The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1838-08-10 00:00:00

CONTEMPORARY PRESS.

DR. WHALE'S LETTER.
(Front the Dublin Record. )
Ireland is certainly the most miserable country in
the world: It pains one's heart as he passes through
our streets, to see a haggard leanness in almost every
face, to meet bare legs, bare backs, and every form of
melancholy destitution, on, the right hand and on the
left. It is painful to recollect that these temporal ap-
pearances are but the fruits of the prevalence of a
dreadful system of spiritual delusion, which destroys
soul as well as body. This is all exceedingly distress=
ing, and yet perhaps it is not the most distressing ex-
perience that one who knows the height of privilege
and prosperity to which the truth as it. is in Jesus
would lift up every class of Irishmen, is compelled to
feel. No; there is an experience more poignant still.
It arises from beholding the authors of the miseries of
Ireland—the blind leaders who have bronght the peo-
ple to wallow in the ditch, assuming airs, and playing
the part—without any inconsistency either—of in-
structors to a professedly Protestant government.
Such is the part that Dr. M'Haie assumes in the long
letter which he has lately written to Lord John Russell,
and whiCh now lies before us. It is excessively bum-
bling to a true Protestant. to behold .the Protestant
heads of the state placed under circumstances in which
they can be bearded in the manner in which Lord
John Russell is here bearded by this idol priest. The
letter indicates a superfluity of naughtiness, for it is
evidently written without any definite end or aim. It
was not called forth by any particular grievance—there
was no occasion for it—it is simply the mire and dirt
thrown up by the troublecrsea of the mind of the wri-
ter, agitated and irritated, perhaps, by the slow pro-
gress made by a destructive policy in the production
of those results about which he is morbidly anxious.
Consequently, the letter is a heterogenus gatherum of
murmurings and complainings on every conceivable
subject of not merely Roman Catholic grievance but
of Roman Catholic triumph. What he has something
like a shadow of reason to be discontented with, is
very dreadfully annoying, shocking—too bad—and
the points that are somewhat in his favour do not come
up to this standard. They tolerate Protestants; they
do not instal Dr. WHale as Prelate Paramount in
Tuam : this is the gist. of the whole epistle. Here we
find lamentations about " the constabulary," about
" enormous taxes" " county cesses," " the poor laws,"
" the origin of the reformation," " the pauperism of
primitive Protestants" " the Protestant officials in the
national system of education," " Mr. Carble," " the
Archbishop of Dublin," " his errors of Romanism,"
but above all, " the church establishment" and " the
national board." These constitute a few of the items
touched upon in the rambling epistle of the Rev. Dr.
To attempt to answer such a letter would be vain. it
contains neither point nor argument. But does he
really think that the Protestant establishment will
soon disappear—that its hierarchy will soon be done
away with—that it is doomed, and that its days are
numbered ? So it would appear. Alas, that a learned
doctor should be so very far astray ! Know, Dr. Mac-
Hale, that the Holy Catholic Church of Ireland is
founded upon a rock, and the gates of hell shall not
prevail against it. It has been buffeted by the storms
of eighteen centuries, and still survives; it escaped
something more direful than the threats of modern
Popery, namely, the corruptions of ancient Popery, all
its bishops at the glorious period of the Reformation
having cast aside the errors in which the church had
become generally involved, and having returned to
primitive truth. Know you not this, Dr. WHale ?
Know you not that your church is just a modern ime
portation from apostate Rome ? And that although it
may claim the title of Catholic, because, alas! it is
sadly too prevalent, yet it is precisely on the same
principle on which we would call drunkenness and
swearing, adultery and Sabbath-breaking Catholic
practices. Your church, Doctor, is the unmitigated
curse of Ireland—it is the curse of every country
where it prevails—its universal accompaniments are
corruption and destitution. What single village in
Ireland has Popery delivered from vice or misery ?
Not one—not one in any country in the whole world;
whereas the universal results of the doctrines of the
holy church are wisdom, truth, integrity, virtue, order,
and decency—fruits which ever accompany genuine
Protestantism, and distinguish every Protestant coun-
try without exception.
Look at England, Scotland, and the north of Ire-
land. Your church, Doctor, is the unholy Catholic
and apostate Church—the long foretold Roman Apos-
tasy—that dreadful moral evil which the primitive
saints trembled at the anticipation of—pictured out to
us as a drunken, persecuting Whore—the Mother of
Harlots and abominations of the earth—an incorpora-
tion of all that is vile—every member of which bears
on his forehead a name and a number—the name
APOSTATE,
In Greek,
making exactly 666.
Is it then to be wondered at that, with such an incu-
bus upon lie Ireland Ireland is miserable ? Here is a church
which withdaws all the sanctifying influences of the
Gospel, and, at best,brings us back to a beggarly lega-
lity—to a principle which God himself has demonstra-
ted to us by a great national system of 2,000 years'
existence to be inadequate to meet the evils of the
world. The Gospel offers to men the true Christ ;
Popery gives a fiction—a wafer—an Idol—Christ-
ianity offers the Holy Spirit; Popery laughs the gift
to scorn; but gives holy water, holy .oil, holy bones,
holy candles, holy clay, &c. &c. &c.; Christianity
gifts men with the spotless robes of a Saviour's righte-
ousness ; Popery deforms them with the miserable
rags of their own. Is it any wonder, then, that Ireland
is wretched ? No ! a curse is consuming us. Our coun-
trymen allow an Apostate Church to starve their souls
—to invest them with spiritual deformity, debasing
superstitions; and God, in judgment, visits their bo-
dies with analogous and illustrative miseries—hunger
and thirst, nakedness and rags. But, for the comfort
of the learned Doctor, the days of Popery are num-
bered. It is with Babylon now just as it was of old.
Intoxicated with a temporal glory which marked but
the reprobation of the Lord, the wretched inhabitants
of that devoted city gathered themselves together to
triumph over the Church of God—they exulted in
displaying the spoils of Zion. "I have prudence !
/ have wisdom !—/ have removed the bounds of the
people, and have robbed their treasures; and I have
put down tile inhabitants like a valiant man!" was
the reflection of the stout heart of the King of Assyria
—" I shall stand for ever !" That very night the right
hand of the Lord dashed in pieces the enemy. There
is neither might, nor wisdom, nor power against the
Lord. The days of Popery are numbered. Take
notice, Doctor !.

EPITAPH IN GATESHEAD CHURCHYARD.—The body, over
which this tomb lies yet more " heavily" than Vanburgh
could have designed it, was that of one Robert Trollop
(architect of the Town Hall in Newcastle,) descended from
a line of stonemasons, who prepared it during his life. Mr.
Surtees tells us, that, according to tradition, there stood the
figure of this Robert Trollopwith his arm raised; pointing
Trollop,
,with
the Town Hall of Newcastle, with these original
lines subjoined « "
Hero lies Robert Trowlup ,

Who made yon stones roll up;
When death took his soul up,
His body filled this hole up."

*Dr. Dibdin's Northern Tour.
COUNTRY GENTLEMEN.—I would have the ancient gentry
live upon their estates, because I think they are of great use
so the agricultural population ; but I see no reason why they
thould not have enlarged culture of intellect, and emerge a
little into the world occasionally. If the quiet of the coun-
try is used only to nurse a stagnation of the finer qualities of
the mind and heart, then woe be to that quiet! Rather let
them run " into the full tide of life at Charing-cross," as
Johnson said of that noisy centricalitv. 1 was struck with
an extraordinary declaration of Wesley, as recorded in
Southey's life of that singular man. He said that he could
make least of the agriculturisti—they were a sordid set of
people, whom he could never move. lam sorry to say that
this applies equally to the stationary gentry.—Sir Egerton
Brydges.
A WESTERN HUNTER'S NOTION OF LOVE.—" I say,
Earthquake, were you ever in love ?" "Ah, Rolfe, there you
are too hard for me! I hardly know what to say about that.
I have sometimes felt qeeer. When I've seen some of your
Kentucky gals I've felt quite funny—felt as if some one was
drawing a briar over me. Now, if you call that love, I have
been in love." " Well, I think you have. Do you know
anybody that you would marry?" " I marry ? What for?
To be always toating a wife through the woods, or across the
the swamps, to keep some red skin from taking her hair off?
Fool, who ? She'll be all sorts of a gal who catches me,"
said Earthquake; "a wife is a queer thing, and getting one
is like taking varmint out of a hollow; you don't know until
you've got it in your hand what sort of a thing it is."—Daily
Democrat.
OvsTuas.—Honour and gratitude to the late Duchess of
St. Albans, who, even at her most sumptuous banrteatilinoi
variably had a little barrel of natives placed
dupon
its own, with a skilful opener by its side, and goodly slices of
brown bread and butter in its front; nor was that little nook
of the proud saloon by any means the least prolific of
" Quips and cranks, and wanton wiles,
Nods and becks, and wreathed smiles;"
awl of accompanying bursts of laughter, that consigned the
tiny molluscs to their last home with a triumphant epice-
dium. Well does the writer recollect her grace's look of
naiveté, when, in reply to the simple question of oue of her
noble guests, whether oysters could feel, she replied, " To
be sere they can—do you not hear them constantly crying
about the streets?" Of the different significations of the
verb "to cry;' our jesters have liberally availed themselves;
but even our standard serious writers, spite of the numerous
blunders it occasions, will imitate the duchess in the use of
the active instead of the passive participle. "Oh ! reform it
altogether!"—" Essay on Oysters."—New Monthly.