The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1846-12-22 00:00:00

THE LIVERPOOL STANDARD.

CUttliilSl-101VDEAL.E.

" PROTESTANTISM. PUSEYISM, & POPERY."

TO THE EDITOR OF THE LIVERPOOL STANDARD.
Sin,—The assize intelligence interposing, I could not
expect the most indulgent editorial courtesy to open the
columns of the STANDARD for the reprehension of a lea-
der with the above prefix, which appeared in the supple-
ment of the Liverpool Mercury of the 4th inst.—a leader
that demands the condemnation of every honest Protestant
in the empire.
That the Old Lady of Lord-street should turn religious
monitress is, if not instructive, at least amusing; but
when she undertakes the protection of abstract Protes-
tantism, this is more than can be endured, and cabs for
the repudiation of the kindness, and the suppression of
the impertinence. Her hugs become so much akin to
those of the " blessed Virgin" in the Inquisition, which
tore off the flesh and ripped up all who courted her " holy
embrace," that all who eschew hatred and malice and
mischief to the Church of England, will also eschew the
Mercury's proffered kindness towards Protestant interests
and true religion.
A mars of more contradictory inferences, from real or
supposed facts and data, could not well be compressed into
the same space as his leader. If he would confine him-
self to salt-box logic, sp uning tops, swimming feats, and
kindred trifles, he might be permitted to pass at least un-
censured, it not unread. But when he ventures on theo-
logy, writes lectures on Christianity, and strictures on
Protestantism, we may indeed open our eyes in astonish-
ment at a pundit so learned in the Scriptures, which he
quotes with all the facility of a Cambridge professor or an
Oxford D.D. This, doubtless, is to prove his familiarity
with that musty old volume, the Bible, and to establish
his qualifications and pretensions to instruct. A facility
in quotation, however—apposite though it be—is but a
sorry and equivocal proof of general, and none of saving,
knowledge. The devil himself could quote, and most ap-
positely too, if not c rrectly ; but who, except your Mer-
curys, your Carliles, and your Tom Paines, will receive
him as an expositor of Holy Wilt. That Ido the writer
of that article no wrong, I appeal to his censure of the
law's suppression of Tom Paine's infidel works. My
readings of the Mercury, short and occasional though they
be, are yet sufficient to bring to my recollection his stric-
tures and condemation of the law (when reporting an un-
fortunate inquest) for not prohibiting the dispensation of
physical poisons from the druggist's shops. But that is
quite azothei thing. Poison the soul as much as you like,
but touch not the body. The effect of the one is only su-
ture, though eternal ; that of the other is proximate,
though temporal only, therefore protect it at all hazards,
and at any sacrifice of either liberty or profit : the happi-
ness and pleasures of life certain are not to be superseded
by those of merely lite possible. So faintly does the
Mercury's divinity stir within him.
He says—" it is in this land of religious freedom that
death was declared to be the punishment of denying the
doctrine of the Trinity." Instead of being thankful that
this is no longer the case, instead of etnogising " this land
of religious freedom" for its abandonment of such perse-
cution and excess, be endeavours to lead the minds of his
readers into the in, pression that the crime is still ob-
noxious to the penalty, stating in aggravation, " that a
poor young college student was actually hanged at the
Grassmarket of Edinburgh by the particular requisition
of the Clergy." For the sake of the argument, admitting
the imputed fact, who, 1 would ask, originated such bloody
persecutions and tragedies as that here denounced? Who
openly shed oceans of blood, and secretly perpetrated the
most refined cruelties and the most atrocious tortures in
the vaults of that Pandemonium, the internal Inquisition?
Why that very Papacy with which he so deeply sympa-
thises. Yet not one word has he to utter in it. condem-
nation, while the phials of his unmitigated wrath are filled
to the brim against Protestantism, for what took place, if
at all, ages ago. Any reader of that article, unacquainted
with the fact, would suppose him to be an uncompromis-
ing and rabid Papist ; but is he such ? on the contrary, he
is, credal Judeus ! a professing member of the Reformed
Church of England. and bas affection for Rom .hism.only
as it is so formidable and stabbing an antagonist of our
National Church, furnishing a weapon for its discomfiture
and a wedge for its overthrow.
Again he says—" Here, too, (that is, in England,) the
Jews for their religion alone have been the objects of con-
stant persecution ; and whilst not even yet admitted to the
ordinary right of peaceable citizens and loyal subjects, are
compelled to observe the Sabbath of the Christian, while
the Christian refuses to pay the slightest respect to theirs."
Any foreigner reading which would arrive at no other
conclusion than that the Jews are now persecuted for their
religion. This is the same ignoratii elenchi appeal to our
partially-educated young Radical readers of the Mercury
containing,that runs throughout the entire leader, as' it
does, base (and, to perpetrate a jeu de mot, 1 may add
baseless) charges against both the religion and the laws of
this happy land. None knows better than himself, that
in no country is the Jew less persecuted, nor more libe-
rally treated and respected, than in this. In proof, look
at the list of high sheriffs for the current year ; is the ele-
vation of a Jew to the high honour of the shrievalty a proof
of persecution ? Is conferring the aldermanic gown of the
mightiest and most intelligent city in the world a proof ?
Away, then, with the dishonest arid unprincipled imputa-
tion, and away with the childish objection, that no respect
is paid to the Jews' Sabbath, an objection too puerile for
a rebuke, too contemptible for the dignity of a rejoinder.
He lauds and holds up to imitation the present Pope. for
relaxing some of the rigid laws against this wonderful race
of God's sons, censuring by implication and contrast the
severity of our own. Now a more damning charge against
Popery could not have been introduced, nor one more
damaging his own general knowledge and historical read-
ing. Is he so ignorant, then, of the Jews having been ex-
cluded from all rights of citizenship in the Holy City—
that at a certain hour each night they have been driven,
like dogs to a kennel, into a certain quarter, and that, too,
the most obnoxious, of the town, and there locked up for
the night, without the power of either ingress for others
or egress for themselves, except in the urgent case of fire ?
Transfer this system and state of things to liberal Eng-
land—town, Liverpool—time, ten o'clock at night—loca-
lity, the poorest, the filthiest, the most immoral, and in
every sense the worst part of, say Vauxhall-road; inclose
this pestilent district with high walls—drive the noble race
of Abraham within its confines, and lock them therein
each night,—do all or any portion of this, and into what
an ebullition of fury would the Mercury lash himself,
bristling with weekly leaders of fiery indignation. What
requiems would he not perform over the dead bodies of
each pestilentially-slain Israelite! what anathemas would
he not evoke against the " bigotry" of Protestantism! To
find a Radical half advocating the observance of the Jews'
Sabbath, by way of reciprocating religious civility, is a no-
velty worthy the refined politeness of a Beau Nash. No,
no ; one day in the week is enough for any liberal, and too
much for some. Whatever others may have forgotten, he
must remember well the time when his intimate friend
and co-labourer in the same Radical vineyard was habi-
tually accustomed to spend the Christian's Sabbath in
playing billiards. Those who can claim such liberty as
this, without incurring the visits of an inquisitor-general
and the punishment of the thumbscrew, have little reason
to complain of the restraint of the seventh day. The liberty
sought for is, the liberty to level all distinctions of days—
to open shops, offices, and theatres, as in France and other
Roman Catholic countries—to make the Sabbath a day of
pleasure, drunkenness, and licentiousness—to break down
the barriers that now interpose between monarchy and
democracy, between religion and infidelity. This is the
liberty dearer to the clan Mercury than any and all reli-
gion. The profession of the latter is desirable only so far
as it will contribute towards the accomplishment of this
ultimo thule of Whigs and Radicals ; for this it is that
they patronise that great " conspiracy against property,
liberty, and life." Popery—for this they offer the right
hand of fellowship to those" incomprehensible vagabonds"
the Jesuits, who hunt in couples, compassing the destruc-
tion of your domestic happiness; sowing the seeds of ha-
tred between husband and wife, brother and sister ; la-
bouring to topple down our sacred institutions, and involve
in one common ruin both liberty of conscit nce and perso-
nal liberty. History is prolific of such fell intentions and
resut's as these, but then we are forbidden to appeal to
such an old almanack as history. Well, but let us turn
to the Morning Herald of the Bth of the present month,
and we 11311 find that " a journeyman blacksmith, from
Wirtemberg, employed at Lucerne, has been tried and
condemned to banishment from the canton for ten years,
and to pay the costs of his prosecution, for having, while
drinking at a public-house cast reflections upon the Je-
suits." Is this fact of October, 1846, to be classed in the
category of the old almanack. Suppose that to have taken
place here, what then? But I need not describe the in-
sulted Roman dignity of your contemporary. But why
lend himself to that party end those principles which aim
at nothing less than the accomplishment of such a luxated
state of society as shall result in the destruction of civil
and religious liberty, and leave us nothing in exchange
but the caput mortuum of the body-burning, soul-destroy-
ing Romanism. He cannot be ignorant that the Society
of Jesuits are so dangerous, desperate, and intriguing, as
to have been kicked out of the very countries which not
only gave them birth, but which professes their religion
also ; nor ought he to be ignorant that Popery and igno-
rance, Popery and slavery, Popery and idleness, Popery
and filth, and Popery and crime, are synonymous; in
proof, let him take those Italian states the most proximate
to the " Holy City." No right-minded Englishman can
have any sympathy with the Mercury in his malignant at-
tacks on the citadel and bulwark of our liberty, and the
happiness of our homes—Protestantism. None can jus-
tify his patronage of the great apostacy. There is some-
thing to wonder at, Mr. Editor, when we find a professed
member of our own Church maligning the brightest and
the best of that Church's ministers, and yet throwing a
mantle of protection over Tom Paine. Such is the fact in
the article lam criticising. The opportunity of dragging
that minister before the public, again presented itself, and
we find Mr. M'Neile recommended to imitate the present
Pope ! Let that reverend gentleman imitate an angel,
still, like the flogging drummer, he will never please the
Mercury.

There is not a paragraph in that leader, Mr. Editor,
that does not call for analysis and demand rebuke. I have
no right, however, to trespass further on your columns
with an article already too long
.to find grace in the eyes of

One pressed, if not oppressed ;:ith the difficulty of finding

space for matter craving insertion ; but I cannot conclude
without observing, that it is to the countenance and sup-
port given to Romanism and Jesuitism by the writers of
such articles as that on " Protestantism, Puseyism, and
Popery," that we are indebted for the present state of

Ireland, where murder is the hourly crime of each day,

perpetrated, too, under circumstanCes more
_recoltit;k

than. are to be traced in the most barbarians of the Savage
tribes.—l am, sir, &c. VINDEX.

THE COLLEGIATE INSTITUTION.

TO THE EDITORS OF THE LIVERPOOL STANDARD

GENTLRMEN,—WouId it not be an improvement to the 1
Collegiate Institution if there were more lectures on music
delivered during the season. In an age when music is so I