The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1852-06-29 00:00:00

orders, and till 1841—a period of 17 years—he was
a priest of the Roman Catholic Church. From the
first to the last hour of this period, he was a man of
some prominence, treated with confidence, kindness,
and increasing patronage. By the influence of the
Duke of LUCCA, he obtained a dispensation from
the POPE to obtain priests' orders under the canon-
ical age ; in 1837 he was prior of the convent of St.
Pietro, at Naples; and till 1841 he was a secular
priest at Naples. In the interval, he had been
appointed at various times to preach Latin sermons,
by the Bishop of Saltri, and by Cardinal SERRA,
Archbishop of Capua ; the Bishop of Viterbo had
appointed him to be Lector Philosophise in his
college ; the Master of the Sacred Palace had made
him his vicar in the diocese of Viterbo, including
the censorship of the press; the General of the
Dominicans had made him Head Professor of
Philosophy of the College of Minerva; Cardinal
VELzr, Bishop of Monte Fiasconi, had given him
unlimited authority to confess persons of both sexes
in his diocese ; the Apostolical Delegate chose him
to be confessor to the Governor of VITERBO; he was
also confessor to the Princess of SAXONY ; besides
being commissary, visitor, &c., at several places and
on several occasions. These facts are of the highest

importance.
In 1835 he obtained letters of secularization,
ww.,..tA lie dill itu6 uae 6111 ia39, and then for the
first time the deserted Dominicans began to whisper
that he was no better than he should be. For two
years longer, however, he was a priest of the Church,
and it was not till he openly avowed his Protestant-
ism, that the question was raised respecting his
morality. Yet if the evidence be true, which was
sworn to by Dr. NRWMAN'S witnesses, during the
seventeen years that he was a priest of Rome, he
was known to be a licentious hypocrite, and a man
of the most abandoned character and the most
vicious habits.

The evidence laid before the jury was directly
positive and negative, and it was their business to
say which party, in all the circumstances, was en-
titled to belief. It was sworn that Dr. AcHILLS had
again and again deflowered virgins, sometimes
within the limits of the consecrated building, that
he was an habitual seducer, the father of several
children, that he had not hesitated to use violence,
had chosen one of the most sacred parts of the
church for the :display of his licentiousness, that
his household servant and the door-keeper of his
chapel was a woman of notoriously bad character,
and that his life was as bad after marriage as before
it. But the witnesses had, in some instances, com-
pared notes, in others they were persons of the
worst reputation, on their own showing ; some had
been invited to give evidence on the ground that
they would be well paid for it ; some had appeared
because he had reproved them for irregular lives ;
the majority were persons whom we could not, in
this country, prosecute.for perjury ; in several in-
stances Dr..Acimaa swore that not only was their
evidence untrue, but, in the nature of things, it
could NIA be true; and not a few he declared he
had never seen before. In two hours and a half,
the jury gave in their verdict, declaring that not a
single charge of immorality was proved, one of them
stating, for himself and his fellows, that
_Pro-
testantism and Catholicism had nothing to do with
their verdict, but simply the facts of the case.

Comment is utterly unnecessary, and would be
quite out of place; the naked facts are by far the
most eloquent. But let the laity of the Church of
Rome lay to heart the simple dilemma on the horns
of which we place their priesthood and their sys-
tem. If the evidence for the defence be true, the
fruits of the Maynooth style of teaching are seen,
and the record of this trial is the best comment on
DENS'S instructions for the confessional. The
man who was a heretic or infidel at heart, and
a ravisher, seducer, blasphemous and sacrilegious
by daily practice, is not merely shielded, but ca-
ressed, patronised, and promoted during seventeen
long years of known atrocities and abominations!
He is never regarded as unfit to anoint, confess,
and absolve, so long as he remains on the right side
of the hedge; but so soon as he Carrico iutu
the Protestant camp the vices which have been
nourished elsewhere, yet which are now waxing
faint, he is unfit to write history, or deliver lectures,
or speak truth ! If, on the contrary, the evidence
be false, as the jury say it is, has ever Protestant
antagonist
d
id
sr
disregard
a utteredr for
the sanctity of n a
sobit censuretera
ac
ooa n the
world I
Ro-
manistf t
be false, there has been perjury at which
hthel
which defies

exagger

grow pale, and con

for us to sa

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1 description. It is

hich is true, though we entertain ar

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first to last, R

ome wa

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e favourable t

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acted by a

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£4l
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