The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1854-01-17 00:00:00

TO THE EDITOR OP THE LIVERPOOL STA.IfDA.IID.

Sts,—l was very pleased to notice the able and inde-
pendent manner in which yon exposed the many diffi-
culties connected with the adoption of a system of decimal
currency, and denounce what I cannot but characterise as
a delusion. There are one or two other points, however,
to which I beg permission to call attention through your
columns. It has already been shown that fixing the pre-
sent pound sterling as the standard of unity would involve
many difficulties with the present penny, which enters so
largely into the every-day transactions of life ; and, per-
haps, not less with the shilling, which constitutes the
price of admission to so many entertainments. Part of
this difficulty is proposed to be surmounted by making
ten of our present pence into one coin, and ten of those
into another. This will secure the penny in its position,
but multiply the other evils almost indefinitely. By
making a hundred pence into our new pound, the national
debt would be nominally raised into about eighteen hun-
dred millions ; taxes and duties would be more than no-
minally doubled ; and in order to render comparisons of
increase and decrease at all intelligible, new calculations
would require to be made of all previous monetary records,
involving an amount of arithmetical labour far surpassing
all that can be saved by adopting the new method. If
you retain the pound, you ruin the usefulness of the penny
either to the payer or the payee : and if you retain the
penny, you spoil the pound, and multiply the evil.
I quite agree with your remarks as to the impractica-
bility of a system of decimal currency in combination with
our present scales of weights and measures ; and this al-
teration would involve even greater difficulties than those
connected with the currency, because divisions are not so
easily made ; and they would interfere with the well-
accustomed modes of those who would not readily learn
any new system. The only answer to all this is a refer-
ence to France and the United States of America ; but
neither of them is a case in point. In neither case had
the promulgators to deal with the settled habits and
usages of the people of an old country. In the one case
every thing old had been destroyed by the demon of revo-
lution ; in the other it was a new people, with every thing
before them, much to learn, and little or nothing to forget.
It would be, indeed, a retrograde step for the intelligence
of Britain to take a lesson from such sources ; and while
I have confidence that our legislature will display more
wisdom than seems to have emanated from the provincial
demonstrations of the new lights, I quite coincide in your
view that an act of parliament for this purpose would be
as inoperative as that which unsuccessfully attempted to
enforce an uniformity of weights and measures. In the
dearth of political agitation, it is, perhaps, an innocent
subject for discussion, but before any step is seriously
taken, it is to be hoped that our rulers will be guided a
little more by COMMON SENSE.
Liverpool, January 13th, 1851,

WARNING TO PROTESTANT PARENTS.

TO THE EDITOR OP THB LIVERPOOL STNADARD.

Sri—You will oblige by inserting in your truly Protes-
tant paper the following statement of facts :
A person who I supposed to be a Priest, but who, as it
proves, disclaims all title to such a high calling, and styles
himself a Monk, on Monday last accosted a little Protes-
tant boy, a member of St. Paul's Sunday School, as he
was attending to his business in a certain place, which I
need not now mention. He asked him, in the course of
the conversation if he could prove the Bible to be the
Word of God, wishing, of course, to prove the necessity
of the authority of the Church. For this the lad very
cleverly at once replied, that the dispersion and present
state of the Jews proved it, and referred him to Lev. xxvi.
chap. 33 v. The Monk, who desired to pervert him to the
faith of the apostate Church of Rome, was thrown a little
aback, and covered his confusion by applauding him. At
the close of this interesting conversation, he requested the
boy to call on him at his residence, and to bring a friend
with him, when he would talk more freely with him, stat-
ing, at the same time, that he would not be long in Liver-
pool. The Monk and his fellow missionary seem to me
some of the alumni of that college, Maynooth, which has
produced hitherto such promising sons. A friend, who
felt interested in the boy, accompanied him on Tuesday
evening to the Monk's lodgings, and said that he came, as
he understood from the boy he was told to bring some
friend with him. The Monk seemed a little confounded,
poked the fire very hard, and soon found that he had
caught a tartar. The result will, I trust, keep him quiet,
and make him less free in his invitations. I mention the
matter as a warning to Protestant parents to guard their
children. How serious might the matter be, if a number
of youths were bribed,,or induced, by some means, to
attend on Priests at their houses or lodgings to receive
instruction • and when we remember the teaching of the
Church of Rome, that children may disobey their parents
—take religious vows upon them, when they deem it their
duty, and there are so many nunneries and Popish prisons
in the land,—can we, Protestants, be too careful in watch-
ing our children that they fall not into the paths of the
destroyer—that they be not seduced from " the faith once
delivered to the saints."—l am, Sir, yours, &c.

A TEACHER AT ST. PAUL'S SUNDAY SCHOOL.
Liverpool, 14th Jan., 1851.

EDUCATION FOR THE BRITISH COLONIES.

TO THE EDITOR OP TUE LIVERPOOL STANDARD.
" Ducit amor patrin, et amor hamani generic."
Sin,—At the present time, with the prospect of war
before us, and innumerable dangers looming in the future;
with men busy reading the signs of the times," and
foretelling the downfall of the Crescent and its followers ;
when the great king of the North is to give it its death-
blow, and to work mischief to ourselves ; when he has
already stirred up the weak and effeminate representative
of a once grand empire to menace our Eastern possessions ;
and prognosticators, who can look out as dearly upon 1880
as they can upon the present day, already tell us that
when that day arrives we will no longer behold the red
cross banner of our country waving from the ramparts of
the cities of Central Asia, for our power will no longer be
felt there ;—when all these things combined have excited
the public mind, and kept it on the stretch, for a con-
siderable time, I deem it but right, sir, to call your at-
tention, and that of your readers, to the way in which I
think we might bind our colonies to England more
strongly than they ever have been.
The plan. I can scarcely call a new one, for I have en-
tertained it for a considerable time now ; and communi-
cated with the Secretary of State for the colonies, and the
leading members of the Cabinet, and found them favour-
able to it. Indeed, it is one that all classes in the com-
munity are deeply interested in; inasmuch as they mostly
have some friends who have emigrated to our possessions,
or are connected with them in trade. Thus the relations
of affinity, and the powerful one of commercial interest,
bind most of us to the colonies. Persons of intelligence,
acquainted with the intellectual progress of the nation,
and how intelligence has been diffused among the people,
know that immense strides have been made since we had
national functionaries appointed to watch over and pro-
mote the instruction of the people. The same result has
followed in the sister country, Ireland. Commodious
schools have arisen over the length and breadth of the
land, and the course of instruction greatly raised too.
That the colonies should be put upon the same footing as
the parent islands, in this respect, is now evident. It
only needs to be put before the mind to produce convic-
tion. A Board of Education is wanted for the Colonies.
England has the Committee of Privy Council on Educa-
tion, and Ireland has the National Board ; while Scot-
land has the Assembly's Committee : yet we have no such
body for the colonies. But at this era of the world we
ought to have. With the examples before us of how the
Committee of Council has benefited England, and the
National Board Ireland, let us not shut our eyes to the
way such a body would benefit the colonies. Benevolent
persons exist in all our colonies, who would gladly give
their assistance to the spreading of knowledge around
them, if they had a guiding power to direct them, such
as I have pointed out. Without such a directing power
they may waste their goodness of soul on the great desert
of heathendom.
The stationary character of the people in our Eastern
possessions, when left to themselves, is well known.
The Brahmin priesthood have enclosed their minds in
net-work of dark superstition, which can only be broke
through—humanly speaking—by education. A know-
ledge of the physical sciences is necessary to acquaint
them with the objects around them; and a correct know-
ledge of them would go far to destroy their Feticism and
idolatry. We- know that the lotus, cow, flanges, are
objects of idolatry and veneration among them. Their
stone idols are innumerable ; their name is Legion, and
they have paid the most abject veneration to them for
ages. A little light is breaking upon them, thank God,
but it is only like the crimson streaks that precede the
dawn, or the starlight that illumes the night.
No Englishman, with the least patriotism, can range his
eye over a map of the world, and then turn inward and
realise in conception the varied and brilliant scenes which
the dependencies of our country present, without feeling a
glow of warmth in his breast at the prospect. Cold and
sorrow-blighted must his heart be indeed, and dead his
spirit to moral and religious things, if he feels not an awe
at the duties and responsibilities which our colonial
empire lays upon England. No other country at the
present time can at all compare with Britain for colonies.
The colonial empire of France in 1792 was a respectable
rival, but the revolution lost it for her. In the west she
lost St. Domingo ; in the east herself and allies lost the
Cape, the Isle of Bourbon, the Isle of France, Java, and
the Malaccas I while on the continent of liindoetan she

had her force on the Jumna subdued by Lord Lake,
and her influence over the whole continent passed away.
When she lost her North American colonies, she sunk as
a naval power, for she.lost her best nursery for hardy
seamen in the great waters belonging to those colonies.
Spain, too, had a magnificent colonial empire—regions
that the imagination still sees surrounded by a glittering
halo of golden glory—famed alike in poesy and historic
tale. But where are they now ? They are no longer
linked to the crown of Spain. The connexion between
her and them has been dissolved, and she has in conse-
quence sunk to a second or third rate power in the councils
of nations. But in the day when she had her South
American colonies, and her viceroys reigned over Mexico
and Peru, this was not the case. She then held up her
head among the nations of Europe,—second to none for
power and importance. Thoughtful men who ponder
these things will desire our own great dependencies more
securely bound to us than they are at present. They will
desire to see them bound to us by some of those potent
mental ties which are stronger than merely commercial
ones. If we pour into the minds of our colonists the
charms of learning in early youth, when the mind is un-
occupied, and young brilliant hope sheds its lights upon
the path of life lying untrodden before them, we will bind
them to us more strongly than by any other ties. Material
ties become loose—'tis their nature to shift and change ;
and a great colony bound only by them, and no other, may
snap the chain at any time they choose. History affords
us many lessons of this kind, and we ought to profit by
them, for it was written for our instruction and reproof,
to make us wise in worldly matters, as truly as the Word
of Truth was to make us wise unto salvation, and we ought
to profit by them. Colonies are easily lost to a country,
and it must sink in importance in consequence. The great
powers will afterwards look down upon it and degrade it
in their councils. Robbed of our colonies, what would
England be to the rest of the world ? Not what she is at
present—the arbiter of the nations of the earth. Our
colonies are so widely scattered throughout the world that
it has been truly said " that the sun never sets upon
them, but shines, continuAlly throwing down floods of
light upon them." Far as the breeze extends and ocean
rolls they may be surveyed, and they contain within them
all the different races of mankind into which philosophers
have divided the human race. In every quarter of the
world, whether in the eastern or western hemispheres,
large tracts of country, peopled by immense multitudes,
whose weal or woe, in a great measure, must depend on
how England behaves towards them, are colonists of this
country. Our duties towards them are many, our respon-
sibilities very great.
These considerations make the question of, how can we
extend education to our colonies, one of vital and thrilling
interest to us. By retaining our dependencies we can
only fulfil our mission to the nations for good ; if lost to
us it would be impossible for us to do so. The East now
gazes anxiously towards us for both light and liberty,
while the West offers abundant homes for our race.
Africa, alas is friendless in the world if we turn our faces
away from her; the Philistine nations of the earth would
then make her their prey. Interests dearer and more
precious than those of profits and property—treasures
nobler far than those of rubies and gold —are mixed up
with this question ; the wealth of the mind, the treasures
of the heart, and the riches of the soul belong to it, and
these interests, if rightly promoted, will gain for thousands
an eternal inheritance in the mansions of heaven, where
the weary will have rest, and sorrow and sighing cannot
come. By promoting them we will be making His ways
known who bath ever dealt friendly and mercifully with
this country and its people. He who hath been our shield
and buckler when all other nations were overthrown.
Who bath, adopting the language of the Psalmist, looked
upon this country and its people as fairer than the rest
of the nations of the earth; and seemed to have said to
us, " Good luck have ye with your honour, ride on accord-
ing to your worship and renown; for in the day of your
trial your right hand shall teach you terrible things, as
they did your enemies in the day of battle, when they
struck them down at Waterloo and Trafalgar." We may
yet have to gird our swords upon our thighs, and go forth
to chastise the Philistine nations of the earth. If we
perform all our duties we may go forth, like a righteous
man who hath no sting on his conscience, and meet any
enemy without fear, remembering that—" Thrice is he
armed who hath his quarrel just." Our colonial policy,
hitherto, has never tended to run them into the parent's
islands—to dovetail them, so to speak, into one another.
Material interests have been the only connection that our
legislatures have bound them to us by. Some right-
minded persons have exerted themselves to promote other
interests, and good has followed their labours ; but
nationally, imperially, we have fallen far, very far, short
of our duty. To value our possessions on account of the
high and lasting ties of the mind and soul has not been
our aim ; a gross materialism has taken hold upon the
spirit of the age; but, we may depend upon it, that by
valueing our colonies on account of the interests of the
mind we would be binding them more strongly to us than
in any other way ; and we would strike those strings of
human nature which vibrate so deeply through the soul,
and have in all ages, when struck, produced such great
results, and made the history of the world so crowded
with events.

Our foreign dependencies are the most brilliant gems
in the great coronet of our national glory ; other nations
sigh for what we already possess, and Russia seems bent
upon doing wrong, simply to acquire more provinces.
Napoleon Bonaparte, in a hour of his greatest triumph,
when his proud heart swelled within him, said to his
Marshals and those around him, as thousands of Austrian
captives piled their arms at his feet,—" Gentlemen, this is
all well ; but I must have greater things than these. I
want ' ships, colonies, and commerce. The possession
of colonies was his great aim ; and with them he would
ivavn FtPenrPa of neef,saa;ty., bath al,epo and oornirrnovoo.
What he wanted, when Europe might be said to lay at
his feet, we now possess, and God grant that we may do
right by them, and thus fulfil our mission to the next of
mankind.

I have deemed it but right to preface the subject of
Colonial Education with the foregoing remarks. I will
(D.V.) discuss the question more at length in your next
publication; and for the present, subscribe myself

Your obedient servant, -
Liverpool, Jan. 13th, 1854. JAMES LISTER.