The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1840-10-09 00:00:00

pig Row 1414ow,eaunirytnett are grievoualy abused, and tho
t helongs of right to a great Protestant community, like mire,
to have compassion on them, and to endeavour to rescue
them from this thraldom. (Cheers.) More than this; there
is a matter that will touch the temporalities of our poor peo-
ple, and be felt more as a privation than either of the two I
have named. I boldly charge the Romish Church with de-
priving our poor fellow-countrymen of their lawful weekly
wages. What are the lawful weekly wages of a labouring
man in any country ? Complying with the commandment of
God, which says, " Six days shalt thou labour, and do all
that thou hest to do :" the lawful weekly wages of a labour-
ing man are wages for six days' labour. Are the poor Roman
Catholics allowed to work six days ? Nay, verily. They are
not allowed to work on the saints' days. Their priests will
not allow them. There is, indeed, a measure of discretion.
You have heard something from the chairman about discre-
tion. The priests know how to he discreet. The saints'
days are very numerous. It depends upon the priests how
many are observed. In England the number is very small.
Many in this place may know of Roman Catholic labourers
who are allowed to work six days. They know what they
are about, and where to forget the saints. (A. laugh.) In
other countries, where is not the same politic reason for
forgetting dead saints, in order to keep well with living men,
they do enforce the observance of the saints' days. The
working of it in Ireland is frightful, and tends in a great
measure to keep the poor people in abject penury. Festival
after festival, groups of labourers are to be seen about the
villages and public-houses, idling all the day through. They
may not work. And if you ask them why, their only an-
swer is, " The priest forbids it." " What saint is it ?"
"I do not know. They cannot even name the saint they
are honouring by idleness. (Hear.) Themselves very ill
provided, their families but one remove from starvation,
work may be ready from some private employer, or the
contractor for some public undertaking. But they must
not work. 0, this is a heavy burden ! 1 might appeal
to your feelings and those of the community—l might de-
scribe a poor family in distress—l might set before you the
hungry children screaming for food—their anguished mother
has none to give them—l might represent the self-denial of
that mother, refraining from the sustenance required for her-
self and her infant, to divide the more among the elder ob-
jects of her love—l might call your attention to the father of
that family turning away from that hovel where the sight of
his distressed wife and children sends pangs to his affection-
ate heart—turning away and dashing with his finger the start-
ing tear that bedews his manly cheek,—l tell you that another
half-bushel of potatoes would supply them the week through
—that the man is able to earn the price—that his Protestant
neighbour is willing to employ him that he might earn it—
but no—the priest says no—you must not do it. (Much ap-
plause.) To be a faithful servant of the church you must be
adamant, you must be iron, to all the tender feelings of hu-
manity. (Much applause.)
Oh, sir, the priest does not know what a husband's heart is.
He may indeed be a father, but he cannot know the honour-
able cherished feelings of a father warm in his heart, by the
thoughts of his child. He has no wife. He has no feeling
either for wife or for child. Hekeeps the poor man starving
from his wages, from honourable employment, from his work
upon saints' days ; while trembling and famishing ; he shows
the tyranny of his church, and by the mockery of the system
he keeps the people slaves. Oh, sir, it is worse than mockery
to call this an affair of conscience, of religious opinions, and
to repudiate interference upon the ground that religious
scruples should be respected. It is not a matter of religious
opinions ; it is a matter of irreligious practice. (Hear.) As
well might you respect the liberty of a fraudulent gamester,
so long as he could succeed in deceiving and defrauding wil-
ling dupes. We shall be told by our liberals, " these people
are willing to act as they are bid by their priests—they are
willing to refrain from their labour, and why do you inter-
fere ? Who can believe it—that a man such as I have de-
scribed, the father of that family, is willing to be idle?
(Hear.) No ; he is willing to work ; he loves his family ; he
desires to provide for their sustenance. He would a thou-
sand times rather toil all day, and carry home the happy
supply, than idle about and go home at night to cries of
misery that rend his heart. But he has a tyrant over him ;
he has a tyranny, an iron tyranny that grinds him down, and
which will not allow his affection to his wife and children to
be practically present in hi§ life, but which keeps him in re-
membrance of the galling yoke of his church, even whilst his
poor family arc screaming with destitution in his ears, or
thrown out a nuisance upon the neighbours, begging from
door to door, because their father who was able to provide
for them if he wrought six days in the week, was kept by his
priest two or three and sometimes as many as four days a
week, in honour of the saint's memory, from turning a spade
or doing a hand's turn at work. (Hear.) Oh, sir, this is
frightful : (Hear) Is not this tyranny? Is not this a case
for interference ? Well did Mr. Stowell ask why we inter-
fered upon behaltof the negro, why we interfered to rescue
the poor slave from the grip of his task-master? An African
expedition is now preparing to leave this port to interfere
between the African chiefs and the poor slaves they were
ready to sell, and the barterers who were ready to buy. And
why ? Because it is a righteous interference ; because
humanity claims it at our hands, because it is a lawful in -
terference, that when one man is trampled upon by another,
we should step in with wisely regulated laws, restrictive upon
one side and protective upon the other, to save the wretched
and to restrain the oppressor. (Hear.) Here is one of the
things you have to complain of. Here is one of the things I
wish to press upon the minds of this great community—that
these saint-days, these hindrances of the popish priests pre-
venting the poor people from getting their lawful weekly
wages, is a point intelligible by every man. Here is no the-
ological speculation, no doubtful matter, no references to
old books, but a matter that will teach Englishmen, and I
trust in God will make them feel or say that some effort is to
be made to rescue our Roman Catholic countrymen from the
thraldom of their priesthood. (Hear.) But there is more
still. Not only are they hindered from earning what they
might and ought to earn, but a large proportion of what the
do earn is taken from them by fraudulent pretences. (Hear.)
I charge the Romish priesthood with depriving our poor Ro-
man Catholic fellow-countrymen of a large portion of their
scanty earnings by fraudulent pretences. And what are
those pretences? They pretend they can get the souls of
their fathers, mothers, grandfathers, grandmothers, uncles,
aunts, great grandfathers, and I do not know who, out of the
fire. (Hear. hear.) They make the people pay for their
masses for this purpose, (Hear.) I have here a very curi-
ous tract. It contains au article originally published in the
Church of England Quarterly Review, being the review of a
book entitled—" The Church of Rome's Traffic in Pardons,"
written by Archdeacon Hodson, and the reviewer gives some
curious extracts from Romish books upon the subjects of
pardons and massess. " Nothing is given," says the re-
viewer, "in the Roman Court but for cash." The original
words are here taken from Eneas Sylvius, who was himself
a Pope. (Hear.) " Nihil est quod absque argento Romania
curia dedat. Nam et ipsie mantis impositiones et Spiritus
Sancti dona venduntur. Nec peccatorum venia nisi numma-
tis impenditur."—Nothing to be had without cash ! (Hear,
hear.) There is another very remarkable testimony quoted
in this tract from Cardinal Cajetan which has a strange sound
—" Tantum donant quantum sonant." Their value is to be
measured by their sound. (Hear, hear.) That requires
some little explanation. because we have money now that
can be given without noise. Paper money does not
sound ; but when this was written there were only the oboli,
the denarii, the sestercii, and the soldicii, all good hard
coins ; and when large sums of money are put down in hard
coin, it tells—tantum donant, quantum sonant." (Hear,
hear.) 1 have good hope that good will come of this, be-
cause this was the very thing that roused the flames that
burst forth in the reformation. (Cheers.) I will now read
a passage from a bull of the famous Pope Leo, entrusted to
Tetzel, of celebrated memory, to sell, and the sale of which
roused the lion-spirit of Martin Luther. (Hear.)
" May our Lord Jesus Christ have mercy upon thee, and
absolve thee by his most holy passion,- and I, by his autho-
rity, and that of his blessed apostles Peter and Paul, and of
the most holy Pope, granted and committed to me in these
parts, do absolve thee, first, from all ecclesiastical censures,
in whatever manner they have been incurred ; and, then,
from all thy sins, transgressions, and excesses, how enormous
soever they may be : even from such as are reserved for the
cognizance of the Holy See ; and as far as the keys of the
holy church extend, I remit to you all punishment which
you deserve in purgatory on their account, and I restore you
to the holy sacraments of the church, to the unity of the
faithful, and to that innocence and purity which you posses-
sed at baptism ; so that, when you die, the gates of punish-
ment shall be shut, and the gates of the paradise of delight
shall be opened; and if you shall not die at present, this grace
shall remain in full force when you are at the point of death.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy
Ghost."

This wag the document which Tetzel went about selling in
Germany. Here is a more modern one, sold in my own na-
tive land, to be found in the Ist volume of the State Trials,
page 461, and produced before the Court of King's Bench,
upon the trial of Connor, Lord Maguire, on the 10th Febru-
ary, 1644 :
Adluturum Rei Memorium Urbanus Octaves, Sec. It
recites, that having taken into his serious consideration the
great zeal of the Irish towards the propagating of the Catholic
faith •, which kingdom (for their singular fervency in the true
worship of God) was of old called the Land of Saints : and
having certain notice, that in imitation of their godly and
worthy ancestors, they endeavoured by force of arms to de-
liver their thrilled nation from the oppressions of the heretics,
and to extirpate those workers of iniquity, who had infected
the mass of catholic purity with the pestiferous leaven of their
heretical contagion, by virtue of his power of binding and
loosing, which God had conferred upon him ; to all and every
the aforesaid Christians in the kingdom of Ireland, so long as
they should militate against the said heretics and other ene-
mies of the catholic faith, he did grant a full and plenary in-
dulgence, and absolute remission of their sins, desiring all of
them to be partakers of this precious treasure ; dated from
the Vatican, or St. Peter's Palace in Rome, May 25, 1643,
and in the twentieth year of his pontificate.' "
These things are still acted upon. I want now to show you
the rules of one of the societies established with regard to
these indulgencies. There are Purgatory Societies, and these
are not far off. I have a paper, which I will read just now,
a transcript of the rules of one of these societies, now in full
operation in Liverpool :
" PURGATORIAN SOCIETY,
INSTITUTED JULY IST, 1813, AND HELD IN SAINT JAMES'S

CHAPEL.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the

Holy Ghost. Amen.
It is therefor e a holy and wholesome thought to pray for
the dead, and they may be loosed from their sins.'
Maccabees, chap. xii. ver. 46.
THE members who compose the society of the office for'the
dead, commenced on the above day, at the said place,
adopting the spirit and meaning of the above sacred text,
and wishing, in conformity to the divine precepts of the
Holy Catholic Church, to extend their charitable views
beyond the grave, by relieving, as far as in them lies, the
suffering souls in purgatory, and inviting all tender-hearted
Catholics, who have a feeling sensibility of the duty they
owe their departed parents, relations, and friends, who
probably may stand more in need of their commiseration
at present, than at any period of their life time, to assist
in the charitable and pious purpose of shortening the du-
ration of their sufferings by the most easy means imaginable,
have agreed to, and adopted the following rules :
The rules are long, and I need not read them all ; but I will
show you some of the " easy means they have adopted :
Rule 1. That the affairs of this institution shall be regu-
lated by the Superior, Rectors, and six of the members who
compose the office for the dead, who shall attend on every
Wednesday night, at half-past eight o'clock, throughout the
year, at the above named place, or any other place which may
be hereafter appointed,. and there, with attention and devo-
tion, recite the office for the dead, agreeable to the intention
that shall then be mentioned.
2. That every well-disposed Catholic, wishing to contribute
to the relief of the suffering souls in purgatory, shall pay
one penny per week, which shall be appropriated to the pro-
curing of masses to be offered up for the repose of the souls
of the deceased parents, relations, and friends of all the sub-
scribers to the institution in particular, and the faithful
departed in general.
3. That on the first Monday of every month, a mass will
be offered up in the parish chapel of St. James, at ten o'clock,
for the spiritual and temporal welfare of the subscribers of
this society.
4. That the Superior, Rectors, and Council shall continue
in office for six calendar months, at the expiration of which
time, candidates shall be nominated by the persons in office,
who shall give due notice to the whole body of members
who compose the office for the dead, that they may punctu-
ally attend on the first Wednesday night in July, at half-past
eight o'clock, and on the first Wednesday night in January,
for the purpose of electing a Superior, Rectors, and Council,
to serve the ensuing six months, and so in succession.
5. That each subscriber, on entering this society, do pur-
chase a copy of these rules, in order to defray the expenses
incurred by printing and other contingencies, and that the
money arising from the weekly subscriptions shall be dis-
posed of to the most necessitated clergymen, who 0411 be