The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1838-12-14 00:00:00

CHURCH AND STATE.

(From the Standard.)
The manifesto of Sir George Arthur has met with all that
approbation of its ecclesiastical views from the Whig-Radical
press which it was so well calculated, we will not say which
it was designed, to elicit. This approbation we are not
ashamed to say does but confirm our opinion of the gallant
Governor's great indiscretion Had Sir George Arthur the
power, which happily he has not, to realise his latitudinarian
views, and should he realise them, we do not scruple to say
that in successfully defending the province confided to him,
he would inflict a serious injury upon the country. The
discipline which he seems to propose, is just that which would
assimilate Upper Canada to the neighbouring Republican
states in temper and in moral character; and thus assimi-
lated, they would not very long differ about the form of their
government. The ultimate safety of the British colonies
everywhere, lies in their complete moral union with the me-
tropolitan state, which can be effected only by a Church
communion. And in America this is more especially the
case, because of the anti-Church system of government in
that commonwealth, which is our great rival in the New
World. It is said that in Upper Canada the great majority
of the inhabitants are persons separated from the Church of
England. It may be so, though there is no evidence of the
fact, and they who state it are not scrupulous in making as-
sertions convenient to the purpose in hand. if the Church
of England inhabitants are, indeed, a minority, it must be
in a great measure the effect of a neglect, which they who
think with Sir George Arthur would seem desirous to perpe-
tuate. Christian Englishmen will not carry themselves and
their families to a place destitute of the means of that form
of Christian worship of which their consciences approve, and
to which they are accustomed in the land of their birth. The
Infidel will emigrate, unrestrained by any such consideration
—the Sectarian and the Romanist may carry with him his
Church and his priest; but without a sufficient Church of
England establishment in the colony, the Church of England
man is virtually excluded from it. We have often pressed
this point before, and it cannot be pressed too often—that if
the colonies are to be preserved to England, they must be
made like England, not like Scotland or Ireland; and that
this can be effected only by extending to them a full and
efficient Church Establishment. We shall be told that this
will give occasion for disputes. To be sure it will: what
free country ever existed in which each institution in- suc-
cession was not the subject of dispute ? Of all follies, that
is the most gross which anticipates the putting an end to the
jarring of parties, in a popular state, by any arrangement or
by any measure. The bill of 1829, we were told by the
Whigs, would put an end to all party difference: the Duke
of Wellington and Lord Grey should rule together, and the
houses of parliament were to exhibit in epitome the Satur-
nian reign that was to gild the United Kingdom with its
blessings. Well, the bill passed—but Lord Grey and Mr.
O'Connell knew better than to realise its promised conse-
quences. They knew that without faction they must remain
in their previous unplaced nothingness, and that without a
dispute faction could not be aroused to activity: for the com-
paratively safe dispute that had occupied parliament during
25 or 30 years, the one substituted parliamentary reform, the
other abolition of tithes and repeal. So it will ever be when
the interests of truth and justice are sacrificed to the getting
rid of a dispute—the safer difference will be followed by one
far more dangerous. So it will be in Upper Canada—ex-
tinguish the dispute upon Church Establishments, and the
next dispute will concern the comparative merits of a repub-
lican or a monarchical form of government, and the prefer-
ence due to a connection with Great Britain or with the
United States.
This is, we admit, a low view of the subject, but because
it is a low one it is better suited to those with whom we have
to deal.
But whoever wishes to see the question treated in its higher
and more just contemplation, will be fully satisfied, and
amply instructed, by a noble essay, written by Mr. W. E.
Gladstone, which has just issued from the press, under the
title—" THE STATE IN ITS RELATIONS TO THE CHURCH,"—
a work, to borrow Burke's homely but expressive phrase ap-
plied to Bacon, cramming more of argument, of learning,
and of truth into its pages than any that our age has seen.
Mr. Gladstone's work does not follow the essays of Hooker,
or Warburton, or Chalmers; but it comprehends them all,
with much beyond them—fruit of the writer's own powerful
and highly-cultivated mind. He demonstrates not the ex-
pediency of supporting an established church as auxiliary to
the state, but the peremptory duty of erecting and main-
taining one, as enjoined by natural religion in the first place,
next by the express language of revelation.
We cannot but look upon it as a pledge of the continued
care of providence, that the rising men of our time—and
among them no man stands before Mr. Gladstone—thus, as
it were, bring the first offerings of a genius with which HE
has endowed them to the altar of THE CREATOR, sanctifying
their future lives at its sacred fire.
We should, if we might, most willingly reprint the book.
The following passages, which bear upon the subject before
us, give a lesson to statesmen of which older men than Mr,
Gladstone, we fear, stand in need :
" Why, then, we now come to ask, should the governing
body in a state profess a religion ? First, because it is com-
posed of individual men; and they, being appointed to act in
a definite moral capacity, must sanctify their acts done in
that capacity by the offices of religion; inasmuch as the acts
cannot otherwise be acceptable to God, oranything but sinful
and punishable in themselves. And whenever we turn our
face away from God in our conduct we are living atheisti-
cally. It is the deliberate avowal of the principle of turning
away from him, of without God in the world,' which
constitutes atheism in its ordinary, though not in its strict,
signification. This was the atheism of Lucretius, and his is
pre-eminently an atheistic sect :

" ' Omnis enim per se Divuni natura necesse est
Immortali wvo summa cum pace fruatur,
Semota ab nostris rebus, sejunctaque longe. (1.)

He does not forbid men to pay acts of worship, but he says,
' Avoid referring the facts of the world to divine government,'
or else (in his too beautiful language,)
"'Nec delubra Deum placido cum pectore adibis ;
Nec, de corpore gum sancto simulacra feruntur„
In mentes bominum diving' nuntia formes,
Suscipere animi tranquilla pace valebis.' (2.)
It is, therefore, the recognition of actual relations between
God and man that saves us from atheism, and not an abstract
acknowledgement of his existence.

" It is most important to stop for a moment and reflect
that, while on Christian principles we are commanded to dis-
charge our social duties as unto the Lord' and not to man,
so, even in the view of rationalism, we must ever bear in
mind that, whatever be the functions, whatever the external
circumstances, of each particular person, he has a nature and
a law within him, which protest against being absorbed and
lost in the external energies required by those functions ;
which claim to rule over him and direct the paramount
conditions of his life; and by the suppression of which he
surrenders his human birthright and patrimony, the inwar d
and central freedom of his being, and becomes but as a captive,
chained, though it may be to a triumphal car.
" There is a striking and almost an indignant remonstrance
on-this subject, contained in an oration which was recently
delivered by Mr. Emerson, an American, at an American
Cambridge. (3) He says, There is one man present to all
particular men only partially, or through one faculty.' `The
individual, to possess himself, must sometimes return from his
own labour to embrace all the other labourers.' The planter,
who is a man sent out into the field to gather food, is seldom
cheered by any idea of the true dignity of his ministry. He
sees his bushel and his cart, and nothing beyond, and sinks
into the farmer, instead of man on the farm.' And so it is
with us, that he who holds offices of public trust runs a thou-
sand hazards of sinking into a party man, instead of man
employing party for its uses—into a politician, instead of
man in politics—into an administrator, instead of man in
administration. Upon the observance of a distinction sub-
stantially analogous to this depend alike the freedom and
dignity of our being, and that highest result of its highest dig-
nity and freedom, its implicit submission to God; for thus
only. do we keep in view the reflective nature of man, and
the judicial powers pith which his conscience is intrusted.
" In fulfilment, then, of his obligations as an individual,
the statesman must be a worshipping man. But his acts are
public; the powers and instruments with which he works are
public; acting under and by the authority of the law, he
moves at his word ten thousand subject arms; and because
such energies are thus essentially public, and wholly out of
the range of mere individual agency, they must be sanctified
not only by the private personal prayers and piety of those
who fill public situations, but also by public acts of tfie men
composing the public body. They must offer prayer and
praise in their public and collective character, in that cha-
racter wherein they constitute the organ of the nation, and
wield its collective force. Wherever there is a reasoning
agency, there is a moral duty and a responsibility involved in
it: the governors are reasoning agents for the nation, in
their conjoint acts as such; and therefore there must be at-
tached to this agency, as that without which none of our re-
sponsibilities can be met, a religion; and this religion must
be that of the conscience of the governor, or none. He can-
not, that is, cannot rightly, believe one and profess another.
It is with profession alone that we are at present concerned.
For these reasons, then, the public profession of religion ranks
among the personal obligations of governors as individuals.
•

" Now, of all the parts of this subject, probably none have
been so thoroughly wrought out as the insufficiency of what
is termed the voluntary principle. It has been shown, that,
while demand under the circumstances of modern society
commonly creates supply, and while therefore it is needless to
use adventitious means in order to provide any commodity or
good for which there is a natural desire, in the case of reli-
gion the desire is least when the want is greatest, and those
who are most indifferent upon the subject require to be most
solicited by the public institutions of religion, not less for
the welfare of the state than for the salvation of their own
souls. It has also been unanswerably shown, that there are
very large portions of the community, whose temporal means
are insufficient to enable them to bear the expenses of reli-
gious establishments; and perhaps no one who looks at the
competition for employment in an old and thickly-peopled
country, will he of any other opinion than that such inability
is likely to continue. And those who are at first merely un-
able to pay, will if neglected, in no long course of time, add
to inability unwillingness.

" There may be a state of things—in the United States of
America, perhaps in some British colonies there does actually
exist a state of things—in which religious communions are so
equally divided, or so variously subdivided, that the govern-
ment is itself similarly chequered in its religious complexion,
and thus internally incapacitated by disunion from acting in
matters of religion ; or, again, there may be a state in which
the members of government may be of one faith or persua-
sion, the mass of the subjects of another, and hence there
may be an external incapacity to act in matters of religion.
We do not here trace out all the consequences, but it has
been shown that this involves dereliction of the functions and
responsibilities of government; and it is enough, therefore,
for the present, to have marked each of these combinations
of circumstances as a social defect and calamity."

(1) Lucr. I. 57. (2) Lucr. VI. 74.
(3) Oration delivered before the Phi Beta Kappa Society. Bos-
ton. James Munro and Co. 1833.

The King of Sweden has appointed a commission to draw
up a new ordinance relative to the poor for the whole king-
dom, which is to be laid before the estates in their next
sitting.

The King of Wurtemburg has recently liberated several
political prisoners, and some of their number have been re-
instated in their rights, and allowed to re-enter the service
of the state.

Surveys are being made on the east coast of this county
and the river Humber for the most eligible sites o❑
which may be erected batteries, in the event of hostilies
with Russia. Whethe a war now takes place or notit
it is intended to secure the ground, in the event of any fu-
ture occasion. A site at High Paull and the opposite coast
will be again occupied as military establishments for the de-
fence of the Humber.—Hull Times.

A SOUND SLEEPER.—On Tuesday night some burglars
entered the house of Mr. William Lennard, of Renwick, and
proceeding to the bed-room took his trousers from under his
Dillow. and abstracted nearly £5O in gold and silver from the
pocket; they then stole a quantity of plate out of a cup-
board which they forced open, and drank the greater part of
a bottle of gin which they found in the room, without wak-
ing him.—Hereford Journal.

DESCRIPTION OF DR. WARDLAW'S SPEECH AT THE
EDINBURGH RADICO-VOLUNTARY SOIREE.—SPECIMEN OF
THE MIXED STYLE.—NOW sweeping away, with resistless
argument, the flimsy mazes of his opponent's arguments;
now darting the pointed sarcasm, while the edge-tool with
which he cut his way was withal so finely tempered and
smoothed, that it had pierced asunder some dearly cherished
maxim, which had grown grey in the creed of his adversary,
before that adversary was sensible that it had touched the
surface. The surgeon's knife had lopped off the unsound
limb ere the proprietor (!) had been fully aware to the fact,
that, instead of the dearly cherished member, he must in
future put up with a wooden substitute.--By the new Editor of
the Scottish Pilot, or Voluntary Battering-ram.

LIVERPOOL MECHANICS' INSTITUTION

LECTURES ON PAINTING.

On Saturday evening R. B. Haydon, Esq. delivered his
sixth lecture.

There is a continual contest between painters and poets as
to the claims of their respective arts to pre-eminence. Poets
generally decide the question in their own favour, and in
that they have the advantage over painters, whose canvas is
the only medium they can employ to assert their claims.
Painting is an imitation of the things themselves; but poetry
is a purely imaginative art. Poets can make their charac-
ters speak; painters can make them look. No painter could,
make Newton look as if he had just discovered the tides with-
out extraneous help, but a poet could describe his emotions.
What a painter does, however, the whole world is able to
comprehend, but a poet's works are, in a great degree, con-
fined to his own country. What painting can do is more
intense in its immediate effect than the effects of poetry.
Poetry can do well what painting can do a million times
better. A singer argued that there was nothing in the world
which a musician could not accomplish by his art as well as
a poet or. a painter. The experiment was tried. A party
agreed to go to an inn, and endem4iur to procure a supper by
the exercise of their respective arts. The musician sung a
number of tunes, for a long time, in vain, but no supper was
forthcoming. The painter sketched out a fowl, and the
waiter having brought it, both poet and musician acknow-
ledged the triumph of painting.
It was at one time supposed that Reynolds' lectures were
not his own writing, and Burke was accused, but the lectures
were too pure for Burke. The lecturer had lately stumbled
upon the original manuscripts, corrected in the handwriting
of Reynolds, which plainly proved that they were the com-
position of Reynolds himself.
What most struck Mr. Haydon in the Louvre was a little
invention which existed in the world; for even Reubens
himself had borrowed wholesale from the German school;
and at the Louvre the pictures from which he had borrowed
his ideas rose in judgment against him. Reynolds was what
Fuseli used to call a bold thief. There is, however, a differ-
ence between borrowing and adopting.
The greatest art on earth is the art of using nature. It
must not be copied too particularly, nor so generally, but it
must be nature reduced to her essential properties, and
nothing more or nothing less. It was in this that Vandyke,
Titian, and Reynolds, as well as Reubens, failed in compa-
rison with Raphael and the Greeks. Reynolds could draw
well, so long as he had his models,—remove them and be
was abroad. Reynolds was an eminent artist, but still a se-
cond-rate one. His genius for high art was not sufficiently
intense to make him a high artist in spite of time, and in
spite of education.

Choice of subject is no slight part of invention, and in this
choice there is nothing more Important than the moment.
Coleridge. with all his wild dreams, was always selecting fur
artists impossible subjects. The moment chos€n by the
artist must be big with the past and pregnant with the future,
and you choose the most interesting pointof interest between
the two.

Martin's examples of scenery are the purest specimens of
the epic. The success of Martin's compositions among the
middle classes is a sufficient proof of the taste of the British
public for the best principles of art. Martin has been over-
rated by the public, but underrated by the artists. He is
not an historical artist, but a great scenic painter.
It appears to be a folly to build any national galleries
without having one to preserve the works of modern artists.
It is an honour to Liverpool to have been the first to set the
example in the formation of a gallery of modern art. Li-
verpool is the first town since the Reformation which has
given public commissions to the painters of historic alt,
which had been done in Hilton's instance, and that of the
lecturer himself. If Liverpool succeeded in establishing a
permanent gallery of art, her name would be handed down
to posterity as the first town which had done it. There is
nothing which would astonish the Londoners, or the common
council of London, so much, as a proposal to give a public
commission to an historical artist. He ventured to say, that
such a proposal would not only cause the hairs of the Lord
Mayor's wig to stand on end, but would even cause Gog and
Magog to descend from their places. For thirty years the
lecturer had urged this patronage by public bodies, of which
the inhabitants of Liverpool have set such an example.
Even Canning, the member for Liverpool, did not seem to
know the valuable influence of high art upon the arts and
manufactures. Lord Brougham once asked the lecturer if
he supposed that the people of England had taste. He might
have asked bis lordship, in return, if they had knowledge.
Certainly not, without you give them schools, or mechanics'
institutions; and the same with taste—they will not possess
it unless you give them schools of design. None of the mi-
nisters with whom Mr. Haydon had communicated (and
he had had interviews with them all, from Perceval to
the present day,) had bestowed so much attention upon the
subject as the Duke of Wellington, who had not only listened
to him patiently, but bad allowed bim to argue the question,
and if possible to prove him wrong. He had no cold looks
and sophistry from him, and he thought that if he had re-
mained where he was, that something would have been done;
indeed, the Duke of Wellington hail intimated as much to a
friend of the lecturer's. The lecturer had seen two exhibi-
tions in Liverpool, and in each of them had seen the very
best situation occupied by full length portraits, and the best
historical portraits put in out of the way places. If the Li-
verpool academy bring down pictures here which will not
sell in the London markets, you will have no means of im-
proving your taste. He could point out works of merit in
had situations, which would give an historical tone to the
Liverpool exhibition. He had seen good pictures put into
such places, that had a Wilkie been put there, no other
picture of Wilkie would ever afterwards have graced the
room.

Mr. Havdon then exhibited to his audience several de-
signs for historical paintings, drawn by a young man named
Huxley, who had received education in drawing at the Li-
verpool Mechanics' Institution. He said that if the young
man did but turn out a moral young man, he would one day
be an ornament to his native town. He had never met with
such downright originality of conception as this young man's
compositions evinced. The subject were, The Rape of Proser-
pine—the descent of Pluto and Prosperine, and Ceres de-
manding her daughter at the Court of Pluto. The boy pos-
sessed great genius, and deserves to be well taken care of.
He had never predicted the eminence of any body who did
not afterwards become great. If Huxley were sent to Lon-
don, clothed and lodged, he would educate him himself with-
out. charge, and he was confident that he would become an
honour to Liverpool.