The Sun.
London, England, 1850-11-15 00:00:00

THE POPISH AGGRESSION.

BEDFOItDSIIIRE.

The first county meeting to protest against the
meddling of the Bishop of Rome in the affairs of this
country was held at Bedford on Wednesday. It was
convened by Colonel Gilpin, the high sheriff, in ac-
cordance with a requisition signed by upwards of 400
of the most respectable and influential gentlemen in
Bedfordshire, including persons of every political
party and every Protestant denomination. The
Town-hall of Bedford, in which the gathering took
place, was so crowded that further ingress was im-
possible. The High Sheriff presided in person, and
amongst the gentlemen who thronged the platform
were Lord Charles Russell (brother of the Prime
Minister), Sir Harry Verney, M.P., Mr. Hastings
Russell, Colonel Trevor, M.P., Mr. H. Little-
dale, Mr. C. L. Higgins, Colonel Higgins, Sir C. G.
Payne, Mr. G. P. Livius, Mr. H. S:aerman, &c.
The HIGu SuEitur read the requisition upon
which he had convened the meeting, and called upon
Lord Charles Russell to move the first resolution.

Lord C. Rossaaa, on rising, was received with a
continuous burst of cheers. The Noble Lord said his
motto was, " No fear."—(Cheers.) Never fur a mo-
ment could he anticipate that any harm would result
from that which he might call almost a contemptible
document.—(Uproarious cheering.) On all sides
he saw his countrymen rising and giving expres-
sion to their sound Protestant feelings, and declaring
their attachment to their Protestant institutions
in Church and State.—(Cheers.) He saw also that
our rulers, both temporal and spiritual, had nobly
spoken out, had faithfully denounced this act of ag-
gression on the part of a foreign enemy, and he hoped
had with some success shown forth and expressed
their faith in our glorious national institutions.—
(Hear.) On that score, then, he had no fear; and if we
were called upon to enter into the contest between
Protestantism and Popery, and between truth and
error, how could he for one moment doubt the issue
of it ? —(Prolonged applause.) Was not the power
which struck down Popery in the fifteenth century
sufficient to keep it down in the nineteenth ?—(Great
cheering.) Did it not, humanly speaking, fall before
the power of the printing-press; and did we not now
live happily in the enjoyment of a free press in this
country ?—(Loud cheers.) Whilst, however, he had
no fear, there were no limits to his amazement at the
audacity that had prompted this act.—(Vehement
cheering.) How it could have originated he scarcely
knew. That the Papacy, which but a little time ago
was trembling on its last legs, as it seemed, the Pope
being a refugee from his dominions, and afterwards
restored only by the aid of the bayonets of a foreign
Power—that he should have the audacity to say that
he had all spiritual and temporal supremacy in this
kingdom—this was so monstrous an assumption, and
such a palpable attempt at innovation on our civil and
political rights, that he (Lord C. Russell) was amazed
at the insolence.—(Cheers.) He could not account
for it, and the only way that it, or any other absur-
dities of the kind, could be accounted for, was, he
supposed, by alleging the Pope's claim to infallibility.
—(Laughter and derisive cheers.) Let them, then,
before proceeding to denounce the effort of the Pope,
see upon what this claim to infallibility rested. First
of all, had his Holiness been really infallible ? He
termed himself the great spiritual head of all Chris-
tendom ; had he been infallible in the choice and
adoption of his own faiih ? The Bible told us, "By
their fruits ye shall know them;" and what were the
fruits of the religion established by the Saviour upon
the earth? Was it not hymned by angels that it
should be " peace and good will ?"—(Cheers.) Let
the Pope, then, say where he would find those fruits
of the soundness of his religion in his own domi-
nions.—(Cheers.) Had it established " peace" even
in Rome itself? He appealed for an answer to the
bayonets of the French.—(Vehement cheering.) Had
it been instrumental in promoting " good will" in
the Papal dominions ? He thought his Holiness
might have answered that question himself when he
made his escape from Rome mounted on the box
of a coach, and arrayed in the disguise of a foreign
livery.—(Loud cheers and laughter.) But if the Pope
had shown himself to be fallible in his choice and
adoption of a faith, bad he not been equally fallible
in his denunciation of another ? He had denounced
us both by word and deed. He had done an act
which he could only do in a nation of infidels. What
fruits of infidelity had England produced during the
last half century ? On the contrary, had she not
given out the fruits of a sound faith ?—(Cheers.)
But, whilst the Pope has been deceived in things past,
he was not less deceived in things present. He had
seen an absence of persecution here, and that he as-
sumed to he indifference to real truth.—(Hear, hear.)
He had mistaken the healthy development of Pro-
testant character for the paralysis of infidelity.—
(Cheers.) Again he had mistaken grossly—he had
mistaken the falling off of a few dead leaves as
symptomatic of the decay of the heart of the tree.—
(Hear.) He had gloated on the passion for a mere-
tricious ritual displayed by a few, and hoped that it
was tantamount to a total abandonment of gospel
truth.—(Cheers.) He had witnessed with delight a
recent attempt of the Church to establish a spiritual
oligarchy, and, for once, he had come to a sound
conclusion that a spiritual despotism must be
preferable to a spiritual oligarchy—(Loud cheers)—
and that the infallibity of one man was more conso-
nant to reason thin the infallibility of a dozen.—
(Cheers.) But, again he had committed a gross
blunder, even in connexion with this subject. He
heard a wish go forth from the cloistered cells of
England, and he mistook for the voice of the people
‘,Sninoene-npronounced,.—an(dGwreaest
feeble-minded,trhoewtwphrnhEnglandun pronouncing,
gt
f the hadto
be a mere aspiration of the
cheering.) By his letter he branded us as infidels ;
yet almost in the first sentence he resorted to the
mockery, the great inconsistency, of calling us
much likefr o
i to
those know
which what
" noble," ay, the " noble people of England."--(0h,
oh, and laughter.) He treated us as infidels, and
te
styled us " noble ," and he (Lord C. Russell) should
idieeaesho-f
nobility were. He had no doubt that they differed
very
yy
much
tertained. It might be noble in his eves toph bep apos-
tates and professors of that dissimulation which, what-
ever favour it might find hi the eyes of a Jesuit, was
totally unknown to the nature of En lishmen
(Loud cheers.) Well, let th • g *
e nation arise and tell
the Pope what its estimate of nobility was.—(Cheers.)
In the words of a poet--
a 'Tis only noble to be good;
Pure hearts are more than coronets,
And simple faith than Norman blood."
The Noble Lord resumed his seat amidst thunders of
applause, after proposing a resolution deprecating the
Pope's bull.
Mr. 11. HILL seconded the resolution, which was
carried unanimously.
Colonel TREVOR,
M•Pn moved the second resolu-
tion, expressive of the hope that her Majesty would
command a public benunciation of the bull of the
Pope, and signify her determination to maintain in-
violate her solemn engegeinent to her people, and
pledging the meeting to support her to the utmost, in
accordance with their bounden duty and sworn elle-
gierrce.—(Loud cheers.) He (Colonel Trevor)
looked upon the Pope's bull as neither more nor less
than an innovation on the rights of both Sovereign
and people; and he felt sure that Englishmen—above
all, English Protestants—would never permit them-
selves to be ridden roughshod over by any potentate,
whether lay or ecclesiastical.—(Cheers.) Lortl John
Russell hod promised them, in his letter, that the
present state of the law should be examined and
considered ; and that was all we could at this
moment require. But he did trust that no time
would be lost in making tbat examination, that
due notice would be taken of what had transpired
in her Majesty's next speech from the Throne ;
and he ventured to say that, if it should be found
necessary, upon the advice of those who were charged
with the government of the country, to add anything
to the strength of the existing laws, any such propo-
sal would receive an almost unanimous support, whe-
ther in the House of Lords or the House of Commons.
—(Loud cheers.) They were told that a similar bull
was to be sent to Scotland, and that that country was
also to be parcelled out into Popish dioceses. But,
recollecting the strong feelings of our northern
brethren, he ahould be much astonished if they did
not give it even a warmer and more enthusiastic re-
sistance than that which England was now offering
to it.—(Loud cheers.) saving more than once so-
journed in the city of Rome, he could not help re-
collecting the extraordinary superstition and acts of
idolatry which he himself bad publicly witnessed
there. The Bible was a condemned book in Rome ;
and on some occasions it had been taken out of the
luggage of travellers upon their entering that city.
In various quarters of Rome he had seen and read
public notices that a certain number of years of ex-
emption from purgatory would be accorded to those
persons who kissed certain images. In the same man-
ner, by the repetition of a certain number of prayers,
a man might obtain pardon fur almost any crime
which he 'night have committed.—(Hear, hear.)
Mr. HOWARD seconded the resolution.
Sir H. VERNEY, Ml'., supported the resolution.
As one who had ever been in favour of toleration, he
deemed it especially incumbent upon him to come
forward on this occaeion and state plainly that tolera-
tion was not indifference—that toleration and indif-
ference were not the same thing.—(Cheers.) There
was nothing in the spirit of toleration which justified
the recent act of the Pops'. Here was a claim to su-
premacy set up by a foreign prince over the subjects
of her Majesty, and without her Majesty's authority.
Such an act was not known in any other profession.
If, for instance, an Englishman received the honour
of knighthood at the hands of a foreign prince, he
never used it in this country, unless with the permis-
sion of the Queen; for Isere it was held to be a fun-
damental principle that the Queen was the fountain
of honour—(Cheers)—and if any individual, be he
civil or ecclesiastical, presumed to use a title conferred