The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1836-08-26 00:00:00

Al 5 13 UST 26 1836.

TO M. T.' BLACKBURNE

Si do not address you for the purpose of answering your
" Defence," nor in order to vindicate Mr. M'Neile, nor to as-
sume new or old positions of argument against the education
system that you so strenuously endeavour to uphold.. My ob-
ject is to show you, that your wisest course would be to receive
and act upon the kind advice already given, "Ne sutor ultra
crepidam, and endeavour to rest satisfied with the laurels that
you have gathered in the council chamber. You are evidently
essaying to move in armour that You have not proved. You
acknowledge, with a good grace, that your biblical criticism is
"second hand." I sincerely hope, for your own sake, that the
information displayed in your pamphlet is of an equally " se-
cond hand" character. I should be sorry to impute to you,
without sufficient evidence, the " devout fraud" of knowingly
deceiving the public by ungrounded assertions, but I cannot
free you from the "virtuous delusion" of undertaking to write
upon subjects with which you are altogether unacquainted.
Some remarks in your " Defence" might have led us to hope
that you would have avoided the evil you su much deprecate.
You say, " before men had gone the lengths that have been re-
sorted to on this subject, it was but fair to make themselves
quite sure that the ground on which they stood was quite te-
nable ;" and again, "few things are more deserving of con-
temptuous and sarcastic reproof than unfounded pretensions to
learning." When a decided opinion is advanced we are in-
duced to imagine that the writer or speaker "is quite sure that
the ground on which he stands is tenable." In order that h,4
may be sure of it, there ought to have been a careful investiga-
tion. The firmness of assertion is founded either on knowledge
or on pretensions to knowledge. If the opinion be formed on
sound knowledge of the subject it will yeadily evolve its proofs,
and show its reasons—if it have been puffed up by "unfounded
pretensions" to knowledge, then it is only "deserving, of con-
temptuous and sarcastic reproof."
As you have volunteered to serve in the forlorn hope of the
Irish system, you cannot be offended if the feeblest as well as
the mightiest—the least known as well as those who are most
prominent—should adventure to meet you on ground of your
own selection. You make severe complainings of the uncere-
monious manner in which Mr. M'Neile has treated your speech.
You consider the reception given to your conciliatory harangue
to be an act of direct personal aggression. " Mr. M'Neile has
thought fit," you say, "to treat me with a degree of personal
rudeness, not very consistent with the dictates of gentlemanly
propriety." In your haste to throw off from your mind the un-
easy sensation of "thoughts that burn, and words that glow,"
you quite forget that you have not proved your assertion, that
Mr. M'Neile had treated you with a degree of personal rude-
ness." It seems as if you had yet to learn that a public speech
becomes public property. Every man is at liborty to make his
comments upon it. A wincing conscience will convert criti-
cism into personality, and would fain cover the confusion of ,
defeat, by endeavouring to elicit compassion by the whinings
and wailings of wounded feelings.
But, sir, it was to be hoped that your Own suffertrileatwould
have taught you to compassionate the feelings or others. • The .
most delicate sentiments towards others ought to have character-
ised your " defence," when you were enduring such exquisite
nervousness, because of an imaginary " personal rudeness."
And does your pamphlet exhibit an extraordinary carefulness
to avoid even the semblance of " personal rudeness ?" Is there
no just ground of complaint against yourself for " violating the
dictates of gentlemanly propriety? What construction are we
to put on these expressions respecting Mr. M'Neile. " Con-
necting this piece of uncalled fur impertinence, in advising me
to mind my own business"—" he has most disingenuously con-
cealed it"—" traducer." "Hyperion to a Satyr. Party spirit
must have rendered a man all but absolutely rabid, or he could
never have indulged in such a presumptuous and profane per-
version of scripture. And is this the man who is to give the
tone to public opinions in Liverpool ? I trust not"—" the
meanness to insinuate"—" usual sneering manner." Loath-
ing from my inmost soul the spurious affectation of delicacy
that pervades Mr. M'Neile's speech, and thinly veils the tierce
malignity that lurks beneath it, I shall not hesitate in plain
terms, to avow my conviction that he did notbelieve me to have
any such intention, and that when he first uttered, and after-
wards sanctioned the publication of this passage, he knew it to
contain a vile and. unprincipled calumny." "He would be
able to supply the vacuum occasioned by the death of Charles
Matthews." These, sir, are a few specimens culled oat of your
" melange." No doubt you would endeavour to persuade us
that they do not treat Mr. M'Neile " with a degree of personal
rudeness, not very consistent with the dictates of gentlemanly
propriety." Ido not quote them for the purpose of insulting
Mr. 11PN eile's character, by even denying their applicability to
him. He will shake them from him "as dew-drops from the lion's
mane," and leave his traducer, like all other insects of a day, to
sport over and perish in the corruption that engendered them.
Lpon you they ought forcibly to impress the advice, Ne sutor
ultra crepidam, by teaching you that when you do not "mind your
own business," you expose yourself to the temptation of losing
your temper in your vain attempts to flounder through subject"-,
for the investigation of which you are not at present competent.
But you say that " every sober-minded man will regard
" Mr. M'Neile's" graphic grouping of the children and the
clergy as a despicable piece of Tom-foolery, disgraceful alike
to him who produced and to those who applauded; mournfully
inconsistent with the gravity and solemnity of the subject under'
discussion, and calculated to grieve rather than to delight. all .
those who wish to see the teachers of religion respected and re-
spectable." What language then, sir, can be sufficiently ex-
pressive of our abhorrence of the wit that exercises itself with
the words of scripture? In what terms can we describe the in-
dividual who could mix up profane witticisms with a punning
remark upon one who bad not provoked the attack ? With what
words of indignant censure shall we rebuke the man who wrote
the note on the second page of your pamphlet? Have not,
" political feelings been in some degree at work" in the mind o'
him who penned it ? "is it the genuine offspring of enlight-
ened principle ?" Are there not in it " spiteful allusions to,
and sneers" at toryism ? Does it not afford sufficient evidence
that the feeling of supreme reverence for the word of God was
dormant iu the bosom of its writer? And does it not lead us
to suspect that his religion is of that "second-hand" characters
which brings into strong exercise the eneres of the mind,
whilst the fibres of the heart remain totally. unmoved? Oh
sir, we dare not use the words " despicable:" or " disgraceful
Tom-foolery" in feference to such a note, but we are compelled
to say that it is " mournfully inconsistent" with the principle
of professed subjection to the gospel of the Lord „tee... curies.
I now proceed to point out your utter incompetency for the
work that you have undertaken. You have gained, rapppose•
some trilling celebrity amongst your own party. Your speech
and succeeding pamphlet evince that you are considered the
great bulwark of the Education Committee. We may, then,
reasonably conclude that you have brought up your best and
most learned endeavours to the "Defence." I candidly con-
fess to you that your speech and pamphlet appear to me as Sr!
little deserving of notice, that I would not move my pen against,
them were it not for the consideration that some might be in-
duced to receive your unfounded assertions as solidly-p,rovr
truths. My own heart bears me witness before Him we°,
searcheth the heart and reins" that I undertake to-point out
your errors, not for the contemptible purpose of exalting m`'"self, but to show you that your measure of information Is t"'"
scanty to act as a safe gu?de, either to yourself or otherf;
through the various subjects glanced at in your "Defence.
At page 8, you write thus of our private schools :—" They are
admirably calculated to nourish the fierce and haughty sectari-
anisin which is the natural tendency of all religious establish
ments to engender. By drawing up, as it were, the different
sections of the community into hostile battallions—frowning
defiance and scowling hatred upon one another from their in-
fancy—they too often succeed in sowing the seeds of dissensi°'
and confusion, and in poisoning and embittering all the inter-
courses of life. Such, however, are not the objects that en"
lightened benevolence will seek to accomplish by education;
Human nature is sufficiently prone to contention, without b
ing it taught as a duty with our earliest lessons, that we should
hate one another because we do not all go to the same church
and join in the same worship." Now, sir, I will not hesitate'
in plain terms, to avow my conviction," that this paragraph ih
a continued misstatement from first to last. Search tbr°°
the length and breadth of the British Isles, and, I confident).
affirm, that you will not be able to find a single school, in C?°
flexion with time establishment, wherein such principles are la:
culcated as you thoughtlessly and recklessly attribute to Us.
On the 9th page you write :—" But mark the baneful ilea
rude, even on a benevolent mind, of being committed t ,
despotic system. Legal establishments of religion are essell
tially tyrannical and persecuting. These features are not srt'o
dental or extrinsic appendages, but enter into their very
Bible
—are part and parcel of tbeir essence—so that it is impossi
for the mind, by any process of abstraction, to spparate from 1,/
e'
conception of a religious establishment the ideas of tyran
and persecution, any.more than it can separate the idea of light
from the sun. 'This is the principle, and, indeed, the lauguqee
of the inquisition. * * * Such is the identity of charaee7t,
that pervades all religious establishments ; and such is the woe
ter fruit they will ever continue to bring forth, to the disgree
of religion and the injury of society, until, scared away by the
advancing light of reason and revelation, they vanish from
,t;tl
earth." Assertion is bele heaped upon assertion, while 4.
nobly disdain to afford your readers even a shadow of Plrt
Do you imagine, sir, that your ipse dixit is sufficient to copy
~,a
an unproveable assertion into a self-evident truth ? DO,
4Y to
think that the "advancing light" of voluntaryism mats
act the part of a scare-crow, and so fright establishinef.o
that they shall " vanish from the earth ?" Is it bees fly
you have asserted, that " legal establishments are esseotili,
tyrannical and persecuting,' that therefore we must lift LIP tee
cap of liberty and cry, "down with it, down with it, even t°..00
ground;" or, as you ao blandly express it, "all sincere christTie
and true patriots should labour and pray for its overthrow
it because it is impossible for your mina to levet ate theeide._
an establishment, and of tyraunyund persecution, that theicaeo
no other mind can discriminate between them? Is it bectouge,
Your ignorance of the subject has caused you to jumble e the
iher the principles of the Church of England and o ,ba
inquisition, that therefore every other mind must be confute
its
the mists of prejudice and ignorance ? What collection of 'eh ?
has hurried you to the sweeping conclusion of this paragrayet
Have you gathered it from the fact that popery, althottegliave
established, is essentially tyrannical and persecuting ? u!oary,
you concluded that all establishments are essentially sang ° well,
because that when the independent party, under Cron was
became the established religion of the country, our 14i
with a
beheaded ? And now, sir,l will enlighten your mind, wee, to
remark, sufficiently common-place, but which) does not seems-
have occurred to you. It is this—your assertions in toms tle
graph, as far as regards the Church of England, are ineeti,et abes•
of being proved. I challenge you to show, in the
tre'jeati
Liturgy, or Homilies, a single passage that can po!U"
either to tyranny or persecution.,
Again, on the same page, you write, " the Church Caete oak
is a compend full of popery from beginning to end." at this
not hetitate, in. plain terms, to avow my conviction" tt„tty
sentence contanis an assertion which is beyond your a "
prove.
eee
Your remarks at page 26 still more forcibly convinceeTe-.0
the narrowness of your information en the subjects tO tees it
attempt to write upon. You there say, "As already raftrs 'ft
is fair to take it for granted that these,
least the most formidable." " Let any candid and con dwelt
dwelt
man—remember that one of these charges, and that in" oiseed;
if not the who,e, ideate
upon than all the rest put together, is now fairly reliagendecl;
and tlt ihsel‘c.oornthduycotinbfethinegcoinpilers justified, and even cm-I'i,,
instance remains in whicshilectlitaellyteribtscard'o-epdte, dthabyt nottl the vre-fer;eileoc:111;
objected to." " The notes are very numerous, and of Ir. Creal
three are found fault As new information ustiaa,
astonishment and delight in the mind, I am sure to
brit 0o
feel obliged to any person who will raise the presentu.
3 our knowledge and enlarge the field of your observationso_o wort!
will also gain the additional advautage of procuriug.
ercil'iffeessot,
" second hand" criticisms. Those who have studied tn
the
bearings of the Irish system will discover no noveltyied atte
furmation lam about to give you. Since you 'or_ mask,ee
lion, w th the inviting appearance of italics, to ye ile,7.;nit of
can nor justly be offended if we tell you, that lt.e frith the e"g
" special observation" is, that your acquaint,a,nlat
one of
ti:oet
tracts is evidently in its infante,. you say,
.11:, :5 more
boce
charges (ieferring, I suppose, to I Cor.hxa.v-e4i '
heard the su4lic
upon than all the rest put together." _
fa'ne u ineu t private, atu, (di lb °Cahn n
therefore EnglandEngland tellai nd
()null
all ehtlahateutdie;:isit Taoussfetge:r
gaelltulideerd;'(onle.aitshnerot;asmir "d'aystt-eudpeo-nTltetnhu'lpina';•:ittihrtagneselarYart
passage in the extracts. You aee eva ti
d for the e: emit, o Pc
in the extracts belie; save
am! too mcch overjoyed at the idea of the jtedit_oref
enivp:tlll376