Star.
London, England, 1819-11-05 00:00:00

do
wthheaptriseseinntycieoucraspieolt,we; Only
;bezetraY theleu eanlP r
and active t;
;and
leave the issue to Paovitectiez : and (added Mr. Curo
ningham, in conclusion) may the eternal mercy and
blessing of
instrumental
Go
in forwarding
descendforwa upon allrdinso
greatthse o whoa shall
workbe
lOsoud and continued cheers followed the Rev. Gen-
deman's conclusion.]
The Rev. J. LEITCHILD, in seconding the motion,
descanted on the immense benefits the Bible Societies
had conferred oa the world ; and declared, that they
had crowned with a halo of imperishable glory the
country that gave them birth.
Mr. Permian (the Irish Barrister) was called upon
'by some persons on the platform. He rose, and
bowing to the Meeting, by which he was warmly
greeted, spoke to the following effect :
~ May it please your Lordship—Ladies and Gen-
tlemen—Although I have not had the honour of
being selected to propose any Resolution, yet, as a
native of that country to which your Report alludes,
I beg leave to say a few words, as expressive of the
opinions of a great body of my countrymen. Indeed,
my Lord, when we see the omens which every day
produces—when we hear blasphemy openly avowed,
when we hear the Scriptures audaciously ridiculed—
when, in this Christian Monarchy, the den of the
Republican and the Deist yawns for the unwary in
your most public thoroughfares—when marts are
ostentatiously opened where the moral poison may
be purchased, whose subtile venom enters the very
soul—when infidelity has become an article of com•
merce, and man's perdition may be cheapened at the
stall of every pedlar, no friend of society should cone
tinue silent. It is no longer a question of political
privilege—of sectarian controversy—of theological
discussion : it is become a question, whether Chris-
tianity itself shall stand,' or whether we shall let gu
the firm anchor of our faith, and drift without chart.
or helm, or compass, into the shoreless ocean of im-
piety and blood. I despise as much as any man the
whine of bigotry—l will go as far as any man for
rational liberty ; but I will not depose my GOD to
deify the infidel, or tear in pieces the charter of the
State, and grope for a Constitution amongst the
murky-pigeon-holes of every creedless, lawless, in-
toxicnted regicide. When I saw the other day, my
Lore, the chief Bacchanal of their orgies—the man'
with whom the Apostles were cheats, the Prophets
liars, and JESUS an impostor, on his trial in Guild-
hall, withering hour after hour, with the most hor-
rid blasphemies, surrounded by the votaries of every
sect, and the heads of every faith, the Christian Ai ch-
bishop, the Jewish Rabbi, the men most eminent for
their piety and their learning, whom he had pur-
posely collected tc hear his infidel ridicule of all they
reverenced—when I saw him raise the Holy Bible in
one hand, and the Age of Reason in the other—as it
were, confronting the ALMIGHTY with a rebel fiend,
till the pious Judge grew pale, and the patient Jury
interposed, and the self-convicted wretch himself;
after having raved away all his original impiety, was
reduced himself into a mere machine for the repro-
duction of the ribald blasphemy of others, I could
not help exclaiming-L, Unfortunate man! if all your
impracticable madness could be realized, what would
you give us ill exchange for our establishments ?
what would you substitute for that august tribunal?
for whom would you displace that independent
Judge and that impartial Jury? Or, would you
really burn the Gospel, and erase the Statutes, for
the dreadful equivalent of the crucifix and the guillo•
tine?' Indeed, if I was asked for a practical pane-
gyric on our Constitution, I would adduce the very
trial of that criminal; and if the legal annals of any
country upon earth furnish an instance, not merely
of such justice, but of such patience, such forbear-
ance, such almost culpable indulgence, I will concede,
to him the triumph. I hope, too, in what I say I
shall not be considered as forsaking that illustrious
example; I hope 1 am above an insult on any man
in his situation; perhaps, had I the power, I would
follow the example farther than I ought; perhaps 1
would even humble him into an evidence of the very
spirit he spurned, and as our creed was reviled in his
person, and vindicated in his conviction, so I would
give it its noblest triumph in his sentence, and merely
consign him to the punishment of its mercy. But,
indeed, my Lord, the fate of that half infidel, half-
trading martyr, matters very little in comparison
of that of the thousands he has corrupted. He has
literally disseminated a moral plague, against which
even the nation's quarantine can scarcely avail us. It
has poisoned the fresh blood of infancy—it has dis-
heartened the last hope of age; if his own account of
its circulation be correct, hundreds of thousands must
be this instant tainted with the infectious venom,
whose sting dies not with the destruction of the body.
Imagine not, because the pestilence smites not at
once, that its fatality is the less certain ; imagine not,
because the lower orders are the earliest victims, that
the more elevated will not suffer in their turn : the
most mortal chillness begins at the extremities ; and
you may depend upon it, nothing but time and apa-
thy are wanting to change this healthful land into a
charnel-house, where murder, anarchy, and prostitu-
tion, and the whole hell-brood of infidelity, will quaff
the heart's blood of the consecrated and the noble.—
My Lord, I am the more indignant at these designs,
because they are. sought to be concealed in the dis-
guise of liberty. It is the duty of every real friend
to liberty to tear her mask from the fiend who has
usurped it. No, no; this is not our Island ,Goddessf
bearing the mountain-freshness on her cheek, and
scattering the valley's bounty from her hand, known
by the lights that herald her fair presence, the peace-
ful virtues that attend her path, and she long blaze
of glory that lingers in her train! It is a demon,
speaking fair, indeed—tempting our faith with airy
hopes and visionary realms; but even within the
folding of its mantle hiding the bloody symbol of its
purpose. Hear not its sophistry ; guard your child
against it; draw round your homes the consecrated
circle which it dare not enter : you will find an amu-
let in the religion of your country : it is the great mound
raised by the ALMIGHTY for the protection of Hu-
manity—it stands between you and the lava of hu-
man passions; and oh! believe me, if you stand tamely
by while it is basely undermined, the fiery deluge will
roll on, before which, all that you hold dear, or re .
nerable, or sacred, will wither into ashes. Believe
no one who tells you that the friends of freedom are
now, or ever were, the enemies of religion. They
`know too well, that rebellion against GOD could not
prove the basis of government for man; and that the
proudest structure impiety can raise is but the Babel

menument of impotence, and its pride, mocking the
builders with a moment's strength, and then coven-
ing them with inevitable confusion. Do you want
an example? Only look to France; the microscopic
vision of your rabble blasphethers has not sight
enough to contemplate the mighty minds which com-
menced her revolution. The wit, the sage, the ora-
tor, the hem, the whole family of genius, furnished
forth treasures, and gave them nobly to the na-
tion's exigence. They had, indeed, very great pro-
vocation. They had a glorious cause; they had all
that human potency could give them. But they re-
lied too much on this human potency; they abjured
their GOD, and, as a natural consequence, they mur-
dered their King. They called their polluted deities
from the brothel, and the fall of the idol they wor-
shipped extingui.hed the flame of the altar.—
They crowded the scaffold with all their country held
of genius or of virtue ; and when the Peerage and the
Prelacy were exhausted, the mob-executioner of to-
day became the mob-victim of to-morrow : no sex
was spared—no age re,pected—no suffering pitied ;
and all this they did in the sacred name of Liberty,
though, in the deluge of human blood, they left not
a mountain-top for the Ark of Liberty to rest on !
But PROVIDENCE was neither dead nor sleeping; it
muttered not that for a moment their impiety seemed ,
to proper—that Victory panted after their ensan-
guined banners—that as their insatiate Eagle soared
against the sun, he seemed but to replurne his wings,
and to renew his vision : it was only for a moment ;
'and you see at last, that, in the very banquet of their
triumph, the ALMIGHTY'S vengeance blazed upon the
wall, and their diadem fell from the brow of the
idolater. My Lord, I will not abjure the Altar, the
Throne, and the Constitution, for the bloody tinsel
of his revolutionary pantomime. I prefer my Goa
even to the impious democracy of their Pantheon. I
will not desert my King, even for the political equa-
lity of their Pandemonium. I must see some better
authority than the Fleet-street Temple, before I forego
the principles which I imbibed in my youth, and to
which I look forward as the consolation of my age;
those all-protecting principles, which at once guard
and consecrate and sweeten the social intercourse ;
which give life, happiness, and death, hope ; which
constitute man's purity, his best protection—placing
the infant's cradle and the female's couch beneath the
sacred shelter of the national morality. Neither Mr.
Paine nor Mr. Palmer, nor all the venom-breathing
brood, shall swindle from me the hook where I have
learned these precepts, in despite of all their scoff, and
scorn, and menacing. I say, of the Sacred Volume
they would obliterate, yet it is a book of Facts, as
well authenticated as any Heathen history—a book
of Miracles, incontestably avouched—a book of Pro-
phecy, confirmed by past as well as present fulfil-
ment—a book of Poetry, pure and natural, and
elevated even to inspiration—a book of Morals, such
as human wisdom never framed for the perfection of
human happiness. Sir, I will abide by the precepts,
admire the beauty, revere the mysteries, and, as far
as in me lies, practice the mandates of this Sacred
Volume ; and, should the ridicule of earth and the
blasphemy of hell assail me. I shall console myself
by the contemplation of those blessed Spirits who, in
the same holy cause, have toiled and shone and suf-
fered in the goodly fellowship of the Saints'—in the
6 noble Army of the Martyrs'—in the society of the
great and good and *ise of every Nation : if my
sinfulness be not cleansed, and my darkness illu-
mined, at least my pretensionless submission may,
be excused ; if I err with the luminaries I have
chosen for my guides. I confess myself captivated
by the loveliness of their observations. If you
err, it is an heavenly region—if you wander, it
is in fields of light—if you aspire, it is at all events
a glorious daring ; and rather than sink with infidelity
into the dust, I am content to cheat myself with their
vision of eternity. It may, indeed, be nothing but de-
lusion, but then I err with the disciples of philosophy
and of virtue—with men who have drunk deep at
the fountain of human knowledge, but who dissolved
not the pearl of their salvation in the draught : I err
with Bacon, the great confidant of Nature, fraught
with all the learning of the past, and almost prescient
of the future, yet too wise not to know his weakness,
and too philosophic not to feel his ignorance ; I err
with Milton, rising on an angel's wing to Heaven,
and, like the bird of morn, soaring out of light amid
the music of his grateful piety ; I err with Locke,
whose pure philosophy only taught him to adore its
source, whose warm love of genuine liberty was never
chilled into rebellion_ with its Author; I err with
Newton, whose star-like spirit, shooting athwart the
darkness of the sphere, too soon did re-ascend to the
home of its nativity ; I err with Franklin, the patriot
of the world, the playmate of the lightning, the
philosopher of liberty, whose electric touch thrilled
through the hemisphere. With men like these, Sir,
I shall remain in error, nor shall I desert those errors
even for the drunken death-bed of a Paine, or the
delirious war-whoop of the sinking fiend who would
erect his altar on the ruins of society. In my opinion
it is difficult to say, whether their tenets are more
ludicrous or more detestable, They will not obey
the King,. or the Prince, or the Parliament, or
the Constitution—but they will obey Anarchy—
They will not believe in the Prophets—in Moses—in
Mahomet—in CHRIST; but they believe in Tom
Paine. With no Government but confusion—no
treed but scepticism, I believe in my soul they would
abjure the one if it became legitimate, .and rebel
against the other if it was once established. Holding,
my Lord, opinions such as these, I should consider
myself culpable if, at such a crisis, I did not declare
them. A lover of my Country, I yet draw a line be-
tween Patriotism and Rebellion. A warm friend to
Liberty of Conscience, I will not confound toleration
with infidelity. With all its ambiguity, I shall die
in the doctrines of the Christian Faith ; and, with all
its errors, I am contented to live under the glorious
safeguards of the British Constitution."
The resolution of thanks, &c. to the Lord Mayor,
was then passed unanimously, after which
His LORDSHIP came forward, and expressed his
grateful tense of the honour which had been conferred
upon him. He complimented the principal speakers
who had preceded him, and said that that heart must
indeed be steeled which could be insensible to their
eloquent appeals. His Lordship then alluded to the
factious parties by which he was -sometimes assailed
in the discharge of his public duty ; but expressed
his firm determination to continue to discharge that
ditty faithfully, regardless of such attacks.
The Rev. WITeLI4U Wino (onc of the Missionaries

of Serampore, in the East Ind:esi jr is
and forcible speech—
.. That the thanks of this Meeting be giver to ,he p•
aourables, and others the Vice-Pfe.adents of •
the patronage which they have afforded to tit I. ,trt:::"n
that the Gentlemen specified In tic annexed ti
Presidents for the year ensuing."
And, in a short speech, described the good
which had resulted in many parts of India fn
dissemination of the Bible.

---
The resolution was seconded by the Rev.J.lb
and carried unanimously.
The Lord Valor (elect), Alderman Batnot
turned tttanks, as did also Alderman Tharm.
Captain PA EENIIA m (Royal Nary) !rayed.
" That Cho Thanks of this Meeting be s'aen m tht
surer, the SeeretarieF, and the Committee, for their ar.l
ettions to further the objects of !Ile Soc:ety, and fer
teresting Report; and that the Gentlemen spedEefl
flexed list be the Committee for the year ensuing, tv„l
to enlarge their number."

il
He pi el aced hii 'Lotion with a sl.trt speech:
sive of his approbation of tl..e Meeting aid its c,j
The Resolution wAs seconded by Sir Di 21
WORTH. and carried un:iiiirrious!y.

The Rev. D. WILSON moved the itillowin,
lution, which he piviace,l with it short speech:
" That the warmest T:ianks of this Meeting
night lion. the Lord Mayor, for his &dive.
business of the Meeting, and for his atilt Vt.. ,1
in the Chair this day."
- .

This was seconded by the Rev. i:,.:iTLISK•~
and carried.—l lis LORD II I P again re,urned tl.l
A handsgme collection was mad*• at the Ja :I

THE L EN ING SPA

LONDON.

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 5, IRI9,
Ccxrcnrt,La PLO?.--Holiday at the Stock Eackrze

The Anniversary of the Gunpowder Ecc
ushered in this morning by the ringing of bells,
a display of the British Union Jack nom it
ships in the River. The Park and 'fewer guasj
as usual, at one o'clock.

Every one looks forward to the opening of P:
meet with anxious inquiries, and some with po

anticipations of the measures to which MiniAers.
resort in the present state of the Country. These
pretend to be well informed on this subject—ch.
perhaps by such statements they are only p
out their feelers—assert that something like
Irish system will be proposed, respecting the dis!
Counties : that is, summary powers tr, be COE
to the Lords Lieutenants, on the declaration of
Magistrates respecting the state of the Cowl.
spectively, to place them unJer !lartial Law.
Press, it is also asserted, will expelience some
of muzzling—if the Country can b 2 brought ts
mit to it—or rattle:, it Ministers can carry the
sure in Parliament ; but wan,: car, tiv. nia
tend to the tiro. penny press, the. ~.,.,2klv mo: •
sedition and blaspilemy. And it is
restraints, of some description, wili be putcr.the
vilege which belongs to Britois to meet and 4.
publicly any matter of grievance—perhaps
same description as those in force a fen• years
when the sanction of a Magistrate, on the reini'
of at least six respectable housekeepers, :as an,
dispensable requisite.

We have received this morning, a contintuti,
American Papers, to the 29th of September.
yellow fever continues to rage with great viclen

various parts of the United States. The last

from Baltimore, mentions forty-five new cases,
sixteen deaths of malignant fever. At New Oriel
thirty persons are said to have perished on the 2
of August. The fever had spread to the shippi
and there seemed to be no limit to its wasting
press. The physicians say that the yellow feve
this year is the most virulent they have ever seen.

Accounts have been received from St. Dods
which state, that the fever is also making great
vock in that island. The deaths are said to be
less than from fifty to sixty a day.
The expedition, which sailed from Margari
under Admiral BRION and General ENGLISH, Sr

Cumana, has completely failed. The; were rep
in all their attacks, both by land and sea ; and
Admiral, at length, took to flight, with his
leaving ENGLISH with his troops, in a state cf
ration, on shore, where they were finally attic
and routed by the Royalist troops.
A letter from St. Thomas's, dated September
hinting at the causes of this disastrous termination
an eipedition on which such high hopes were bci
observes, that—." General ENGLISH, who had d
superinternslance of the British troops, had never
tamed any higher rank than that of Clerk in d
Commissariat Department of the Army." tit 'e
with the writer in thinking that, under such g
dance—guidance of the same sort as lost Portobello
nothing but a succession of disasters is to be al
cipated.

Lord and Lady CASTLEREAGH arrived ycsterd
at their house, in St James's-square, from a visit
the Marquis and Marchioness of Hcarroen, at Lb
seat, Sudburn Hall, Suffolk.
The Marquis of BUTE, Lord Lieutenant of
County of Bute, has called a Meeting of that Coo
to consider of an Address to the Pity:cc rtnaE
containing a declaration of loyal attac:imert to
Throne and Constitution.
The report of Lord COCHRANE having or.
the rich convoy from Guyaquil amounting to th
millions of dollars, if true, will prove a most fe
nate occurrence for those concerned with him. E%
the present Lottery, which contains no less
EIGHT Prizes of £20,000, Two of which must,
drawn in the First Five Minutes NEST TI:1500, •
which it was supposed would bear a cornpa: 'son w
Any pussible event, must yield the pre-c:::.":,r....
the above, but tollat ONLY.