The Sun.
London, England, 1829-04-07 00:00:00

lAIIKE'

;COTCH

EDINBURGH CORN IVIARICEE—ApriI I.
We had a small supply of Wheat to-day ; sales dull, mid price
as last day. A good supply of Oats ; for Seed, 3 ts. ; for Mcal.
28s. 6d. Barley for Seed, 455. Beans same as last day.
Wheat. Barley. Oats. Pease. Beaus.
First 77s 0(1 45s Od 2Ss 6cl 36s 0.1 36s (k 1
iecond
Third 68s Od 36s Od 2ts Od 30s Oil 30s (Id
PRICES OF PROVISIONS, AC.
Beef, per lb. Os. 4d. to Os.7d. Fresh Butter,lb.l4.ol to Is. 51d,
Mutton 0 41 0 7 Salt Ditto,—,—. 0 8 0 9
Veal 0 5 0 9 Ditto, per est t. 060 72 0
Pork 0 4 0 6 Eggs, per dos. (1 6 0 0
Lamb, per qr. 5 0 8 9 OatStraw(kii.) 7 0 0 0
Tallow, cwt.... 32 6 35 0 Wheat Ditto— 7 8 0 0
Quartern Loaf 010 011 Barley Ditto 5 6 6 6
Potatoes. 141 b. 0 3 0 0 Hay, per 0 6 0 S

PIESBYTERY OF EDINBURGH.

(Abridged fora the Edinburgh Evening antrant of
Thursday.)
THE CATHOLIC CLAIMS.

Yesterday the Presbytery of Edinburgh tett pursuant
to adjournment, to consider the motion laid sat the table at
last ordinary meeting by Dr: Lee. The anxiety to bear
the discussion was so great that many persons took their
seats shortly atter ten o'clock, and long before tht,, bOur of
meeting (neon) the Trustees' Hall was rros.vded in ever•;
part—the members of Presbytery finding the greatest pos-
sible difficulty in gaining admi,sion, several having to
make their way over the tab'es

Dr. LEE—I proceed under every possible dieeourage-
meat to make thn motion of which I gate notice last
Wednesday. 'Nothing but a conviction that lam actirt
vonsiatsntly with my duty as a member of the Established
Church would have induced me to del art so far from my
usual habits, as to occupy any considerable portion of the
time of the Presbytery, especially with a proposition which
I have learned is unwelcome to many of my brtthren. It
may he s tid that the scales of prejudice are not fallen f. om
my eyes, and that I am far behind the age;—hut I hope
that those who have scarcely yet read the standards which
they must subscribe before they obtain a title. to teach
others, will not be rash to speak of statute as disgraced by
proscription and exclusion, till they have ascertained
whether the principles to which terms of such unmeasured
reprobation have been applied--he or be not contained in
the Confession of Faith. To the framers of that great
work I yield much greater deference than to the proudest
land brightest of the names, either or the living or the
dead, which are so vountingly mustered against us,
Surely it cannot well be alleged that the opreFitiot how
offered to this meature originates in faction. Those who
are dissatisfied with it express themselves hot more strongly
than the leading men in the Cabinet did seven or eight
months ago ; and we do not petition for any thing more
than this Presbytery did in 1813. In what respect lb our
circumstances differ from those in which the Presbytery
then petitioned ?—Daly in two, so far as I perceive :-
Ist, The Bill now proposed is less favourable, having less
Q,ppearance of security—And 2dly, -the Ministry are now
sletermined to use all their influence to carry through
such a Bill as was never proposed by any one, at td much
less as a Government measure. What is the new light
which they have received ? Terror they will not own ;
trait they say there is danger. If the thing be right it
should have been done before there was any appearance
of danger ; if wrong, danger is tin excuse. I therefore
move, that the Presbytery do petition Pariiament, that
the Roman Catholic Relief Bill do not pass into a law.
Dr. GORDON seconded the motion.

Dr. INGLIs moved, by way of " That in
all the circumstances of the case it is inexpedient for the
Presbytery to petition Parliament either for or against the
measure in question."

Sir JAsles MONCRIEFF-1 beg leave to second this
amendment.

-Dr. CIIALMEI3 then rise and spoke as follows:—It
-appears to me that tire spirit of the first ages of the Church
is in direct opposition to the cry of the present times.
The powers that be are said to be ordained of God, and
yt these powers were heathen. Magistrates are called mi-
&eters of God, and thet at a time when there was not
Christian, and far less a Protestant Magistrate in existence.
Tribute was enjoined to be paid, though it swelled the
magnificence and the means of an idolatrous sovereign, and
who might, if he had chosen, have lavished it cn the ex-
peaces of idolatry. Those things which in our day would
have given rise to the fiercest contention, and to questions
without number of theological casuistry, were, in the best
and purest days of the Church of God upon earth, acqui-
esced in without a struggle and without a murmur. There
were Christian servants who attended on the person, and
Christian proprietors who ministered to the wealth, ar.d
e"en Christian solditte 3 who fought the battles of the Em-
perors. In short, they gave up all but their conscience
and their faith to the will of idolatrous masters.
Idolatry, they all well knew, disqualified from holding
eny oftitee in the Church, but it never once entered their
imagination that idolatry disqualified from an office in the
State. The Apostle Paul would not, I am persuaded,
have lent his authority and his name to the enforcement of
eueh a disqualification. He would not have aided in com-
passing the deposition of Nero, even for the substitution of
a Christian in his room. He would have kept within the
strict es:mits of his ecclesiastical office, and never aimed at
Chrietianizing the Government in any other way than by
doing with Nero what he did with some of Nero's house-
hold—turning them to the faith. Whatever may be the
right of citiaene—and I do not question it—to pull a tyrant
front his throne, he never, in his ecclesiasticii capacity,
would have put his hand to other than ecclesiastical
-work ; that is, plied men with the overtures of the gospel
es he had opportunity. To this the Christians of the
primitive ages confined themselves; and by this they at
kngth effected the Christianization of the empire. The
principles and practice of the early ages are abundantly re-
cognised in our Confession of Faith, as will appear feom
the following extract :—" It is the duty of people to pray
for Magistrates, to honour their persons, to pay them tri-
bute anti other dues, to obey their lawful commands, and
to be subject to the'r authority for conscience sake."—
Now, mark what follows Infidelity, or difference in
religion, (loth not make void the Magistrate's just and legal
authority, nor free the people from their due obedience to
him, from which ecclesiastical persons are not exempted ;
much less bath the Pope any power or jurisdiction over
them in their dominions, or over any of their dominions or
lives, or if he shall judge them to be heretics, or upon any
tither pretence wlettever." Now, the principle on which
a man ought not to be sttipt of his lawful possessions is
identicel with the principle on which he ought not to be
resisted in his lawful claims. And whoever are judges of
that lawfulness, we are not. It is a civil question, and
not for us as a Church to decide upon. When the Papists
were held dangerous to libezty, the Legislature shut them
nut from certain privileges which they now restore on
holding them to be no longer dangerous. If neither infi-
delity nor difference in religion, but something different
from these was the proper ground on which they were
dispossessed, they should that ground be removed, infi-
delity or difference in religion is not the proper ground on
which they should be excluded. I speak in the very terms
of the Confession of Faith. If other principles do not
justify deprivation, then religioe is no mere a valid plea
for stripping a man of his rightful power, than it is for
stripping him of his rightful property; and whether the
question relates to the one or the other, the language of
the Chorale of Christ should be that of its Founder,
" Who made me a judge and a divider over you?" Yet
we are accused of having put aside principle, and rested
our whole cause on the basis of expediency. Now, we
hold the difference between us and our antagonists to be
this. In regard to principle, we can plead the declarations
of the New Testament and the early practice of the
Church ; and, in regard to expediency, ours is a public,
und theirs is altogether a personal expediency. The outset
of our cause is in principle; its outgoings only are in ex-
pediency ; and what a much higher expediency than
that of our antagonists ? We hold that this dreaded
emancipation will open a wide and effectual door
for the entrance of the Gospel into Ireland. That
is one expediency. Our antagonists hold, that
the same emancipation will not, in the least, hurt
the cause of the gospel, but by means of persecution,
which in general purifies and s trengthens the cause of
truth, will hart the ease, and the comfort, and endanger
the lives of those who profess the gospel in Britain That
is their expediency. It is a fear for themselves, and not a
fear for the interests of the gospel, by which they are ac-
tic ; for, amid all this care, which the Church pro-
poets to take of the government, one would like to knew
Low the matter stood in the Church's purest and most I
flourishing period, I mean during the three first centuries.
One might imagine, from the alarm now abroad on so
many spirits, that, because of certain political changes
about to be entered on, the Church was now on the brink
of instant annihilation, and the alarm is, lest the country
should fall under the power of an idolatrous government.
Now, let us suppose for a moment this apprehension to be .
in all its extent realised, it were surely inter eating to know
hew the Church might possibly fare in these circumstances,
and it would appear the likeliest method of ascertaining
this just to revert to that period in the Church's history
when all the governments of the earth were idolatrous, and
the Emperors of idolatrous Rome were the fountain-heads
of all that civic authority which Christians had to do with.
If it be really a religious fear which is making these
alarmists so tremulously alive to the changes that are com-
ing upon us, -if after all, it be some thing holier and higher
than a sordid fear for their persons and properties, if in-
stead of a carnal affection for their own private interests,
it he a spiritual and sacred affection far the high interests
of truth and righteousness in the world ; it should surely
yield them some comfort to be told that never did the Church
more prosper, and never did the Church's right and peculiar
business go on more prosperously than when all the high
places of society were filled with idolaters, and the sove-
reigns of the earth, besides being idolatrous despots, were
the greatest monsters the world ever saw. This content-
poraneous existence of a moat Christian Church, along
with a moat unchristian government, is worthy at least of
being noticed by those who are now charging themselves
with the regulation of the one as if that were indispen-
sable to the well-being of the other. It may well prompt
the misgiving thought that possibly after all they are look-

;ng and labouring in tile wrong way, an] that the vital
prosperity of the Church comes from another quarter alto-
gether, than that whither their cares and cogitations are
now carrying them. It may well beget the suspicion that
there is perhaps a misjudgment and misdirection of effort
and zeal in this whole matter. Certain it is that
neither apostles nor apestolie run took the direction which
they are now thing. They never thought of Kings
and of GoVernors but to pray for them ; and !caring states
and statesmen, and all the elements of this world behind
them, confined themselves to their own high and holy walk
of labouring with the souls and consciences of men. Yet
they have never thought of charging themselves, they only
charge us with the sacrifice of principle at the shrine of
expediency. Now we hold, that though there be the
highest expediency attendant on the Catholic emancipation,
there is also the highest principle involved in it. And the
principle is, that we are not to fight the battles of the
Lord with other weapons than himself has consecrated.
After comet:v-sting, at some length, the arguments of
intolerance, the Rev. Gentleman proceeded as follows :
In the great changes that take place on human opinion,
men do not generally repeal the acts and the documents of
other days. They simply lose sight of them. They are
carv=ed forward on the tide of change, and the creeds and
-Constitutions of by-gone times rank among the forgotten
things that have no influence whatever on the actual gene-
ration. Yet I can inltge to myself an antiquarian, a
resurrectionitt of old parchments—(a laugh)—conjuring
no from the deep oblivion of ages those shades of
departed folly, and telling us, because they have never
been rescinded by any competent or authorised Court,
that we must still watch and tremble and be on our guard
because r f them. May Ibe permitted one word here on
the politics of the question. Gentlemen would need to be
strongly confident of the goodness of their cause ere they
would push it so, to the hazard of all that carnage and
desolation, which it the event of the success their hearts
are so much set upon, might ensue in Irel.nd. I rejoice
in thinking that our religion rests on other foundations
than those for the deference of which the sword roust be

unsheathed, and the cruelties of war be let abroad among
the families of an unhappy land. I envy neither the
opinions nor the feelings of those who could look forward
without a sigh to so dread an alternative. It reminds me
of a whimsical receipt I once heard for the regeneration of
Ireland, which was jug to let it down to the bottom of the
sea for half an hour, and then bring it up again.—(A
laugh.)—And really, to behold the exceeding fervour, not
to say fury, of many out of doors, one might be almost
tempted to think that they would rather have the question
settled in this way—rather have the whole population swept
off from the from the face of the Island—than have the
dearly-beloved enactments they so zealously contend for
swept off from the face of the statute-book. I could not
vote for Dr. Inglis's proposed amendment, because there is
in it a clause expressive of a sense of danger; but I can vote
for the counter motion. I apprehend no danger. The
measure needs no security. We shall stand our ground
against the Papists just ae the Church of England stood
her ground against the Methodists. We have nothing to
fear from any species of Dissenters, if we are true to our-
selves. Our single defence against one and all of them is,
to outpreach, outpray, and outlive them. Whatever the
vote may be, I sit down with a triumphant feeling of the
superiority of our principle over that of our antagonists.
Our sentiment is, that Protestantism can uphold itself.
Theirs is, that it cannot be upheld but at the inevitable ex-
pence of blood and violence.—(Cheers.)
Mr. TAIT s'ipported Dr. Lee's motion, and Mr. Stem-
roe of Kirknewton, that of Dr. Inglis.
Dr. THOMSON, after discussing the character of the
Irish church, and asserting that it would be strengthened
not injured, by Emancipation, the Rev. Gent. con-
cluded in the following terms :—The measures now pro-
posed go to the preservation of the Protestant church from
the perils with which it is surrounded on every side. We
are all agreed as to Popery. We hold it to be an Anti-
Scriptural system, corrupt and fraught with errors the
most dangerous, and which we are all agreed should be put
down, and put down for ever—(applause)—as we would
ilehl with all other errors. We just differ as to the most
efficient means for accomplishing this end. Therefore we
should be as one in the public estimation in regard to the
evils of Popery, and the necessity of getting quit of it. But
we differ as to the means of attaining that great object.
My Rev. Friend who made the motion, gave us a histori-
c of detail regarding the conduct of our forefather., and the
estimation in which they held Popery. All this may be
very correct; but he did not come down to the present
time. I say all this might have been then very well ;
then very expedient and very necessary ; but from a change
of circumstances, I du not care whether in religion or not,
from a change of circumstances, I say, in which thet re-
ligion operated, things are totally altered. The Rev.
Speaker detailed at considerable length the advantages that
would result from emancipation, and concluded as follows :
Three Catholics fight your battles, overcome your foes, and
wreath your brow with a laurel of victory; they make
your name a tower of stren:th all over the world—they
secure to you every privilege to which you sling so
closely, but in which you will not allow one lof
them to participate. And in doing all this they
belie the allegation that is made against them, of being
under improper influence, for they contend against Catho-
lic Powers, and even against the Pope himself, if he was
an enemy of Great Britain. In doing this they expose
themselves to numerous hardships and perils; and, after
all is lone, then you reward them or punish them—for,
according to this monstrous system, these words may he
synonimously employed—by telling them just to go bark
to their wretched homes, having performed these mighty
services, to live contented under the burden of their op-
pressions and insults heaped upon them merely because
the inhabitants of that country differed from our religion
in their creed. What is the aeisequence ? They resent
this. They are men of like passions with yourselves. If
wa prick them do they not bleed—are they not sensible of
the injuries done them—and have they not the power and
ability to avenge themselves on this country.—(Hear. )
Then you give them the second edition, improved amid cor-
rected, for their past services. Instead of consolation,
;sou put them to the sword—you scatter their poor fami-
lies you burn their hovels, which wretched though they
be, are their homes—you carry despair over their country,
and you do them all the mischief you can. You may
succeed, in the contest—l do not say you will not sue•
teed, but don't forget this, even your success is disas-
trous—every victory you gained over them is tantamount
to a defeat—every gun from our ancient citadel that would
announce a victory over them would go like a knell to the
heart of every patriot in our land—(Great cheering.)—
'And then your triumph is your ruin. When all this is
passing over the Catholic, Powers would be glad to take
advantage of your conduct. Do you think they would be
idle spectators while the contest was going on ?—(lkar,
hear.)—At last when you had exhausted yourself in this
warfare they would pounce upon you as eagles do upon
their prey.—(Applause.)—You may cut off the locks of
the strong man, and put out hie eyes—you may make him
the subject of mockery; but though he perish under your
insults, he pulls clown the pillars that support the house,
and you are crushed along with him.—(Applause.) I do
say that the measures proposed in Parliament is the only
safety for us and the Protestants. And it should be re-
membered if they fail to be carried, Catholicism and Pro-
testantism must go together. lam wrong ; the Catholic
powers would take advantage of this and resuscitate Popery,
hut Protestantism would be gone for ever. Admit Catho-
lics to the privileges that are now proposed, and I do say,
that according to the nature of things and the whole his-
tory of our race, you make friends of those who are your
determined enemies ; and then you are safe ; then you are
a united empire. Only do not pass the measure, and you
may say of our country " but yesterday she might have
stood against the world, but now none so poor as to do her
reverence "—(Great cheering.)
Dr LEE said a few words in reply.
The Presbytery then divided, the state of the vote being
first or second motion—it being understood, if the first
motion was carried, that Dr. Lee's motion would be adopted,
and if the second, Dr. Inglis's.
For the first motion, I I—For the second motion, 20.
Majority 9. —T he Presbytery separated at six o'clock.

The following is the House List of Gover-
nors and Directors of the Bank of England for the year

ensuing, viz.:—

FOR GOVERNORS.
Samuel Drewe, Esq. Governor.
John Horsley Palmer, Esq. Deputy Governor.

FOR DIRECTORS.

John Bowden, Esq. __
James Pattison, jun. Esq.
Cornelius Buller, Esq. John Henry Pelly, Esq.
John Cockerel], Esq. Charles Pole, Esq.
William Cotton, Esq. Richard Mee Raikes, Esq.
Timothy Abrah. Curtis, Esq. Sir John Rae Reid, Bart.
George Dorrien, Esq. John Baker Richards, Esq.
John Oliver Hansen, Esq. William R. Robinson, Esq.
John Benjamin Heath, Esq. Samnel Thornton, Esq.
Samuel Hibbert, Esq. Stephen Edward Thornton,
William Manning, Esq. Esq.
William Mellish, Esq. Thomas Warre, Eq.
Humphrey gt. John Mild- Money Wigram, Esq.
may, Esq. llelvil Wilson, Esq.
The Election for Governor and Deputy Governor will
be held at the Bank, on Tuesday the 7th, and for Direc-
tors on Wednesday the Bth instant, from tea o'eleek in the
forenoon till key is the afterxes*