The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1841-12-24 00:00:00

FRIDAY MORNING, DECEMBER 24, 1841

If ever there was a time when the Mercury was a lead-
ing and influential journal in Liverpool, we should ask no
other proof than such a fact, of the low state of sound
opinion within the district. It boasts at this day of a
very extensive circulation; but it is no longer a lead-
ing journal; and its influence, if not altogether de-
stroyed, is at least counteracted, and, in some mea-
sure, neutralised, by journals which row in an opposite
direction. It cannot be a matter of indifference, how-
ever, at any time, to what ends an instrument of such
acknowledged power as a public journal, commanding
the attention of a considerable aggregate of readers,
may be directed; it is a proper subject for animadver-
sion, and more particularly so if we have reason to
think that the ends towards which it moves are dan-
gerous and pernicious. With a view to assist inquiry
on this head, with respect to a local contemporary, we
directed the attention of our readers, in our last, to a
leading article in the 31ercury of the 17th instant, en-
titled " An humble Attempt to expose Clerical Buffoons
and other Humbug;" and we selected from it a spe-
cimen of what the author probably considered, and
certainly designed, as quite a tremendous exposure.
The individuals, or party against whom this satire was
levelled, doubtless, felt the most thorough contempt
for a production so purely fictitious, so entirely tainted
and rotten with falsehood as regarded them, and so
perfectly inefficient as it must necessarily prove, in
laying any sensible consciousness of restraint upon the
spring and energy of their own determinate course of
action; but the inefficacy of a blow proves nothing as
to the malice of an assailant ; the indifference of the
aea
gai led affords no extenuation of the criminal inten-
tionthe party assailing. On this ground we revert
to the article; we take up the weapon ; and we fancy
ourselves not unprofitably etaployed, whilst weighing
the stone and examining the sling, in endeavouring to
ascertain the character and animus of the thrower, and,
if we discover them to be of dark and suspicious em-
it' giving notice to the police, and warning all
riloenxneisQtfolk, In general, to beware of those who have
the misfortune to support them. We may be told,

pcifital

3 (.4sl

garde a jourad of uviel, it-mg standing uthe Liverpo.t.?;

Mercury; that its pen is by this time no slander; 4tid
that it has always been as consistent as it has been no-
torious as a purely party organ, doing the work of agi-
tator and defamer against things established, and all
that we, in our conservative simplicity, demi most sa-
cred and venerable. This may be 80 ; bit, neverthe-
less, we think the remembrance of the tl.ing should
be kept fresh, and that, as fresh occasions arise, we,

who are placed as watchmen in the city, ought to tlou-

rish our rattle, and repeat our signals of admonition.

to the simple.

Those who have glanced at the filthy libel just now
in question must have perceived that it was expressly
set forth as a manifesto against 'what the authors de-
nounce as " fanaticism," and that against the thing so
entitled they pledge themselves to a perpetual warfare.
Now, this being so, we would call the attention of our
readers to this fact, that here is a public journal, en-
joying the largest circulation of any in Liverpool,
which openly avows itself the antagonist of what we
hold, and proclaim to be, not fanaticism, mental aber-
ration, or excess of any sort, but pure and undefiled
religion—the religion which the Church of England
teaches, and the constitution of England has adopted,
endowed, and established. The attempt of the enemy
to screen his operations by the use of a convenient
term—by calling the religion of the Bible " fanati-
'—is a measure of commendable prudence on his
part ; but it makes no change in the essential and un-
alterable constitution of things. The following is the
introductory observation of the article. It only
speaks, it is true, of fanaticism in general; but the fa-
naticism in contemplation is unequivocally indicated by
the subsequent portion of the chapter :

" Religious fanaticism is one of the besetting sins of the
present and, we may add, one of the peculiar charac-
teristics of our country. In no other land do we see news-
papers teeming with perpetual discussions about points of
speculative belief, and preaching a crusade of persecution
against those whom chance has caused to be born within the
pale of any particular church. In no other country in mo-
dern times do men quarrel and persecute each other on ac-
count of differences in matters of professed religious:opinion,
which, in ninety-nine cases out of the hundred, are the result
of pure accident."

You will not find the writer of this diatribe uttering
one word of exception against the fanaticism which
breaks forth from time to time with most extraordinary
virulence in the Pope's church; not a syllable against
Popish priests, who, whilst the fit is on, do cut the
most outlandish capers : heading mobs at elections,
carrying off voters by night, cursing them by day,
and displaying other such odd branches of the mono-
mania ; on such fanaticism there is not a line or a let-
ter in our transcendental contemporary. Nor again,
with regard to the fanaticism of a congregation of the
" all-denominations"—the prayerless ministers who
labour so hard out of their vocation—the anti-bread-
tax evangelists—has he a word in his jaw. Respect-
ing all such fanaticism he is meek as a mouse, and ten-
der as a sucking dove ; he is, in short, ferocious as he
may seem in our particular case, quite a dumb dog.
The only fanaticism that rouses his ire is Church of
Englandism, and church principles carried out with
any degree of zeal and effect. This is in reality what
he means by the term; and it is against this, which he
elsewhere describes as " humbug, hypocrisy, and non-
sense," that he has drawn his awful cutlas. If the
church would only go to sleep—if her clergy would be
content to doze in cathedral stalls, or set others to
sleep with a dull weekly homily, and leave all inter-
vening time to a profane world to disport itself at its
own pleasure—if men would be content with church-
manship as a mere lifeless theory, and not make them-
selves troublesome with it in the world—questionless
such rationalists as the Mercury would be found more
manageable, and members and ministers of the church
might procure for themselves a little unenviable peace
and obscurity ; but if they refuse to enter into such a
compromise—if they are so obstinate as to reject such
terms—then they must make up their minds to figure
in the columns of Mercuries and Chronicles, ad irfini-
tum—to be gibetted in print—to be caricatured, lam-
pooned, and vilified, and treated with the utmost ridi-
cule and contempt. Vilification of this sort, it is
true, does not, and will not affect the minds of men of
strong sense and sound judgment ; but there are
others whom it does—others whom it indisposes to
hear truth, and confirms in the ways of folly and per-
verseness. On this ground then we say that such a
journal as the Mercury is a common nuisance, and
only different from some Social gazette or New Moral
World in degree, but not in kind. If it assails Church
of Englandism as frenzy or " fanaticism," what, we
should beg to know, is the religion which it espouses,
or would defend as rational ? It is concluded by most
thinking people that the world cannot get on satisfac-
torily without religion of some sort : the Mercury,
therefore, need not be ashamed to make a declaration
on this head. We would pause for a reply, but that
we have long since made up our minds to regard it as
a matter of indifference of what religion Englishmen
may say they are, if they are so silly and so stupid as
to quarrel with that which our laws have established
for us; and we shall altogether dispair of the man who
could be so absurd and so demented, or so corrupt, as
to denounce it as fanaticism. Of such a one, we
simply say, hic niger est—and we bid all our country-
men beware of him.

In another column we give insertion to a second
letter from our respected townsman, Mr. E. W. Jack-
son, explanatory of a portion of his original commu-
nication, and in reply to the remarks which we offered
upon it in our last publication. With respect to the
conclusion at which our correspondent arrives, via.,
that, " with an average price of 565. per quarter for
English wheat, and an average duty of Bs. per quarter,
the protection to the English agriculturist is 47 per
cent.," we are still unmoved from our former opinion.
The mode of calculation adopted by our correspon-
dent, as we shewed in our last, leads to establish a
fallacy,—as will be seen by the application to it of that
test which is styled by our mathematicians the " re-
ductio ad absurdum." The true mode of calculating
the per-centage of protection, in all cases where the
duty upon an article is not an ad valorem one, is by
estimating the proportion which it bears to the price
which the home grower can afford to receive in average
seasons; and in the present case, assuming 565. to be
that price, the amount of the proposed duty and charges
(together 18s.) constitutes a protection of 32 instead
of 47 per cent. We stated previously, however, that
the correctness or otherwise of this calculation did not
at all interfere with the intrinsic value of Mr. Jackson's
proposition; but it is of importance nevertheless that
the degree of protection should be correctly stated, as
it tends to prove that, with the first scale of prices and
duties laid down by our valued correspondent, the
agriculturist would not be receiving a greater protec-
tion than that afforded by the legislature to almost
every branch of industry throughout the kingdom.
Mr. Jackson is guarded in refraining from the ex-
pression of any opinion with respect to the sufficiency
of the protection which—assuming his preference for
the first scale of prices and duties—his plan would
afford to the agriculturist. We cannot, however, omit
here the opportunity of expressing our own conviction,
that it would not he an adequate one. We are quite
aware of the fact, that, by the mode which he proposes
of taking the averages, the price throughout the king-
dom would seldom reach that which is returned as the
general average under the present system, notwith-
standing the returns being made, under Mr. Jackson's
system, of the prices of " sound, merchantable wheat"
only. Under the present system, it is well known
that the average prices are materially advanced by the
returns of sales—in many cases fictitious—from the
large marts of import and consumption, in which, from
the extensive demand and the expense of transport
from the place of growth, the actual prices are in ge-
neral higher than those throughout the kingdom.
But, although the mode proposed of taking the ave-
rages from the returns of prices, merely, from the va-
rious markets of the kingdom, irrespective of the
quantity sold in each, would somewhat reduce the
rate of the general average, and apparently justify the
adoption of a lower scale to regulate duties, we muss
not lose sight of the effect which will be produced by
the substitution of the proposed gradually ascending
scale of duties for the present jumping scale. This
effect would be, that at all times the foreign importer
would be able to realise in the British market, if not at
a profit, at least without that enormous loss which is
imposed by the sudden rises in the present scale; and
the native grower would therefore be subjected to the
liability of prices being pressed down, by a constant
gld, below a renumerating point.