The Northern Daily Times.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1856-04-17 00:00:00

THURSDAY, APRIL 17, 1856

THE PALMERSTON Cabinet were defeated on the
Maynooth Grant Bill on Tuesday night. This
being a question of great national importance,
and one which the Government cannot abandon,
without an open violation of principle, the
country must have Leen surprised to find that
the defeat of Ministers was not followed by an
announcemeut of a formal resignation of
office—not that we by any
wish it on this particular question. So long as
any Church is supported from the consolidated
Fund, so long will the Roman Catholics have a
claim to grants for religious purposes. While the
Protestant Church of Ireland receives 700,0001.
a•year for its twenty-three per cent. of the Irish
population, the Roman Catholics, and all the other
religious seets,have an indisputable claim to 38,0001,
for their seventy-seven per cent. No really im-
partial man will deny this. We know that a great
variety of qualifications are employed in these
days, to get out of what the Americans call
a fix," but still a strict sense of justice must pre-
We must all know, that if 38,000/ is enough
for the religious wants of 77 per cent. of any
population, that a like amount ought to suffice for

means

23 per cent.
It may not be thought exactly right to treat
the question in such a narrow commercial
spirit; but fortunately, when we come to
he actual amount the Established Church receives
annually from the Imperial Exchequer, reason-
able men may easily persuade themselves that
we are soaring into regions of romance, or revelling
amidst the spoils of a Lahore or Sebastopol.
.700,0001. is the figure for which the Established
Church of Ireland appears, year after year, on
ce sheet. This is what the
reformation in the Sister Isle
bunk it high limo that some
ne should be made to those ,

our national balan

work of spir

costs us, and we

return of the work

who have to pay their money for such purposes.
n England we have something more
than 77 per cent. of the population's
spiritual wants supplied without the aid
of one sixpence from the national purse. Pro.
testanism has lost none of its primitive vigour by
assenting to voluntary contributions for its
succour. The followers of JAMES Fox, WESLEY,
the Presbyterians, and all the other Protestant
sects who cling to the Bible as their rule of faith,
have not decreased within the last twenty years,
during which time the Established Church of
Ireland has received 14,000,0001. of money out of
the public coffers !

We will not, however, push this argument any
further, as we believe there are few subjects which
ought to have been more studiously avoided at
this moment. It is a matter which not only
excites the wildest passions and at home,
but it draws down upon us the attention of every
foreign country. If this was the object of the
majority of the House of Commons on Tuesday
night—if the Government should be driven from
office at this critical juncture by their division, we
can only rely on the cool discretion, patriotism,
and moderation of the House of Peers
to defeat Mr. SPOONER'S manifestly unjust
mode of dealing with the claims of the several
religious portions of the community. Had the
ultra-Protestant party to which Mr. SPOONER
belongs brought forward a bill to discontinue all
State grants for religious or church purposes, he
would then have found the genius and voice of the
age in his favour; but as it is, he offers a gross out-
rage to the Dissenters' sense of justice, and an
unprovoked insult to every Roman Catholic in the
realm. If this is to be the reactionary policy
of the Opposition, so immediately after
the close of a most bloody war, we think we need
scarcely point out the necessity for the less rabid
portions of the British public's supporting the
present Ministry at any hazard.

Mr. SRooNzu has shown us what he would do,
and his party have shown us their strength ; and,
if they are resolved to persist with their
Maynooth Bill, they must either be foiled by
an agitation in favour of the immediate
abolition of all state grants for Church
purposes, or Lord PAL3IERSTON must advise her,
MAJESTY to dissolve Parliament, that the Maynooth
question may be 'tried at the hustings.
We must have no intestine warfare going
on, while (all is doubtful abroad. England
needs that repose for which she has been
shedding her best blood, and paying
millions of treasure, to secure to the rest of Europe.
If we are not to have this, let us have an oppor-
tunity of testing the real strength of public morality.
under the old Constitutional standard of a general
election. Mr. SPOONER and his supporters can scarcely
desire anything half so straighforward, but a
decisive step must be taken, and at once. We have
no great cause to be satisfied with the PALMERSTON
policy in the management of the war, or with regard
to the terms of peace, but on this Church question,
he will not commit a great injustice in order to
cloak a grievous wrong. The country should, there
fore, support the PRE3IIER, not that Maynooth may
be subsidised at the public expense, but that all
Churches may be made to provide for their own
support, and enabled to say with ST. PAUL,
" Neither did we eat any man's bread for nought :
" but wrought with labour and travail night and
" day, that we might not be chargeable to any of
" you." Mr. SPOONER will doubtless despise this
doctrine, but if he should provoke the Dissenters
to speak out, he now knows the source from whence
they will date their opposition to all Church
endowments.

LIVERPOOL has just beheld, in the person of
Lours KOSSUTH, the greatest hero of the age, and
the most immortal among the European statesmen
whose deeds the historian has to hand down to
posterity. We have lived to see that man com-
bating in the councils of despotism, subduing
cruelty by his determination, banishing injustice
by his frown, and winning the pampered hire
lings of tyranny over to the cause of morality by
his truth, his eloquence, and unanswerable reason-
ing. It is before such men that the mightiest
monarchs quail, and from such patriots and sons
of mercy, nations borrow their highest, moral,
and God-like attributes. We have seen KOSSUTII
throw down the gauntlet to a despot who could
boast of 400,000 bayonets. We have seen him at
the head of an unarmed and unprepared people,
exasperated to madness by years of unparalleled
oppression and misery, burning with a wild spirit
of revenge ; frantic with joy at their sudden
release from their chains—their impassioned
love of freedom inflamed by signal triumphs on
every battle field. Hurried onward to renown by
these tempestuous elements of civil war, we saw
him raised to the supreme post of honour and
power, and by moderation, and all the loftiest
aspirations of humanity, turning the current of
long-smothered passion and deep-rooted prejudice
into the channels of toleration, and securing equal
justice and protection to all classes of men.
It is not often we see men who have played
with the sword of victory those humane and
truly magnanimous parts which they have
often pourtrayed with their pens, and
advocated with their tongues. Visions of renown
have perverted the noblest of minds, but we
saw in KOSSUTIT a man whose understanding was
equal to magical successes. The sincerity of the
Patriot, unswerving adherence to justice, and
ceaseless devotion to the cause of humanity, bore
him onward against all the stern realities of an
armed struggle. He had broken the chains and
dispelled the horrors of domestic tyranny in a fair,
though desperate fight, when a foreign despot was
suffered to step in to crush a nation whose love of
independence, and Constitutional freedom, has
been the admiration of all ages. KOSSUTH, though
defeated by this treason to the world's civilisation,
says little in the way of rebuke, and knows no
despair. He looks on the Concordat as the
substitution of a spiritual for a temporal despotism;
and caring not what mask the destroyers of his
country's nationality may assume, he sees in
the surrender of sovereign political rule,
the restoration of the inquisition and the
downfall of spiritual dominion. He tells
fanatics that they may forbid the reading
of Hungary's history in her national
schools—and infidels, that they may prohibit
the reading of the Bible, by her enlightened and
tolerant people, while he ventures to predict the
result, and calls on history as his witness.
We may never again behold so brilliant an orator,
so ernest a patriot, or so great a ruler, pleading for
the civil and religious rights of his people, in a
land of freedom, where every man enjoys the right
of worshiping his Creator, according to the
dictates of his own conscience. KOSSUTH asks for
nothing beyond what every Englishmen demands
for his country, and this he 'seeks at no greater
sacrifice than the abandonment of that expediency
which caused us to " drift" into war in 1854, He
informs us that the native language of the Magyar
is to be banished from the schools of Hungary, and