The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1836-08-30 00:00:00

ma.iters, much less injurious, immediately, to our pro-
testants bishops and clergy, by their contemptible deduc-
tion therefrom, we shall have full opportunity of doing
our best to prevent both them and their popish allies
"taking anything by their motion."
The mean attempt to throw the odium of neglect on
the protestant clergy displays the hoof in its polished
lustre ; whilst the energies of that clergy have been pa-
ralized by the treacherous duplicity of the King's govern-
ment to the protestant cause generally, for the sole pur-
pose of acquiring that political support from the mass
which alone enables them to remain in office. We boldly
tell the servile defenders of the " thimble-riggery," that
it.is the secret connivance given to popery and its wither-
ing influences, which together with the open policy dis-
played in parliament, checks the utility and the benign
progress of protestantism in Ireland,—the onus probandi
lies with the jesuitical defenders of the O'Connell-Mel-
bourne policy, and of negativing this our position, sus-
tained by plain matter of fact circumstance and fair ar-
gument.

The Times has put this question in its true and simple
position :—Test the accuracy of the charge by the ex-
tent of the way the state has been able to make, and com-
paring the progress of the govekment of the King with
the advancement of the religion of the church, it • will
certainly be seen, that whatever blame may attach to
Great Britain our fellow-countrymen in Ireland have
chiefly to thank themselves for the fact that they are not
more faithful subjects, and better christians ! "
The error is easily elucidated to unprejudiced minds.
The misnamed reform government, since the pasting of
that measure, following the measure of catholic emanci-
pation, has allied itself to the popish party on account of
its numerical strength; and it has openly discouraged
protestantism in a given ratio, instead of upholding the le-
gitimate interests of the established church, as a fair coun-
terpoise to the political interest gained by the Roman
catholics under those two measures, and yet, with hands un-
clean, through this truckling and disgraceful anti-national
policy, these worthies now come forward and attempt to
attach the stigma of neglect to the protestant clergy and
draw from it an inference in favour of the increase of
Romanism. Away with such futile assumptions !--they
are worthy only of the gaseous smelting shop from which
they first emanated, and they have already been blown
into their air and their virulence neutralized.

We hope that our warm-hearted conservative bre-
thren in Liverpool, will not accuse us of want of con-
genial sympathy in the proceedings and feelings of
that respectable body of Englishmen, and undisguised
patriots, who recently marshalled themselves under
the constitutional banner of our " Church and King,"
at Stockport, on the occasion of the dinner of the
Stockport Branch of the Cheshire Conservative As-
sociation; and a full report of the exhilerating spec-
tacle, which there took place, we gave in our last impres-
sion. The length of that report, as well as of another,
connected with the issue of the Warwick election, on
Tuesday evening last, must be our apology for the omis-
sion of any special notice in our leading articles of Fri-
day; and our kind friends in Cheshire will know, by
this time, that whilst they were gloriously engaged in
triumphantly celebrating the rise and progress of the
good cause there, we were assailed on all sides by a black
hail storm of pen and type whiggery, on what they,
the assailants, falsely conceived a vulnerable point in our
own trenches, and through which they might enter and
blow up conservatism in our town of Liverpool. Vain
coxcombs of the goose-quill ! did they imagine anything
so preposterous as that a private misunderstanding (how-
ever unpleasant to us individually) would be the ready
means of compelling us to abandon our posts of public trust,
of national importance, and surrender them ingloriously
into the hands of a contemptible enemy, driven to the
mean expediency of such a wretched resort ? They have
yet to find out the quality of our metal—we are not going
to strike the colours of the ship on account of a personal
difference amongst those lately in command.
We congratulate our constitutional friends at Stockport,
and at Warwick, on their double triumph—a reunion in
one case, and a victory in the other ! But what shall we
say of the speeches of Mr. Robert Hollingsworth, and
Mr. Tatton Egerton, at Stockport. If men are not both
drunk and blind, under the influence of democratic
bigotry, here "be who runs may indeed read." No
humble comment of ours can add to their strength and
importance. Nor must we forget Mr. Turner, who, with
the force of his humour turned the crazy works of the
whig radicals upside down. We say to our townsmen,
read ! read ! Most heartily do we respond to the pro-
posal for forming a grand Conservative Association in
London, under the charge of Lord Sandon—there we
shall fight the enemy on their own ground ; and present
at once a formidable and much needed bulwark, concen-
trated in the heart of the British empire, as against
the workings and doings of the Dublin band of Popish
revolutionists. To Mr. Canning, we say God bless
him. And to the independent electors, we return our
thanks.

It was shrewdly remarked by Rochefocault, that " hy-
pocrisy is the homage rendered by vice to virtue." This
keen satire from the pen of a learned Frenchman, is
particularly applicable to the conduct of our flaming
patriotic whig scribblers, who arrogate to themselves the
the supreme right of engrossing all power, and all
the influence in the state, for their crafty task-masters,
that they may smother the general influencers of reli-
gion, and triumph over the securities of constitutional
liberty, the more effectually to establish that oligar-
chical principle of government, which is its very oppo-
site, and at. variance with the ,feelings—the habits—
the principles—and the interests of the whole commu-
nity of Englishmen, under the false, the delusive, pre-
text of extending their civil privileges.
Thus, viciously disposed and designing men have,
in all ages, endeavoured to impose on the credulity
of the weaker portion of their fellows, by an as-
sumption of the visor of morality liberality
religion, or superior goodness, according to cir-
cumstances, that they might more effectually cloak
their corrupt objects, and thus disarm the unreflecting,
or confiding, who would otherwise be a match for their
crafty opponents on the broad principle of honest dealing.
The mass of the people of' all nations whereof we read
has been discontented and even, in most instances,
miserable; hence, it always offered a ready leaven of
fermentation for the operation of political knaves and
hypocrites; and, principally through their workings,
empire after empire has sunk into degeneracy and ulti-
mate oblivion( _ Ranging through the moral universe in
search of the causes of human and social misery, we may
ultimately trace them back. to the designs of the few
upon the weakness of the many, operating there as a
contaminating spirit on their feelings, their morals,
, their affections, and their peace, and thus engendering
the seeds of great organic social changes and political re-
volutions; the first impressive influence never rising si-
multaneously with the mass, but concocted in the breasts
of ambitious.. individual adventurers who gather unto
themselves congenial elements, and thus spread around
the materials of political combustion. In fact, they
merely form the agents for fanning the passive embers
of discontent into flame ; first denouncing names, dig-
nities, and titles, and then propounding schemes and
phantasms as impalpable as the air we breathe, each
seeking his private ambitions despite of his neighbour's
good, and each becoming his own tormentor, and each
the evil genius of his friend and compatriot
Before the worthy beings we have described, existing
in our social sphere, we wear no mask, nor are we either
ashamed to stand by our principles, nor afraid to meet
the sordid band we are opposed to on their own high
vantage ground, armed, though they may be, with the
whole artillery of false logic,—irreligion,—whig philo-
sophy, and presumptuous impudence. Public men are
public property, and if we have roused the feeble ire of
apostate whigs and radical or popish enemies, we have
done so in the advocacy of truth—of a fundamental prin-
ciple of sound national policy, without any reference to a
private disunion, totally unconnected with external po-
litics, although we would painfully lament, in common
tvitl4 atll etly*onservative supporters, any injury that may