The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1838-06-29 00:00:00

Vottrp.

THE JEWISH CAPTIVES' LAMENT.

(From the Fife Herald )
"By the rivers of Bal)ylon. there we sat down, yea, we wept
when we remembered `Lion."—Sony of the Captivity.

Far, far from Judah's lovely land,
And from our fathers' graves we dwell,
A drooping and dejected band,
Our many sorrows who shall tell?
We think upon those youthful days
When, glad, we strayed by Jordan's streqm,
And loved on Zion's towers to gaze.
That sparkled bright in morning's bean►.
But broken down are Zion's Towers,
And laid in dust is Salem's shrine,
While desolation darkly lowers
Above the fields of Vdestine !

On Carmel's side the lily shines;
But Caravel's mount no more we view.
Nor Judah's hills and beauteous vines,
Or clustering grapes of purple hue.
Ah ! while by Babel's stream we roam,
With grieving heart and weeping eye,
And think upon our early home,
Our silent harps unheeded lie.
Our haughty spoilers call for joy,
An 4 ask ns scornfully to sing;
But how can we our harps employ,
Or touch the sweetly-sounding string?
Far from the country of our birth,
Far from the land we highly prize.
How shall we sing a song of mirth
While sorrow dims our weary eyes ?

As sad we shed the briny tear,
And feel oppression's iron. rod,
Jerusalem is doubly dear,
And dearer still is Israel's God!

For he can dry the watery eye,
Unbind tie afflicted captive's chain,
And he will bear the mourner's cry,
And lead his people back again!

CONTEMPORARY PRESS.

THE PROGRESS OF POPERY.
(From the Scottish Guardian.)
"It is.a fact," says the writer of an address on the
progress of Popery, which has just been published by a
sound Christian society in Paris. " it is a fact that since
the death of Louis XIV. (1715) the Church of Rome
was never in so advantageous a position as she is is to-
day. •In France it holds the keys of all the great and
small seminaries, closed by it in spite of the University.
It has for it the law of primary instruction, and nearly
all the schools. In England it has now its seats in Par-
liament, and every one is aware of the supremacy it is
labouring to obtain in Ireland. In Holland there never
were se many churches and priests as at present. In
Belgium it is sovereign; and it has nearly all the schools •
beneath its poke. In Piedmont it has lately renewed a.
Draconian code against the Protestants of the Vaudois_
valleys. In the Rhenish provinces the Protestant go-
yernnaentof Prussia is daily attacked by the Romish
priests. In Geneva it is gaining ground. Here and.
there in Germany it is leading hack to those countries of
the Reformation the dangerous and obnoxious Jesuits;
and certainly the moment has arrived to cry, " To your
tents, 0 Israel !" . An article in to-day's paper, quoted
from the Times, supplies us with another evidence of the
progress of Jesuitical intrigue on the continent, of a
more startling kind than any of the instances mentioned
above., It is an account of the expulsion of between
400 and 500 Tyroleans
.from their native valley of the
Ziller,
.for no other reason than their adherence to Pro-
testant principles, and their fixed abhorrence of the
Church of Rome.. This act of oppression on the part
of the Austrian government was instigated by the Po-
pishpriests ; and it has been carried into effect with a
-degree of inexorable cruelty which will call down upon
the Court of Vienna and its ghostly advisers the con-
tempt and the execrations of the whole Christian
These simple-minded but noble-hearted Ty roleans are
but recent converts from the Church of Rome. They
were in the habit of wandering from the Ziller valley in
the.prosecution of their humble traffic, and received co-
pies of the Bible and religious tracts from foreign Pro-
testants, which the Divine blessing rendered instrumen-
tal in opening their eyes to the dangerous delusions of
'the corrupt system in which they had been educated.
They abandoned the Church of Rome, and the conse-
-quence was that they were visited with all those pecu-
liar arts of persecution and oppression which the vin-
chtive priesthood of the Papacy have exercised so ef-
fectually throughout the whole history of their un-
--changeably tyrannical system. Incentives to insubordi-
nation were employed, with the view of subjecting the
poor Zillerthalers to the lash of the civil law; hut these
were-resisted, and their protracted sufferings were en-
-dared with the patient spirit of Martyrie The last act
of relentless persecution was however made the means
of their deliverance. In the month of March, 1837, a
government officer was commissioned by the Emperor to
signify to them, " That they must either return into the
.Catholic Church or abandon their country ; but that it
was left to their choice to migrate to other Austrian
'States, in which non Catholic communities are *ale
-lislied:" This order was formally confirmed by an impe-
1-let-edict in the month of May of the same year. The
-decided-conduct of the King of Prussia in repressing the
insolent attempt of the Popish Archbishop of Cologne
-to usurp his authority in the Rhenish provinces, must be
fresh in the remembrance of our readers. It is a still
-more pleasing trait in the character of that paternal mo-
narch, that atteltis crisis in the affairs of the persecuted
Zilleroluilers, he interested himself in their behalf—in-
terceded for them at the Court of Vienna—and provided
them an asylum in his own dominions, placing them, as
the account informs ue, "on lands so beautiful as to ri-
val, in any eyes but theirs, their glorious homes, from
which they had been driven for their faith and his, and
watching with paternal care over their temporal and spi-
ritual weal in their new fatherland, at the foot of the
great mountains, ' a land of brooks, of waters, of foun-
tains, tend depths that spring out of valleys and hills.' "
it is also most gratifying to notice that our own late re-
vered Monarch, William IV., interposed, as a German
.prince, for the protection of the expatriated Tvroleans,
before he was aware that the Court of Berlin had es-
poused their cause. The emigrants were compelled to
make a hurtled sale of their effects, and to proceed on
their journey, at the beginning of last winter. A hun-
dred families abandoned forever a country which they no
doubt-regarded with the characteristic hornefeeling of
the people, and which many of them had -shed their
blood ,to defend against France and Bavaria in 1809.
-EyeryWhere in the course of their progress from the
Tyrol to the dominions of Prussia, they were received
with unbounded sympathy and hospitality by their Pro-
testant brethren. -'They met with a cordial and generoue
ereeeption in the Prussian territory, and were finally set-
tled near the town of Schrniedeberg, in Silesia, by au-
thority and under the protection of the King, whose be-
nevolent care -of these persecuted people accounts to a
considerable extent for the present persevering efforts of
his vindictive enemy the Romish hierarchy, to disturb
the peace of his dominions.
Such is an outline of this interesting narrative—the
most affecting we have met with far a long time, and
which we recommend to our readers for a careful pe-
-meal, and to the country in general for an impressive
lesson. Talk of the amelioration of Popery under the
mild and humanising influences of the nineteenth cen-
tury ! Alas for the vanity of such a notion, and the cre-
dulity of the men who entertain it ! There is no hu-
manity_in a-system which boasts of the unchangeable-
nets and infallibility of its principles, and, with un-
weveringconsistency, lords it over the souls and bodies
of men in the nineteeth century with ferocious spirit
of -Smithfield and St. Bartholomew. Let our Protestant
liberals open their eyes to the spirit and progress of mo-
dern Popery, adapting the old policy of Loyola to the-
altered circumstances of the times, and compassing earth
and sea to make proselytes. With. equal adroitness it
succeeds in wielding the despotism of Austriaintrigues
under the mild sway of the King of Prussia—seizes the
Trintlar seminaries in France and Belgium—thickens
the revolutionary plots in Spain and Portugal, protract-
ing, if not perpetuating, the degradation of both—en-
larges its boundaries in our possessions in the east, and
-in our West Indian, Canadian, and Australian colonies,
and extends them even to the remote islands of the South
Pacific. Above all, let them look to its progress at
home—to Ireland, with the Executive at its disposal, and
the highest legal functions invested in its votaries—to
England and Scotland, which it now regards as its special
" missionary" ground. We appeal to every sober-
minded reflecting man, whether Popery is not at this
moment manifesting a vitality and energy over the whole
civilised world, which it has never had it in its power to
exhibit since the Reformation ? and we ask every man
who, moral perceptions are not blinded by political pre-
judice, whether. it is not receiving its chief countenance
and support from the unprincipled conduct of our Liberals
'both in politics and religion ? If men will still be de-
luded by the plansibilities of the system and again
brought back to the terrible evidence of its immitigable
-spirit afforded by the sufferings of the Tyrolean.. How-
ever the policy of the Romish hierarchy may he sliversi •
fled by the various conditions of the people on IN hom it
is brought to bear. it is acting harmoniously ; and the
expulsion of the Zillerthalers and the gentler influences
at work nearer hone—tle. wheedling of the credulous
voluntariee, and the cozening of the self-seeking whigs
and unprincipled liberals—are manifestations of the same
deeply concerted and dexterously managed scheme.—
Men may choose to shut their eyes to the sign* of the
time, and make light of the fears of impending danger;
hut; we are dersuaded that facts such as those we have
been considering Deist sooner"or later rouse the nation
from its false security. Already, if we are not mistaken,
has tbe prPent aspect of cur own country and of the
Stated of Car. tirental Europe, harraesed. and distracted
as they all are more or less by the grasping ambition of