The Express.
London, England, 1851-02-10 00:00:00

THE EXPRESS, MONDAY EVENING, FEBRUARY 10, 1851.

FATHER OAVAZZI'S SIXTH ORATION
YESTERDAY IN THE PRINCESS'S CONCERT unit-

feather awl raw an image of the winking Madonna, fur
luck, or robs and plunders in a hat shaped like a bee-hive
with a cross is the top of it, and calls it a tiara. (Cheers
and laughter.) A pair of apostolic keys thrust under the
nose of the victim are found quite as efficacious as a
brace of pistols to make folks stand and deliver.
What matters it that the bands of Passatore are only native
outlaws, driven to the sad trade of robbery by the forcible
estoppege of every honest industry, and the crushing and
withering effects of priestly dominion ; while the bands
which the other brigand has brought to act on the country
arc transalpine riolatorsof international law and regimented
aliens who rob in uniform ? The French gang, with the
gallantry of their nation, are content to work as amateurs,
but the Austrian footpads insist on their share of the spoil,
and go halves with the priestly taxgatherer, the Friar Tuck
of Italy. Can this atrocious farce go on in the eyes of civi-
lised mankind ? No; by the God of justice 'l. The end is at
hand. The doom of the house of Hapsburg and of the
popedom hastens to its final catastrophe with swift and
precipitt.e caducity. Broken and bankrupt both, they have
both outlived the means of their respective livelihood,
and as they were equally lovely in their lives, so in their
death they shall not be divided. The crash' is inevitable.
The whole human race is preparing to clap hands on their
' joint and associated downfal. Hear ye not the ill-sup-
pressed throes of their agony and the death-rattle in their
throats ? Are not the symptoms of their dis,olution, the
moribund groan of their decrepid senility, visible and
audible to mankind? The funeral toll oi St. Stephen's
belfry i• re-echoed by every steeple in broad Bohemia, in
Hungary, in the cathedrals of Lombardy, and the great hcU
of the Capitol begins to swing in sympathetic vibration.
Bayonets and bankruptcy, bayonets and bigotry, the
changes have been rung to the disgust and abhorrence of
the whole family of man. Prussia, for very shame, must
shake off the pestilent connexion; even Turkey. tired of
being the common gaoler of Christendom, asserts the higher
I manliness of Mahotnetanism, and taunts us with the lost
I pion, of Godfrey and lion-hearted Richard. Free and in-
dependent Amenca had by the majestic organ of Daniel
Webster expressed the full scorn of the western hemisphere
for that wretched Russian donkey, Joseph of Hapsburg,
the Romulus Augustulais of the holy Roman empire.
(Chaves.) To live and reign by the grace of God and Cos-
sacks is a contemptible line of livelihood, but the kindred
existence of the popedom is reduced to expedients of still
more despicable turpitude. The quackeries of miraculous
imposture are the fitting concomitants and appliances of a
system of which the ration crutches are the crapulous
kranconi in Turin, the traitor Bonney, in Switzerland,
and (that transparent Tartuffe) Montalembert, in France.
(Cheers.)
•

" TUE CANON LAW AND PAPAL
USURPATIONS."
The usual concourse of exiles and patriots has re-
ceived a graceful embellishment in the presence of ,!
ladies, attracted not less by the sympathy for brave
men, than by the exquisite beauty of Italy's lan-
pure, set forth by the splendid delivery of the
spcaler. The House of Commons was in great force,
and we recognised the members for Dublin, for West
Surrey, and for Northamptonshire among the audi-
tors. The enthusiasm which fur two hours pervaded
the assembly, and which the vigorous declamation of
the orator never suffered to flag for a moment, found
frequent utterance in the most clamorous explosions
of applause. Though the notes of our reporter arc
as copious and faithful as the rapid elocution of the
father would permit of, we despair of conveying any-
thing adequate to the effect of his marvellous out-
pourings. It would require a regular staff of steno-
graphers to put the public in possession of what may
be considered a continuation of the pending debates
in our legislature, with the exception that the key
note of the strain is far loftier, and the eloquence of
a much higher order than what the "gallery has to
deal with.
The opening was a sketch of the humble attitude
' of the Roman hi-hops under the Roman emperors,
when Felix, Victor, and Leo, wore their modest
mitres, and Irtemeus vied with Tertullian in glori-
, fving the exemplars- docility of contemporary Chris-
tians, under the rude rule of the temporal autho-
rities.

Even the imperial mandate, by which multitudes of
monks were sandled as wailiers and sent to guard the
frontier against barbarian inroads, met with faint murmur,
but full submission. The mitotic interests were paramount.
The church was a community within the general control of
the state, and was nothing more ; but the enemy of mane
kind tried on the mystic body of Christ the experiment
which had failed it, signally in the deaert. The tempter
came over the Alps with the Gallic l'epin ; he showed from
a pinnacle of earthly power and aggrandisement the king-
doms of this world, and pledged himself to secure their
homage if, falling prostrate before God's adversary,
" Christ's vicar" should adore him. The sacrilegious bar-
gain was struck ; the ark of the Lord was placed in the
temple of Dagon ; the bishop. of Rome, who had over and
over again suffered death sooner than offer incense to Pagan
idols, fell into the palpable snare of Satan ; and the hand
that bore on its finger the brightiwt of sacerdotal gems in the
" ring of the fisherman" was outstretched with scandalous
avidity to barn a fatal frankincense on the altar of secular
ambition. A visible change fellon the papacy. The gory crown
of martyrdom was uvehanged for the glittering tiara. Swell-
ing with the pride :not pump of satanic inflation, Boniface
VIII. having foully dethroned his still tieing predecessor
Celestine V., hum nu the world with his blasphemous bull,
I nam Sarteltsitt, and laid his monstrous mandate on man-
kind, invols lag the human rare in sacerdotal serfdom. By
one fell swoop lie abrogated the authority of kings witlua
their &faintest., of magistrates within the circle of their
attributions, of fathers within the sacred precincts of their
household. Popes became the arbiters of universal sove-
reignty, bishops bearded monarchs, and priests lorded it
over the domestic hearth. Legislation quelled before the
newborn code of clerical command, which, iu the slang of
the dark ages, was called CZUIOII law. The arbitrary com-
pound of fraud and forgery assumed the title of decretabs,
sod was first compiled by isidorus Mercator, enlarged by
Amadeus* of Lures, and finally licked into shape by a
Bologntse monk, Gratbui, whose name it henceforth bore,
and whom I, as a citizen of Bologna, I devote to the
merited execration of Europe. The principle which pul-
-1 lutes every page of this nefarious imposture is that every
haman right, claim, property, fnuseltiose, or feeling, at vary-
awe with the preshaninance of the popedom, was ipso facto,
inimical to heaven and the God of eternal justice. In
virtue of this pn•posterous prerogative, universal manhood
became a priest's footstool, this planet a huge game pre-
, serve for the Polley individual shouting. The finger of
Borgia, fresh from the poison cup, could trace a meridian
on the globe, and partition America between the rival
bribery of Portugal and Spain; nor was it only the un-
tutored Indian who was thus handed over to slavery or
slaught-r, but in the midst of European monarchies
the same insolent principle was haughtily asserted.
The adversary of the temporal Tiara was cursed
in all the inalislittory moods of the Vaticatt's viru-
lent vocabulary. The almighty ruler of the universe
was dragged into ignoble co-partnership with the
besottisl administration of 4.1 paltry principality; dis-
gust at its brutal misgovernment, hostility to its hideous
honest antagonism to its abhorred tyranny is
ringed in the category of crimes ; you, gallant men who
thnafte this hall are the criminals of canon law ; you dared
to have a country—(ehms).- kindred, home, and native
land, pa dansl to dream of the damnable d,-lesions, for
getting canon law ! Do I not glory in being your en-
tiansgresaw ? Does not the mother who bore me in the
11.1.0111 of Bologna bless God for her exiled son, bless God
that she gat, birth to no renegade from Italy, no accom-
plice or approver in her degradation, no saccislotal trader
in her downfall, no priestly plunderer grown bloated on
her wrong.. (Thunders of applause.)
The Father went into the details of canonical
showed how the Pandects and Codex of
Ju•ainiatt were superseded by clerical bye laws; how
Inneilotto and the famous Clementine code set aside
the jurisprudence of mcditeval tribunals ; how the
right of asylum in churches and monasteries, at first
a refuge kola feudal tyranny, became perverted into
a shield fur common robbers and murderers, and a
source of priestly peculation; how the clergy
claimed exemption from the ordinary judicature of
the land, and ran riot in the impunity of consecrated
delinquency —nll under the sanction of canon law.
How, as light dawned on the various coon-
tries of Europe, the atrocities of this de- I
basing system were by the laity indig-
nantly scouted, and the nuisance everywhere
abated save in the fag end of the Italian peninsula
and in the stereotyped stupidity of Rome. The
speaker thereupon made a ludicrous exposure of the
ignorance of Mr. John O'Connell when meddling
with the Piedmontese question in the House of Com-
mons, showed the utter imbecility of that juvenile
lawyer's appreciation of international rights, and de-
monstrated the inalienable character of legislative
sovereignty which the court of Rome had the absurd
pretension to regulate within the precincts of an in-
dependent foreign country. The plea of a convention
put forth by this enlightened laybrother was either a
mere secular agreement between two despotic powers,
and ceased to bind when the absolute monarch who
bargained away his people's privileges had vanished,
while the people who had been thus sold into bondage
repudiated the unnatural transfer, and in free
parliament made laws under a constitutional king,
or else the convention was a purely spiritual transac-
tion, and then it fell to pieces from its intrinsic rot-
tenness. Lord John Russell had taken a statesman's
view as well as a lawyer's of the papal interference
in the legislative functions of Piedmont, and rightly
stigmatised Franzoni's conduct to the dying Count
Rosa as a ferocious absurdity: but churchmen of
that stamp will mingle mischi4 with their mumme-
ries. and the machinery of canon law in their hands
can be made to work miracles of malignity. With
what delight did this unfeeling bigot witness the
pangs of the pious partner of the dying minister who,
with her four children, surrounded his bed of agony:
but his machinations have been visited ou his own
head—the kingdom has spewed him forth ; and the
widow of Count Rosa sees secured to her children the
rich inheritance of a nation's gratitude. (Cheers.)

•
The Father expressed his hearty concurrence in
what had fallen from Roman catholic lips in the
British legislature as to the wide and palpable dis-
tinction between the universal church of Christ and
the corrupt court of Rome. He would enforce and
proclaim aloud the disseverance. The gospel of for-
giveness was not more at variance with the Dra-
conian decretals of the late Gregory or the inquisi-
torial oppressions of the felon who has succeeded
him. The Vatican Palace was the court of Caiphas
the high priest, in the precincts of which Peter had
no sooner got entrance than he denied his master. It
is from that court, and not from the church of
God, that insolent and offensive bulls issue, as did
the words of blasphemy from the mouth of the great
beast of Revelations. It is from that court that has
emanated the late usurping document which England
tramples wider foot, and blessings on her for such
scornful defiance of the common disturber of Christen-
dom! lint perhaps it was after all but a trading
peculation. We all know that rosaries, and par-
dons, and briefs, and rescripts. a few cameos, and
plenty of indulgences, are the sole financial resources
and produce of the territory.cumd by papal misgo-
vernment. It sends a specimen of its wares to your
oecumenical exhibition, a rampant a 'id rabid specimen,
and accompanies the invoice with samples of native
handicraft in the manufacture not only of mock
Roman pearls equal to the genuine, but of 13 live
bishops. hoping the specimen may tempt ulterior de-
mand for such ingenious fabrications. (Laughter
and cheers.)
The speaker proceeded to arraign the liberal press
of France for the levity of its strictures on the
" Papal Aggression." The French are incapable of
a serious emotion, or they would feel the importance
to England of the present movement, worthy of the
great and thoughtful nation in which it occurs and
caused by no trivial alarm. Let France look to her
own condition ; by what insidious arts and persever-
ing craft has she not been dragged down from her
social and European position to be a mere instrument
of papal tyranny abroad with a Roman expedition
4 iistsrissr" in full progress at home. Here began
a splendid and highly poetical description of the
great Norwegian whirlpool culled the Maelstrom,
buoyant on whose circling eddies the ship of France
was yet visible, though every hour sucked closer and
closer into the central vortex,where it wasdoomcd to
be engulphed and disappear. Such was its present
position with reference to the papacy ; was not the
hits h vessel sailing beyond the influence of this
' dread phenomenon warranted in crowding all sail to
keep still farther aloof from the focus of destruction?
England sees the degradation of its neighbour, sees
the operation of priest-craft, and sniff', the pestilen-
tial odour of the Vatican in the breeze that is wafted
o'er the channel.
England instinctively feels that these foreign
bishops bode no good tither to her spiritual or tem-
poral coucerns. They come in flagrant violation or
evasion of British laws: they enter not at the door,
but, robber wise, by the window—emissaries of a
power which, like the " old man of the mountain,"
whose name is given to assassins, sends forth its satel-
lites, if not to poignard kings, certainly to strangle
the liberty of nations that are free; to act as a re-
mora to the onward march of civilisation ; a clog to
progress a drug on the social whcel,revolving in its
joyous gwations. Discord has already been the first
result; blood has been shed at Birkenhead. What
heeds the court of Rome the social evil of her handi-
work ? She seeks the pomp and pride of her dele-
gates, reckless of consequences to the land they
mvaile. Wherever there is wealth to gain, whether
from the imbecility of her votaries when alive, or at
the pillow of dying opulence, her agents are at hand
—speculators when they are not spies. Men of
England, bless your Queen for repelling in the face
of Europe these skirmishers of the forlorn hope of a
foreign power. (Cheers.)

THE "mow TAX.—On Friday a public meeting
was held in Newcastle, at which retolutiont condemnatoiy
of the window duty, and a petition to parliament praying
for its abolition, were unanimously adopted.—Gateshead
Obaaree►.
THE THERGOLAND MURDER.—SESPECTED FRA-
THICHIT.—Siace the inquest was held, circumstances
have come to light which have induced Mr. Superin-
tendent Green, of the Bern,kv police, to apprehend
John Firth, a younger brother of the deceased,
ou the charge of murdering him. The superintendent has
found some very strong circumstantial evidence against the
prisoner, which was to be adduced at the adjourned inquest
appointed to be held on Thursday at Wortley. The de-
ceased bad contracted very dissipated habits, and had been
a source of grief and shame to his parents. The accused
brother, John Firth, is about twenty-four years of age. He
was employed at the Victoria Colliery, and considered a
highly respectable youth. His life and character were irre-
proachable, and no motive can be aligned fur the perpetra-
tion of the horrid deed. The inquiry washrought to a close
on Saturday evening. In consequence of the evidence of
the blacksmith at the Victoria Colliery,

.. ,
William Simpson, the ..
It is not merely at the bedside of the dying that clerical
muscly in that the bullets which he received as his portion of those
meddlers come to curse or to " convey." It it net ut cast for the prisoner (John Firth) ftd been thrown away by
public politics they presume ; but intrude in the household
_Simason's wife down a sough; it was opened at the place on
business.. of every-day life, and invade the privacy of every Friday, mad seven bullets found therein. These on being
man's home with loathsome and pestilent pertinacity. They
compared with the slug found in the head of deceased, were
will dictate to a father of a familiy what school he is to found to correspond both as to size and weight. The sub-
select for his sons, and quote canon law for the infraction of stance of a conversation which transpired between the pri-
the simplest laws of human society and of God, the common soner and William White, constable of Barnsley, during the
Father of all and founder of the sacred rights of paternity. sitting of the inquest on Thursday, was stated. It appears
What else is this canon law but an attempt to invalidate all that he was extremely anziuus to know from the constable
human legislation, and to confound Christianity, in its eels- what was the nature of the evidence against him. Whether,
ti.,n to secular communities, with the exploded and super- if he was committed to York, the constable thought they
aided theocracy of the Jews? Are not the doctrines of would hang him. Further, if he knew of any persons ever
Christ compatible in the views of the Divine Redeemer with having been hung without sufficient evidence of persons
every form of goveynanent ; is not that the i!ssonce having seen them do the deed, whether the constable
and bout of catholicity ? Whence, then, is the Vatican bad ever known of a similar charge of one brother
at war with every free coantry, with Belgium, with Sardi- shooting another, and further, if he knew of any
nia, with England ? At peace with the despotisms of the peeson charged with wilful murder getting off,
Kaiser and the Czar? Catholic Poland is manacled by the with traziortation, and it so, where persons who were
encyclics of old Gregory, and ruthlessly delivered up to his thump() for life were usually sent to. These singular
brother Pope of Petersburg, while to the Kaiser our own queries were volunteered to the constable. The coroner
heavenly land is offered in holocaust of treacherous and ire- ' summed up, and the jury after deliberating about three-
nominious homage by papal felony (fei°nese° Mast' i)' ' quarters of an hour, returned the followed verdict: "We
Truly canon law reigns at Rome : a model land
.for prize , find a verdict of wilful murder against some person or per-
legi4ation ; where terror walks the streets and the spy eon. unknown." They thought, however, that there was
lurks at every key-hole • where social intercourse is • snare, much evidence to throw considerable suspicion on John
and the domestic out.boiomings of the family circle so much , Firth. the brother of the deceased, but they thought there
gnat for the mill of the co co ; where the greetings was not sufficient evidence to warrant them to return a
in the market place are noted down by the noonday verdict of wilful murder against him. At the termination
devils of the police, and the shafts of venomed dl- lof the inquest the prisoner was apprehended by Mr. Green,
nunciation are shot at random in every man's Par,..`"' i the superintendent constable of Barnsley, by the authority
way ; the luxury of hidden woe an indulgence of deePestuur, lof the magistrates of that town, who will institute au
and a clandestine press the only outlet of the national de- 1 lag into into the ease on Monday
next.
spair. One channel alone was open for the energies of. the ',
TIM SEAMENS' STRIKE IN TTIE NORTII.—OR
country to find issue ; the public robber was abroad , the 1
held South Shields, at which
cluaolu- upwanls of 2,000 sailors were present, and resolutions were
brigand like the owl of Sultan Mamhoud_btlesd the clerical 1 Thursday a meeting .3.at
government for unprotected villages and hp utter
ks
tion of society. The banded plunderers of ~. adopted in which the new articles provided by the Mercan-
Wreenkeil , tile Marine and Merchant Stamens' Acts were denounced as
established a formidable compdetititon waithrivtarae
UP, la, unjust and unconetitutional. It was also resolved that no
Pecuatodrisasoftrothuse, but
upit no,
more atse ranupance with the rights Alio, coasting or foreign, should proceed to
sea uuder the
equally For after al wain eam,,,ja. new articles, and that no ships should go to whose awn
and immuniti" of
ispnisgethe Pnekditinelld defr.a uceletter
andell that the . went to the shipping office. This latter resolution, it was
ties Is it to the d
personal stated, meant that all chip; %vete to rentan. at anshOr unt-I
11411;*td wh° inuk?"ree withaa=ral nill i the question at USW is date
liberty wean a bead-gear of a Natty