The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1840-02-18 00:00:00

GREAT MEETING IN LIVERPOOL

TO PETITION FOR

CHURCH EXTENSION.

On Friday evening, a very crowded public meeting was
held in the Music-hall, Bold-street, for tae purpose of con-
sideri ,g the propriety of petitioning the House of Commons
to provide the means of extending the Church of England
in the populous and destitute districts of the country, and
in support of the motion of Sir R. H. Inglis, on, that sub-
ject, intended to be proposed after Easter. On the pla.tform
we observed the following gentlemen :—Rev. H. Carpenter;
Rev. H. M`Neile, Rev. F. Ould, Rev. G. Mansfield, Rev.
J. R. Connor, Rev. W. Falloms, Rev. D. Wilson, vicar of -
Islington, and son of the Bishop of Calcutta, Rev. W. Ties-
keth, Rev. J. H. Stewart, Rev. J. C. Richards, Rev. M.
Gardner, Rev. Dr. Tattershall, Rev. D. James, Rev: R. P.
Buddicom, Rev. W. M'lvor, Rev. C. Reav, A. Hodgson,
Esq., T. B. Horsfall, Esq., C. S. Parker, t sq., W. Jones,
Esg., J. Howard, Esq., J. Rigby, Esq., J. C. Bailey, Esq.,
of London. B. Jowett, Esq., agent to the Christian lain.: S
ence Society,.T. Forsyth, Esq., R. W. Preston. Esq.,
Holrne, Esq., W. Shorter, Esq., of Oporto, W. Thine,
Esq., J. Edwards, Esq., and C. Eoutflower, Esq.
The Rev. JONATHAN BROOKS, senior rector of Liverpool,
was unanimously called upon to preside.
The Rev. JAMES STEWART, at the request of the chair-
man, opened the deliberations of the meeting by the offering
of prayer. After this,
The CHAIRMAN rose, and addressed the meeting. He
said,—lt becomes my duty, in the honourable and gratifying
situation in which you have
placed me as chairman of this
meeting, to state the particular object w
further and promote. It will, perhaps, be are called upon to
beknown to most
Of yOu that Sir Robert Inglis has given notice of a motion,
in the Commons' House of Parliament, for a vote of a sum
of money, to extend more generally to the great population
of the country at large the benefits of religious instruction,
through the instrumentality of the Established Church.
(Hear.) Now, in a country where Christianity is acknow-
ledged as a part of its constitution, there can be little differ-..
once of opinion that it is the paramount duty of a Christian
}legislature to provide for the religious instruo so throughctiouofthe
people (hear, hear, hear) ; and that it should do
the instrumentality of the Established Church, is the natural
consequence of en establishment itself. (Hear.) I would
simply ask the question, what an established church means,
if it is not something which has been so' .established by the
legislature of the country for the purPeise of enabling every
individual in the country to have access by this means to
that religious information upon which its own constitution is
grounded. (Hear, hear.) The very meaning of an esta-
blished church is, that in every censer of the country,
throughout every portion of it, there should not be a vacant
spot on which the people should be unable to have access to*
that instruction which is important both for their temporal
and their spiritual welfare. (Hear, hear.) It was not in-
tended, by the fact of an establishment, that all should he
compelled to accept that information in one particular mode,
but that, at all events, they should have no excuse for being
able to say it was not offered to them. .( Hear, hear.) Now
a measure so extensive and universal as it is necessary this
should be—l know not how it is to he carried into complete
effect unless it is to he done by the legislature itself. (Hear.)
We have been told that the voluntary system is sufficient
for the purpose ; but I would appeal to the experience of
every one who hears me, if that system has not proved to be
a fallacy. (Cheers.) I would ask whether there has beea
any backwardness—whether there has been any reluctance—
upon the part of the great mass of the people of this country,
to furnish, as far as their means extended, that instruction
which is so important to them ? But, when we consider the
rapid increase of population, when we consider the ratio in
which it has been going on for many years, however great
those exertions may have been,—and they have been great,—
when we consider the simple fact that the present Bishop of:
our own diocese, during the ten years he has superintended
it, has consecrated more than a hundre d churches which
have risen up from the spontaneous efforts of the people
themselves, we have no right to say the voluntary system
has not been brought into effect as far as we could even hope
it to be practical. We know that upon a former occasion
large sums of money were voted by parliament, and the mis-
fortune only was that they came very late in the day. If the
executive government of the country, and our rulers, had
done earlier what at last necessity compelled them to do—
that is to say, if they had, as the population increased, kept
pace with it by providing sufficient church accommodation,
my conviction is, that we should have seen the morals and
the state of this country in a much better condition than they
are at present. (Applause.) However, that not having
been the case, we must take matters as they are ; and the
question is, what is the best mode of providing a remedy ?
(Hear, hear.) A great deal has been done by the people at
large, and they have now a right to call upon the legislature
to do their part and to perform their duty. (Hear.) There
is no time at which this matter can he brought forward with
greater propriety than the present, because I know, and I
believe it is well known to a great number of those around
me, that there are doctrines spreading about the country of
the most alarming kind and nature. (Hear, hear, hear.)
We have now attempts made to prove, by pretended ap-
peals to reason, some of the most extraordinary doc-
trines that ever arose in the human mind—such as the irre-
sponsibility of man, and the falsehood of that blessed
Book which, as Christians, we all venerate. (Hear, hear.)
It has lately fallen to my lot to meet with some publications of
this kind, which in the course of my official duties fell in
my way—they having beensintercepted on their admission
into the House of Correction at Kirkdale, They were in-
tended for a man confined there for a riot. I perused
them with some attention ; and I never read any thing which
caused in my mind a greater degree of depression and me-
lancholy. They were blasphemous in the highest possible
degree. They asserted that the Bible itself was a tissue of
falsehoods, and that Christianity was an imposture. They
were addressed to the clergy of all denominations, and they
stated that they all of them attempted to impose upon the
People that which they themselves knew to be falses (Hear.)
These assertions would have been of little consequence ef
themselves. because the common sense of the people must
have enabled them to resist doctrines of that nature ; but
with the greatest degree of ingenuity they were attempted to
be enforced by argument and reasoning. The author, in his
address, said he would not require his readers to believe
what he could not himself prove; and he goes on in a course
of reasoning, specious indeed, and which by men of intellect
and strong mind might easily be proved false, yet to the
great mass of the people they would bear-upon the-face of
them that reasoning character which might induce them to
listen to them. In the discharge of my duty, I, together
with those gentlemen who are associated with me as magis-
trates, thought we should ill discharge that duty if did not
send these pamphlets to the home department. I sent them
to Lord Norrilanby, with a letter stating the circumstances
attending them ; and I believe it is to them he has alluded
in a speech lately made in the upper house of Parliament.
(Hear, hear.) I received an answer from his lordship, in
which he acknowledged the receipt of the pamphlet, and
stated he had put them into the hands of his legal advisers,
to ascertain whether it would not be right to proceed against
the printers of there, and that I should hear further from
(Hear, hear.) Now, gentlemen, when such doctrines
are attempted to be disseminated among the lower orders of
people of this country, I know not by what means they are to
be met, or h., v an antidote is to be provided against them, if
not by providing the people with better food; and I there-
fore humbly conceive, that by the establishment of additional
places of worship Belonging to the Chutch of England among
the populous districts, they may be led to read what shews
the other side—to the truth, and to the conviction that this
trash, which is so industriously disseminated among them, is
fallacious, and only calculated to deceive them in those points
essential to their eternal welfare—and that their best interest
is to follow those who will provide/them with that consola-
tlon which the Christian religion affords to all who really
and t
to-night
y believe it. (Cheers.) The object of this meeting
to is then to determine, whether or not it be advisable
ortethe motion of Sir Robert Inglis, by petitioning
the House
of Commons in its favour. Several gentlemen
have kindly undertake
tomove the different resolutions
which will be brought forward for your approval, and I shall
begin by canine upon the Rev. Hugh M•Neile to move the
first. (Great cheering.)
Mr. M`Neree, ontepping forward, was received with
enthusiastic cheers. He spoke nearly as follows. I have
been requested to move, " That the spiritual destitution of
vast masses of the population of England • nd Wales, and
especially the fact that, wherevet suchd
destitution exists,- the
poorer classes are the first and the chief sufferers, call loudly
for the aid of a Christian Government and Legislature.
There are three statements contained l nthis short resolution.
The first is an assertion that spiritual destitution exists, and
that upon a large scale ; the secondpoorer
classesarei -stlsat wherever such
destitution exists the
the chief sufferers ;
and the third is, that such destitution, so, falling upon the
poor, calls loudly for the aid of a e
g,o.:delrnrn ent and
legislature. (Hear, hear.) The first, then,
who are
atten-
tion to the multitudes of our fellow-countrymen
in a state of inevitable ignorance and irreligion. TL
are left
lation of England and Wales is now estimated at aboviTPfiuf--
teen millions. The increase in that population has not been
regularly progressive. During the last fifty years it has been
accelerated beyond all former proportions. In 1700, the po.
pulation, as estimated from various returns, digested and
methodised by Mr. Rickman, was 5,475,000. Fifty years
afterwards, in 1750, the returns gave 6,467,000: that is, the
increase during fifty years amounted to less than one mil-
lion, or one-fifth part of the whole. (Hear, hear.) Com-
pare this with the last fifty years. In 1790, fifty years ago,
the population was returned at 8,675,000: and now it exceeds
15,000,000; that is, the increase during fifty years has been
nearly one-half of the whole. (Hear, hear.) It is needless
for me to say that no approach towards a corresponding in-
crease in church accommodation has taken place. The fol-
lowing statement, illustrative of this fact, is taken from a
late charge delivered by the Bishop of Exeter :
In London and its suburbs, there are
34 parishes, with a population amounting to .. 1,137,000
In the diocese of Chester there are
38 parishes containing an aggregate of
In the diocese of York,- there are
20 parishes, containing
In the diocese of Lichfield there
16 parishes, containing .
.. are
.. .....

816,cr00

402,000

235,300

The amount of church room provided for this agg249a°t'eMis
301,382 sittings, leaving two
hundred and eighty
eight thousand, six hundred and eiTytelisouls unprovided
for, as far as the church is concerned.g (Hear hear.) Now
making a most liberal allowance for what dissenters of all
denominations have done : calculating that teihhuotaecvtchoienannecoodma..-
eBr, it does
tion provided in chapels of all descriptions,,e
niodation provided by the church, (which
not, but for simplicity in the calculation we will
does) and granting that the instruction given in allutigoesh it
pels is chriatian instruction (which it is not) for not' chat
o-
speak of the Socinian fry, who degrade the Lord Christ to
mere manhood and therefore reject his atoning sacrifice, many
of those chapels, and those among the largest in the kingdom',
are avowedly dedicated to image worship, and thereby proved
to be synagogues of Antichrist :—(cheers)—bnt, supposing
all the insruction given in all the chapels referred to to he
christian instruction, still, if we suppose the aggregate amount
to be equal to the amount of instruction in the church, there
would be, in the parishes named in the list I have read, alone,
considerably above a million of our fellow subjects for whom
there is no provision for ehristian instruction whatever.
(Hear, hear.) I know it has been asserted that the dissenters
give much more accommodation and a much larger proportion
of instruction, than the church, but I know also something
of the fictitious data, on which such assertions are hazarded.
I know something about the statistical societies which have
been formed, and the statistical returns which have been
made, upon exparte, or at least upon very inadequate exa-
mination—(hear). This applies both to church accommoda-
tion and to schools, especially to schools. Such statistical
returns so made and ostentatiously putnileissshhd for the magni-
fying of dissent against the church, ey are promptly
exposed by the competent authorities locally interested, pass
current as accurate and authentic documents, and are' pre-
sently afterwards triumphantly referred to, as experimental
proofs condemnatory of the church. (Ilea; hear.) Unfor-
tunately, however, for them, some of these statemelnetshave
been submitted to an ordeal most inconvenient and
provok-
ing. I heard one of them exposed last year at a b
ing in London, by my bold, honest, active, enti7taead-
elocu
highly valued reverend brother, Mr. Close, of Cheltenham.
(Applause.) I will take the liberty of reading to yon a part
of what he said. " Now, I proceed to ask if there is an ad-
milted want of education, what shall we do ? A number of
quack doctors immediately come forward with a remedy.
You have beard of some of their proposals and proceedings
to.day. And it is said that certain papers will be laid before
the House of Commons by Lord John Russell on this ques-
tion on Tuesday night. Now I am very curious to know
what is in them. If they prove to be a return, a professed
return, or °sums of the state of education throughout the

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