The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1847-12-21 00:00:00

)ng as persons within th

mum actinowieugeu a spiritual subjection Lv
Some; but, believing that the oath was never intended
or understood to express more than that by the laws and
constitution of the realm, no foreign prince, person,
prelate, state, or potentate bath or ought to have any ju-
Indiction, power, superiority, pre-eminence, or authority,
ecclesiastical or spiritual, within this realm,' and that it
was originally designed to keep the legislature, magistrates,
and officers of state constantly in mind of the separation
from the papal authority that had then been recently ef-
fected, and of the policy that should be thencefor'-
adhered to, I did not hesitate as long as that -

he see o

the
maintained, to comply witlithe requirement of
the law by t-'

ng the oati

The provisions of the so-called Catholic Relief
Bill, he says, did not appear to him to be in viola-
tion of the oath, inasmuch as, whilst admitting
members of the Church of Rome to increased civil
privileges, it was accompanied by the imposition
upon them of the most solemn obligation to ab-
stain from any acts by which the Protestant church
might be disturbed, or weakened, and by the re-
enactment of penalties against the unauthorized

assumption of ecclesiastical titles, and by enact-
ments for the suppression of the Jesuits, and other
religious orders of the Church of Rome.

" The case, however, h
1844, the Charitable Bequi
act the ecclesiastical ranks

me very different when, in

lions in Ireland of persons in holy order
of Rome are distir
is them as such I

tired

f the Church

eessors in continued succession, conformably with the
usages and discipline of the Church of Rome. It there-
fore appears to me that it cannot be affirmed as a fact,
that no foreign person or prelate hath any authority
ecclesiastical or spiritual, within the realm : for the eccl
iriastical authority

Parliament in the course of the
tooth Bill in 1845, when I challenged
LI-, however, hearing anything in the
lake the opinion I had adopted.' "
See Hansard's Debates on the 2d and 3d readings of the
Xaynooth Bill.)
Thenceforward Lord Clanc

not only the r

actual force of law.
fully stated in my ph
debates on the Maya
contradiction withou
-1-

These opinions I have reiii—inou;

ty could not, with
it, however, occurred to

his
him that he might avail himself of the t
that prescribed by the Act 10th Geo. IV. Chap. 7,
which, whilst it releases from their disability those
who conscientiously objected to take the oath of
supremacy, at the same time binds them to the
most faithful allegiance to the Sovereign, and prac-
tically to the conservation of the Protestant religion
and Protestant government. The oath of 10th
Geo. IV. Chap. 7, however, was designed specially
for persons professing the Roman Catholic Religion ;
and the question arose with him,—how were the
terms Roman Catholic religion to be understood

Rome, and belief in tho.se traditions which the Pro-
testant churches have repudiated as being contrary
to Scripture ? The conclusion to which he came
was that, the Church of Rome, having by the adop-
tion of these traditions, become a dissenting church,
had no right to the term "Catholic" at all; and
the Act of Parliament styling that church " Roman
Catholic" could not be held correctly to describe

former statutes ref

professing t
Rome, the p

erred to as a Popish Church,
)plied to a church

v be E

3e religion

f the early Christians at
'aith, he remarked,

S of whos

. .
"St. Paul has handed down to us in the undying words
of his inspired epistle, and those who hold it, as every
member of the church of England must do, may be there-
fore said to profess the Roman Catholic religion, certainly
the only Catholic religion which can with propriety be
denominated Roman." _ _ _

There is some little obscurity here, mixed up
with much truth. The obscurity is caused by the
concession—an unthanked-for one—madeto Popery
by our legislators in modern days, in conceding to
it any right to the use of the term `• Catholic" at all.
The early Christians at Rome had no wish to be
)3poken of as a Roman Catholic Church; and the
present Romish Church has no right to be styled
„Roman Catholic, which is indeed a contradiction
in terms, the words "particularly universal" are
just as appropriate. Moreover, we can scarcely
approve of his Lordship's step in attempting to
warp the known and original meaning of the word-
ing of the act to his own purpose, although we are
compelled to admit that his scruples, as to the oath
of supremacy, are fully justified.
His lordship states that he has written the letter,

from which we have quoted, hastily ; and perhaps
in seeking to adopt the Act 10th of George IV. he
has acted without sufficient consideration of the
_subject. It is clear however, and we must thank
him for it, that he has started an important ques-
tion for the consideration of the Protestant public
11,nd Protestant Legislators, who will have to take
hereafter an oath, the terms of which they cannot
substantiate.

THE warehouse owners of Liverpool are really a
most unfortunate body. Do what they will, it
would seem to be an impossibility for them to do
right. Sacrifice what they may, of their own inte-
-rests, they fail in satisfying those even for whose
-advantage they most earnestly strive. For years
*bey have been objects of constant abuse to the
.Whig Radical portion of the community and to its
press. Paying a larger proportion of rates than
any other class in the borough, they have, never-
theless, been accused of selfishness in requiring
'that they should not be sacrificed to advance the
interests of parties paying nothing like the same
amount towards the public burthens. Their oppo-
;salon to the erection of dock warehouses, to be
,conducted by a public body, with funds belonging
to a public trust, and erected upon property pur-
chased by that trust at half the price which would
have been realized had it been offered to open corn-
'petition, was set down as the prompting of avarice
-and of a longing for monopoly. The interests of
important trades sought to be engrossed by that
public body—the rights of coopers, porters, and
others, infringed upon by the advocates of dock
warehouses, were urged by them with great reason
and shew of justice; but the reply was, a reference
to their fondness for warehouse rates, and a more
than insinuation that self, self, was at the bottom
of it all.

Within the past week, however, it has been dis-
covered that there are times in which the most
discordant materials may work together. The
Dock Committee brought forward a bill, in accor-
dance with the requirements of their former act of
parliament, applying for further powers to erect
warehouses on the dock quays, and especially to be
enabled to carry out a scheme for the formation of
docks in Wapping, and to conclude a purchase of
strand on the North Shore, the importance of
which has been acknowledged on an hands. In
the bill in question, however, it was discovered that
there was no clause for the rating of the new
warehouses proposed to be erected ; and, upon this
point arose a temporary amalgamation of interest
between the " liberal" tradesmen of the town, and
the heretofore much vilified warehouse owners.
They discovered that they were fellow sufferers in
this question of dock warehouse rating; and an
agitation was commenced to enforce the insertion
of .a clause in the bill by which the new warehouses
to be erected upon the dock quays would be made
rateable to the local burthens equably with ware-
houses otherwise situated, shops, dwellings, and
other species of property.
In the agitation to effect this object there were
*lle. more earnest and active than the Liverpool

Mercury, and the Liberal portion of the Select
Vestry. It was joined in by a large majority of the
shopkeepers and rate-payers generally, the ware-
house owners only appearing as those most largely
affected in the question. Meetings were held to
influence public opinion ; members of the council
were canvassed by their constituencies ; memorials
were poured in to the Mayor. praying the Council
to insist upon the insertion of a clause in the dock
bill, if that could be legally done; or, as the alter-
native, to suspend all further proceedings until
next session of parliament. The decision of the
council, under the circumstances, and with the
strong public feeling existing upon the subject be-
fore their eyes, is known to most of our readers.
As such clause could not now originate with
them, as dock trustees, they adopted the alternative
prayed for, of withdrawing the bill, at least so far
as regards the conferring of new powers, rather
than incur the risk of trusting to the committee of
parliament to insert the clause.
With the wisdom of this decision of the Council
we have nothing here to do, although it really
seems to us a rather unnecessary proceeding, and
quite beside the question of rating, to tie the hands
of the Dock Committee with respect to the com-
pletion of the north shore purchase. But it does
strike us as most unfair and utterly inconsistent
that, in their effort to procure a rating clause, hav-
ing lost the warehouses themselves, our contempo-
rary, the Mercury, and the party with which he or-
dinarily acts, should turn round at once upon the
astounded world, and point to the unfortunate
warehouse owners, whom they were hugging in
their arms but yesterday, and proclaim " it was all

heir doing

fake our contemporary's version of

,he story, and never were a set of innocents so tho-
roughly bamboozled as they have been in this busi-
. They attempted to use the warehouse owners,
and they complain now that the warehouse owners
have used them. They borrowed the case of
these gentlemen, in order to get up a feeling of sym-
pathy towards them, which was to aid the progress
of the agitation ; and they intended to part company
'in as they had, by such aid, carried
—4-.lv the feeling created has

with them as

carried them further than they wished to go
showing the injustice of a body of

private-ind

duals, who contribute one-third, or perhaps half of
the sum required for the payment of our local bur-
thens, being required to compete with a public
body which contributes nothing, they raised the ques-
tion, which has slept for the last few years, whe-
ther there is any immediate necessity for such com-
petition on any terms.

How absurd, then, is such language as the
following, which appeared in the Mercury of

Friday