in all such religious natters lie or she is bound to
submit to the authority of the said Runtish church, and to
the direction of the priesthood thereof.
" That in a certain work by Nicholas Wiseman, who is •
a high cocksiastical authority in the ltomish church, au tlw
principal doctrines and practices in the said Refinish church,
under the head of • Lecture 1.,' introduction, page 10, the
following passage octuni "The catholic church is thus as
a city to which avenues lead from ever• side, towards which
men may travel from any quarter bl• the most diversified
roads ; by the thorny and rugged ways of strict investiga-
tion—by the more flowery paths of sentiment and feeling—
but, armed at ibi precincts, on find that there is but one
door to the sheepfold—narrow and low perhaps, and causing
flesh and blood to stoop as it pusses in. '!'hey may wander
about its outskirts; they may admire the goodlints.s of its
edifices and its bulwarks ; but they cannot be its deni-
zen, and children if they enter not by that one gate of
absolute unconditional submissiou to the teaching of the
church.'
"That in the said work, under the head of Lecture
111.,' page 76, the following passage occurs :—' For, the
momeut any catholic doubts not alone the principle of his
faith, but any of those doctrines which are thereon bused—
the moment he allows himself to call in question any of the
dogma* which the cathodic church teaehcs us having been
handeddown within her—that moment the church conceives
him to lave virtually abandoned all connexion with her ;
fur she exacts such implicit obedience that if any memlier,
however valuable, however be may have devoted his early
talents to the illustration of her doctrines, fall away from
his belief in any one point, he is cut oil without reserve,
and we have in our own times seta striking and awful in-
stances of this fact.'
• "That the above opinions and declarations of the said
Nicholas Wiseman are the true doctrines of the Kaman
' catholic church, out that the said infant Augusta Talbot
has had them instilled into her mind to the exclusion of all
• other principles, and that the said infant Augusta Talbot
• is bound to submit to the will and dictation of the superior
. of the said convent and to the priesthood of the church of
Rome.
. . .

"lhat your petitioner is deprived of all communication
and connexion with his step-daughter, the said infant
Augusta Talbot, and your petitioner s slaughter, the half-
.ibtxr and only near temale relative of the said infant
Augusta Talbot, is also prevented from cultivating those
natural feelings of ode...lieu which but for the reasons afore-
said would exist and grow up between them to their mutual
cointbrt and support.
Your petitioner, therefore, humbly prays that the
honourable the Commons of the United liingdom of Great
Britain and lrchind will be pleased to take his petition into
their serious consideratien, and tleat they will be pleased to
ingraft a clause in the bill entitled the ' Ecclesiastical Titles
Assumption Bill,' now before their honourable house, which
will prevent such practices As are detailed in the said
petition front hiking place; and that they will introduce a
clause enacting that nu intent, whether a word in Chancery
or not, shall be permitted to be placed by her parents, or
guardian, or any other person whomsoever, in any convent
or seminary, or place of education, or other institution
uttsu:hed to the Church of Rome, as a postulant, during
the minority of such infant, fur the purpose of enabling
or compelling any such infant to become a nun, and
that in the event of any infant or infants being now or
hereafter placed within the walls of any convent,
seminary, place of education, or other institution attached
ti the said church of Rome as a postulant for the purpose
of becoming a nun, that the property, whether absolute or
cuntiugent, of any such infant or infants, shall vest in and
enure to the use of her Majesty, and shall and may be dis-
posed of as her Majesty shall be pleased, by warrant
under her sign manual, to direct or appoint. Or that a
clause may be introduced into the said bill fur throwing
protection round young persons who now are, or may be
hereafter, placed in convents with a view of taking the
veil therein, and appropriating their property thereto,
either by placing such establishments under the supervi-
sion of inspectors appointed by government, or by such
other means as to the honourable house may seem best cal-
culated to put a stop to the aforesaid primitives.
" And yuur petitioner will ever pray.
(Signett)
"CRAVEN FITAHARDIROE BERKELEY.
" Berkeley-home, Spring-gardeus."

ADMIRALTY, MARCH Id. APPOINTMENTS.
Surgeon Superintendent W. D. B. Jones, to the Aurora.
Surgeon Carpenter, to the Peadopc.
First Engineer IL. Roberts, and Second Engineer Wm.
Furuell, to the Er/to.
Master's Assistant J. M. Missing, to the Fiujard.
EXTENSIVE WOOLLEN CLOTH 'HOBBERIE.S AT
LEEns.—On Saturday last the Leeds magistrates brought
to a close several lengthened examinations arising out of a
charge of felony brought against Mr. George Oddy, a
woollen cloth manufacturer and dealer, residing at Wortley
Moor Side, near Leeds. The prisoner, in addition to manu-
facturing cloth on his own account, has bartered a good
deal for other goods, and carried on a rather extensive
business, and, so far as we know, in a creditable manner.
Recently several robberies have taken lilac,: at Puils4 and
the neighbourhood, but until this week nothing has tran-
spired to lead to the detection of the thieves or the recovery
of the stolen property. During Sunday night week Allan
Brig Mill, which belongs to a company of proprietors, was
broken into, and three ends of cloth in an unfinished state,
belonging to Mr. Isaac Hancock, stolen therefrom. About
the lith of December last Swinuow Mill, near Pudrey, was
broken into, and two ends of blue and two ends of black
cloth were stolen, the two former belonging to !Messrs. Jos.
Walker and Son, and the latter to Mr. llireplcton. Last
Saturday or Sunday information was obtained which gave
the parties belonging to the stolen property reason to believe
that the cloth was in Oddy's house, and the constables of
Puilsey and the head pollee were at once communicated
with. Oa Monday Inspector Child obtained from tho Leeds
justices a warrant authorising him to search the house of
Mr. Oddy. In the meantime his house was watched by the
constables of Pudsey (Messrs. John Pearnley and James
Halliday), in order to prevent anything being conveyed
away; and after watching at the New Inn, kept by Mr.
Pickli a, which is near Oddy's house, from Sunday. to Mon-
day afternoon, Oddy was seen to leave his premises with
two ends of blue cloth upon his back, he being followed by
his wife, carrying another end. The cloth was seised, and
Oddy taken into custody. Inspector Child and Police-
officer Kell arrived soon after this, armed with a search
warrant, and on searching the house found two ends of
blue cloth in a finished state, some remnants of cloth, and
, other articles detailed in the evidence. Two ends of black
cloth, belonging to Mr. Threpleton, were found at the
warehouse of Mr. Lambert, cloth merchant, of Cook-
. ridge-street, Leeds, who had bought them of a com-
mission agent named Jackson. The three ends of
7 blue cloth which the prisoner and his wife were
conveying away, have been identified as the property of
Mr. Boocoek. The two ends found in the prisoner s house
belong to Messrs. Joseph Walker and Son; and the two
' ends of black cloth, found in Mr. Lambert's warehouse, are
• also identified as the property of Mr. Threpleton. Mr.
Jackson, a commission agent, proved having sold the
latter to Mr. Lambert on account of the prisoner. In de-
' fence the prisoner said he had received the cloth of a woman
named Huggen, who resides near him, but this was denied
by her, and after a long examination the prisoner was corn-
. witted for trial.

THE THIEVES' KITCHEN IN GRAY'S-INN-LANE.—
This establishment, which has long boasted a high reputa-
tion as a normal school of thi:ving, and a depot for the re-
ception of stolen property, is broken up. By the vigilance
of two or three detectives of the division, the greater
number of the thief-traiaers have 64:131 convicted and tram-
ported.