The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1841-04-13 00:00:00

*4'4 M

SA MOP

i-440 1 4.1 or,t,

Tha Vestal's Dream," by James A. Norris, is a $3 lever
poem, shewing the author's erudition. It is rayther Tom
Mooreish in construction and sentiment. The number con-
eludes with an article on the Drama, and Reviews of Books.
Taking it altogether, this is an amusing stranger,. and " as a
stranger we give it welcome." It will be read for its merits,
and taken for its price.

TO THE CONSTITUENCIES OF PROTESTANT

ENGLAND.-

-LETTER IN

FELLOW PROTESTANTS,

It is evident that such a body as will be returned by the
purely Popish constituencies of Ireland, under the operation
of Lord Morpeth's Bill, can never with safety be allowed to
sit in a British Parliament. It was never calculated by the
bill of 1829 that such a body should be returned for Ireland.
Under that bill the constituencies contained at least some
portion of the influence of Protestantism. The influence of
the land was Protestant; a Protestant yeomanry still existed;
and, allowing for all the exertions which could be used by the
priesthood, it was still calculated that a small share of the
representation would be left in the hands of those interested
in the maintenance of Protestantism and in the preservation
of the British connexion. Whilst this check existed in the
constituencies, the practical evils of allowing Popish mem-
bers to sit as representatives in parliament were lessened.
But when the constituencies shall have become, by this bill,
entirely Popish, the people of England can no longer tolerate,
and ought no longer to tolerate, that the representative body
should be also Popish. Somewhere there must exist a gua-
rantee that faith will be kept with us, that Protestantism in
the constitution will be held inviolate. And if we no longer
possess that guarantee in the circumstance of property in the
soil being a component portion of the constituencies, we must
inevitably be driven to insist upon possessing it in the Pro-
testantism of the representative body itself.
It is no longer a question of speculation whether Roman
Catholic members of parliament can be relied upon to exer-
cise the power, which we have given them by the bill of 1829,
—and which we increase by this bill—in accordance with the
interests of the people of England. Putting out of view all
those questions which affect immediately the existence of
that church establishment which they have sworn to respect;
putting out of view all questions which relate immediately to
the aggrandizement of their own church—questions which he
must have been a madman who ever supposed that they
would legislate upon with any other than a sectarian spirit—
is it not an undeniable fact, I ask, that on every other—on
questions of purely social bearing, and upon which the inte-
rests of the people of England alone are concerned—they
have throughout displayed the same punic faith--the same
utter disregard of constitutional principle and justice ? What
party or what class of Englishmen have ever trusted them
without being betrayed ? None, I reply. From the period
of their betrayal of the factory children, for a valuable con-
sideration paid into the hands of their leader, the member
for Dublin—to their betrayal of the poor of England into the
gripe of the Somerset House tyranny during the past week,
the history of their career in the House of Commons has been
one long and disgusting falsehood—one revolting and loath-
some treachery. Has there been a ministerial job to be
enacted, an instance of profligate expenditure of the public
money to be defended, an insult to the national honour to be
glossed over, or an act of national injustice to be perpretrated,
the Popish body within the walls of parliament has furnished
the ready instrument for any and every indecency with which
an infamous faction has dared to insult the people of Eng-
land. And although ready to intrude their counsel into mat-
ters affecting our religion, our hearths, and our homes—to
throw their filthy slime over the wives and daughters of our
love—to scoff at our social feelings, and to libel and degrade
us, as men and as Christians, in the eyes of mankind ;—if we
have ever presumed—if, as legislators for the United King-
dom, the British Parliament has at any time presumed to
stand between Popery and her slaves whom she grinds be-
neath her truculent tyranny ; one after another we have seen
the members of that body rise from their usurped seats to
dare us to interfere with the developement of their treasona-
ble plots, or to bully us into submission to their restless en-
croachments upon our liberties and our religion.
The continuance of such a body in the united parliament
of Great Britain and Ireland is manifestly incompatible with
the mere social good government of the people of England,
putting out of view even the preservation of the established
Protestant religion of the realm. And, with such a body,
as the representatives of the people of Ireland, the British
parliament will become equally incapacitated to legislate for
the social good of that people. Placed in antagonism, upon
all British questions, with the majority of British represen-
tatives, and unwilling to originate themselves any measures
of merely social improvement, the Irish members and the
Irish people will at length find just reason to complain that
their interests meet with no sympathy in the parliament of
the United Kingdom ; and the question of repeal of the
union—the demand for a separate legislature—will then,
perhaps, be agitated with some shew of justice, and may be
defended upon some grounds of expediency. The concession
of such a demand, by a British parliament, may appear im-
probable to us at present; but can we imagine under what
harassing provocation such a body, at no distant period, may
be brought to legislate? May we not imagine the arrival of
a period when the representatives of constituencies, whose
social interests are allowed to be totally neglected in the
Istruggle of Popery for aggrandisement, will turn readily to
any change which will release them from the tyranny which
overrides them, even although that change involves the dis-
memberment of a portion of the empire ? i fear we may ;
nay, I believe most firmly that to such a result it is which
Popery looks as a portion of her contemplated triumph. She
looks to a period at which Ireland—her church and the pro-
perty of her Protestant landowners—shall be handed over to
the tender mercies of the Romish priesthood and a Romish
democracy ; she burns to witness the establishment of a
Popish kingdom within the circle of the British crown ; and
she has bent all her energies—and the bill of Lord Morpeth
is her greatest—to win that object by fraud and circumven-
tion which she dare not attempt, and which she would never
I be allowed, to win by force of arms.

A repeal of the bill of 1829, then, or a repeal of the union
between Great Britain and Ireland? Fellow Protestants,
behold the alternatives which are left to your acceptance
after the passing of Lord Morpeth's bill ! The repeal of a
legislative enactment passed only twelve years ago,—every
condition of which has been violated by those to whom it
was conceded, every result of which has falsified your own
hopes and verified your worst fears,—or a struggle at the
point of the bayonet to preserve the integrity of the British
empire ! Can there be a doubt as to your choice ? There
cannot. There can be no question except as to the time
when the struggle for repeal must begin—unless there be
also a question whether the bayonet will ,not have to decide
the question in either case. Let that question, however,
answer itself. The present is no time for faint-hearted po-
licy. If the struggle must come—why, let it come; and
upon the heads of those who have precipitated it, let the
blood and tears which will follow in its track cry for judg-
ment ! The question which you have to decide is, whether
you will return now to the " ancient ways" of the constitu-
tion—whether you will receive the passing of Lord Morpeth's
bill as the last outrage upon your patience, and step forth
boldly to demand, as the accompaniment of that measure,
the only guarantee of safety which is left for the Protestant
faith of Great Britain and Ireland; or you will wait until
one portion of that faith is irrevocably destroyed—until the
Church of Ireland is hopelessly prostrated—until the loyal
yeomanry of that unhappy land are exterminated by mid-
night outrage, or alienated from the devoted loyalty with
which they look up for protection to the British throne, and
to the sympathy of their Protestant brethren in this land.
This question only—the question of time—it is, which you
have now to decide ; and upon that decision may depend the
amount of difficulty and of danger, of misery and blood,
which you may have to encounter.

I feel, and feel deeply, the individual responsibility of re-
commending a course of action which involves such great re-
sults. I am well inclined to believe that the repeal of the
bill of 1829, under any circumstances, is a measure only to
be resorted to in the last extremity. But I contend that the
passing of Lord Morpeth's bill will have brought us to that
last extremity ; and that to the faction which, for venal and
selfish objects, has originated that bill, will be justly due the
crushing weight of retribution which must fall. We have
not sought the repeal of the bill of 1829, even whilst
lamenting and protesting against the abuses which have re-
sulted from it. No ; we left the gradual removal of those
abuses to the correcting hand of time. We trusted in the
silent progress of public opinion operating through the
medium of the existing constitution of the country. We
trusted in the truth of our Protestant faith—in the stability
of the rock upon which we had planted the standard of our
liberties. Have we been deceived in our trust ? Have we
written our testimony in the sand ? Has our rock moved
from its base? No—we repeat emphatically—No! " The
truth is great," and it would have prevailed—nay, it was al-
ready prevailing. Throughout England, Scotland, and—
Ireland even—in that very stronghold of the accursed princi-
ple of popery—the sound and healthy action of the constitu-
tion was gradually returning, until a worthless and reckless
faction stretched out its hand to let loose upon us anew the
destroying waters—to bring in upon us " devils stronger than
the first." Upon that faction it is that we fling back the re-
sponsibility of the evils which we may wake in our progress
to stay the entrance of the flood ;—to that faction, steeped
in treason and in crime, we may point as the authors of all
the heartburnings, and even the violence and bloodshed
which may meet us in our course.
But no such evils, I trust, will meet us ; and if even they
do, we have justice at our side. lam unwilling to believe
that the great bulk of the Irish people sympathise in the fe•
rociotas insults levelled, day by day, against the creed and
the persons of the British people by the ruffian agitators,
whose ceaseless aim it is to bring about those results with
which they menace u_s_ On the contrary, lam far from be-
ing satisfied that a great portion of the really estimable peo-
ple of that unhappy land are Clot weary of the possession of
a privilege which brings with it fever and contention, instead
of health and peace. What social benefit has Ireland gained
from the introduction of her demagogues Into the British
parliament. Not one ! Not one, at least, which she
_would

vti34

0 OW

tf i+bfi vil4r
Dile step, within tin 3 last 20 ypttre of gitai,ipu, towards

provement, I defy the loudest of her boasted friends to point
to that step as the result, directly or indirectly, of ow efforts
of their Popish demagogues, or their liberal allies, T defy
them to point to one measure of pretended social improve-
ment, which they have not converted into an instrument of
social torture. No, no : the day has gone by when the pre-
tences of these glib-tongued traders in the credulity of their
fellow-countrymen could win any great portion of confidence
from the respectable and influential people of Ireland ; and
the instances of cowardice and betrayal, which marked the
unhappy period of 1798, are not yet forgotten in the memory
of those who, unreflecting and ignorant, might be induced
for a moment to harbour the thoughts of violence which
Rome, in the agony of her discomfiture, may seek to encou-
rage.

We have no serious calamity to fear from Ireland, dis-
tasteful to her though the repeal of the bill of 1829 would be,
which may not equally be feared as the consequences of re-
fusal, on the part of the legislature, to gratify the slightest
demand of her insolent priesthood. The only serious cala-
mity which would result to Great Britain would be brought
on by a postponement of the time at which that repeal should
be demanded. At present we possess in Ireland a strong
body of loyal Protestants, friends of the British connexion,
true hearted, tried and trusty men, who have once before
freely shed their blood in our behalf, and in behalf of their
faith. Against such a body, aided by the power of the Bri-
tish empire, treason might in vain point the musket or whet
the pike. But if we allow that royal body to be alienated
from us—if we suffer the democratic bill of Lord Morpeth
to disgust and to crush that body beneath the feet of trucu-
lent popery ; then, indeed, we may have to enter upon a
struggle in which, although the result may perhaps be not
doubtful, yet the value of success would be doubtful indeed.
And if we procrastinate still longer ;—if we allow the same
democratic principles to be introduced into the bosom of
England herseff, the struggle to retrieve the ruined fortunes
of protestantism in Ireland will
.become hopeless althether,
until we are driven to risk our all upon one decisive field ; to
strike for our own altars, and to fight by our own desolated
hearthstones !

Fellow Protestants, can you allow such a calamity, in.
open day, and with the voice of warning in your ears, to
approach your liberties, and to invade your dwellings ? You
cannot ! The time to gird on the armour of the constitu-
tion—if you wish to avert the arrival of a fierce rebellion—is

And when the last daring defiance of your strength
is uttered by the lips of popery ; when the bill of Lord Mor-
peth is flung insultingly in your face by the recreant hands of
this base and unprincipled faction ; Let England through all
her hills and vallies echo back your indignant resolve to
STAND FIRM FOR THE CONSTITUTION ! Let the deathless
words of the boys of Derry startle the ear of popery, as they
rise in the proud and fearless shout of—" No SURRENDER."
A PROTESTANT ENGLISHMAN.
Liverpool, 27th March, 1841.

THE LIVERPOOL PERMANENT GALLERY

OF ART.

We are glad to find that the prospect of a permanent gal-
lery of art in Liverpool is likely to be established. If those
who possess, or pretend to possess, a love for the fine arts
will only now bestir themselves, the happiest results will en-
sue, and however small the gallery may be at first, it will at
any rate be a nucleus which our children and children's chil-
dren will prove grateful to us for forming. Most gratifying
is the following extract from the report of the Royal Insti-
tion :

" At the last annual meeting, the committee were autho-
rised to expend the sum of £1,200 in the formation of a per-
manent Gallery of Art, provided that a corresponding amount
were subscribed by the public. Your committee lost no time
in procuring the plans and estimates for the building, and in
making their appeal to the public for assistance, having little
doubt that the required sum would be quickly subscribed. In
this expectation they were for a time disappointed; the sub-
scriptions received fell far short of the amount calculated
upon, and your; committee were seriously apprehensive that
the project must be abandoned. Within a very short period,
however, of the present time, their prospects have greatly
brightened. Many additional subscriptions—some most li-
beral in their amount—have been received ; and they now
fully anticipate that, when next they meet the proprietors, a
gallery will be completed on a scale creditable to the InAitu-
tion and the town of Liverpool."
The formation of a permanent gallery of art in Liverpool
would give us and many more, inexpressible delight. We
have so frequently expressed our opinions upon the subject
of the influence of the flue arts upon society, that we feel
unwilling to obtrude them again on our readers. But the
contemplation of the works of the great masters of painting,
those

" Rare artisans, whose pencils move
Not our delights alone, but love,"
is one that will repay any one for the time they bestow upon
it. That which becomes at first a mere pastime and an idle
amusement, will at length become a passion—and a study,
as varied and interesting as any other which can excite or en-
gage the teeming and inquisitive mind.

The artists of this town—and there are some who show a
promise of future excellence—ought warmly to enlist their
wealthy friends to promote the establishment of a permanent
gallery of art. for they will be most materially benefitted.
How can they improve themselves without carefully studying
the works of those perfections of art which time has stamped
as invaluable, and judgment has declared to be genuine ?
How can they expect to excel without observing and ex-
amining to the very groundwork those brilliant efforts—those
immortal productions held in such high veneration and es-
teem ? The artists of the present day in vain attempt to out-
strip those illustrious Prometheuses whose magic pencils and
whose busy fancies have given life to their subjects and vigour
to their canvas. Let not modern painters, as is too often the
case, decry the works of the ancients and those of the middle
ages. Let not the artists of our time, who contemplate with
such serenity and ineffable delight their own works—many
of which, when compared to those they attempt to decry,
are mere daubs—despise and condemn their predecessors,
but rather let them hold them up as worthy of imitation, and
as standards of that perfection which their emulation should
stimulate them' to approach, for they cannot excel in excel-
lence. In a mercantile community like ours, although our
merchants and tradesmen are deeply engaged in the soul-
absorbing occupation of making money, we hope that they
still cherish a wish to see the arts and sciences flourish. The
first show their taste in their private mansions and dwellings,
and whoever walks through our streets must be struck with
the architectural beauty of the buildings, while the shops of
the latter display taste in the arrangement of wares and the
mode of placing them in a tempting and pleasing as well as
effective position. And are not these signs of taste existing ?
Most assuredly. And a constant observation of the works
of imagination or reality will improve and encourage that
taste.

Let us look at a picture, and see how many trades derive
a profit from it, before it is placed with its pleasing face be-
fore the spectator. To begin with the frame. The ship-
owner is interested, to say nothing of the growers and the
hewers of the wood, for his vessel brings it over sea. It then
passes through the hands of the merchant, broker, and deal-
er, before it conies into the hands of the frame-maker ; and
he requires the aid of the glue-maker and the tool-manufac-
turer before he can put it togather. Then comes the canvas.
The shipowner has to bring over the material of which it is
constructed ; and what a train of trades must it not pass
through before it can come into the painter's hands, with its
groundwork prepared? Next we haveithe colours, varnishes,
brushes, and palettes, by which an almost endless variety of
trades are brought into requisition before they can be used,
and the artist seat himself to ponder upon and work out his
subject. When finished, the gilder, with another string of
trades at his heels, must be employed. And then there is
the artist himself. His class—composed of numerous and
highly intellectual men—deserves encouragement in every
way ; and we must confess that we like to look upon speci-
mens of his handiwork, from the rough and rude production
of a self-taught village limner, as it hangs:in the cottage of
the peasant, to the matchless production of a Correggio
adorning the walls of a palace.
Let not the scheme of a permanent gallery of art be neg-
lected. An opportunity now occurs of commencing it, by
the purchase of a matchless specimen or two from a noble
collection now in this town ; and if it can only.be once com-
menced, we know that in the course of a very few years it
will become the pride and boast of the port of Liverpool.
Strangers will inquire for it as the first object worthy of no-
tice ; and while they will admire us for our enterprise as
commercialists, they will honour us for our taste.

THE MEANNESS OF PRIDE. - Sir Lambert Black wel
and the Duke of St. Alban's strove which could outshine
the other in parade and splendour. On one occasion, the
Duke being engaged to dine with the Knight, found him
dressed in a most superb brocade of Lyons manufacture.
Shortly afterwards, the Knight returned the visit, and the
Duke had taken care to provide a suit of clothes of the same
costly materials for the servant who waited behind his chair.
—On this subject, there is a good anecdote reported of
Diogenes. Being once at Olympia, he perceived at that ce..
lebrated festival, some young men of Rhodes arrayed most
magnificently. Smiling he exclaimed, " This is pride !"
Afterwards meeting with some Lacedernonians in a mean
and sordid dress, he said, " And this also is pride !"
Diogenes,. nevertheless, went not without his rubs' on the
same vanity. Visiting Plato at his villa, and perceiving that
the floors were beautifully spread with carpets of the richest
wool and finest dye, stamped his foot with sardonic scorn,
he exclaimed, " Thus do I tread on the pride of Plato !"
With greater pride !" mildly replied the discerning Plato.

VALE OF CLWYD.—The fertile tract of valley in which
St. Asaph is situated, known as the Vale of Clwyd, extends
net less than twenty-five miles in length, and varies from six
to eight in width. It commences beyond Ruthin, and run,.
ning northward, contains also the towns of Denbigh and St.
Asaph, coming to a termination at Rhuddlan, where the
Clwyd becomes a tide river. The first burst of the valley of
the Clwyd, as it opens on the spectator from beneath the
ruins of Diserth Castle, is surpassingly beautiful. North-
ward is a length of twelve miles of coast, forming the boundary
of the vale, with the sea beyond ; immediately below, a rich
tract of land, dotted over with farms, the river, winding its
course beneath the Castle of Rhuddlan, which carries the
ofey eßtiolywia;rdoisi thethe sotpeir)iolesidteissitrdieetoalf
t•ohuendthe vale, rGapwirdylyehriscstinagtloe iswn
seen, perched like an eagles nest on the side of a rock---the
town of Abergely—Kinind, the sumptuous abode of Lord
;17,
17
a forestD i n orbe n—
of
_ towerpen go‘Nferßno, d
thelew y
residenced( i n Castle,of
Lordpee s
peeping over
and, terminating the scene, the bold outline of St. Asapt:
Cathedral.—From Roscoe's Wales, new edition, now pub-
lishing in monthly parts.