The Express.
London, England, 1850-11-28 00:00:00

PUNCH'. APPEAL to WISEMAN.
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LONDON, THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 28.

Idawriscis follow meetings, end address is heaped
ups address, to vent indignation and express seal on
the subject of the arrogance and the menaces of the
wan of Rome. All this is good as displaying the
spirit of the people, and their determinstion not to be
thrust back into the swathing-clothes of the middle
ages by any old spiritual nurse, whether of Rome
or Exeter. Some bigotry and intolerance 77 Rome
with the sentiment, but this should be laid to
the charge of those who have wantonly provoked
this quarrel, and stirred up the popunir cur-
rent from the dregs. Nor do we think
that Roman catholice ought to be grievously
offended by so very natural an outburst of
protestant anger and surprise. Nor should they
charge all protestants with the exaggerated anathemas
of the more zealous and intolerant, any more than we
should confound all catholic, with the ANTONELLIS
or the WISEXANS. But the time and its events are
each, that no sense of courtesy or brotherly goodwill
can be powerful enough to prevent the consideration,
and even the discussion, of the political and social ten-
denies of the two religions. If one leans to the side of all
that is despotic and retrograde in Europe, and if it
be made the cat's-paw and the instrument of despot-
ism and reaction, no sense of forbearnee or of tales-
nee, no innate love of social and religious equality area
repress the sentiments of fear and of dissent whine's
must feel towards a political religion that is band ma
the negation and defiance of snob liberal prioclplai
But, however natural and praiseworthy the mai-
versal outburst, there is still no symptom of italsit
directed towards any worthy or any useful gad. A
law against the assumption of titles, in a esontry
where titles are of importance, may be wareantable,
if it could be enforced, but what penalty Gould be
inflicted upon an ecclesiastic for covering his shaven
crown with a red rather than a black skull-cap?
Spiritual authority, though nominally conferred by
the POPE, can only acquire force from the fact of cer-
tain members acknowledging it. And if numbers of
Englishmen agree to do (so, how are you to prevent
them?
And yet thereon be no doubt that the division of Eng-
land into sees, and the placing over all of a prelate
clothed with the highest aignities,and endowed with the
command of very great wealth, was done for the sake of
impressing the people of England with the idea that
the Roman catholic church was a great one, and that
it possessed in a greater ds than the established
church all claims to popular respect, such as those
of traditional right, antiquity, splendour, unerring
wisdom, superhuman panty. Certain of our own
bishops and clergy have been putting up similar
sign-boards, which no doubt prompted Dr. WISE-
MAN to Set up his cardinal's hat at once to eclipse
altogether such Anglican traders. And the specu-
lation is, we fanny, not a bad one. The Cordi-
tsars hat will draw customers. The learned of
Oxford and the ignorant of Westminster will both
frequent his shop. Old men, and women of enfeebled
intellect, will be mare induced to leave their
estates to a princely church, than to either a genteel
er a middle class one. And since the Bishop of
Lofton has declared himself a patron and an ad-
mirer of auricular confession, and since there remains
to the Romanising protestants but the choice et Dr.
BLOMPIELD and Dr. %Immix fora father confiner,
we must frankly admit that the latter has the best
claim to occupy the confessional.
The use of bishops in a church (without inquiring
into their origin) is that of being of a rank whisk
enables them to treat and communicate on a tooting
of equality with the great in an aristocratic society ;
and equally with great officials and the sovereign
himself in a despotic regime. To this is added the
weight and veneration which the wealthy and the
ppoowerful have, even from their splendour, over the
t and the poor. We can conceive the church
oTio —wns, of merely civic classes and republics,
doing without such lofty representation ; but we own
that in a feudal and aristocratic state, in an extended
empire, where rural claims abound, consisting of the
untutored penult sad the influential lord, the church
that dispensed with the episcopal dignity abdicated
its great hold over the upper and lower classes, and
thereby condemned itself to be a sect, and that not a
dominant one.
The Retain hierarchy on the other band addressed
itself especially to the non-civic classes. Chosen in
from the lowerranks el life, and most often
general
the cloister, it maintained at once its inflames
with the class from which it sprung, and assumed
no less influence with the clue to an equality with
which it rose, by its authority, its wealth, its splen-
dear, its suede virtues, its adhesion to the feudalism in
whose ritlias it awed, and to the despotism to which
it eddied a baba sad an allied power. All these.
elements of seesadancy are, however, fast fading.
The iguana etas lower classes, and the privileges
dais higher, ea evaporating. And were it not for
the wad tesaisat alarms of governments and of
=Mgshwa in Europe at the prooeedings and
r a issawasiy grown from ignorance and
them Asa rather then from perverseness, catho-
weal have asthma to glide down that
shelving declivity whist the active age had already
eland for It. The meats el 1848 and 1849 have
given it a breathing time, villa it has employed
in an adobes attempt to Arab the height from
which it has Mho, rather thee to strengthen the
which it steed brims those years past
Velliall esiser not the WO beak of its farther, its
final, its palpitate fan, sod its disparition from the
world, slag with that state of society which engen-
dered it.
Bat the asides at present, sad with us, is, sot
so mash the impede straggle of Romanian to maha-
tma a hid et watome, bat the vitality d
power of the establialiso church to
answer best prat demand d the English mind,
which is M solid the return to mediaeval religioo, to
sacerdold espanisoy, and to forms of creed which
have bees heed incompatible with civil liberty sad
with iatellesteal and industrial development.
It with met on. sea that the conduct of a
law number el the English clergy, of several of its
prelates, as well as the spirit which has prevailed
in its seats of learning and infected their locality,
have demonstrated that there is unfitness in the men
and in the listen to leader to represent the mind GI
England in the struggle. Large numbers alkali&
churchmen feeling that there was a want of religious
bison% and homogeneity, and seal, have gone to
seek it in the adoption of the old Romanist
principle, and the old organisations of society,
. utterly foreign to its age, _ its ideas, and its
program. What the established church wanted was
to get fresh hold over the non-aristocratic classes.
Yet to do this, they have invented modes for tickling
the merely aristocratic palate. Instead of gaining
over the educated laity, they have repudiated them.
MBA the lower ors cannot comprehend, much
yse allasists, their " msmawise," a if they could,
it weed be at once to compare that with the oere-
main d Baas.
•We is sot believe that any moat of
lamed fathers retrograde and silly mea,wil=le
=gift the established church in tie amildseesViidsh
S use held over the minds el the laity. Wi bite
tiles mat be OWS*III Worm dated, ha able to
.11Sier that aura intrinsically natiosaL If it is le
rz-ie bid OM the dole dame, mord,. with
tb. pinup of the lower nuke, it must seas
be be adored to a purely stietoreatie aide;
Ohl the warty in which the clergy are
lard mad be made a national Julia**.