The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1841-05-25 00:00:00

TUESDAY MORNING, MAY 25, 1841

In the London Times of last Thursday, we find an
article of most questionable complexion put forth, re-
lative to the recent transaction in Dublin, in which a
mother abbess, certain police magistrates, and a Pro-
testant clergyman, were the principal characters en-
gaged. Matters of this kind excite a great deal of in-
terest in Ireland, and the commentaries which they
elicit at this side of the water, especially from journals
of great circulation and influence, are anxiously looked

for. • Now it occurs to us that this demonstration of
the Times will give rise to a good deal of speculation—
and some of a kind the reverse of agreeable—in the
mind of Irish Protestants. They will be likely to re-
mark the peculiar moment selected by a Conservative
journal for sending forth a manifesto, in which the
Protestant clergyman is denounced in the most un-
qualified. and, we must say, opprobrious manner ;
whilst the part enacted by the Popish party is alluded
to in the most subdued tone—scarcely at all censured,
or altogether applauded. They will observe that the
Times was silent and neutral whilst the fate of the
•Whig administration remained uncertain, but that the
instant there seemed a likelihood of their being suc-
ceeded by Tories, it availed itself of this incident to
intimate that Tories highly disapprove of any defect of
veneration being shewn to keepers of nunneries, or to
the " old mother of abominations" herself—that Tories
will not be different in this respect from 'Whigs—and
that when they come into office, liberalism as to reli-
gion will still continue to be, as it is now, the " order
of the day" !
We do not say that such inferences would be justi-
fiable; we think, indeed, that an editorial article in the
Times, just now, would afford but slender foundation
for erecting so formidable a structure upon; but di-
vesting it of these or any other suspicions to which it
might be capable of giving rise, we say that it was in
itself a most unwarrantable production—such, indeed,
as we might expect to emanate from the Chronicle, the
Globe, the Sun, or any other Whig and Popish print ;
but altogether unworthy of, and unsuitable to, the
columns of a journal recognised as in any degree the
.organ of Conservative principles.
The Times is enraged that a Papist should be called
an " idolator," and Popery " idolatry;" but he should
reserve his rage for the homilies of our church and the
laws of the land, (to say nothing of the truth itself,)
which fully justify these epithets. He says :—" Could
" we be far mistaken in suggesting that the man who
" not only describes Fenelon, Pascal, Barromeo, Xa-
" vier, &c., as idolators, but advises all who cannot
" adopt the same language to join the Church of Rome,
" might probably be a Jesuit in disguise ? Fanaticism
" more wild, more coarse and revolting, cannot be found
" in the history of the Covenanters, even as caricatured
" by Sir Walter Scott."
Now this diatribe is, in the first place, an exhibition
of the sheerest ignorance, and has far more resem-

blance to what we should really expect from a " Jesuit
in disguise" than anything with which it professes to

find fault. If our laws and church declare the sacri-
fice of the mass to be " damnable and idolatrous"--a
" blasphemous fable and dangerous deceit," there is
surely no fanaticism (whatever impropriety there might
be under certain circumstances) in saying that.the per-
son who partakes in that sacrifice is an " idolator."
It is consistent in the writer who calls such language

fanatical to claim for Popery the title of a Christian—
instead of, what we think it is, an anti-Christian---
church ; and the whole series of his observations
would, in fact, be perfectly intelligible if he avowed
himself at once a Papist ; but the difficulty consists in
accounting for, or understanding, such language as
the language of Piotestantism. If the Church of
Rome be a " Christian" church, or may properly be
termed so, we of the Church of England have been
wrong all this time in protesting against, and decidedly
schismatical in separating from, it; and if the sacrifice
of the mass be not a " blasphemous fable and danger-
" damnable," moreover, and " idola-

°us deceit".

trous"—our laws and church are much to blame in
calling it so. Let the writer in the Times, however,
arrange these matters with the church and the legisla-
ture first of all, and then, if he succeed in having the
protest cancelled, he may rail and rant without that
palpable grossness of inconsistency and absurdity
which he now exhibits.
The false colouring which he gives to the transac-
tion in Dublin, and the perverted view he takes of it,
are natural enough in one whose mind is dark on this
essential point. With the high veneration he seems
to entertain for the Pope's church, no wonder that he
should conceive the lying, kidnapping, mother abbess
to be a most benevolent lady, who, in, endeavouring to
detain a little heretic in her establishment, was doing
a most meritorious, praiseworthy act; and the clergy-
man of the Church of England, who assisted her bro-
thers and relatives in endeavouring to remove her, a
most " bigoted fanatic," who " richly deserved" to be
pelted by the rabble—a " would-be martyr," who was
only too fortunate in afterwards escaping " prema-
turely" from that punishment to which he was con-
signed through what he himself called an unjust and
" idolatrous" influence operating against him even on
the pretended seat of justice—but of course, according
to the Times, most erroneously and unwarrantably so.
The whole tenour of this writer's remarks is, from
first to last, manifestly tainted with Popish prejudice,
and in direct opposition to truth and fact. His state-
ment is garbled—his course of observation unfounded
—and the impression which he seeks to convey, false
and injurious in every point of view. The moral with