The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1853-01-18 00:00:00

TUESDAY MORNING, JAN. 18, 1853

ANOTHER VICTIM TO ROMISH TYRANNY.
WE were enabled to announce last week the intel-
ligence received by electric telegraph of the death
of FRANCESCO MADIAI, one of the victims of the
intolerant tyranny of Rome, as exercised by her tool,
the GRAND DUKE OF TUSCANY. We have no oc-
casion to enter into a lengthened statement of the
alleged crime for which the, innocent couple, MA-
DIAI and his wife, were condemned to the punish-
ment of the galleys for a series of years. All the
world must be familiar with that glaring act in
which Rome wrote herself down anti-christian,—in
which she verified her claim to the worst which her
enemies have laid to her charge. History is thickly
stained with instances of the demoniac tyranny with
which Rome persecuted her victims, and submitted
the unbelievers in her strange doctrines to the most
diabolical tortures. It was a system which would
have disgraced the wildest hor.le of savages, but
time had somewhat dimmed the horror of the pic-
ture, and too many were inclined to attribute much
of the enormity to the barbarity of the age in which
such deeds were perpetrated. The age of martyr-
dom, it was believed, had long since passed away,
and though Rome had lost none of that pestilent
heresy which made the adoration of the images of
saints a substitution for the worship of the DEITY,
and the intercession of the VIRGIN MARY an equi-
valent for the mediation of the REDEEMER, it was
at least supposed that she had become more civilised
in the mode of propagating her soul-destroying
errors. It was all a delusion, and Rome, through
her minion LEOPOLD, the GRAND DUKE of Tus-
CANY, has testified to the world at large that she
is unchanged and unchangeable. She has all the
will, and lacks only the power, to perpetrate the
most barbarous enormities of which history accuses
her. She is only wanting the means to fill the cup
of her infamy to overflowing, and arouse the wildest
spirit of vengeance from common humanity, in order
to crush such a concentrated pest-house of thefoulest
crimes, which is blazoned forth in the blasphemous
mockery of Christianity. This poor Italian couple,
of whom the blood of one, and the still lingering
pains of the other, cry aloud to heaven for vengeance,
had no other accusation against them but that
of having read the Divine Revelation to all man-
kind. They did, indeed, but receive the glad tidings
which should be to all people—for there was not a
particle of evidence that they attempted to dissemi-
nate the glorious light of the gospel, or make prose-
lytes—and for this, which is the inherent right of
every soul born into the world, the foul demon of
Antichrist, of which Rome is the incarnation,
awarded them a punishment exceeding in severity
that usually allotted to felons. This is no highly
coloured picture drawn by enthusiastic partisans to
serve a political object, but a naked fact, patent to
all the world, and standing out in its glaring de-
formity. It is no longer an accusation, for which
argument may interpose a palliation, but a damning
record,which no sophistry can wipe away, that Rome,
in the nineteenth century, in this age of civilisation,
is animated by the same spirit which justified the
persecution of the Albigenses, and prompted the
massacre of ST. BARTHOLOMEW. It is only that
the arena is contracted, that for wide Christendom
her absolute controul is limited to the petty domain
of Tuscany, or such scenes would bti too common
even to be recorded, and we should again see the
time when

Sighs and groans and shrieks that rend the air
Are made, not marked.
In England her surpliced tools may speak with
bated breath and whispering humbleness, but it is
only the craft which teaches them to bide their time;
and though in France and Austria they have more
swing, they are there Considerably checked by that
under current of democratic tendency which may
break out, as it has done before in Paris and Vienna,
and endanger the thrones of the respective
Emperors. There priestcraft is but an to
military despotism, and its harpy claw aid s
are there-
fore muffled for a season, yet still responsive to
the same truth, which cannot be too often echoed,
that Papal Rome is as sanguinary in her desires
and as unmitigated in her ferocity as ever she was
in her worst days. It is only a few years since
we had account s of the discovery by Capt. HARRIS
Of the kingdom of Shoa, in the interior of Africa,
in which some remains of Christianity were still
preserved, but so debased by barbarism, that its
worshippers offered human sacrifices. Does Rome,
with all her advantages of civilisation and refine-
ment,
offer a better picture to the view ? She had
glossed over her enormities with the veil which had
been woven by Jesuitical cunning, but the oppor-
tunity for gratifying her true spirit has been
afforded her by the little Potentate of Tuscany ;
she has thrown aside the veil, and now stands
exposed to the world in all her hideous deformity,
not one whit ch,aner than the naked Christian
savages discovered in the middle of Africa.
But why say all this in England, where the
apologists for the persecutions committed in
Florence are admitted to sit as legislators—where
the professors of this foul doctrine are actually
Ministers of State—where the public money is
voted to educate and maintain the priests who

propagate this pestilent heresy—and where every

- -
encouragement, short of sacrificing the Reformed
Church to their rapacity (and this may soon be
done in Ireland), is given by the men now elevated
by faction into power ? The Protestant subjects of
QUEEN VICTORIA are not sufficiently alive to the
dangers which threaten them, and it is only the
occurrence of such an event as is now recorded
which excites due attention. But Rome has for
years past been insidiously extending her influence,
deeming no degradation too low, if by stooping she
may advance one step towards her object. Her
priests, her mass-houses, her nunneries, and other
means of perversions have been considerably in-
creasing in numbers in this country, while in
Ireland, with her own friends in power, and reli-
gious liberty made the pretext for the surrender to
her of every claim, it needs some more decided
action than has hitherto been taken even to main-
tain our own position against such a wily and un-
scrupulous antagonist.
A letter from Florence, which has been subse-
quently received, throws a doubt upon the report of
the death, but it cannot remove the stigma upon
either Rome or her
of sacer tool. If either of these victims
dotal tyranny has been spared, it is owing
otwhs
on the part of their persecutors, who,
ton no
itmetracnyding the
continued their persecution with relentless V'indic-

lave been requested to
Teticlvantages afforded by this
the advertisement in our front
sretimLtuilitvlidoE
page. There will be no print given this year, but all the
nßo,ru:rs° ries
eaAtd eRrTs
forth of n
funds will rangeevoted to augment the number of prizes,
which will g from £4O down to £5 each, and we un-
derstand will average one to every fifteen subscribers.