The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1841-10-22 00:00:00

those social tics which.bind them to the order to which th
belong—to stain their hereditary I

honours, and debase their

ancient lineage—by fraternizing with revolutionary leveller

and making common cause with a vulgar and insolent demo-
riflemen should

cracy. But that a body of B
thus hold aloof, when the object, too, for which they were

man C'atholi

urged to confederate, was the destruction of the establishes

Protestant church of the realm

—that such a body sho'

not only hold aloof, but even be ready to interpose

fluence between the tide of hostile aggression and i:he object
against which it was; directed—was an anomaly which at
once baffled Whig ingenuity to account for, and drew from
Whig lips, upon the heads of the recusants, a perfect storm

of ignorant frenzy and objurgation.
It would not, however, be difficult, we think, fora
whose mind is iaot hopelessly warped, or obscured

I by the

mists of factious radicalism, to discover in the conduct cif the
Roman Catholic gentry of Lannashire the prompting of lofty

and honourable, and, withal, of consistent motives
we must confers, the alliance of the Roman Cathol

To us,
of

England, as a L ody, with the combined forces of infidelity,
latitudinarianism, and dissent, has always appeared unnatu-

rat, and, upon the face of it, unprincipled. But that the
Roman Catholic gentry, " casting aside their STUART me-

mories, their J acobite predilections, their aristocratic sym—

pathics, and their old English associations, should league
themselves with the legitimate descendants of those who,

through long y ears of bitterness and reproach, ceased not to

persecute their fathers," does really appear to us a prostitu-
tion of principle for political ends, which is at once shame-
less and suicidal. With such allies, they at least (whatever
might be the case as regarded the demagogues of their body)
could have no common object in view beyond, perhaps, the
destruction of an establishment viewed with hostility by each.
The Church of England prostrated, to what ulterior mea-
sures could they advance hand in hand ? Obviously to none.
Here the alliance must, perforce, be dissolved ; and in what,

we ask, would its success, thus far, have advanced the object
which the honest and conscientious Roman Catholic has ever

in view, viz., the restoration of the supremacy, temporal and
spiritual, of his own church ? In nothing most assuredly,
unless catholicity can be gratified it

sceing that position,

which she thinks it her sole right to occupy, filled up by a

multiform and heterogeneous dissent, or abandoned to infide-
lity itself, rather than see it held by a: scriptural church,

within whose pale is included at least the majority of the an-
cient gentry, the lovers of old usages, and the possessors of
the old kindly notions and feelings which have ever distin-
guished the English aristocracy, and the sounder portion of
the English people.

That the Roman Catholic gentry of Lancashire, therefore,
or at least a portion of them, have withdrawn themselves, in

limine, from the contamination of an alliance with the "

berals" of the present age, will be recorded, we think, to

their honour, not only as loyal subjects of the crown and

supporters of the constitution, as established in the three
estates of the realm, but also as consistent professors of their

own faith. For, upon what other terms does the church of

Rome occupy her present prominence amongst the unassorted
materials of that alliance than by a fraudulent suppression of
her real ulterior views, ou the one hand, and by the forbear-

ance of her temporary allies, for expediency's sake, on the
other ? No reasonable man can doubt with what fiery zeal—
(the first object of the rabid crew of fanatics with whom she

is associated having been achieved)—the energies of dissent
will be devoted to crush and trample upon herself—its hated
ally ; and there can be as little questio❑ as to the amount of
aid which it will derive towards the achievement of this ob-