The Sun.
London, England, 1851-11-29 00:00:00

S ti N,

TIIE

more irotosi or more .The poirept repro-
i:oeo et the e,res_ees Leteisr eel it eruseee egeinst
fiette3teetieta woalcl nave stemel Rerope three en reels*
et discord sold of catastrophe in which France aed
civi-
may perish."
(Laughter.) But, to cite the highest of all authorities,
the Pope himself—what was the account given in the
Roman Catholic paper, the Tablet, only last month, of
the allocation of Pope Pius IX. on the sth of Sep!ernber, I
1850? It releted to the we:cord:it between the Pope
:sod bpain; it stated that all eccieeisatical property un-
ju.tiy confiscated was to be resumed, that all property
which hid been or should be given to the Romish Church
was to remain immutable and inalienable, and that all
colleges and schools, public and private, were to be
pieced under the entire and absolute control of the
bishops. It went on:—
" But it has also been decreed that all the magistrates
of the kingdom shall do their endeavour to secure that
due honour, observance, and obedience shall be shown
by ail to the ecclesiastical authority and dignity."
To this was added:—
';'het the most illuslrious Queen and her Govern-
ment promise to give all assistance by their powerful
patronage nee' protection to the aforesaid bishops, when,
io the exercise of their pastoral office, they shall have
occasion to restrain the wiekedin es and audacity of those
ruin principally who impiously seek to pervert the minds
of the feitlifee, and to corrupt their morals, and when
they shall have to seateer and drive away from their
flecks the dete, table and dire plegue and ruinous evil of
perverse books."
(Hear, hear.) Nor were these mere words ; here was
their application in the case of a weak published lately
by a professor at Turin, who had written two works on
ecclesiastical law, in which he had laid it down that the
Church should employ moral and religious influence, but
n t the power of the sword and of the magistrate, to
carry out her views. Upon this cut came a rescript from
the chair of St. Peter, " In the sixth year of our Ponti-
ficate," forbidding the work to be read, under pain of the
greeter excommunication. The Pope said—
" By such a doctrine and by such maxims the author
tends to destroy the constitution and the government of
the Church, and utterly to ruin the Catholic faith, since
he deprives the Church of its exterior jurisdiction and
coercive power, which has been given to it to bring
beck into the ways of justice those who stray out of
them."
(Hear, hear.) Here, then, was a system of the most
deadly intolerance against every thought which erected
itself in opposition to the doctrines and superstitions of
Rome. Would England, the refuge of the oppressed,
stand by and not put forth her hand, and give the infl a-
ence of her policy, to rescue these nations from the
grasp of the Pope?—(Hear, hear.)
The CHAIRMAN here stated that ho had received
among the letters of apology for absence one from Earl
Ducie, who stated that, having formerly voted for the
Maynooth grant, he should have been glad of the oppor-
tunity of giving his reasons for an entire and total change
of opinion.—(Cheers.)
The Rev. Dr. TIDMAN secretary of the London Mis-
sionary Society, seconded the resolution, and insisted
that, whether Caurchmen or Nonconformists, those en-
gaged in this Alliance were here of one heart and of one
mind, united in tne great principles of evangelical Pro-
testantism, and not only thinking alike and feeling alike,
but determined also to strive together.—(Cheers.) Not
that they were going to exhibit the spirit they con-
demned. He was willing to give to every Pepist the
liberty ho claimed for himself—the right to teach, and
use moral influence to enforce the lessons he inculcated—
(Hear, hear)—but no more.—(Hear, hear.) We were
asked " what we wished to set up?' We did not wish
to displace Popery in one form to put it up in another.—
(Hear, hear.) Let us have a fair field and no favour;
let us meet on just and equal terms; let us not have the
sword of the magistrate and the thumbscrew thrown into
the scale against us.—(Hear, hear.) Let us have an
honourable conflict, and we need not fear the issue.
The resolution was then put and carried.
The Rev. R. BURGESS, rector of -Lipper Chelsea,
UR
moved the second resolution, which was as follows:
" That the recent movements of the Romish priest-
hood throughout Continental Europe, coupled with their
late aggressive proceedings in England, prove the exist-
ence of a settled purpose to overthrow religious freedom;
while their success in France, in prosecutions for the
sele of controversial tracts, and in preventing the circu-
lation of the Holy Scriptures, shows to what an extent
that freedom may be curtailed, even under a constitution
framed to secure both civil and religious liberty. That
this meeting, therefore, approves of the purpose of the
committee of the Protestant Alliance to interpose,
whenever practicable, in behalf of those suffering wrong
at the hands of that priesthood; and it calls upon the
Protestants of all countries, and especially upon those of
the United Ststes of America, to unite with the people
of Great Britain in defence of those principles of the
glorious Reformation for which our ancestors :aboured
and suffered."
He should be very glad to keep clear of politics on
this occasion, but the Papists, and not they, had entan-
gled the religious question with politics.—(Hear.) Popery
was not a confederacy against the religious liberties only
of men; but a political conspiracy against their civil
liberties.—(Cheers.) He would briefly refer to the state
of things iu France, with which he had had opportunities
of' becoming somewhat acquainted.—( Hear.) France pre-
sented an anomaly such perhaps as history never saw.
It was a republic with universal suffrage; the principles
of liberty were proclaimed far and wide upon a larger
basis than was ever laid in modern Europe, and yet no-
where was the power of Popery and the Romish priest-
hood more rampant.—(hear.) The reason was this—
the political power of Rome was always greatest where
civil government was weakest.—(Hear.) It was mar-
vellous to look at the power the priesthood had
acquired in France. Under the monarchy of Louis Phi-
lippe it was restrained within somewhat reasonable limits.
That monarch had the courage to drive back the Jesuits
into the shade, and to resist the demands of the bishops
to have till education placed in their hands.—(Hear,
hear.) But in February, 1843, they came out to offi-
ciate in public under the shouts of the multitude, and,
embracing the republic they despised in their hearts,
blasphemously assimilated the trees of liberty to the
cross of Calvary.—(Hear, hear.) Ever since that time
the Government had been anxious to pay them every
kind of compliment. There were eighty episcopalthose sees
in France, and upwards of 40,000 clergy, and
bishops and clergy received in 1850 out of the public
Treasury a sum of 1,600,000/. for their salaries. There
were 240 diocesan buildings maintained by the State,
under the name of public works. There were about
38,000 churches, and more than ono half that
number of priests' houses, maintained at the expense
of the State or the municipalities.—(Hear, hear.)
He considered himself called upon by his resolution to
show that if they founded a constitution to secure civil
and religious liberty, still they could not work it with an
army of priests against them.—(hear,hear.) Take
again the case of France; there the priests had got pos-
session of four things—the school, the provincial judg-
ments, the press, and the tribune.—(llear, hear.) They
had got possession of the school, the rising generation.
Instruction was said to be free, but it was directed by
one supreme board, of which the Minister of Public, In-
struction was of course the president, but which com-
prised also four archbishops or bishops, three Councillors
of State, eight members named by the President of the
Republic, only one minister of the Reformed Church,
elected by the consistories, another of the Confession of
Augsburg, and a member of the Israelitish synagoguewas
s
—so that the poor solitary Protestant pastor
s wamped.— ( Hear, hear.) The composition of the local
councils was similar to that of the general board. Louis
Philippe resisted the priests having this power, which
they had got under the Republic; but the weakness of
the civil government was ever the strength of the Papal
power.—(Hear, hear.) He (Mr. Burgess) must not
detain the meeting further, but there was plainly
a confederacy to overthrow religious freedom in
Europe. The concordat with Spain pronounced the
Roman Catholic the religion of Spain, "to the exclusion
of every other." For Portugal, let the excellent Dr.
Kelley boar witness, and that poor woman who through
our intervention just escaped being put to death. If
Italy was not involved in the charge why was Guicciar-
dini here?— (Hear, hear.) Did not Austria, too, intend
to put down religious freedom?—(Hisses.) A remark-
able foreigner lately among us—(Hear, hear)—said that
Russia was the rock against which every sigh for free-
dom broke. Let us hope that England would be the
bulwark against which every wave of Papal tyranny
should roll in vain.—(Cheers.)
The Rev. W. CHALMERS seconded the motion. The
Governments cn the continent, in their mad attempts to
support a policy which could not live in the nineteenth
century—(Hear, hear)—had called in the Romish
priesthood.—(Hear, hear.) Whether this alliance was
going to lead to a crusade against the Protestantism and
liberties of England we could not tell. Hints had been
thrown out that the Catholic Powers of Europe would
not see their Church disrespectfully treated here; and
Lord J. Russell had alluded in Parliament to the pos-
sibility of a great Popish league. We might yet be
called to stand in this resp,!ct in the Thermopyle
of Europe.—(Hear, hear.) Let that be as it might,
there was enough in the events of the last few months
to put us upon our guard. However the ad-
herents of Popery might disguise the recent Papal
aggression, it was manifest that mere tolerati
hear
was
They
not
what they aimed at—they had it.—(Hear,
had what we know that, if they had tho power, they
would withhold from us.—(llear, hear.) Toleration
was not what they wanted, but ascendancy.—(Hear,
hear.) They were the servants of a master who hoped
again to be the autocrat of the world.—(llear, hear.)
We must regard that aggression as the result of the con-
spiracy agoinat the liberties of Europe. He went for
tt eh rosl oc f s
an aggressive movement to carry the war into the quer-
,illbeuftee,angaoitnstte
againsth trhaepaleibyerties of Roman
th Ca-
itself; against at
politico ecclesiastical organization` which, approppating
to itself exclusively the title of the Church,' aimed
onnalmyeaottsr7ingliaorn,aanidmmedunadt mundane objects; which, under the
national independence and reploigliitoiucsalfracsecdeoudara.zycfhaetaelr:.l
'The resolution was then put and carried unanimously.ch
Sir C. EARDLEY moved the third resolution, whi
was us follows:
" That this meeting desires to express its sense of
the contrast afforded to this retrograde movement in
France and elsewhere, by the protection recently given
by the Government of Piedmont to the ancient Church
of the Waldenses, and by the firmness with which that
Government has withstood the arrogant pretensions of
the Papal priesthood. It trusts that the house of Savoy
may have the honour of carrying on to completion the
work of liberty of conscience, the surest guarantee of
civil freedom and national prosperity. Aud it desires
ofifrmthecoSnavricdtiiuointin itnodeexpepnrdesesnciets that in
against the theag-
gressive claims of Rome, the Piedmontese Government
may rely on the warmest st mpatby of the people of
Gar:aystißair,itdaiteiiir.
Bin."
of all to mention that Mr. Burges,a in
r,telriug to France, did not notice two eircutestenees
which should be mentioned. One was, that the tracts of