The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1849-11-01 00:00:00

PII IL EIARMONIC CONCERT.

MR. BRIGHT ON IRELAND

The Manchester Financial and Parliamentary Reform
Association held the first of their meetings for the winter
a few evenings ago, at the Free Trade Hall. The orator
of the occasion was friend Bright, and his elemience
seems to have exhausted itself on Ireland, alleece the
worthy quaker has recently arrived, primed with statisties
relative to landlordism and protestantism, for the edifi-
cation of his compeers in the next parliamentary cam-
paign. The burthen of Mr. Bright's song at. the Man-
chester meeting was of course to old and- oft-repeated
tunes, nevertheless, the reader and listener who stop
to consider, at certain stages of the oration who it is that
holds forth, and to reflect on all the circumstances attend-
ing quakerism, with the peculiarity of its dogmas, must
feel some surprise at the bias its hopeful son Bright betrays
for Popery. In reply to the hypothetical objection of the
presence of " something in the Catholic religion which
makes it impossibleforany peopleto be prosperous wit'i it,"
Mr. Bright points triumphantly to Belgium and Lam-
hardy, and asks it' the people of those countries are not of
the same religion as the Irish. We are not well enough ac-
quainted with the condition of the peasantry of these coun-
tries to deny that the demoralizing tendencies of supersti-
tion and idolatry, evinced wherever these causes exist, are
absent in these special kingdoms. But granting (which we
by no means can on Brother Bright's authority), that in
Belgium and Lombardy Popery way be seen instigating
industry, encouraging the arts, and developing geneeally
the intelligence and capacities of its votaries, we are of
opinion that the position has been maintained after a very
negative fashion. What ! could the insignificant terri-
tories of Belgium and Lombardy only be indicated as the
bright spots on the face of the Catholic: continent ?
What of Spain, Italy, France, &c. ? Should we not
rather account for the misery we see amongst the Irish
peasantry by causes which we know approximate the
peasantry of two-thirds of Europe to their condition, than
believe that their demoralizing superstition is not the
°right of the evil, because the same religion is professed
by two comparatively small kingdoms, the subjects of
Which are more prosperous than the Irish people ? Mr.
Bright defies the imputatiaii of " Special pleadings."
But apart from the weakness of the position, another
consideration arises, and that is the coasistencv of a mem-
ber of the Society of Friends advocating the religion of the
Pope, for the positive defouce of that religion, undertaken.
by Mr. Bright, is certainly tantamount to a vindication of
its tenets. Mr. Bright too, in aiming a weapon at land-
lordism, obviously attempts mischief at Protestantism.
Does he for„ et that to Protestantism his precious sect owe
their existence and welfare, and though the Church may
regard the Quakers rather as an excrescence than a healthy
limb, still she has, in accordance with her mild rule, borne
with the vagaries of the latter, hoping by indulgence
to absorb the " proud flesh" into the sound body, ra-
ther than to extirpate or destroy ? If Mr. Bright
think anything at all of his religious faith it must be to
him a consideration of paramount importance ; and if so,
_where is his consistency, we repeat, in singing paeans to
Popery, which would take very decided measures with
such schismatics as the Quakers. Under Protestant
ascendancy the Quakers have grown up a wealthy society,
of whose wealth, indeed, Mr. Bright is no inapt represen-
tative. They could never have existed under Popish
sway ; or if toleration had been extended, it would have
been so limited that they must have continued a despised
and persecuted sect.
Ingratitude is one of the basest crimes ; but Mr.
Bright's offence i* that and something worse; the prais-
ing of a malignant enemy, from whose clutches he con-
ceives distance renders him safe, because that enemy
happens to be the implacable foe of the persons who fos-
tered the sect to which
_he belongs, but which chooses to
regard she s.iurce from which it springs with malice and
an uncharitableness.

Mr. Bright, in his speech. r,futes alss another hypo-
thetisal o'ojection to the probability of the Irish becoming t
a prosperoui people, under a congenial form of govern-
ment ; and that is the obj"ction of race—" that you can •
Make-nothing of them." This oki..etion, corjaintly with
the one already dilated on, he meets by instancing the
success which attends the Irish in America and elsewhere.
Now, we believe in both these causi.,s—i hat of religion and
that of race—the former is certainly infinitely the more
depressing ; and this is proved in the very instances ad-
duced by Mr. Bright to show the reverse. When the Irish
emigrant leaves his land of ignorance and mendicancy, and
lands on the shores of England and America, he assumes
almost a new nature; he is surrounded with the examples
of industry and order, and, from necessity, is taken in and
becomes a part of the novel system. His native indolence
and Celtic inaptness in this mode is reproved and tutored,
and he is henefitted by the influences under which he
acts. Because the Celt, when transplanted, is susceptible
of moral elevation, is it to be inferred that the same
elevation can be accomplished in the mass at home?
The difference of the cases is obvious. In Ireland, the
peasantry, whether from the instincts of race, n'r from
other muses, the growth of ages,—and it matters not
which he the catee, the consequences are identical,—the
popuhtion are sunk in indolence, devoid even of the
energies to turn the scanty means of subsist, nee which
they., see around them to the best advantage; where
thena is means there is extravagance and. waste, where
the former does not exist there is squalor and despond-
ing,7that is the character of the people.. If we see them
.proskrnus in the United States, .we see. them um?, r the
favourable aspect working up to the example of :in intlu-
trions nation, and surely it is no argument of the excellence
of their religion because the same degree- of misery does
not attend them in that new 100-:ion. 'flue they are Ca-
tholics sill, but not so the country they have chosen
their home, as a fraction of the populati,jl t livy will nee,
sarihy share iii the general pro,t,it-r ; the dvt,-,,,:csi,;ic;
of the country are, in fact. proti'staiit, like a iz;and. :sir.
Bridir, to hay.: illti.tratesl poi;t. of his argitii•fit,

si oia have skew!, tim coutktri, in which Li,.

of Irish paph,try fir,. to I.e seen to such wcre
Roman Cathn!ic ecainrries ; as the *ez.v,c shim!, the in.
Atances go rathrr to refute than to sup,.or argunc..rt.
The Irish erni&rant does not have i, s tow.t.y n.
home in the enhghtet.e.l eountries of lkiniErsitly and B
gium, but in her,tical England and Aitu-,riea, when.. his
prosperity—if prisperity he has—is not Owing, as Mr.
B.ir.:ht would have it, to his own extraordinary energy,
and the elevating influence of his idolatrous faith, hut to
the fact of his bring in a great nieasuce freed from this
last fatal power, and bring warped into a system by which
unwittingly he is benefited.

LOLA MONTES Assemblee Nolionale
gives another letter from its correspondent at Barcelona
respecting Lola Montes. It is dated the 20th, and is as
follows :—" My previsions are realized; the husband of
Lola Montes, forty-eight hours after his departure, wrote
to her from Mataro, imploring pardon. He besought her
to allow him to return to her feet. He terminated his
epistle thus :---` If you have ever to complain of me show
me this letter, and it nill bo your talisonm.' Mrs. Heald
set out next day by the railway, and some hours after
brought baCk Mr. Heald. According to what he states,
he declares that others persuaded him to depart, but
scarcely had he been 'separated from his wife when be
dvsired to return ; three times he attempted to escape on
the road, but too good a watch was kept over him. At
last, when he arrived at Mataro, he refused to go any
further, and then wrote her the letter alluded to above.
When returned to his wife, he complained to her of all
those who had persuaded hint to break his chain. Mrs.
Heald is in the greatest anger; her eyes dart fire ; and if
ever she meets with those who wanted to separate her
husband from her, I do not know what may not happen.
It is said that she-is 'about to publish a statement of her
late adventures."

May I beg the favour of your forwarding this letter to Mr.
Ho;me's Committee forthwith, with a request that, if it be
their intention again to publish the correspondence appearing
in the Standard, they will in fairness publish this explanation
also.

Rev. W. Pollock.

Yours sithfolly,
J. H. GREGORY,
Secretary to Mr. Jones's Committee.

51,;!toJney-street, October 30th, 1849.
My Dr;AR SIR,
I have ju A received youltiblsor, and as amendment upon
the cours' proposed by you—ififf?ealitiuding*rrazraph, I sug-
gest to you the indepenib-nt publication of it with this reply.
I am really unable to see how toy correspondence with
Mr. Holme can be understood to cast the slightest reflection
on your motives or conduct. Upon the one hand, I have dis-
tinctly stated more than once that 1 promised•my, vote to Mr.
Jones. in-entire ignorance that Mr. Holme was in the field ; so
that you could not have " canvassed against" him, or at-
tempted in any way to injure him in my estimation. His name
was never named by you. And on the other hand, lest any
person should set down this silence on your part to an un-
worthy motive, I stated in my second letter, (when I now found
that my correspondence was likely to become public.) that you
were a gentleman "above all concealments," and that you un-
questionably "supposed me to be in possession of all the cir-
cumstances of the contest."

To the account which you give of our interview I unreservedly
subscribe. You came to me not to canvass me, but upon A.
matter of business, and when the matter of my vote was intro-
duced, it was precisely as you have stated. No man could
have dealt with another in a more candid and straightforward
way than you with me. When I promised you my vote for
Mr. Jones, it was not for any interest I felt in municipal
affairs, but because you hat asked it, and in order to show the
estimation in which I held you; and that estimation is by no
means diminished by anything which has since transpired.
1 was sure you were wholly incapable of having brought Dr.
M'Neile's name so unfairly before the public.
Believe me, my dear Sir, with great cordiality,
Your very true and faithful •
WY M. rou.ocK.
J. H. Gregory, Esq.