The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1839-10-25 00:00:00

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MARRIAGE OF THE QUEEN.

(From the Britannia.)

Among the alarms of the Protestant people of England is
the new connexion which her Ministers and family are, it is
presumed, 'about to form for the Queen. On the subject of
the royal individual, we shall always speak with due respect.
We must regard all her public acts as those of her advisers :
and in this feeling, while we lament that her Majesty should
be the victim, we can have no consideration for the contri-
vances whiFh have thus raised a new source of surprise and
vexation between the Throne and the people. That Lord
Melbourne should have counselled the choice of a boy of nine-
teen for the Queen's husband, is perfectly consistent with his
notorious principles ; he loves the Palace cookery too well,
the comforts of the Palace parlour fire, and the lively asso-
ciation of the Palace chamber-maids of all degrees much too
fondly, to give them up for any conceivable public object. A
boy husband clearly affords the most feasible prospect of the
continuance of a system of cheap gratifications, which—
though any gentleman of England would regard as a mere
system of mendicancy, a mere begging of his daily bread, a
mere living on alms, and in the eye of public ridicule,—the
easy conscience and unblushing cheek of the Premier regard
as the luckiest appendage to office, the true scavoir vivre, the
original evidence of his fitness to hold the reigns of supre-
macy. If a husband of nine years old could be found, he
would answer the purpose only so much the better ; while the
presence of a manly, intelligent, and high-minded person at
the side of her Majesty would be a sentence of banishment
from the Palace and its gratuitous meals ; the heaviest af-
fliction of political life to the cheap-feeding Minister.
But to the actual match. We pass by the fact, that, of all
the sojourners in England, the Prince Leopold rapidly con-
trived to make himself the most unpalatable of all princes to
the nation. At his reception, highly popular for the sake of
the Princess Charlotte, the national regard abandoned him
within the next six months. About a year or two, he sank
wholly from public view, and except for the appearance of
his carts :at Claremont, with his name on them, and the
weekly sale of his currants and gooseberries in the public
market, it would have been forgotten that the gallant Prince
Leopold had ever existed. By the annual receipt of his
£50,000 for twenty years, he netted about a solid million of
English gold, and was supposed to be the richest Coburg
that ever existed, or ever will exist. The sum judiciously
laid out would probably have purchased the whole princi-
pality, with its live stock of princes, and all.
But our concern is not with his disposition to make cent.
per cent. of our money, but with the blood which he sends
among us in return for our past benevolence. The Coburg
family has now three heads. Nothing can be more impartial
in point of religion than this triple-headed dynasty; one of
them professing to be Protestant, one of them to be Papist,
and the third we must leave it to himself to decide what he
is. The first he is a Protestant (according to the Protestant-
ism of Germany). Ernest, Duke of Saxe Coburg, whose son
of many names, Prince Albert Francois Auguste Charles
Emanuel, is the reputed candidate for the Royal hand.
The second is a declared Papist, Ferdinand of Saxe Coburg,
whose eldest son is the husband of the little Portuguese
Queen, and a Papist. The third is Leopold of Belgium,
who is married to a daughter of Louis. Philippe, the condi-
tion being announced, that his children shall be Papists.
Without saying whether this lucky personage (who, by the
way, still continues to receive a portion of his salary from
England), is a Papist or not, we may conceive the feelings
with which an English Protestant would see his sons and
daughters worshipping stocks and stones, pictures of the
Virgin, statues of St. Nicodemus, and the thigh bone of St.
Dominic. We think that the spectacle must require a good
deal of Protestant philosophy, and a very remarkable sense
of the value of a French alliance. However, the result will
be, that our Protestant Queen will find herself suddenly sur-
rounded with Papist cousinship. We have had some speci-
mens of the kind already. Her litt'e Papist aunt, the Bel-
giant Queen, has tripped it among us with French vivacity,
settled her secret business with a smile, and fluttered back
to her land of burgomasters, to flutter over again when the
next little affair to be transacted dexterously at court shall,
make it necessary for her to put herself into the steam-boat.
Then we have had no less than three Papist cousins taking
their Sunday morning's leave of her Majesty at the break-
fast-table, to go off in the prettiest manner to hear mass at
the chapel, while her Majesty went on her way to the church ;
and all this done in the most simple and affectionate style.
Who can imagine that there is any great harm in Popery,
when it moves about palaces and terraces in such gay and
graceful forms ! However, on the strength of these royal
and princely promenades, the priests are about giving up their
old chapel, and building a showy affair, fitter for the reception
of Papist princes and princesses, of whom they evidently ex-
pect a regular supply in the season ; and bringing it nearer the
palace, too, for the convenience of those gay strangers and
their converts. Doubtless we shall have .the honour of a visit
from little Donna Maria, the most bigotted little woman in the
most bigotted kingdom of the globe. Then the Coburgs are
like the clever inhabitants of thenorthern portion of our island,
prodigious ramifiers, great spreaders of their blood ; they
have planted little crooked stems of themselves all over Ger-
many, and we shall have them all one after another. Where
the carcases are there will the crows be; where the dinners
are there will the Coburgs be. In the mean time we shall
have a succession of Popish kings, queens, princes, dukes,
generals, and duchesses constantly running over here—a per-
petual grand gala of the hungry, the gay, and the crafty, all
laced and liveried, driving about from show to show all day,
dancing all night, but going in solemn sanctity to the chapel
on the fasts and feasts, to count their ten ayes to one pater-
noster, and then after performing their genuflexions, and
raising their eyes to the holy wafer, come back to sport
through the feast and the dance as festively as ever. But
they will have their confessors, too, and their secret devo-
tions, and their dexterous correspondence, and their pious
aspirations for the restoration of heretic England to the arms
of the holy mother at Rome ! What would not such a restora-
tion be worth to the restorer? Why it would sweep away
every tin of the most frolic princess since Margaret of France;
Ninon de L'Enclos herself would be sure of canonization. It
would secure a donative from the Papal exchequer worth
twice the fortune of the most successful opera. dancer ! Can
we doubt that there are thousands of eager eyes turned from
the cells and palaces of the continent, at this hour, on Eng-
gland, regarding the whole as a great experiment, rejoicing
to see the, growing facility with which we suffer Papistry in
all its shapes to overrun our country, and rejoicing most of
all in the prospects held out to them by the rapid rise of the
most venomous clients of the priesthood into power. Popish
ascendancy, if not instantly checked, must break down the
Constitution and the Church of England. We ask, which of
the Protestant bishops has formed the guest of the palace,
under Lord Melbourne's government ? which of them is ever
consulted? Is the venerable primate placed at the right hand
of majesty. Is the sar,acity of the 13ishon. of London =once
tne tavounte enjoyments or me royal circle e is any distin-
guished ecclesiastic sought for by ministers, as the natural
friend of the first Protestant Sovereign of Europe ?
We have treated this marriage and matter in a lighter
manner than its infinite importance deserves. Protestantism
is not an opinion, nor the power of a sect—it is Christianity
in its purest form ; it is religion in its most freeborn, sacred,
and essential activity : it is virtue of heart, vigour of intelli-
gence, and liberty of being. If Protestantism is enfeebled
among us, all is weak ; if perverted, all is stained; if de-
stroyed all is destroyed. We stand at this hour like a people
gathered on some vast cliff, overlooking a stormy ocean.
Hitherto, the heavings of Europe have been only things of
remote contemplation. We have followed the fate of its
thrones as we watch the course of ships struggling through
the tempest, and anxious as we were for their safety, .we could
feel but as men on solid ground ; but a new agent of ruin is
in action, we feel the ground shaking under our feet—the
more solid the bulwark the more precipitate will be the fall ;
it is not the tempest that we have now to dread, but the
working of the subterranean fire—our enemy is the earth-
quake. The danger is under our feet, and if we perish, not
even a remnant will be left on the shore !