The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1836-06-14 00:00:00

PROTESTANT UNION.

The Duke of NEWCASTLE, on presenting a petition from Not-
tingham expressive of thanks for their lordship? protection to
the church and state, said he trusted that their lordships would
not yield to intimidation, and he felt sure that the country would
rally round their lordships. The noble duke then presented a
petition from the Protestant Association, of which be had given
notice. The petition was agreed upon at a meeting held at
Exeter Hall on the 11th of May, and was read at length by the
clerk as follows:

" The petition of the undersigned protestants of London and
its vicinity humbly showeth,
" That your petitioners have observed of late years, with re-
gret and apprehension, various indications in the conduct of the
legislature of adeparture from those protestant principles which
have for centuries formed a leading feature in the British con-
stitution, and which principles, while they are professedly ad-
hered to on the one hand, are practically deserted on the other;
and your petitioners cannot doubt that; if your right honourable
house will but condescend to take these matters into your seri-
ous consideration, you will perceive the necessity of adopting
some settled and consistent course of action, and of abandoning
theattempf; which.itis impossible should ever be successful, of
governing a country at one and the same time on two opposing
and naturally irreconcileable principles.
"In exemplification of this remark, your petitioners beg leave
to observe, that, on readilyg the act passed in the ninth year of
King George the Fourth for the relief of protestant dissenters,
they find it thereby enacted, that every person who shall accept
any corporate office shall take an oath ' never to exercise any
power, influence, or authority he may possess .by virtue of that
office to injure or weaken the protestant church as it is by law
established.' 'lhessalso find in the act passed in the following
year for the relief of his Majesty's Roman catholic subjects' a
similar enactment, that every Roman catholic member of either
house of parliament shall subscribe an oath never to exercise
any privilege, to which he is or may become entitled, to disturb
or weaken the protestant religion or protestant government in
the united kingdom.' In like manner, in the corporation act
passed in the very last session, they find a re-enactment of the
oath of 1828, which has been already quoted; while at the
coronation of his present Majesty a solemn engagement was
publicly entered into by the King in the face of the whole na-
tion `to maintain the protestant reformed religion as established
by law.' From these, therefore, as well as from various other
instances which it is needless to recapitulate, your petitioners
are led to the conclusion, that it is the declared determination
of the legislature that the government of the country shall still
be protes:ant,,and that the maintenance of the protestant reli-
gion as by law established is still an object of your unceasing
solicitude.
" Your Petitioners would next observe that, not imagining
that in these repeated declarations of an earnest desire for the
preservation of the Protestant religion and the Protestant
Church, your Right Honourable House could have used words
without any definite meaning; or have enacted a series of so-
lemn oaths and obligations without any concern as to their in-
tent or purport—they have endeavoured to ascertain the exact
nature of that protestant religion which is thus repeatedly de-
clareda
establishedb)U law, and fur the mainte-
nance d tfo
whichha v e beenso nch apparent
with reference to the Ch•,,•ch of England, your petitioners find
that inasmuch as by the Act of Uniformity. of the 13th and 14th
of King Charles the Second. the Thirty-nine Articles of' that
church are made part of the statute law of the realm, and are
ordered to be subscribed, without any exception lN hatever, by
every minister of the church, and I,y every teacher in out na-
tional seminaries—there can remain no doubt of that National
Protest against the Church of dome, which is thus recorded
and perpetuated, is most full and complete. •,i• in ;hese stan-
dard formularies the Romish Church is declared "to have eired
in matters of faith ;" the Bishop of Rome is adjudged to have
np jurisdiction witiin this realm ; transubstantiation is held to
be "repugnant to the plain words of Scripture;" and the mass
to be " a blasphemous libel and a daugirous deceit;" iihile