The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1846-05-12 00:00:00

priesthood. There were few men, however, who
thought that the temper of the times would at pre-
sent permit of our going further. The majority of
the public were wrong. They had not measured
the depth and breadth of legislative and ministerial
faithlessness. They could not see into the recesses
of the laboratory of Downing-street, or estimate the
power of the Members of our two estates to live
under the fumes emitted, and gulp down the results
of the Ministry.
We have lived to see the first experiment made
upon our endurance by the Bill of the Lord Chan-
cellor in the Upper House, and the Bill of Mr.
Watson in the Lower, both having for their object
the further removal of the landmarks of Protest-
antism, as the distinguishing feature of the British
Constitution. We will not say that we were quite
prepared for either of these measures. We should
not have been surprised to see some Member of the
Ministry, inflicted by the cacoethes of conciliation,
proposing the repeal of a few obsolete statutes,
directed against members of the Roman Catholic
religion in times when our fathers were more ear-
nestly Protestant and jealous of the truth than we
appear to be in the present day. But we certainly
did not expect to see the introduction of the Bulls
of the Pope into this country made legal, or the
order of the Jesuits, which has been denounced as
a pest by every government in Europe, recognised
in this once Protestant country. Our Legislators,
however, it seems, are more forbearing towards
this order, and more forgetful of past events con-
nected with its history, than ourselves or the ma-
jority of the public. In the debate on the bill, in
the House of Commons, on Wednesday last, we
heard the Jesuits styled the purest of the most
spotless. They were learned and calumniated
men, upon whom the House was challenged
to fix the odium of a single crime. Yet where was
the professing Protestant member found to accept
boldly so impudent. a challenge -•to scatter to the
winds, by a reference to the page. of history, which
is blackened by the crimes of the order, such au-
dacious denials of 'fact, and misrepresentations of
character ? There was none such found ; there was
only a hesitating and hinting demurrer where there
should have been a bold and indignant assertion of
the truth, which nine-tenths of the world would
recognise.

Alas, how fallen off is this House of Commons
of the present day, from the faith and the courageous
assertion of that faith of former Parliaments ! The
manliness of Protestantism is gone. It shrinks
now from the expression of its convictions, lest it
should be twitted with the crime of " illiberality"
or "intolerance." It dare not denounce what even
Roman Catholic popes, priests, and monarchs,
have denounced. It dare not throw a stone against
the order of Jesus, lest it should alight upon the
head of a Jesuit in disguise in the shape of a Ca-
binet Minister, or a professing Protestant member !
The Jesuits are a learned and a pious order—so
runs the cant of the day in Parliament and out of
it;—an order devoting itself exclusively to good
works,—to the spread of education, to the prose-
lytism of the heathen, to the enlargement of the
boundaries of Christ's fold, and to nothing secu-
lar—nothing
besides. They walk our streets hum-
bly fixed on the ground, and not a trace of spiritual
or temporal pride to be discerned in their features
or their carriage. But is it so in lands where the
Church of Rome is more rampant than it is as yet
in our own land ? We quote the following from
the Paris correspondent of the Cheltenham Looker-
on as our reply :--
" As the Jesuits are forbidden in France, I know not
how it happened (especial:), as their own recent acts have
lately revived the law which had slumbered in their fa-
vour), hut, happen as it might, the fact is, a Jesuit
preached to the Queen, the royal family, and the densest
multitude that ever crowned St. Ruch. Making allow-
ance for angry feelings at the law revived against his or-
der, for the death-blow struck by " Mich-let" against
the undue influence of priesthood, concede all that is pos-
sible, and it still will be difficult to believe that this Jesuit
glanced from his pu!pit at politics, and insinuated, if not
spoke against, the reigning family ! The following Sun-
day, emboldened, I presume, by impunity, or lashed to
wrath by angry meditation, he dared to speak of the
reigning family as the origin of evils, as a curse, rather
than a blessing, to the land. But, said he, who was the
father of the King who reigns? Was it not one who
styled himself 'EgaliteP and can it be wondered that the
son of such a man should follow the footsteps (suivi les
vas) of such a father!!! The Queen sat in silence till
the set mon ended. Insult, gross and unprovoked, had been
offered to one dearer than her life ; to one whose fair
1 fame is to her more infinitely pricious than the crown
I she shares. She sent for the Cure, and told him
that ' St. Roch could be her palish church no more.'
The Cure, as may be supposed, was ' desol6,'—penitent,
and grieved beyond measure. Ile assured her Majesty
that the Jesuit should never be suffered to preach again. '

This is surely significant enough with respect to
the dangerous character and the insolence of this
order. The following, which we quote from the
Morning Herald, is equally to the point :
The Journal de Rouen publishes the following letter
from a Paris correspondent on the subject of an address
to the King of the French, on his recent escape from
assassination : _

" The Kine had received, the evening before his ft!te,
the Archbishop of Paris, who came to pay him the custo-
mary compliments. The archbishop's addre,s was little
enough in conformity with the necessities of the moment
—with the turn of men's minds—with the ideas of the
Court—and even so unsuitable in form, as to astonish all
who heard it. The King was much offended ; and during
the evening, in the midst of his family and household, he
seven,' times manifested his displeasure and his emo-
tion."

Surely when an order cannot repress its arrogance
in the presence of a crowned head, on an occasion
such as that which called the Archbishop of Paris
into the presence of Louis Philippe, viz., to con-
gratulate him on his escape from the bullet of his
assassin, it is not likely to continue very forbearing
and humble in a country where its members are
petted and fawned upon as " learned men," " ca-
lumniated men," " pious and persecuted men,"
and where they see that every fresh claim is met
with an increased measure of concilia.ion, and that

they have only to ask a little to receive more than
the amount of their demand.

We have been most gratified to observe the cor-
diality, with which the proposition of Mr. Procter
to appropriate the Wavertree-hall estate, purchased
by the Council as the site of a new Prison, to the
far more fitting purpose of providing, in conjunction
with the Botanic Gardens, a park for the recreation
of the inhabitants has been received. We shall thus,
at a cheap rate too, provide for the keeping open
permanently of one lung to the eastward of this
rapidly increasing town. We shall prevent this
beautiful portion of our out-skirts from being over-
run and deformed by those jerry-built erections
which, though when first run up with their goodly
outsides and their lath and plaster internal arrange-
ments bear the appearance of decent dwellings, and
are eagerly occupied with respectable tenants, be-
come in a very brief space dilapidated nests of dis-
ease and fertile disseminators of impurity. Inde-
pendent of the uses of such a park as might be
formed in this locality, its being secured by parties
who would lay down a stringent building plan, in
case of a portion of it being appropriated for build-
ing purposes, would be a boon of no ordinary
value; and the removal of the prison, with which
the neighbourhood was threatened to be injured, to
some other available site is an event for which the
inhabitants of the neighbourhood will be duly
grateful.
In connexion with this subject the suggestion of
Mr. John Stewart that, in the laying out of this
property for the use proposed, some broad and com-
prehensive plan should be devised, by which it
might be worked along with the Newsham-ball estate,
purchased last year, and a broad belt of open space
secured round the Lancashire outskirts of the
town was excellent. We trust it is not yet too late for
Mr. Stewart's views to be carried out. With the
Prince's Park and the Dingle at the south end of the
town, the Wavertree property and the Botanic Gar-
dens, the Newsham-hall estate on the east, we are al-
ready more than half provided for the wants of the
town in this respect. The only further desideratum
would he a similar property to be laid out as a park
for the northern end of the town, which might pro-
bably be found somewhere at the back of Everton
and Kirkdale, provided with which it could scarcely
be said that the town is unprovided with ventilating
outlets, or the inhabitants with places of healthful
recreation and enjoyment. By laying out such laws
judiciously for the erection upon a portion of them
of Villa residenees, handsome streets or squares,
the venture on the part of the Corporation would
not, we conceive, be a costly or a dangerous one.
Had some such effort been made ten or fifteen
years ago, the Corporation would at the present
time have been in the receipt of a large surplus of
interest upon their investment; the outskirts of the
town would not have presented their present strug-
gling and unsightly appearance, and the health of
the population would have been materially preserved.
The effort may, however, be made safely even yet.
Liverpool is not doomed to see her rapid extension
checked.