The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1846-06-30 00:00:00

mould take that
s opinion, the alteration

nexion, he

might not prove so injurious as
1; but whatever his opinions as an

widual might be, there could be no doubt that the
great bulk of the people of the province were adverse to
the change. The feeling was one of dread. There could
-lion of it. The principle of free trade, in his

be no clue
opinion,

would be beneficial to Great Britain, but with
respect to this colony, he thought Government should not
be hurried too fast. It would be better to wait and see
what was proposed, and then if Canadians found that the
proposition could be modified so as to be less injurious to
them, it would be their duty to attempt to do so. He did
look at this question of free trade with a good deal of
anxiety. llis hon. friend had said, and said truly, that
colonial dependence implied protection, and, to a certain
extent, it implied protection to the British home manu-
facturer as well as the colonial producer. If e last were
removed the first must be abolished, and he did fear Oat
when the British minister rose in his place year after year,
to propose grants for the purposes of the colonies—he did
fear, he said, that the British people would begin to ask
s were to them ? That was
upon tree trade with anxiety. It was
~ediate effects, but its prospective results that
be feared, when, in five, six, seven; or ten years hence
the people at home would begin to reflect whether it was
- not their'interest to maintain colonies. If they
t a conclusion in the negative, it would be most
rious to Canada, for her best hopes of improvement
-,nce of the existing connexion with

vantage t

whet made him I

rested in the rnainte

Great Britain."
A further corroboration is furnished by the
Montreal Herald, a free trade organ, conducted by
an intelligent gentleman, formerly the conductor of
a free trade journal in this town, and a staunch
supporter of the ministerial measures
The people of Canada, as a whole, are Protectionists.
ey dread and deprecate the measures of the British
;rnment. The difficulty is to keep them from abso-
ate despondency, and, at this moment, with a larger
amount of exportable produce (the true test of a nation's
wealth and resources) than was ever before known in the

colony, its commerce is in a state of unprecedented para-
lysis, principally from the fears of the result. May those
fears be groundless; but to deny them would be some-
thing worse than a folly."
The Montreal Herald of another date says :
" The aspect of our commercial affairs has never been

more gloomy than it is at present. Produce is tapidly
accumulating in the warehouses of this city. where it is

wholly unavailable to meet-the heavy engagements formed
by the m Hers and merchants of the west. The certainty
that England will very shortly adopt a system of free trade
in corn, and the prospect of excellent crops at the ensuing
harvest all over the continent, has had the effect of de-
preciating the price of our staple products to an extent
that a few months ago could not have been anticipated.
The question in every mouth is, how is the heavy indebt-
edness of this country to the banks to be provided for ?
At such a time as the present the financial operations of
the government will be watched with intense interest. It
is notorious that a large sum will have to be provided to
continue the public works, and strange as it may appear,
very little information on the subject was either given or
demanded in the house. The prospects of the revenue,
too, are any thing but flattering. There has been hitherto
but slight encouragement to the importers to send large
fall orders, and it is scarcely possible that the revenue can
equal the anticipations of the In<pector-General. Where,
then, is money to be obtained for the purposes of the go-
vernment? Not, surely, in Canada.

While all the world is occupied with the discus-
sion of a sort of " who's-the-traitor " question, it
seems sadly well disposed to omit the consideration
of a kindred question, infinitely more important in
its nature and practical in its consequences—
namely, what is the remedy of the treason ? Nay,
the case is worse still. Lord George Bentinck has,
indeed, made a dangerous lunge, through his per-
sonal honour, at the political life of Sir Robert
Peel, charging him with making the " Catholic
question " a stalking-horse, a matter of traffic to
aggrandise himself ; with carrying on a sham fight
against that question, lest candour and truth with
respect to it should serve a brilliant rival ; in a
word, with opposing it that he might " hunt Mr.
Canning to death," while, being in his heart deter-
mined to concede it, he should in honour have en-
listed himself as the ally of him whom he is said to
have had in chace. Lord George brings this heavy
charge against Peel, and Mr. Disraeli, by demon-
stration satisfactory to some, fastens it on ; hut
neither Lord George nor Benjamin, nor any other,
blames Peel for aught else in the matter than bad
faith towards Canning,—all apparently consenting '
together that Catholic emancipation was a great
settlement of a great question—that it was inevita-
ble, and has succeeded gloriously. Now, such vast
hallucination, such general darkness, involving
grievous political cowardice, is a far more melan-
choly fact than if it were indubitably proved that
Sir Robert feel were a false knave—a view of a
man's character which might be perfectly true,
though no proof thereof that was tangible, and to
the lawyers very satisfactory, could be adduced.
For what has " Catholic emancipation " settled ?
Nay, what has it not unsettled ? It has most cer-
tainly unsettled the principles of the nation. It
has shaken that confidence in the national profes-
sion of religion, which (confidence), in the absence
of vital faith in themselves, kept so many from
drifting into the plausibilities, absurdities, and le-
thargising agreeabilities of Popery. It has given a
fatal impulse to a system of falsehood, which ever
has been, and ever must be, connected in its preva-
lence with national weakness and national slavery ;
and it has simultaneously diminished the general
respect for scriptural truth. To what else must we
attribute the rise and spread of Puseyism ? Is the
perversion of some half-hundred of our most
learned ministers no calamity ? Should we con-
template those perversions, and their possible and
probable results, without uneasiness ? Yet these
are but the beginning of sorrows. Unless the Bible
be a fiction, our church a vanity, and our Govern-
ment a usurpation, the beginning that was not
begun in '29, but which then came to pass, must
push on until it issue in mediwval darkness, bon-
dage, and decrepitude. There is inevitability here.
If the Bible be true, and we continue as we are as
to principle, we are undone. To be sure there is
the other alternative—the Bible a figment. But,
then, what a nation of fools we must be ! A na-
tional religious establishment, national Bible Socie-
ties, national Missionary Societies, national religious
societies of countless variety, national excitement,
national enthusiasm, national " three cheers and
one cheer more,"—and all this vanity and vexation
of spirit, all folly, or all hypocrisy ! We can vindi-
cate our title to national respect by one alone of
two courses—national faith in the Bible, and a
consistent acting of it out; or else national infide-
lity. and a policy according thereunto. We verily
believe that the current moment is, with respect to
these two alternatives, or either of them, the most
important that ever ran by. According as we im-
prove or neglect it, posterity will bless or curse our
--lacksoceorisua... .
giving way, new organisations nigh, even at the
door. Is there nothing at this crisis to give to the
future a determination which may deliver us from
infidelity and anarchy on the one hand—from Po-
pery and slavery on the other? Let us expend a
few lines on this all-important consideration.
Video meliora proboque deteriora sequor, is as
true of nations and of politics as it is of morals and
of individuals. It lies at the foundation of our
theory that the English people are rightminded, or
at least disposed in that direction. They are indis-
posed to the religious theory which would change
the worship of God—a solemn thing—into a farce,
and look for its effects in the infatuation of the
spectators ; and to the political theory which would
make a shorn priesthood a necessary auxiliary to
an effective government, and the production of
public order. The English people are well enough
disposed, but they see, impracticability staring them
in the face, and pressing on them the conclusion
that Popery cannot be put down, nor Protestantism
put up. That which the times demand is not per-
suasion, not argument, not talk, but such solid
action, such substantive movement, organisation,
combination, development, demonstration, or what
you will, as shall make that which every one knows
to be right, what every one will be obliged to con-
fess to be not only practicable, but necessary and
unavoidable. Now this is possible, and in this
wise. The clue to deliverance from " the Irish
difficulty," and from all our other difficulties, pre-
sents itself to us in the body of the Irish Protes-
tants. In the midst of a hostile nation, a boastful,
active, and not altogether despicable enemy, there
is for England a gallant, high-minded, right-hearted
ally. In the midst of the Roman camp there is a
more powerful camp of Irish Protestants, uncon-
quered and unconquerable. They glow with the
noblest zeal. Though faint, they are still pursuing.
Without leaders and without countenance, they
still are full of hopes, and only long for such an
organisation as shall, through them, annihilate re-
peal, and present Ireland to the world as a Protes-
tant and loyal, instead of a Popish and rebellious
country. Ireland is now the hope of our enemies,
the rallying point of disaffection, the puzzle of our
statesmen, the eyesore and the heartache of the
British empire. The turn of a hand is only neces-
sary to make it our strength instead of our weak-
ness, our boast instead of our reproach. The sub-
ject is one of such great importance, that we must
articulate our utterances on the subject.
1. The three millions, more or less, of the Pro-

testant masses of Ireland, are right to the heart's
core, and could hold Ireland against the devil him-
self and all his hosts. They want to be led out,
organised, moved.

2. Tbe Irish Protestant gentry would go with
their people, but they doubt the dispositions of
England to
.Lthernward. They are furthermore
greatly and rationally deterred by

3. the Irish authorities, ecclesiastical and civil,
ho naturally are swayed by the spirit of compro-
mise which prevails at Whitehall and at Dublin
Castle. Hence Irish Protestantism, in general, is
in abeyance.i

4. What, then, is necessary ? We respond. some-
thing in the shape of a leadership, though but tem-
porary, which m'ght draw out and elicit our allied
hosts on the other side of the Herring Pond, and
assure them that their Saxon brothers arc still their
friends—their lovers.

5. Is there no mediatorship which could do this ?
Is there no influence in rerum natura which Provi-
dence, and something higher still, though one and
the same, which Grace has prepared for this instru-
mentality ? Is there no individual, no body of in-
dividuals, who have a right to take a primary inte-
rest in tins matter, so posited and so circumstanced,
that they might be, or that he might be, a " days-
man," or " daysmen," to whisper in the ears of
Irish Protest-nts, in a trumpet-blast, " Stand out,
and you will find all right yonder; stand out, three
millions of you, and you will make all right yonder.
You are placed in the front of the battle, and you
must take your legitimate position in marshalling
it ; but if you do, all will stand with you who are
worth having." Are there none, we ask again, who
would have some influence with "an Irish bri-
gade,"
which they might cause to serve a national
fame, in the noblest rank of patriots, such as no
" Irish brigade" has yet achieved ? This is, in
fine, the sum of the matter. Awakened tish
Protestantism would awaken English Protes-