The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1853-08-30 00:00:00

show ourselves deserving of the high mission with
which we are entrusted as the centre of Chris-

punish

tianity, the promoter of civilisation, the fountain-

head of commerce, and the arbiter of

,stinies

of the nations of the world ? From the time of
ELIZABETH and the glorious era of the Reforma-
tion, our commercial and financial policy has been
that of Protection to native industry, native capital,
and native enterprise. Under that system we pro-
gressed with a rapidity beyond that of any other
and, at

nation, either of ancient or modern times

the close of the last long war, had reached a pitch
of greatness unparalleled. During all this time
Great Britain preserved the purity of the faith
which had obtained her so many blessings, and

even ha

d a revolution to prevent a return to

her ancient superstition. She

lmitted no en-

croachments of Rome, whether by force or craft
and allowed none who professed the exploded
heresy to have any share in her Government,
either national or local. How have we profited by
the wisdom of our ancestors, which were blessed
with such happy results P We have thrown the
experience of ages to the winds, in order to adopt
the theories of political economists, whose gold is
God, whose ledgers are their Bibles, and whose
Consols. It was for the

5h is in the pric

profit of the manufacturers that the duty on foreign

corn was repealed, in order that, on the pretence
of cheap bread, they might reduce the wages of

their factory slaves.

The cry of Free-trade was
assumed as a political dogma, to realise which every
interest in the country was thrown open to com-
petition with untaxed foreigners ; and when prices

had been so reduced that every merchant, importer,
and shipowner was losing by his commercial ope-
rations, and the country was fast hastening to a
general panic, our political agitators sounded the
note of Free-trade success, and the consumers, who
knew little at whose expense the cheapness had
been produced, readily joined in the cry. Provi-
dence, in its mercy, has reversed the decree, and,
by enormous supplies of the circulating medium,
raised the prices of almost eve,g commodity, and
augmented the wages of labour ; and yet the same
cuckoo-cry is repeated about Free-trade prosperity,
as though our rulers and politicians had pre-deter-
mined to adhere to their theory, whether right or

wrong.
In religion a similar course has been pursued.
The safeguards which the wisdom of our ancestors
had placed round the national faith, have one by
one been displaced upon the false plea of religious
liberty. Romanists have not only been admitted
to places of trust, and to the responsible duties of
legislators, but into the still more responsible
offices of advisers to the Crown ; not simply for
their abilities, passing over the incident of their
being Romanists, but ostensibly and really for the
latter cause—which ought to have been a disquali-
Acation—in order that the votes of their adherents
may swell a Parliamentary majority for the Mi•

proscribed as

practise their

.stition

se who are s

Even the

BISHOP of ROME to parcel E

rn to extirpat

the Church a

npu of the
r._

and to establish a Romish hi
Dalin-

land. into dic

rehy, me

which ha

in the British

towed to ride roughshod over

of Malta, Rome is 0

.e carried I C

L nas 1 ,
3 the I c