The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1841-03-09 00:00:00

FELLON4

PROTESTANTS,

For a period of nearly twelve years we have been contented
to stand by, calm and tacit spectators of the progressive en-
croachments which a hostile principle, unchained by the fatal
credulity of the legislature, has been directing against the
constitution and the Protestantism of the empire. Clinging
to the faith which, in the fearful crisis of 1829, we were will-
ing to repose in the integrity of the British parliament—re-
lying upon the unsullied honour of that great statesman, who

then emphatically assured us that, if the measure of eman-
cipation should be attended with results dangerous to the
established religion of the empire, RE " would le the fore-
most to come down to parliament and propose a measure
for its repeal"—we have passively and patiently watched
the rising of the waters of Popery throughout the land, sap-

ng at first, by their insidious action, the foundations of our

koly church—weakening her bulwarks and polluting her

altar-stones—until at length the " surging flood" threatens
to break down its feeble banks, to sweep away in its resist-

,ess course the landmarks of soeiety, and to engulf alike the
religion, the property, and the liberties of the British people.
For twelve years, I repeat, we have passively contemplated

the growth of this giant power ; and if the time has, now
come when the same unresisting course is no longer open to

us ; if the crisis has arrived when forbearance becomes cow-
ardice—nay, guilt ; when the Protestants of England are
compelled, in defence of their own liberties—in vindication

f the church and the faith of their fathers—to " set their

,attle in array" against the legions Of Antichrist, to take up
he weapons of constitutional agitation, and to thunder in
he ears of the advancing enemy their stern resolve, " Thus

far shalt thou go, and no further :" who can deny their right
to turn round to the legislature, and to point as their justifi-
cation—when seeking a return to the " ancient ways" of the
constitution by a reversal of the fatal concession of 1829—t0

'lie violation, by Popery, of every pledge upon the faith of

which that measure was conceded l Who can deny their
right to advance to the THRONE ITSELF, and, laying before
the footstool of the Sovereign the iniqnitous bill of Lord
Morpeth, to exclaim, in vindication of the course of agita-
tion which must inevitably be the result of its passing into a
law—which may Heaven avert !—" We sought not this agi-
tation ; our hands have not lighted this flame ; ' Infandum,
Regina, Jubes renovare dolorem ' " ?
. No man, assuredly, will be bold enough to deny the perfect
right of the Protestants of this great empire to call upon
parliament to reconsider any measure, the working of which
is found to be dangerous to the constitution. No man will
be hardy enough to deny their right to insist upon the com-
plete fulfilment of each and every of the conditions upon

which such measure was conceded, or to demand the aboli-
tion of the measure as the alternative of their non-fulfilment.

It is notoriously the fact that the Roman Catholic Relief
Bill of 1829 was hedged round with conditions, to be ob-
served on the part of the Roman catholic priesthood and
laity, of which hitherto not one solitary condition has been
adhered to, in .spirit or in semblance. The titular designa-
tions of the Roman catholic hierarchy were to be laid aside.
Has that been done, I ask ? No ! On the contrary, those
very designations have been paraded in petitions addressed
to the legislature and to the throne itself. The rights and
the integrity of the " Established Church of Great Britain
and Ireland" were to be respected and held inviolate. Has
this condition, secured by the exaction of a solemn oath,
been adhered to ? No ! That oath has been trampled upon
like chaff. The emissaries of popery in Parliament have
treated the condition and the oath alike with derision. The
Romish priesthood have laughed them to scorn. The rights
and property of the church have been the objects of fierce
assault, from popish mobs, led on by priestly agitators, out
of doors ; and from popish members, encouragerlL-4o their
shame and infamy be it recorded !—by professing Protestants
within the walls of the British legislature. Ten bishoprics
have been abolished in Ireland, and the incomes belonging
to them alienated. One-fourth of the tithes of the Irish
church has been swept away ; and we have been insultingly
told in the House of Commons during the past week, and
the threat was cheered by Protestant as well as by popish
members, that the people of Ireland—that people who in 1829
sued to us with bated breath and cap in hand" for the
simple boon of emancipation—would insist upon despoiling
her of the remaining three-fourths—" would never be con-
tented whilst any part of the imposition lasted !"
Not one of the securities then adopted by the legislature in
1829, to ward off from the national establishment the danger
which was justly apprehended from the admission of Romish
councils into the legislature, have been found effectual; and
yet by the measure which has just- now, under the fostering
care of her Majesty's government, received the sanction of a
majority of the House of Commons, it is proposed to remove
the last barrier which the bill of 1829 erected against the in-
roads of popery ; and to swamp the Protestant constituencies
of Great Brilain, by admitting to the exercise of the fran-
chise the entire body of the democracy of popish Ireland. It
is notorious—nay it is admitted—that the disfranchisement
of the 40s. freeholders in that country, was regarded by the
supporters of the constitution as an indispensible accompa-
niment to the concession of the emancipation bill. Without
that disfranchisement it is well known that his late Majesty
George the Fourth would never have been prevailed upon to
give his assent to the measure. Without such a security
against the dictation of the priesthood in Ireland, it is well
known that the House of Lords would never have been won to
pass the bill. And yet now, when all other securities have
been swept aside as useless--when all pledges, and even
oaths have been broken like rotten threads—when the howl
of the Romish wolf is at our doors, and his blood-stained foot
has even troubled the waters from which the youth of Pro-
testant England derive the sustenance of life—when the
cowled form of popery stalks insultingly through the land,
and the mass-house and the nunnery rear their stately
towers, mocking as they overshadow the moss-grown walls
of the village church and the green graves of our fathers—

we are calledupon to yield up the lasthope of Protestantism,
which is built upon the fidelity of the respectable yeomanry
and the gentry of Ireland—and to place our religion, our
property, and our liberties in the hands of the fierce and law.
less instruments of a tyrant priesthood—the spawn of May-
nooth—the children of the mother of abominations !
The constituencies which will be created by the bill of
of Lord Morpeth are not, it is true, the identical constituen-
cies which were destroyed by the bill of 1829. The restora-
tion, openly, of the 40s. freeholders of Ireland would have
been a step too bold—too glaringly dishonest—for even a
whig ministry to adopt. But in spirit—in effect—the sub-
stitution of a £5 rating, as the qualification, for the present
£lO franchise, is equivalent to the restoration of the free-
holders of 1829. The constituency which will spring up un-
der such a franchise—a constituency controlled by an over-
riding power in the person of the landlords, or by the still
more stringent tyranny exercised by their priesthood—is pre.
cisely that which it was sought by the bill of 1829 to replace
by an independent and respectable yeomanry ; and in reality,
therefore, the present bill contains an open and a direct
abandonment of the whole spirit of the emancipation bill,
and a glaring violation of the faith due from the British le-
gislature to the Protestants of the empire. By the passing
of this measure the last legislative restraint of Popery will be
removed ; and by the same event, then, ought Protestantism
to be enabled to stand up erect and unshackled before par-
liament and before the country, and demand that measure
of protection which the sovereign and the members of the
legislature have sworn to render to her By the passing of
this hill Popery will have attnned the full measure of her
demands in 1899, freed front the conditions upon which alone
they;were -granted; and Protestantism will, at the same
time, have no more faith to observe towards the legislature
in respect to that compact ; but is free as the winds to adopt
those measures which are the best calculated to replace her
in that strong position from which she was driven in 1829.
The conclusion, then, for which I would at present prepare
the minds of the Protestants of Great Britain, is plainly and
simply this :—A struggle
. will in all probability have to be
decided by the constituencies,in which the question will be
primarily the passing or the rejection of this bill. Prima-
rily, I repeat : such will be the object to be struggled for ;
but in reality the question at issue will be this :—" Are the
Protestants of England content to submit the pure faith, and
the sacred institutions of their fathers, to be trampled under
the feet of rampant Popery ; or will they take their stand
now, and stand fast upon the rock of the constitution—abid-
ing by the principles established at the reformation—seeking
no compromise, and permitting no compromise, but con-
tending for the truth, and for the whole truth?" This, I
repeat, will be the real matter at issue. By the agitation of
Lord Morpeth's bill the whole question of Roman Catholic
emancipation must inevitably be re-opened.
We shall be called upon to decide—not whether the parti-
cular step in the onward march of Popery shall be submitted
sto—but whether Popery herself shall be driven back to her
tarting place. We shall be called upon to consider whether,

judging from the experience of the past, the liberties of Eng-
land are secure so long as, upon every question by the deci-
sion of which the temporal interests or spiritual predominance
of the Church of Rome can be, in the most remote degree,
affected, the feelings and the wishes of the British people, as
expressed within the walls of the House of Commons, are to
be over ridden by a tyrant majority of members, representing

a Popish democracy, or, more properly, perhaps, a Popish
priesthood—alien to Great Britain in feeling, and inveterately
hostile to her religion and the social habits of her people.
To the consideration of the whole question—" Popery or no
Popery within the British legislature !—we must at length
inevitably come ; and in a future opportunity I shall endea-
vour to offer to your notice a few facts, which you will, I

trust, not deem altogether irrelevant to a proper considera-

tion of the question at issue

AN ENGLISH PROTE

3TAN T.

Lir erpool, 3d March, 1841

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