Northern Times.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1857-06-23 00:00:00

conscience.

Considering the tenets of the Roman Catholic
faith, it is a notorious fact that every sincere
member of that religion has an ardent and
earnest desire to disturb and weaken what in the
religious world is termed Protestantism. He
looks upon the systems of LUTHER and CALVIN
as antagonistic to GOD'S Word, and their
existence dangerous to mankind at large. If,
therefore, such a man should agree tp forego
active hostility to Protestantism in consideration
of a certain gain to himself ; although not
taxing him with a wilful violation of his pledge,
we must deem the manifestation of an earnest
desire to be relieved from it as an evidence that
it curbs his action in a course which it is his
desire he should direct it.

Viewed in this light, the conduct of Mr. DEASY
and his supporters, on Monday week, was not
only ungracious but somewhat suspicious, and
particularly when we look at the time selected
for such a political exhibition. The history of
the times already demonstrate that where the
Romish Church has the power either in influence
or numbers, it never fails to attack and weaken
Protestantism. If we look to what is passing in
France, and also Belgium, we find that there is
a system of priestly aggression being carried on
which is antagonistic to civil and religious liberty.
In the latter country, riot, almost bordering on
rebellion, was caused by the Romish priesthood
in their attempt to crush all freedom of
thought, and to usurp all power, civil and
ecclesiastical into their own hands. The Paris
journals back up the attempt, and everywhere
we read of indications of a simultaneous rising
of Ultramontane Romanism against the very
existence of Protestantism ; and there is no form
of Protestantism which they detest more than
that displayed by the people of Belgium, who

protest against the spoilation of their dying
relatives for pious uses, while at the same time
they accept with humility and perfect submis-
sion the whole creed of the Church. Instances
innumerable could be adduced to prove this
position. One—and that a recent one, too—
presents itself to our mind at the present
moment. It is the case of RICE V. M'MAHON,
which was before the Court of Queen's Bench a
few days ago. The plaintiff applied for a
criminal information against the defendant, who
is his parish priest. The cause of action arose
out of certain libellous language delivered from
the altar against Mr. RICE, whose only
fault was his firm determinati3n to
resist certain innovations and pecuniary
impositions which the Reverend defendant had
made up his mind to enforce. On the occasion
in question, Mr. RICE was denounced before the
congregation, and in the presence of his own
friends and relatives, as a " besotted wretch," a
"libertine," an " infidel," a " fellow wallowing
in the mire and guilt of sin," a " drunken
ruffian," &c., &c.

Such unseemly and illegal conduct is part of
the system adopted by the priesthood to
maintain spiritual, aye, and temporal supremacy
over the members of their flock ; and the efforts
of Mr. DEASY is also another of the schemes
whereby they may turn every thing to the
advantage of Mother Church, and the queetiona-
ble purposes of her avaricious ministers.

NEW ZEALAND.—The following extract from a letter
dated, New Zealand, 3rd March, 1357, to a friend in
Liverpcol, will, no doubt, be acceptable to our readers.
The writer has been a resident above ten years in Auckland
I am exceedingly fond of this country, and think
thousands and tens of thousands of ir.dustrious men from
the mother country would have reason for thankfulness if
they found themselves located in this beautiful and healthy
colony, where every one who works may eat the bread of
cheerfulness, beneath his own vine and fig tree. It is a good
country for all, but especially for the labouring classos. I
cannot help thinking that it is not at all understood at
home. Hoping, for the good of mankind at home, and
also for the benefit of this colony, a short time may throw
some light upo❑ its manifold advantages. I rest satisfied
time will work great changes, and soon."

A DFFEAT BETTER THAN A VICTORY. —The church in
Ireland (ever to be distinguished froM the church of
Ireland) being in embarrassed circumstances, to the extent
of £11,500 a-year, the amount of the odious and uncollect-
able ministers' money, it is simply and naturally proposed
by the government that the difficulty should be got over
by the help of the accummulation of church property in
the hands of the Ecclesiastical Commissioners. In other
words it is thought proper that the establishment should
bear her own burthens, having funds for the purpose, for
which it is impossible for the mind of man, at least of lay-
man, to imagine a more becoming appropriation. The
church is not asked to pay £11,500 a year to the public
poor-box ; the intended subscription is exclusively for her
own distress; and she is objecting, or her noble but most
mistaken friends are objecting for her, to the application
of her own resources, or rather superfluities, to her own
special uses and ocsasions. As to ministers' money, there
is no use of talking of it; the people of the towns liable
to it will pay it no more, and the peace of Ireland and
the empire is not to be disturbed by a vain attempt
to compel them. Something must, therefore, be done,
or the ministers will soon come to have no money to
support them. Either the public, or the church herself
must pay, and when this alternative is stated, the matter
Is disposed of. The rashest of Statesmen—by which ex-
pression we mean Lord Derby—never did so rash a thing
as to resist the proposed settlement of this financially
trifling, but, socially and politically roost important ques-
tion. It he were to take office to-morrow, he would have
the same difficulty to deal with, and he could not by any
possibility deal with it any way substantially different from
the plan of the present government. He might indeed pay
the £11,500 a-year out of his private coffers, but were he
the most popular minister that ever ruled England, and
were he ten times more eloquent than he is, not one shilling
of the money would he ever coax out of the pockets of the
people of this country. Lord Derby's opposition is
therefore factious in the extreme, and he is deeply indebted
to the minority of five who saved him on Thursday from a
victory which could not possibly have resulted in anything
but embarrassment and fresh discredit to his party.
Lord Ellenborough acted well in voting for the second
reading of the bill, " for the sake of religious peace," and
the Duke of Newcastle judiciously observed that "it was
the duty of statesmen to foresee when concession was
inevitable, and to concede before agitation made its appear-
ance." His imputation, however, upon the Lord Lieute-
nant, that he had encouraged the corporations to resist the
tax, was utterly groundless. There is no occasion for re-
sorting to any far-fetched theory to explain such resistance,
the towns subject to ministers' money being those where
the Roma❑ Catholics form the bulk of the inhab'tants, and
the corporations being naturally and n:cessarily in unison
with the popular feeling, especially upon such a subject.
It is to be regretted, for the sake of' the Church herself,
that the only Irish bishop who took a part in the debate
should have thrown his weight into the rong side of the
scale. The question being one between peace and good-
will on one side, and a few thousand a year on the other,
It would have become a Christian bishop to have avoided
another demonstration of the preference of pelf to the
moral and religious considerations. It might have been
especially prudent, in a bishop of the race of Beresford, to
have been less prominent on the side of Mammon. Should
the funds of the Ecclesiastical Commission not suffice for
the purposes of the bill, we feel inclined to suggest a
reference to those of the bishopric of Gilmore to supply
the deficiency. The population returns of the Commis-
sioners of Public Instruction tells us, that in 1835 there
were only 80,998 members of the established church in
the three sees (Kilmore, Elphin, and Ardagh) constituting
that diocese, while the Catholic population amounted to
746,471, a proportion of nine to one against the reason and
justice of the institution which endows the shrines of the
few with the wealth of the many. We learn from the
same authority that there were at the period mentioned
no fewer than eighty-eight pari-les in the three sees con'
dining severally less than twenty members of the estab_
lishment. Surely the Right Reverend Marcus Beresford,
this ecclesiastical Cerberus with three mitred heads, and
the patron (as " Dot's Peerage" assures us) of eighty-two
livings, ought to be careful he harks either in England or
Ireland on the money side of a church question.—
Examiner.

THE MINSTER BLUE BOOK MANUFACTORY.—Whatever
may be the condition of our Lancashire cotton spinners. it
is evident that the manufacturers of blue books at West-
minster are working full time, with a full supply of hands,
and with no fear of any failure of the raw material. Accor-
ding to Mr. Bouverie, of the five hundred members of the
Commons available for such labours, a full moiety is already
engaged on thase committees whenca the blue books
emirate. The Upper House, no doubt, are also doing
their part in this truly witienal manufacture, and as John
Ball has money enough to pay his printers, and there are
tens of thousands only too anxious to vgici Ott some com.

mittee their one-sided evidence on their own pet grievance•
there seems little chance of a failure in the annual crop
of blue books, three-fourths of which find their way to the
second hand book-stall and the waste-paper shop. Nay, so
promising is the crop of the session that Mr. Bouverie
cannot find hands to manufacture another little blue book,
though on so interesting a question as the equalisation of
the poor rates of modern Babylon. Mr. Bouverie's excuse,
however fair a looking one on the face of it, after all was
nothing more than an excuse for shelving a troublesome
question for this sessioa at least. Ninety members are
working on private bills in eighteen committees, one
hundred and fifty more are shut no in twelve committee-
rooms on public matters, and sixty-four more are serving
on standing orders committees, whilst two score of election
tribunals are waiting for the services of two hundred more
legislators. Was there ever such a hard-worked House of
Commons ? Was there ever such a fortunate consumption
of its working men, at the very moment when inquiry into
the present inequality of poor rates in the metropolis
would be specially inconvenient to the Cabinet ? The
liberality with which members have been crowded on
public committees now looks somewhat suspicious, seeing
that this demand for inquiry into the London poor-rates
question, if not postponed to suit Mr. Bouverie himself,
would have ta'een precedence of several other inquiries
the concession of which is now used as an argument for
refusing this investigation.—Morning Herald.

NEW ZEALAND FLAX.—The general government had
recently given effect to a resolution of the House of Repre-
sentatives with regard to flax. The house voted £4,000 as
a reward or rewards for the discovery of efficient means
for rendering flax and other fibrous plants of New Zealand
available as articles of export. £2,000 is offered to the
person who shall by some process of his own invention
first produce from a plant indegenous to New Zealand, 100
tons of merchandise; £l,OOO t ) any person other than the
person entitled in the first reward, who shall next produce
from a fibrous plant indegenous to New Zealand, 100 tons
of merchandise. The merehandise must be saleable as an
article of export from the colony of New Zealand, and
have been produced at a cost not exceeding 75 per cent. of
its value at the port of entry where it is exported. Copies
of the Government Gazette, containing the notice, have
been sent to London, Leeds, Manchester, &c., for publica-
tion there.

GENERAL WALKER AT THE SOUTH.—The terms in
which the New Orleans press speaks of Walker and his
advent in that city create some doubt in our minds
whether the editors have gone " demented," or English
words and phrases bear the same meaning on the shores
of the Gulf of Mexico as further North. Any one
who his read the article in the Delta, and is
aware that New Orleans is the first city in the South,
must feel some pardonable hesitation in deciding
whether the piece of fustian was a bad carica-
ture, or he had been grossly imposed upon in the
recent accounts of Walker's doings in Nicaragua. When
one hears of enthusiastic crowds waiting on the quays of
a great city to welcome a small man with " blue-grey eyes,"
and proclaimed by the local newspapers " the champion of
Isthmian Republicanism," the hero," " the brave warrior,"
" the unassuming, mild-looking, light-complexioned man,"
" the impersonation of as glorious and daring a chivalry as
these latter days of ours have seen," " the man of
destiny," " he of the blue-gray eyes," " a man destined to
face the boldestl daugars unappaled," "he whose name
has become a household word in the South, and whose
deeds have been the subject of American and European
conversation, comparatively speaking, as much as any of
the great captains of modern times," one naturally ex-
pects to hear, if not of a good man, at least of a great
one. If we don't expect to hear of the gospel preached,
of the naked clothed, of the hungry filled, of hospitals
endowed, churches built, aqueducts made, laws codified,
and cookery improved, we at least expect to hear of
great battles fought, of rapid and successful campaigns,
of large armies overthrown, powerful fortresses captured,
of kingdoms subdued, and dynasties extinguished. If
you do not look for a Colbert or a De L'Hopitat, you
look for a Turenne or a Napolean. With such an in-
tolerable deal of sack you can never be content with
a half-penny worth of bread. If you compare a man, as
the New Orleans Delta c Jmpares Walker, to Napoleon on
his return from Elba, the comparison is worth little,
if you cannot tell of his Lodi, his Arcola, his Marengo, his
Wagram and Austerlitz, his convention of Campo Formio,
his treaty of Tilsit : if you cannot tell of a genius which
baffled all men, and overcame all things, which was proof
against the cowardice of some, the apathy of others, and
the treachery of many and which wrung victory from
the most adverse fate with the most unpromising mate-
rials, your encomiums only bring ridicule on yourself and
contempt on those who accept you as their organ. To
say that a man is as much talked of in Europe and
America, comparatively speaking, as any captain of
modern times, is to say very little for either his abilities
or his reputation. The phrase "comparatively speaking "
plays fearful havoc with the compliment, bad as it is at
best. Comparatively speaking, Barnam has been as much
talked of in Europe as Wellington, and we venture to
say Busteed has been as familiar in the mouths
of those Frenchmen who know anything of America as
any warrior we have produced since Washington. A.
man need neither be brave, nor wise, nor good, to be
talked about. Fame follows on the heels of the swindler,
or murderer, or burglar, with as much impartiality as on
those of the hero or philanthropist. The place she
awards them is, in history, doubtless not the same, but
the amount of public notoriety she deals out to each is
tolerably fairly balanced. To call General Walker's
doings in Nicaragua "a war," is about as absurd as toe
conduct of the Brahmin whose sad mishap Macaulay
relates so feelingly, who, being in search of a sheep for
sacrifice, was persuaded, by the united testimony of some
scoundrels, into taking a deceased dog for the animal of
which he was in search. The people of New Orleans are
very much in the position of the unhappy Brahmin. For
the benefit of those who may ba disposed to deduce from
the follies of the New Orleans zealots the conclusion that
the people of this country are afflicted with such obliquity
of moral vision as to take Walker for a great hero, and
his filibusters for soldiers, we have only to say that the
disease, like the yellow fever, is local.—New York Times.

CANADA.—The Governor-General had announced his
intention of proroguing Parliament on the 10th. Trade
throughout Canada and the West was depressed, and
likely to be so until the Fall. The grain crops were
promising. The port of Quebec was inundated with
tonnage. The St. Lawrence Dock and Warehouse Com-
pany were about to commence their works on the south
side, which will afford accommodation for their steamers
in connection with the Grand Trunk Railway, having a
depth of 36 feet at low water. The mail steamers, in con-
sequence of the loss of the Canadian, will in future stop
at Quebec. The weekly line to Quebec will commence
next year, and bi-monthly to Pout • i during winter.
The Governor-General is expected home by the North
American, appointed to sail on the 20th inst. -I. ne esti-
mate for the completion of the Victoria Bridge is under
£70u,000 ; the extension to London from St. Mary's,
£lBO,OOO ; extra rolling stock, stations, &0., £3 )O,OA, or
about £1,200,000 of the £2,000,009 Preference Bond;
authorised to be raised last year by the Grand Trunk
Railway Company. This, with the gilt of the Government
subscriplon, places Vat) company in an easy financial
position, as all further extensions are postponed until
1860, when the completion of the bridge will constitute an
unbroken line for the transit of goods. The Steam Boat
Companies complain of being obliged to run, even at a
ruinous loss, against the railway, which has been so
largely aided by public money, anti a further sabsiily to
the ocean steamers, they have petitioned for the abolition
of the canal tolls.

PARIS, Sunday.—An electioneering manifesto, by Ledra,
Rollin, dated London, June 15, is circulating private'y iu
Paris. It contains the following passages :—Whitt we
want, above all things, is to make a breech, Let us not
forget the banquets of 1847, so timidly commenced, and
their triumphant issue ; let tis 114vO in eaeh arrondisse-

ment one and one only legal and constitutional candidate,
the one whose name offers the greatest chance of success,
and let us vote for him as one man. All hops of a fusion
of the two different opposition lists is abandoned. An
angry correspondence is published between the rival demo-
cratic candidate in the fourth circumscription.