The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1840-09-25 00:00:00

QUADRUPLE TREATY

(Prom the Morning Herald of Wednesday,)

The London Gazette of last night contains the flit of the
quadruple treaty, which we were enabled exclusively to lay
before the public on the 14th instant, just nine days since !
The only difference between the treaty contained in the Her-
ald and that now published "by authority," is the insertion
of a clause between the tith and 7th paragraphs of the separ-
ate act, to the effect that it thw proposed arrangement be re-
fused by the Pasha, the Sultan shall be at liberty to pro-
ceed against him as lie shall think fit.
There is also an additional protocol'of a conference held
since the first publication of the treaty.

CLAUSE HITHERTO NOT INSERTED IN THE TREATY

" SZCTION 7

" If, at the expiration of the period of twenty days after
the communication shall have been made to him (according
to the stipulation of section 2) Mehemet Ali shall not accede
to the proposed arrangement, and shall not accept the here-
ditary Pachalic of Egypt, the Sultan shall consider him-
self at liberty to withdraw that offer, and to follow in conse-
quence, such ulterior course as his own interests, and the
counsels of his allies may suggest to him.

" PROTOCOL OF A CONFERENCE HELD AT LONDON THE
17TH SEPTEMBER, 1840 :
" Present—The plenipotentiaries of Great Britain, Austria,
Prussia, Russia, and Turkey.
"The plenipotentiaries of the courts of Great Britain, Aus-
tria, Prussia, and Russia, after having exchanged the ratifica-
tions of the convention concluded on the 15th July last, have
resolved, in order to place in its true light the disinterested-
ness which has guided their courts in the conclusion of that
act, to declare formally—
" That in the execution of the engagements relating to the
contracting powers from the above mentioned convention,
those powers will seek no augmentation of territory, no exclu-
sive influence, no commercial advantage for their subjects,
which those of every other nation may not actually obtain.
" The plenipotentiaries of the courts above mentioned have
resolved to record this declaration in the present protocol.
" The plenipotentiary of the Ottoman Porte, in paying a
just tribute to the good faith and disinterested policy of the
allied courts, has taken cognizance of the declaration con-
tained in the present protocol, and has undertaken to trans-
mit it to his court.
(Signet!) " PALMERSTON.
" NIEUMANN.
" SCHLEINITZ.
" BRUNNOW.
" CHEKIB."
In addition to the above, in order to complete the series of
documents connected with the treaty of tt e 15th July, we
now publish the note from Lord Palmerston to the French
ambassador,lby which it was accompanied :

" The undersigned had the honour on the 17th of July to
inform his Excellency M. Guizot that a convention upon the
affairs of Turkey had been signed, on the 15th of that month,
by the plenipotentiaries of Austria, Great Britain, Prussia,
and Russia, on the one hand, and by the plenipotentiary of
the Porte on :the other. The ratifications of that conven-
tion having now been exchanged, the undersigned has the
honour of transmitting to his Excellency M. Guizot, for the
information of the French government, a copy of the con-
vention and of its annexes.

" The undersigned cannot make this communication to
his Excellency M. Guizot, without again expressing to him
the very sincere regrets of her Majesty's government, that
the objections which the French government has felt to tak-
ing any share in the measures for the execution of which
this convention provides have created an obstacle which has
prevented France from being a contracting party to this
compact. But her Majesty's government feel confident that
the cabinet of the Tuileries will see, in the four provisions of
this convention, indisputable proofs that the four powers, in
undertaking the engagements which it contains, have been
animated by a disinterested desire to maintain those princi-
ples of policy with regard to Turkey which France has, on
more than one occasion, distinctly and emphatically declared
'to be her own, that they do not seek to obtain, by the arrange-
ments which they have in view, any exclusive advantage for
themselves, and that the great object of their aim to uphold
the existing balance of power in Europe, and to avert events
which would disturb the general peace.
. _

(Signed)
" Foreign-office, Sept. 16, 184 G."

" PALMERSTON

THE REAL SPIRIT OF POPERY

A POPISH PRIEST Veral4s A PROTESTANT CLERGYMAN

(From the Edinburgh Evening Post)

We have observed iu the English newspapers an account
of a trial. in which Priest Hearne, of Manchester, prosecuted
an eminent clergyman of the same place, the Rev. Hugh
Stowell, for an alleged libel. It would appear that, at a Pro-
testant meeting, to oppose the parliamentary grant to May-
nooth, Mr. Stowell read a paper, which had been put into
his hands, stating that Mr. Hearne had enjoined on one of
his penitents, as a preliminary to the sacrament, a penance
which consisted in walking on all fours, for several days, a
certain number of hours night and morning on the streets of
Manchester. The penitent said be was a worker in a factory
for twelve hours a-day, and had, notwithstanding, to creep
in the manner described for four hours daily. This was de-
nied by Mr. Hearne, and, in the face of Mr. Stowell's de-
fence, a jury at the Liverpool assizes gave forty shillings da-
mages.

This is a brief outline of a trial which must greatly interest
Protestants of every denominaticn. The parties are both
clergymen in Manchester ; and in passing we may remark
that Lancashire is the paradise of Papists while heresy in
other quarters has slain its thousands, it has here slain its
tens of thousands. This district swarms with the busy per-
tinacious officials of the papacy. It contains, besides other
articles of Romish ware, a Jesuit's college, where the order,
no doubt with great care, train up their emissaries, the mis-
sionaries, for converting this country to the old religion, an
event for which the Hon. and Rev. Mr. Spencer prays very
devoutly. To this seminary belongs the adjoining manor,
and, we believe, other property ; so that its heads, in addi-
tion to the spiritual influence they may derive from the arts
of their religion and rule, possess the influence which pro-
perty gives its possessors.
For resisting the encroachments of Popery—of that bold,
unscrupulous, religions, and political system—the highest
wisdom conceived it necessary that, along with the privilege
of employing the weapons of that reason and argument which
prove Popery to be a delasion and a cheat, there should exist
certain wholesome restrictions, which, without invading what
is genuine liberty of conscience, would prevent men attached
—devotedly attached—to a foreign prince, and arbitrary spi-
ritual tyrant, from having any political 'toe er iu a country
essentially Protestant. These restrictions are now removed,
but as yet a liberty to wield the powers of argument is left to
Protestants. That there are cases in which the vices 'of many
of the Romish priesthood ought to be referred to, no rational
person, acquainted with their system, could probably gain-
say. Some of these grow out of, and are fostered by, their
system. In contact with it the latent and inherent bad qua-
lities of humanity are evolved, and take a determinate shape
—a shape often fatal to the morals of the people, and grossly
derogatory to the sacredness of the Christian ministry. But
generally there is little occasion to refer to the character of
the men by whom the apparatus of Popery is worked : it is
with the system itself that the war should be maintained,
and in the struggle every rule of good faith, honesty, and
candour should be punctiliously regarded.
Holding these sentiments we yet viewed with astonishment
the prosecution of Mr. Stowell, and the verdict of the jury.
No doubt a libel may be uttered against the professional
doings of a man a lawyer may be charged with fraud in
dealing with his client; a physician with emitting a mon-
strously unsuitable recipe, or a Romish priest with an out-
rageous stretch of spiritual authority. Thus, as regards the
latter case, it is possible to suppose a priest grossly libelled
in being represented by a public journal as dictating a course
of penance which would inevitably terminate in the death of
the penitent, or to find him calumniated as having recom-
mended the despairing sinner to give the first born of his
body for the sin of his soul. Here the man would be directly
charged with heinous crimes, and ought to have a sufficient
remedy ; but to prosecute a person for reading a paper in
which a minister of the Church of Rome is charged with
dictating certain genuflections, appears to us extraordinary
indeed, and in material form, at least, wearing much of the
appearance of vindictiveness. Mr. Hearne's resort lay in the
next published newspaper. To it lie should have sent a denial
of the charge, from that paper it would have been copied into
others, and his vindication, especially with the additional
circumstance of offered or given evidence, would have been
complete. What Mr. Hearne was charged with has certainly
not the invidiousness of singularity as respects his church.
Did Mr. Hearne forget the Stations in Ireland upon whose
flinty stones the devotees leave the flesh and blood of their
prostrate bodies, or did he argue that a practice which, ha-
bitually followed up, renders a man a little saint in the sister
island, would have been considered so horrible in Manchester
that he required to prosecute the man who unwillingly stated
that in one instance he had enjoined it. What has been one
great distinction of the Romish Church but penances—what
has possessed it of so many of its saints but voluntarily in-
flicted tortures—what supplied a stock of supererogatary
merit to the Pope, which he could apply at pleasure for a
consideration, but penances, and those the most revolting ?
Penances enter peculiarly into the character of sanctity to
which an erring church, in its wild and egregious ignorance,
attaches an overwhelming importance. In acting upon the
sentiments he had characteristically imbibed, the future hero
of the Romish Calendar numbered almost every hour, day,
and night by acts of mortification. The body in which dwelt
a spirit tamed down to abject suppleness by the church, was
tormented in every possible way, mutilated, disfigured,
wasted by fasts which consumed the physical capabilities, the
appetite was disgusted with nauseous food and drink, the
flesh was wounded by the scourge, and the wounds so created,
were rendered more tormenting by additional instruments of
torture, bandages of wires and bristles occasionally girt round
the embryo saint, and sometimes a dress of iron was substi-
tuted for the ordinary habilitnents of the day. St. Dominic
was called the cuirassier from the last mentioned conceit ;
but in addition to such tournament-like panoply he flogged
himself day and night with a scourge in each hand. Ran-
dulph of Villars, in Brabant, had the ingenuity to devise for
himself, and the courage to wear an under waistcoat, not
certainly of wool, but-of the rattier forbidding material of
hedge-hog's skins, five of which ministered their comfortable
appliances to his back, and six to his front and sides.
Such were Romish penances, and the imperfect detail may
be completed when we mention pilgrimages. " It seems that
with them (the Romish communion)—says Dr. South—a
man sometimes cannot be penitent unless he also turn vaga-
bond and foot it to Jerusalem, or wanders over this or that
part of the world to visit the shrine of such and sech a pre-
tended saint, though perhaps in his lifetime ten times more
ridiculous than themselves : thus that which was Cain's
curse is become their religion. With such appendages to
hrs creed, Mr. Hearne did not require to prosecute Mr.
Stowell, as if a charge of novel, unauthorised, and un-Ro-
wish practices endangered his status and emoluments in the

church.
Much as we respect the trial by jury as a noble adjunct of
British jurisprudence, we cannot help thinking that on this
occasion the jury were at fault. The damages are not heavy,
but the expenses may amount to a pretty round sum ; be-
sides, the pecuniary award inr.plies that Mr. Stowell is held
by the jury as a libeller. The judge on the trial said justly,
that no one had a right to come to a public meeting to say
anything libellous of an individual, and then Justify_ it by
saying ..Some one put the statement into my hand." In
this we fully agree. No character would be safe if the num-
bers to whom a libel were addressed exonerated the libeller
from legal responsibility ; but it is certainly somewhat ex-
traordinary to call it libellous for a man unwittingly to say
of a Romish priest, that he had enjoined at Manchester a
penance substantially the same as that regarded as merito-
rious in Ireland—that he had commanded something which
agrees with the spirit of those acts of austerity by which the
most revered members of his church acquired lasting fame
in one world and beatification in another.
Although we. do not insinuate that the' jury at Liverpool
were influenced by such a sentiment, yet there exists at pre-
sent in numerous minds a factitious sympathy for Roman
Catholics. One great cause of this is the circumstance that
liberal politics and Roman Catholicism are identified. This
junction is even, when every allowance is made, a curious
one. Whether the slave of spiritual despotism can be the
hearty advocate of ultra-popular governments is a question
which we do not intend to disouss ; but in good truth there is
strange in finding the bawlers for not only
with the crouching sub-
-hearted policy
has ever been employed in stifling free inquiry--trampling
jalseiosbcsmetoirertttoyhefdioltlfihgncap°tanssstserifelngnrc harmonious
ne t' but extreme liberty of pen and speech,
easpo fellowshipe
power whose iron
upon the just rights of conscience, and fettering down in the
dark and narrow cell of intellectual slavery, the finest spirits
the world over produced.