The Sun.
London, England, 1844-11-05 00:00:00

et-Vida ilttlt

LONDON, TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 5, 1844.

We had hoped that the McGimes and the O'SuL-
LIVANS, and the other rampant Protestant bigots who
about five or six years since rendered themselves so no-
torious by their virulent philippics against Catholicism,
were nearly if not quite extinct; but, unfortunately,
we find that this is not the case; the breed still
flourishes, as indeed might have been expected, for
what is so tenacious of life as fanaticism ? You
imagine it defunct, when, 10, at the very moment you
are hugging yourself in the pleasing conviction that
it has received the coup de grace, you discover to your
confusion that the "snake is scotched not killed," and
that it is ready to start up again as brisk and mis •
chievous as ever ! These reflections occurred to us
as we glanced over a report of the " Great Protestant
Meeting"—as one of our morning Contemporaries
calls it—which took place yesterday at Exeter Hall.
At this meeting two parsons, rejoicing in the
names of TIIELWALL and STOWELL, vied with
each other in the fierce intolerance of their
declarations against Catholicism, and all who did
not hold that creed in the most unmitigated abhor-
rence. Parson THELWALL, who commenced the pro-
ceedings, talked the customary amount of nonsense
about the Gunpowder Plot, which, he said, proved that
" the principles of Popery involved disloyalty, rebel-
lion, and treason against a Protestant Sovereign and
Government," and added, in aspirit of the most ran-
corous bigotry, that " whatever professions Romanists
ini.4ht make of love and friendship, the unchanged
and unchangeable principles of the Church of Rome
bound them to persecute and murder Protestants, when-
ever they had the opportunity." How dare the man
talk in this way of our Catholic fellow. countrymen !
How dare he charge them with being bound by the
articles of their faith to become wholesale persecutors
and murderers ! Never was there a more audacious
• calumny yet uttered in a public assembly ! Parson
STOWELL, resolved not to be behind his brother par-
son in point of uncharitableness, inveighed in terms
of indignant contempt against "the crosses,
banners, and similar mummery," which he had
recently beheld in a Roman Catholic procession
at Manchester, and deepening in his tone as be
proceeded, went on to observe that " there were at
this very time combinations of Irishmen in London
ready to come forward, whenever occasion should
serve, against the constitution and liberties of Eng-
land." The speech of this remarkable parson was in
every respect an extraordinary one. The first half of
it was in flat contradiction to the other half. The
one neutralised the effect of the other. It began
with a Lamentation—it concluded with a Jubilate.
At its commencement the speaker was inex-
pressibly afflicted at the idea of the
and impediments to which the Protestant Association
was subjected. Everything went wrong with
g this
amiable fraternity. It had lost many of its ea
friends—it was discouraged by the Legislature--re-
garded garded with apathy by " runny of the clergy ":and
had the mortification of hearing that the grant to
Maynooth was to be doubled next session. But this
was not the worst. Rome was beginning to bestir
herself, and had recently caused to be erected, GOD