The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1847-03-09 00:00:00

The only accommodation in quay-room which the rail-
way proposes to dedicate to the public of all England and
Ireland, is the minute wall from C to D, only 500 feet in
length, outside of their own " inner harbour," and so
much exposed to north or north-west winds that, except-
ing in calms, it would be utterly useless, and, if useful at
all, only for a very few vessels. It is buti giving an inch
of quay-room in gratitude for the miles which the railway
company expect to obtain for themselves.
Even with respect to the " inner harbour," proposed
for their own exclusive gain, let any nautical man, who
has a knowledge of the rocky and exposed locality, look
at the entrance of this harbour, (between the two break-
waters,) and slightly study the difficulties to be encoun-
tered by even a powerful steamer in a gale, in running in.
She would have, with a N.E. wind, to round the west
point of the " east" breakwater so rapidly, that the pro-
ballility would be that, with the force of the sea against
her stern on entering, she would be smashed against the
rocks or the walls. The entrance to this inner harbour
is but about 400 feet in *idth, and there is " a tongue,"
or prolongation of the company's pier, running in an
E.N.E. direction, which, from the impingement of the
sea upon it in north-easterly, and even other gales, will
increase the seaway, and endanger all the shipping in what
the railway company and (unhappily) the government
choose to call, or consider,—the General " Harbour of
Refuge at Holyhead."
We would fain drop our anchor within the haven which
the Railway Company have chalked out for " the public ;"
but we find it so questiorable a holding ground, that we
shall drop neither our anchor nor our pen. It will be ob-
served, from our Plan, that there are rocks in almost
every shoreward point of this assumed fine public har-
bour. The south shore is particularly dangerous. The
small public quay, assigned for the use of all her Majes-
ty's subjects by the generous condescension of the Com-
pany, will be completely exposed, and, excepting in calm
weather. unavailable. L'oking from the N.W. curve of
our plan, and employing the scale, it will be foundathat
any wind, from ,almost,-any westwardly point, and parti-
cularly from due N. to West will throw .a strong sea-way
against the quay—C to D.—The average distance or
space of water from the weather side, in the direction
stated is 3,700 feet, and it can be well imagined what a
force of wave would be thrown up against this small un-
protected quay on any occasion of even a moderate blow.
the Company wish to make themselves quite safe, within
the inner side of the wall. They have been advised as to
the protected side of the hedge.
The whole project is an attempt on the part of private
and grasping individuals to obtain a large share, in addi-
tion to their railway profits, of the steam-carrying trade
between this port and Ireland. They are wide awake, no
doubt : and so are we. They have considered that the
running of steamers of their own from Holyhead to Ire-
land, in conjunction with their railway,—and having the
exclusive right and use of their proposed harbour, would
enable them to save that amount of dock-dues, pilotage,
lights, &c., which are rather grievously imposed upon
our present steam-ship proprietors. We are not, in
the abstract, favourable to monopoly of any kind ; but
though the City of Dublin Steam Company have enjoyed
a monopoly, or nearly so, of the carrying trade between
this port and Ireland for upwards of half a century, we
cannot but admit that they have deserved it, not only from
their having been the first to mature steam navigation in
our locality, and since, on the wide ocean, but the efficiency
of their vessels, their excellent accommodations, and Iheir
moderate scale of fares. The average passages, hence to
Dublin or back, of their mail boats and cattle vessels, is
111 hours, which is great going, considering the nature of
the navigation, and the immense tonnage of goods, &c., con-
veyed to and fro. The fares in the cattle vessels (which
have all elegant cabins, &c.) is but 10s. for first-class pas-
sengers, for deck or steerage passengers only 2s. This
company paid in harbour, light, and pilotage dues, last
year, no less than £7OOO.

Can the Chester and Holyhead Railway convey parties
between this town and Dublin at rates so low ? We ima-
gine not. The only difference, in time, from London to
Dublin, would be about two hours, and by railway to
Holyhead the cost must be greater.

THE CONVERSIONS TO POPERY.

(From the Morning Herald)

The progress and number of these conversions are
rapidly increasing. Yet Mr. Gresley writes letters to the
bishops to insist on it that " The real danger of the
Church of England is Puritanism." Puritanism may be
a very wrong thing, and it is not our purpose to offer any
defence of it. But at least this is clear, that Puritanism
is not producing, just now, large secessions from the
Church. Tractarianism, however, has already taught,—
so a Tractarian journal boasti,—no fewer than seventy
clergymen within the last eighteen months,—that the
safety of their souls required them to abandon, as an un-
clean thing, the Church of their baptism —the Church
which they had sworn to abide by till death!
The gravity and extent of this evil seem to require us
to examine it with some thought and care. To what,
then, are we to attribute this rapid flight of so many of
the youthful clergy from the Church of their fathers ?
There is not the slightest difficulty in giving a rational
account of the whole mischief.

About fourteen years ago, there came together in Ox-
ford three or four ardent, clever, but not well-informed
young men, who were driven, by their hatred of Radical-
ism, into a vehement and irrational degree of Toryism and
High-ChurchiSra. Forgetting that the reverse of wrong
is seldom exactly right, they rushed beyond Waterland
and Van Mildert, Jackson and Hooker, into an ardent ad-
miration of the Non-jurors, and a perfect idolatry of
Laud.

In this state of mind, they began to look into Church
history. Very naturally, the Reformation disgusted them.
Freude, one of the most ardent among them, tells us, in
his published Diary,—" I hate the Reformation more
and more." " Jewell seems to me a sort of irreverent
Dissenter." He, Fronde, very soon afterwards, took up
the cudgels 'in defence of Thomas a'Beckett, whom he
represented as a very martyr ! And Newman, his bosom
friend,—writing at that period,—described Hildebrand as
the greatest character in the whole compass of Church
history ! . -
Half-a-dozen such men as these, filled with enthusi-
asm, and. occupying posts of influence in one of our.
universities, could not fail to make converts. And to do
so,—to form a party,7-and gradually to " unprotestantise
the Church of England,"—becaine with them the main
end of their existence.

The real character of the evil was not •understood
churchmen ge:ierally.• "Don't oppose them,--don't
write about them,—don't bring them into notice!" was
the language used by many. •` Only leave them alone,
and the thing will die away of itself." Such was the ad-
vice often given. But nothing could be more mistaken.
The parties at Work were able, and in earnest. They
persevered without ceasing, and such efforts could not fail
to produce results. Each year, therefore, found them
stronger than before ; and when, at last, the Senate of,
Oxford was forced to take the matter in hand, it was
found that this little faction, of scarcely seven yer.rg
standing, already numbered five hundred Makers of
Arts I

But, meanwhile, a similar conspiracy had been formed
at Cambridge also. The mode of its operation there was
by a cultivation of church-architecture. Not content with
admiring the general outline of a fine old church, these
juvenile church-restorers must needs revive all the for-
gotten furniture of Popish times ; and stone altars, rood-
screens,.piscinte, anchedilia, were studied, until the disci-
ples of Neale and Paley began to believe in a real sacri-
fice, veritable priests, and au altar whereon a victim was
still to be offered up. Such have been the delusions
which have led to what we now behold. And assuredly
neither churchmen generally, nor the heads of the church
in particular, have shown themselves alive to the great-
ness of the danger.
Our bishops, as many of them doubtless remember with
sorrow, seemed to pride themselves, ten years ago, on
holding an even balance between the Tractarians - and
their assailants. Most of our readers will remember the
last charge delivered at Oxford by the present Bishop of
Bath .(then of Oxford), and some of the charges of the
Bishop of Exeter. These addresses contained cautions,
and even decided censures, on certain points ;--but these
were immediately followed by high encomutns on " the
learning," " the Christian spirit, " the fervent piety" of
the Tractarian leaders ; so that the hearer was at a loss to
know whether the praise or the blame predominated.
Such has been the course of the last ten years, and now
we are beginning to see the fruit of this hesitating and
temporising system. Seventy of our younger clergy per-
verted in the short space of eighteen months, and the
number of these perversions daily increasing ! Had a
knot of Arian and Socinian heretics, at either Oxford or
Canibridge, produced such a resulf, should we have seen
the quietness and apathy which now prevail? Would our
prelates have rested in such peaceful calm ?—would the
visitors of our colleges have remained in a state of total
quiescence I—would both Houses of Parliament have kept
the eutirest silence ? .