The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1841-03-19 00:00:00

, is intended to e
tent for the delivi

Ltion of a wa

;ne slightest hope to thi
!Plaine will ever be given 'u.l) by

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.
up the negomationa with England, as they will be left on the
4th of March, and carry them out in the same spirit—the
like tone—and without flinching from the ground assumed

ks have fallen fear

vet at t

t; it iss

and believed that United States Bank stocks will fall to 10.
To a certain extent, also, the commerce of the country
may be said to be prostrate. Many kinds of business are
perfectly stagnant ; although the little which is doing is of a
healthy character. The dry goods market is dull beyond
belief; the large foreign shippers for the spring market will
lose heavily, and in various branches
-in which English cap-
ital is largely invested, very serious losses will occur. Nor
is there much hope of any great revival of trade till after
the extra session of Congress is convened, and the measures
of the next administration promulgated ; although what the
tenor of those measures will be, the members of General
Harrison's cabinet do not themselves know yet. Business
will begin to revive in two or three months—not before—nor
even then will it go up slowly. No more sudden darts for a

year to come.
Superadded to all this, come the various troubles relating
to the boundary question, and the affair of the Caroline.
The apparent determination of the people of Lockport to
convict and hang M`Leod, will, of course, create consider-

, . .
Able sensation in England. And the correspondence be-
tween Mr. Forsyth and Mr. Fox, (particularly the angry
letters which have passed during the last week, will not help
to allay the bitter feelings of partizans on both sides of the

---- -
On the other hand, we would not have the government of
Great Britain suppose that both sides of the picture are dark.
Our internal resources are immense; our crops have been
and will be great. All the old steady merchants and banks,
who have behaved honestly, paid their debts, and stuck to
the cash system, are still making as much money as they
have any honest use for. The new cabinet will possess far

ban the one no'

And ab
good n

heavy 1

than to sell

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to the worst, we

aarehold

the fteedom wil
farther adduced

,ined ti

•time and_prudenc

up in that town, giving out a course of sermons to be
delivered by the Rev. J. Abbot, a Roman Catholic priest ;
one of which was announced in the following terms : " Tues-
day, Oct. 27th. A full refutation and exposure of the infu-
riated bigotry and fanaticism of the Rev. W. Ker, of Wood-
bastwick. His harping still on the diabolical calumnies of
the pretended idolatry, blasphemy, and apostacy of the
Chtirch of Rome, will be duly exposed," &c. On reading
this announcement; Mr. Ker, who is clerical secretary of the
Norfolk and Norwich Protestant Association, sent a letter to
Mr. Abbot, embodying in ten articles the various charges
which he had made against the Church of Rome, and chal-
lenging him to a public discussion of the points contained in
those articles. This challenge having been declined by Mr.
Abbot, a series of letters was addressed by Mr. Ker to the
Roman Catholics of Norwich ; some o;pressions in which
the Lord Bishop of Norwich felt it his duty severely to cen-
sure, in a letter to Mr. Ker, in which the bishop accuses
that gentleman of " exposing to insult and injury the Pro-
testant cause, by violence, abuse, and offensive language,"
and more particularly of " misrepresentation and exaggera-
tion." To these charges Mr. Ker replies in terms of indig-
nant remonstrance, requesting his lordship to point out " in
what particular he is guilty of misrepresentation and exag-
geration, or what language he has used not justified by Scrip-
ture and the Church of England." The bishop then says
that if Mr. Ker " cannot perceive in the general tone and
spirit of his papers anything inconsistent with the character
of a christian minister and gentleman, he (the bishop) has
little chance of convincing him of it." To this Mr. Ker
replies in terms of justly-merited indignation, accusing the
bishop of " taking the part of a Romish priest, and endea-
vouring to run down one of his own clergy for doing what he
conscientiously believes to be his sworn duty." The bishop
then points 13,1 t the following points in the letters of Mr. Ker
which he considers objectionable ; he says, Ist, you designate
the whole Ronian Catholic Church as the " very synagogue
of Satan ;" thus adopting as your own, an insulting epithet,
suitable only to a barbarous age 'of controversy. 2d, you

impute to all the priests of that religion the basest and most
degrading hypocrisy; to them you allow " no quarter ;" they
stimation not even " entitled to the compas-

g in your

ion one feels for blind leaders of the blind ;" they being

" wide awake to the gross and fatal errors of their system,
no one knows its deep iniquity half so well as they do them-
selves ; but it is their trade." 3d. you assert that their books
of devotion (you make neither exception nor qualification)
" are full of lying fables." Mr. Ker then forwarded to his
diocesan the following spirited and 'masterly letter, which 'we
will not injure by curtailment. We fancy it will be long ere
the bishop again interferes with any of his clergy in the un-
ostentatious performance of their sworn christian duties.

Woodbastwick, D 6

22d, 1840

MY LORD,—In reply to your lordship's last letter, I beg
most respectfully to say, that in my humble judgment no
rank or station, however exalted, can justify an individual in
stepping forward as the accuser of another, and then, after
staring the grounds of the accusation, refusing to hear the
defence. I should be sorry to put such a construction upon
the concluding sentence of your lordship's letter, in which
you say that you " roust decline continuing the correspond-
ence.' I trust that your lordship will recollect that it was
begun by yourself ; that very serious and painful charges
were made in your lordship's letters, such as no one of inde-
pendent mind and feeling could submit to without, at least,
attempting a vindication ; and that as your lordship has now
stated the points in which you consider me to have so griev-
ously offended, your lordship will patiently listen to my reply.
Of the parts in my pubiished papers, which you consider
most objectionable, your lordship specifies three, which I
shall notice in their order. Ist. Your lordship says, "You
designate the whole Roman Catholic Church as the " very
synagogue of Satan," thus adopting as your own an insult-
in? epithet suitable only to a barbarous age of controversy.
But I must here complain that, by separating those words
from their context, your lordship has made me to say posi-
tively what I only said hypothetically. My words were these
—" I have accused it (i. e. the Church of Rome) of holding
principles of the most atrocious cruelty, tyranny, falsehood,
blasphemy, obscenity, and apostady. These are the grave
and solemn charges which I have openly laid at the door of
this church, any one of which, if proved, is sufficient to show,
that so far from being the Church of Christ, It is the " very

synagogue of Satan.'r But, my lord, as I should not shrink
from using the words in a positive sense, I feel bound to
justify them in that sense. And first, as to the epithet itself,

which your.lordship says, is " insulting, and suitable only to
a barbarous age of controversy," can your lordship have for-
gotten, that these are the ipsissima verba of Jesus Christ
himself, twice used in the Book of Revelations ? lam bound
to believe, that this fact must have escaped your lordship's
memory ; else, 'for merely using the words of our blessed
Lord himself, you would not have accused me of adopting as
my own an' "insulting epithet, suitable only to a barbrous
age of controversy." Your lordship would not surely say,
that our Divine Redeemer made use of " insulting and un-

suitable language." This, then, is my defence, so far as the
epithet itself is concerned; it is the very language of Jesus