The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1853-04-12 00:00:00

?rs.) umni
which may t

very much al the mercy of the local executive, that is,
So that where the mayor is a dutiful
trength of his sir

thrown _
of the mayor of the plat
son of Rome, bound by all t

ty in his

religion, to do the persecuting pleasure of his priest or bishop,
the poor Christian pastor has but slender chance of a fair trial,
nor his little flock of even forbearance with their worship. It
is not supposed that the Fioperor has any personal desire to
encourage or countenanc, these persecutions; but his imperial
majesty is rather awkwardly situate with regard to the Papal
hierarchy. He is emperor by the almost universal suf-
frage of France; but by whose means did he get the
rotes? and what does he owe to the priesthood by whom
the voting urns were filled with suffrages for the empire?
This might account for the state of Protestants in France.
He appealed to their Christian feelings and their Christian
sympathy for aid in the good cause in which they were
engaged, and he was sure that such an appeal would not be
made in vain. There was a gigantic conspiracy of the powers
of Papal Rome against the liberties of England ; and, however
some of their writers might sneer at them for their bigotry,
the facts remained the same, and Rome could not deny it.

He thought, however, England had given some reason for the
belief that there was some inclination to receive the errors or
Rome, and it was owing to her own fault. She hild not per.J.
formed her high mission of spreading the knowledge of the
Scriptures to all the nations round her; for had the with all liek-
greatness shown her adherence to the religion the Bible; it
was impossible but that foreigners must have attributed the
greatness of England to her Protestantism. What, however,
had they seen? They had seen England in these latter days,
believing in her laws and her constitution that Rome had for-
feited her right to the name of Christian, and yet raising to
high places and offices of importance • members of that apos-
tacy which had been foretold in the :scriptures forbidding
diplomatic intercourse with Rome, and yet being in constant
intercourse; in every respect showing an utter disregard of
those principles which it was their duty on that occasion to
show still prevailed. He concluded, amidst cheering, by call-
ing on

The Rev. RICH D. BURGESS, who, in a lengthened andinterest-
ing speech, drew a picture of the state of religion in France,
where at the present moment Rome was crushing with a high
hand the evangelising efforts of the Protestant section of the
people. There were at the present moment 40,000 Popish
priests in France, SO bishops, more than 3,000 nunneries, and
at least a thousand fraternities of friars and similar institu-
tions ; connected with which there were hundreds and thou-
sands of persons, and which were supported by an enormous
sum of money, amounting to not less than four millions stee-
ling t The Romish power in France struck at the root of Pro-
testantism through the control of the education of the people.
Then they added to that the powers of superstition and priest-
hood, which he illustrated--first, in the case of the bishops'
charges, or, as Cardinal Wiseman calls them, Lenten pasto-
rals. One bishop, whom he quoted, laments exceedingly that
he could not obtain from the civil authorities the exhumation
of the bones of heretics buried in the cemetery, because they
polluted the ground. He says--" Why can these heretics not
be contented with the ground set aside for malefactors and cri-
minals?" The authorities fortunately had the good taste not
to accede to the request. An Archbishop says, in his charge,
that the railroads have been the instruments of the vengeance
of God upon the innkeepers, who indiscriminately gave meat
in fast days to travellers, although the Journal des Debats
reminded his Grace that the railroads had raised a new class of
innkeepers, who, in consequence of those very railroads, had
the opportunity of giving meat to an increased number of par-
ties, who travelled on fast days. He read the prefect's decree,
by which, to his own knowledge, a little Protestant chapel had,
on the 20th of last February, been prevented from being
opened for worship—a company of pens d'armes having been
sent thither to see that the worshippers did not assemble,
and to order that the words engraven on a bible in the
front of the building should be defaced—these words being
simply " Search the Scriptures." The bishop who had caused
all this to be done had likewise written a little pastoral, in
which he said—" Arrest these vagabonds who come to infect
our parishes with their obscene works," and to which he ad-
ded— "the reverend rectors will assist you with their attend-
ance, and so you will help to raise in your parish a barrier
against the demoralising influence of the pastors." He related
his personal observations in a town of the department of Cham-
pagne, where some of the inhabitants having sent for a pastor
and founded a Protestant place of worship, they assembled in
peace for a year. But this did not suit the Papal hierarchy ;
the time came for the census, and out of the 2,000 inha-
bitants 900 attached to their names the fact that they
were connected with the " Reformed Church of Christ."
On the day on which lie arrived in that town, two years ago, he
found the Protestants engaged in putting to the roof; the
chapel was now finished ' • but when the pastor went there he
was apprehended, and told by the Mayor that he had no
authority to preach, and that there were no Protestants. The
pastor and his coadjutors were tried by the law, and fined in
16 francs—only 16 francs—because in this case there were ex-
tenuating circumstances—as was always the case in French
criminal courts, even in such cases as that of Madame Lafarge,
where it was stated there were extenuating circumstances, be-
cause she cut her victim into such very small. pieces. The.
pastor and his colleague appealed to the Chief Court in
.Paris, and the result of the appeal was that the decree was
sunported, which
and the punishment of the provincial tribunal con-
firmed. This judgment was given in February last, by
it is ruled throughout the whole of France that, if they attempt
to spread the Gospel, the Protestants subject themselves to
fines and imprisonment. This was the religious equality which
was supposed, even by some of our own shrewd senators, to
exist in France, and among the rest by Mr. Richard Cobden,
who, in one of his recent pamphlets, affirmed that the most
perfect religious equality existed in France. Were Mr.
Cobden to make himself acquainted with these facts,
he would not dare, in the face of that meeting, to deny
the statement he made, that France may soon indeed
produce its Madiai, for the circumstances of France were pre-
cisely the same as those of Tuscany. The speaker related
many other interesting and most affecting incidents, from
which it appeared that, under the new Emperor, Protestant
schools and chapels were shut up—the pastors and the
People apprehended, imprisoned, and fined—the word of
God suppressed and dishonoured—and the toleration ba-
rometer ruled by the Romish ecclesiastics. His expe-
rience had told him that wherever there was a Romish
cardinal or a Popish bishop, there was no toleration.
It was on the ground more especially of this persecution, that
he appealed to them on behalf of the institution which he re-
presented. He did not want them to do more than lend their
aid to the people. He felt convinced that it was not well to do
a thing wholly for a people in such circumstances. A double
good arose from merely assisting the work ; for then the
people were still necessitated to depend upon themselves.
After a most interesting delineation of the progress of Pro-
testant truth in Italy ; and a glance at the recent increase of
the ancient Waldensian Church, the reverend gentieman fur-
stiahed a 3 yery interesting explanistion of the present war .