The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1841-05-25 00:00:00

LONDON COMMERCIAL REPORT.

SATURDAY EVENING.—The result of the present week's
transactions in the general produce markets has not been
satisfactory ; for, although the sales have been large and im-
portant, the actual purchases at them have not equalled the
expectations of the holders.
The Tea-market was quiet to-day.
Accounts received this afternoon from Liverpool notice an
inanimate market for Cotton all the week, the trade only
purchasing for immediate wants. Notwithstanding this,
however, prices kept tolerably steady, which was the more
remarkable, as the stock had been immensely increased
within a few days. The stock yesterday at the outport was
494,200 bales, against only 282,500 bales at this time last
year. The imports this year have been upwards of 500,000
bales, and the sales 504,000 bales. The sales this week are
17,020 bales.
In the St. Petersburg markets, during the week ending
the 7th instant, the sales of produce were as follows :
Casan Potashes, first quality, 3,500 poods, at 19 3-7 roubles,
with 26-7 roubles advance for May ; 2,500 poods at 19 1-7
rouble, cash ;
7,500 poods at 19 1-7 roubles, cash, half for
May and half for July; and 1,250 poods at 18 6-7 roubles,
cash for July. Straw Ashes, 1,200 poods, at 17 1-7 roubles,
with 2 6-7 roubles advance, for June, all berkowetz, and in
silver.

TO THE CONSTITUENCIES OF PROTESTANT

ENGLAND.-LETTER V.

FELLOW PROTESTANTS,-11l the remarks which I ad-

dressed to you some weeks ago, my object was to call your
attention to the aggressive spirit of Popery, displayed in the
attempt of Lord Morpeth to crush by his registration mea-
sure the protestantism of the Irish constituencies; and I

endeavoured to prove to you that, in case of the success of

such a measnre, the only step to prevent the voice of 1'ro•
testant England being overborne by popery in the legislature,

w•as a repeal of the fatal concession of 1829. The bill of

Lord Morpeth, however, has been defeated. The time had
not come when a British parliament would listen to the pro-
position to hand over the entire representation of Ireland
into the controul of the Romish priesthood. The fruit of
years of agitation, tempting though it might be, was not yet
ripe ; and the dark spirit, whose excited hopes had whispered
that she might walk direct, in the light of day, to the enjoy-
ment of her hour of triumph over that church, the prostra-
tion of which is the cherished object of her thoughts and
dreams, has been stricken down for a rime—has been driven
to shroud once more in kindred obscurity her foul and pesti-
lent machinations against the liberties of mankind.

Yet think not that popery, baffled as she may be, is
crushed ! Think not that, although compelled to relinquish
the direct attack, she is less energetically pursuing the object
of her encreasing ambition. No. The scaling ladder which
she had raised against your bulwarks is thrown down, it is
true, and the trench abandoned; but she is still working
assiduously at the mine, and she hopes in a while to be en-
abled to advance amid the ruin created by its explosion.
This is no time, fellow Protestants, to be found slumbering
at your posts. This is no time, either, to allow yourselves to
be misled as to the identity of the enemy by whom you are
assailed. The hand which led on the late attack upon your
constitutional liberties and your religion was that of Rome ;
the weapon was Lord Morpeth's registration fraud. The
same foul apostacy it is which is now raising throughout
Great Britain the flames of civil discord and revolutionary
agitation ; and the brand which it bears is the ministerial
anti-corn law measure.

In endeavouring to enforce upon you this truth, I am
aware that I may draw down upon myself the sneers of some
who, looking only upon the surface of things, can see nothing
to connect the anti-corn law agitation, to the system which it
tends to erect, with the realization of the designs of popery.
But if I can show—as I trust I shall be able to do—that
popery will be strengthened, in her spiritual and temporal
power alike, by the acknowledged results of the ministerial
measure; if I can demonstrate that, not only will the legiti-
mate object of the church of Rome be promoted thereby—
(the increase of her power in the legislature, and the in-
creased facility afforded to her proselyting efforts throughout
the kingdom)—but that she will be enabled also to achieve
other secret and still more cherished objects; if I can show
that this measure will not only enable her to gratify her in-
satiable ambition, but at the same time to glut her long-
hoarded vengeance, I shall not, I am convinced, be accused
of jumping to conclusions when I assert, that it is POPERY
which, (like that kindred spirit which of old " squatted by
the ear" of the first mother of mankind), is now instilling
her dark temptations into the ears of the people of Great
Britain, and precipitating the arrival of a great social revo-
lution, amidst the ruin and misery of which she hopes to plant
her truculent foot upon the necks of the British people !
It is well known that from the populous manufacturing dis-
tricts of England the church of Rome has of late years been
drawing the great bulk of her increased power. Teeming as
these districts are with an Irish population, in them she found
principally a legitimate ground for putting forward her claims
to be recognised as one of the great religious bodies of the
country; whilst once located, she has never for a moment
relaxed in her efforts to increase the numbers and the import-
ance of her followers. Nor have those efforts been unsuc-
cessful. Aided by the natural effect of intermarriages—by
the tinsel splendour in which she clothes her forms of wor-
ship, to dazzle and entrap the ignorant and unreflecting ;
aided, too, more than all, by the debasement of morals and
character which ever results from the accumulation together
of masses of population, imperfectly provided with the means
of education,—within the last ten years popery has made gi-
gantic steps towards the accomplishment of her dreams of
supremacy in Great Britain. She has thrown aside no wea-
pon as too foul for her touch ; she has rejected no alliance as
too debasing for her embrace. She has used alike for her in-
struments the atheist, the socialist, and the socinian in reli-
gion ; the republican, the radical, and the crawling. sub-
servient whig in politics. She has used all, deluded all, and
profited by all in turn ; and yet she has never for a moment
lost sight of the ulterior object, towards the advancement of
which her efforts were directed.

That the immediate tendency of a repeal of the existing
corn laws will be to draw together additional masses of the
poplation towards the large manufacturing towns, will not be
denied, however we may doubt that such a measure will in-
sure them permanent prosperity. The manufacturing in-
terests, we are told, are to be " stimulated ;" and the
agricultural interests of the country, it is scarcely concealed,
are to be in proportion discouraged. Starving millions of
men, women, and children, whom the profits of husbandry
will no longer support, are to be thrown for subsistence upon
the precarious prosperity of foreign commerce—to be with-
drawn from the quiet and contentment of the valley and the
hill-side—to be withdrawn from beneath the paternal eye of
their rural pastors, and heaped up in the sinks and stews of
our manufacturing towns and villages, to be submitted to the
pollution of that moral pestilence, amongst whose turbid
waters popery is enabled to throw out her baits so sucessfully
for the souls of men. In the rural districts of England popery
hitherto has been enabled to make little progress. It is not
in health and happiness—it is not whilst walking by day
amidst the genial influences of heaven—it is not whilst sur-
rounded at even by the smiling faces of his children, that
man is content to bow down his head and to listen to the foul
temptations of the sorceress who claims to interpose her ob-
scene and idolatrous form between him and his maker. No;
the prosperity of the agriculture of Great Britain is a heavy
stumbling-block in the path of Rome. Her masses and her
mummeries, her prostrations and idolatries, are repulsive in
the eyes of men who are permitted daily to gaze abroad upon
the glories of earth and heaven, and yet remember that they
are forbidden to bend the knee to " the likeness of anything"
within that vast circle of power, magnificence, and beauty.
In the admixture of squalid poverty and riot—in the alterna-
tions of weariness and delirious joy—in the midst of pinching
care and reckless dissipation—in damp and unwholesome
dwellings—in an atmosphere loaded with disease and ringing
with the shrieks of crime and suffering :—in such a pande-
monium it is that the chaunt of the choir falls most grate-
fully upon the ear—that the magnificence of the altar and
trappings of its ministrants attract most the eye and the
imagination. Amidst such a population it is that tortured
-hearts and startled consciences fly most readily to that foun-
tain which cools only for a moment—to that hand which
sears over for a time the festering' and throbbing wound;
and such a population it is with which it is the object and
acknowledged tendency of our free-trade theories, to control
the manufacturing districts of the kingdom.
In her views of proselytism, it can scarcely be disputed
that popery must inevitably be a gainer by the full realization
of the anti-corn-law agitation. Admitting even the correct-
ness of the theory upon which that agitation is based; ad-
mitting even that extensive manufacturing prosperity will be
the result, whilst the distress inflicted upon agriculture will
be mitigated by the immigration of the agricultural popula-
tion, and their employment in the manufacturing districts ;
still the church of Rome sees in that vast change the sure
sources of increased power and influence. Politically, she
has every thing to hope from the " discouragement" levelled
against the landed aristocracy and the yeomanry of the
country, and transfer of their influence into the hands of the
manufacturing body, who have for so many years made com-
mon cause with her. Even now it is well known that she
possesses a controlling power in the manufacturing constitu-
encies, which enables her to ask and have her price; and it
would be a folly to suppose that in a new state of things she
would possess that power less effectually or exercise it less
relentlessly.

But let us glance for a moment upon the darker side of
the picture. Has Rome shut her eyes, or ought we to be
blind to the facility with which a system, under which the
great bulk of a nation dependent upon the periodical ebb
and flow of commerce, can be worked to the overthrow of
institutions which even temporarily interfere, or are imagined
to interfere, with its prosperity? Is her far-seeing eye
blind to the fact, that the occurrence of an hour—a glut
in markets—an embroilment with foreign powers, or a tem-
porary cessation of demand, from whatever cause produced—
may convulse such a state of society to its foundations, and
let loose a torrent of wild and resistless passions, to be
directed—by her own hand perhaps—towards the accom-
plishment of any one of her cherished objects of ambition,
or the prostration of any, or of all the objects of her fear
and hatred ? No, no. Romc is not thus blind. She knows
well, that with such a system—with a ruined agriculture, and
a bloated commerce—with millions of human beings heaped
in masses together, crammed with the revolutionary dogmas
of modern liberalism, and liable at any moment to be plunged
into the miseries of famine ;—she would be enabled to rend
asunder, like cobwebs, the ties which still withhold her
from clutching her long-expected prey—to dash aside with a
giant strength, the impediments which still remain in her
path, towards spiritual and temporal supremacy in Great
Britain, and to erect her throne amidst the dust and the
ashes of the prostrate altars of British protestantism !
I have not, in this letter, even glanced at the operation of
the proposed measure upon the sister kingdom ; and the
space which I have already occupied, forbids me now to do
so. In a future letter, however, I hope to be allowed to go
into that portion of the subject ; for, by its operation upon
the interests—nay, upon the existence almost—of that un-
happy land, we can alone be enabled to form a just concep-
tion of the anticipated benefits to popery, to secure which
she has declared her willingness to hazard such vast sacrifices
—to entail such a weight of crushing misery and ruin upon a
people who have placed their destiny on earth and beyond
the grave, so unreserved in her hands.
A PROTESTANT ENGLISHMAN.
Liverpool, 22nd May, 1841.