The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1841-08-13 00:00:00

TO THE EDITOR OF THE LIVERPOOL STANDARD.

SlR,—The above quotation is from a paragraph copied
from the Liverpool Standard into many of the public papers;
and I shall, with your permission, adduce one or two local
cases in confirmation of your propositions, and in support
of the duty of the respective parties therein mentioned,
which duty you have so legitimately deduced from the pro-
position.

While passing through some parts of North Wales in June
last, I stopped at Newtown, in Montgomeryshire. It was
my first visit to that romantic scenery. In perambulating
the town and its vicinity, three large edifices arrested my
attention: one was a Baptist meeting-house, which, since
its original erection, has been enlarged thrice ; another was
a Methodist meeting-house ; and the third a public room or
rooms for lectures, either on politics, dissent, ►mechanism,
or infidelity, as each adventurer's taste or interest may ac-
tuate the candidate for oratorical fame or for lucre. The
parish church is a small and apparently neglected edifice,
out of public view, unless sought for. The incumbent, or
vicar, has not, as I was informed, resided there for many
years; but committed the charge of the large and populous
parish to a curate. There dissent is rampant; and yet, from
the great thirst for religious dissent at Newtown one might
hope, from the great boast made of the moral and religious
efficiency of dissent, to find a population religious, orderly,
peaceable. The reverse of all this, however, is the case.
The town has been lately under a military surveillance; and
the postillion whom I had engaged assured me that the town
was most notorious for its immorality and disorder. It cer-
tainly bore that appearance.

Oil the day of the election (last June) for the Montgo-
meryshire boroughs, the unwashed friends and admirers of
Sir John Edwards, having found that their radical candidate
(Sir John) had lost the election, began to demolish the build-
ings, shops, and houses of the supporters of Mr. Choi-
mondely, the conservative and successful candidate ; to at-
tack the magistrates and police; and it was not until the
military had been called to arms, that the advocates of Sir
John Edwards, and of " civil and religious liberty," were
compelled to live in peace, and spare the lives and properties
of their unoffending neighbours. Of all the voters at New-
town, four only, if 1 rightly recollect, voted for the respecta-
ble and conservative candidate. So much for dissent, radi-
calism, and " civil and religious liberty," at Newtown
The next town at which I arrived was V elshpool. There
I found but little of the trophies of dissent: but there I
found the appearance of order, respectability, and a high
state of conservatism. Tiro CHURCH is in the ascendant at
elsbpool, being favoured with a resident vicar, who, with
his curates, labours in his vineyard. Welshpool is also in
the county of Montgomery.
Wrexham, Denbighshire, was my next place of halting
and of sojourning. In that town dissent and radicalism ap-
pear dominant. And no marvel : fur, on inquiry, I found
that, until the present respected vicar, there had been no
resident vicar in that large and populous parish for many
years. The late Dean of St. Asaph, Mr. Shipley, a tho-
rough wing, had been the vicar for upwards of half a cen-
tury, and committed the parish to any curates whom he
might get as cheaply as he could. Over the ecclesiastical
resgesbc of Wrexham, during that half-century, the
CHURCH may advantageously throw a veil. Suffice it to
say, that Wrexham has had a fair field for experimenting on
the moral and social condition of the people; and in that
town, as my information is, there are not fewer than eleven
or twelve different religious sects, each striving for its own
" interest," and all striving against the curiacn. But the,
experiment made by dissent on the religion and morals of
Wrexham, is as great a failure as at Newtown. In one of
the streets leading towards Chester is a grand colonaded new
chapel, or meeting-house, lately erected. On inquiring what
the building was, it was replied, " That, sir, is a monument
of dissenting pride and churchmen's folly." Not compre-
hending the drift of the answer, I interrogated, " What?"
" That new chapel, sir, stands on the site of the old one,
which was scarcely half filled—an old-fashioned, plain build-
ing, and too much so for modern taste ; and that new erec-
tion has been built to a great extent by the contributions of
church-people—at least called church-people—in Wrexham
and its neighbourhood. The funds—after various ways of
raising the wind—being still deficient, the minister went to
Liverpool, and, in company with a drictor of dissent there,
called upon and obtained from churchmen and churchwomen
in that town a considerable sum of money. On his return
to Wrexham, one of his first acts was, signing an anti-
church-rate petition !---a hole-and-corner petition, hawked
about the town by ono of the pillars of his meetinghouse or
chapel." " Well," rejoined I, "we are liberal in Liver-
pool ; but I was not aware that we had church-people who
contributed to pull down the church in this kingdom."
" You are right, sir—quite right ; for every churchman who
contributes a shilling to build or support a dissenting inte.
rest,' or patronises dissent by his presence in their chapels,
does so much towards pulling down his own church, and the
ancient institutions of his country."

And, Mr. Editor, I repeat that every churchman who don
in any way contribute to support dissent, does just so much
to promote discord, strife, popery on the one hand, or infi-
delity on the other. Witness the close alliance between the
dissenters and papists and radicals and chartists and social-
ists, especially in every political movement against the
church and all the venerable and valuable. institutions of
Great Britain. And what is the conclave of dissenting
teachers at Manchester to do, but to agitate the country in
defence of the al olition of the corn-laws? Not that they
care for the poor, though that be their pretence ; for it is well
known that the dissenting ministers are strenuous advocates
for the present POOR-LAW : and they further show their care
for thg poor—consigned, to the union poorhouses—by at-
tempting to deprive those poor of religious instruction ; for
it is notorious that the dissenters unite with infidels in op-
posing the appointment of regular ministers of religion for
the union poorhouses.

But, in the approaching agitation on the corn-law question,
these dissenting preachers have two objects in view : one to
depress the agricultural interest, and, through that, to reduce
or ruin as much of the church property as depends upon the
landed interest ; the other, to preserve in place and power
the present administration, so as to deal out to the church
more " heavy blows and great discouragements," which my
Lord Melbourne and Co. could not do if out of office.

I am, sir
91h Ari.qust, 1841.

VIATOR

ALTERATION Or THE PENITENTIARY SYSTEM.---Sir
Peter Laurie, in adjudicating upon some case of little im-
portance, at the Mansion-house, made an important an-
nouncement on the subject of prison discipline. felt great
gratification in loeinf.,, able to assure the public limn the chair
in which he sat, that the Penitentiary system., which was so
loudly reprobated by men of humanity, was about to he eo,n_
pletely altered. He had heard from unquestionable author-
ity, that after the long trial which had been given to the so-
litary and maddening process in, that place of punishment, it
was at length discovered that the cruel rigours of the plan
were not productive of the good anticipated ; that the silent
and solitary system, instead of causing an improvement of
morals, deprived several of the wretched delinquents sen•
tenced to pine within its walls of the use of their reason alto-
gether; and that the Government was at length awakened to
the necessity of prison reform, as regarded the horrible place
of punishment called the Penitentiary. Three men and
three women bad completely lost their reason last year, and
the same number of men and women have lost their reason
within the last six months. Mr. Hohler feared that the
model-prison which the government are building will be the
means of establishing a more vigorous system of punish-
ments than was possible even M the Penitentiary. Sir Peter
had no apprehension of the kind ; he did not think that any-
thing could possibly be so bad as the Penitentiary.