The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1849-11-13 00:00:00

THE PRIZE ESSAY

The " great annual meeting of the Manchester Opera-
tive Protestant Association," was held on Wednesday
evening, in the Free-trade Hall. The charge for admis-
sion to the platform, reserved seats, and galleries, was
respectively is., 6d., and 3d. ; the portion of the body of
the hall not occupied by the reserved seats being free
" for operatives only." Notwithstanding the very unfor-
tunate state of the weather, the hall was well filled in every
part. One portion of the business of the meeting was
the presentation of a prize of £lO, offered at the last
annual meeting of the association, for " the best essay on
the privileges of the working classes as Protestants, and
their duties and encouragements in maintaining the com-
mon Protestant faith" the essays to be the production
of bona fide working men within the precincts of Man-
chester and Salford. Among the gentlemen on the plat-
form were,—The Revs. Dr. M'Neile, of Liverpool ;
Him!' Stowell, W. R. B. Arthy, of Macclesfield ; W.
Huntington, J. H. M'Guire, and an immense number of
clergymen and influential gentlemen.
The Rev. Hugh Stowell occupied the chair, and de-
livered, in the course of the evening, a very thrilling
address, during which he described the circumstances
under which the prize of £lO was offered at the last meet-
ing, " for the best essay on the privileges of the working
classes, as. Protestants, and their duties and encourage-
ments in maintaining a common Christian faith ; the essay
to be the bona fide production of working men within the
precincts of Manchester and Salford." The committee
had received eight essays, all by labouring men, each of
which bespoke much research, accuracy of knowledge,
acquaintance with the points at issue between the true and
the apostate &lurch, and above all, (with scarcely an ex-
ception), with the blessed Word of God, the great stand-
ard by which we must judge of any and every church, and
any and every truth. (Applause.) On reading the prize
essay, he had much difficulty at first in believing that its
author was no other than a bona fide shoe-maker, cobbl-
ing away at shoes in a little low cottage, down in a little
low street, in a very low neighbourhood of Hulme ; but
after fully inquiring into it, he was perfectly convinced,
and he had no hesitation in saying that our honest Man-
chester shoemaker need not be ashamed to show his face
among the galaxy of prize essayists that had lately ap-
peared among the working classes. Mr. Stowell then
called forward Mr. John Knowles, the author of the prize
essay, and presented to him a purse containing ten sove-
reigns, which he remarked he considered he had won by
his patient labour and Christian intelligence ; " and,'
said the rev. gentleman, " I trust that God who gave you
grace to win the prize, will give you grace to wear your
honours with meekness and humility." [The recipient
expressed his gratitute to Almighty God for the mind he
bad imparted to him, and to the person who offered the
prize.] The Chairman said he had no doubt their es-

teemed friend and brother, Dr. M'Neile, would go back
to Liverpool with very favourable impressions of the
intelligence and Protestant information of the working
men of Manchester, and he hoped that he would light the
torch of the working men of Liverpool again at the altar
of the working men of Manchester. We (of Manchester)
in former times had lighted the torch at their altar, but
while the fire had been brightening as it burned on ours,
he thought that latterly the torch had burned a little
dimly on theirs. (Hear.) But one good turn deserved
another, and he would return the compliment by inviting
their brother (Dr. M'Neile) to re-kindle the torch of
operative Protestantism at Liverpool at the altar of Man-
chester Operative Protestantism. (Cheers.) One thing
he was perfectly satisfied of, and that was, that the Pro-
testant work among the labouring classes had a very
gracious and very tranquilizing influence on their own
minds and spirits.
The Rev. Hugh M'Neile D:D., delivered a very
powerful and eloquent address, which was most enthusi-
astically received by the numerous auditory. He remark-
ed that the great question at issue between themselves
and the so-called liberals of the present day was, whether
or not the Bible was the word of God ; and, therefore,
to be considered above everything else. He justified the
assertion on behalf of himself and those who thought
with him, that different calamities, such as the cholera,
or the Irish famine, were direct judgments from God, for
certain national sins ; and contended that the keeping of
this principle constantly before his people, was the duty
of every pastor in our church, or any other which had
been long established, in contradistinction to the course
which should be followed by a missionary of an unen-
lightened or heathen people. The great sin of this
country, and that which had provoked the judgments o'
God was, that, after the peculiar favour shown to her,—
after that especial, kind, and gracious Providence, which
gave her martyrs grace to resist unto the death against the
apostate church,—that this country should go back again,
should re-adopt into her national polity, that great sup-
pressor of the word of God, that great persecutor of the
saints of God, that great enemy of liberty, both civil and
religious, that great anti-Christ, the Church of Rome.
Would it have been believed that, in an age of such ad-
vancement as the present, that church should have ever
gained a footing in this country, and that it should have
for its supporters those who put themselves forward as
the champions par excellence of advancement in every
respect. As a proof that Rome now retained the charac-
ter for tyranny, oppression, and bigotry which had ever
attached to her, the rev. speaker read from the Daily
News,—and commented upon—the description recently
given by a correspondent of that paper, of the siehts
presented to him in the vaults and chambers of the in-
quisition. Dr. M'Neile afterwards proceeded to point
out what he believed to be the causes which had assisted
the Church of Rome to raise her head in this country.
He said, first, that it was in consequence of a pressure
from without, both upon the statesmen and the country
generally, while the friends of the British constitution
were as it were comparatively quiescent. The Roman
Catholics of Ireland certainly originated this pressure,
but still they never could have succeeded in intimidating
the government—for the work had been done by intimi-
dation—if they had not received the help of the dissen-
ters of England.—(Applause.) But the dissenters were
the friends of liberty : this was their constant cry. How
came they then to join and agitate with the church of
Rome, the enemy of liberty ? This arose from the fact
that the Roman Catholic chief, the late Daniel O'Connell,
knew his men. He saw that they were so set upon the
voluntary principle, that if he invited aid on the ground
of voluntaryism, they could scarcely refuse the invitation.
He accordingly denounced state endowments to religion,
proclaimed himself a voluntary, and represented Roman
Catholics generally as voluntaries. The English dissens
ters joined them on that ground, for while they saw evil
in Rome, they saw greater evil in the English establish-
ment, and they joined what they believed to be
the lesser of the two evils. They (the speaker and
his friends) warned the dissenters what would be
the result of their conduct; but when the catho-
lics had strengthened their position so as to be ena-
bled to dictate terms, they required from the government
that what Mr. Sheil boastingly called, in the House of
Commons, their " establishment for the education of their
priesthood," should be made a great national establish-
ment in England. Maynooth College was accordingly
made a national establishment ; and then the dis-
senters took alarm that after all there should be a
state endowment for the Catholics. Indeed the Rev. Mr.
Blackburne, a dissenting minister. plainly declared that
the dissenters of England had been " humbugged." The
Protestant Dissenters of England really ought to be
ashamed of themselves, for their conduct on this question,
and should do all they could to redeem their position.
One of those dissenters recently spoke in that hall. It
seemed he had recently made a tour in Ireland, which
was the subject of his speech upon that platform. Per-
haps some present would know that he referred to Mr.
Bright. (Hisses, cheers, and confusion.) Mr. Bright's
speech consisted of some descriptions and an argument.
There was first a geographical description of Ireland, in
which, in common with all tourists, he enlarged upon the
wonderful advantages which that country possessed, in a
natural point of view—her rivers, her bays, her inland na-
vigation, her lakes, her canals, and the fertility of her soil.
On this point he had no desire to gainsay what Mr. Bright
stated. Well, then, Mr. Bright proceeded to describe the
habitations of the poor people, and said that thousands of
them were living in dwellings unfit for human residences.
Unfortunately this was largely true, but not so universally
as Mr. Bright seemed to think. He (Dr. M`Neile) would
venture to predict—or rather to guess, for the thing was
past—that he did not go to Ulster, and that he was con-
tent with a very brief examination of things in Ireland,
and that all on one side, like some other things he (Dr.
M`Neile) could name. Had Mr. Bright gone to Protes-
tant Ulster he would have seen the difference ; but per-
haps it was not convenient either for him to see it or speak
about it. Mr. Bright next described the outrages that
were committed in Ireland, and he mentioned one very
gross case. He then went on to say that the " catholic
religion "—as he was pleased to call it, although they (the
meeting) could not call it so, because they did not believe
it to be so—that it could not be blamed for this ; and, in
defence of this argument, he asked how it came to pass
that hundreds of thousands of Roman Catholics from Ire-
land did well in the United States, although they did not
succeed, and were not prosperous and happy at home.
Mr. Bright said he wished to know this ; and he (Dr.
M`Neile) wished to tell him. The reason lay in the agi-
tating priesthood of Ireland. The priests in Ireland had
something to agitate for, the priests in America had not.
There existed a war between the Irish priesthood and the
laws of Great Britain. Prosperity under the present law
in Ireland, and peace and quietness, would give perma-
nent possession of the land to Protestant proprietors; to
this the people themselves had no objection, but the
priests had an insuperable one, and they would never
allow the people to be quiet so long as their quietness
would give permanent and peaceful possession to heretic
landlords. He supposed Mr. Bright was not much given
to the study of Roman Catholic dogmas, or the canon
law, or any other part of the controversy. But he (Dr.
M'Neile) could tell him for his instruction (and he hoped
he would make use of it in parliament), that it was a law
of the church of Rome " that real property taken from the
faithful in an unjust war ought to be restored without any
price being paid for it." They called the war that esta-
blished Protestantism an " unjust war," and therefore
they held that all the property taken from the faithful in
that war ought to be restored. They were taught
from the very class-books in Maynooth, that the Protes-
tant proprietors had no real right to the land—that the
men put there by James L and the men who went there
with William of glorious memory—(applause)—that they
became possessors of the land in an "unjust war ;" and
then came back the law, that " real property taken from
the faithful in an unjust war ought to be restored without
any price being paid for it." Believing this (and he gave
them credit for sincerity), the priests were bcund to act
upon it. They taught it—they stirred up the people to
contention and rebellion, they agitated them, they kept
them in a state of distress and annoyance against the
government and one another—anything rather than settle
down quietly, leaving heretics in possession of the land.
It was, in fact, an agrarian agitation. But there was no-
thing of this kind to urge the:priests to agitate in Ame-
rica. If Roman Catholics were to succeed there, it must
be by personal exertion, by individual prosperity, by
amassing wealth. In order to do this, the priests en-
couraged them to industry, to amass wealth, and gain
prosperity; but the priests in Ireland would not allow
them to do this. Mr. Bright next referred to a recent
outrage, and, after describing its circumstances, he asked
how it happened that the perpetrators of it were not ap-
prehended ? It was because of the rottenness of the
whole of society in that district, and the sympathy there
was on the part of the great bulk of the population with
those who, by dreadful acts of vengeance, were supposed
to be the chief champions of the Church of Rome, in
giving her that supremacy which the imperial legislature

denied her ; and who_weie determined to give that le

lature no Peace until she had attained it. The simple
fact of the matter was, that Romanism could not be con-
tented except in one of two positions—either so kept

down as to have no hope of supremacy, or so supreme as
to have nothing more to hope for. She could not live at
peace, in fairness and honesty, with Protestants. If she
were honest, she could not do so • because she claimed
supremacy, and held herself to be the delegate of the
Lord, to rule over the earth; and that both the swords,
the secular and the sacred, were in the hands of her
master, the Pope. Dr. M'Neile afterwards proceeded to
contend that the legisl,ture was behind the people with
regard to Christianity ; and argued that the people had it
in their own hands to remedy this state of things, if they
would only carry their Bible with them to the hustings,
and make the elective franchise part of their Protestant
principles. [A voice: They had not all got it.] They
had not all got it, it was true; they had not all property
—he wished they had. (Applause.) But they were told
in the Bible that the poor shall never cease out of the
land ;" the franchise was for the protection of property,
it was the representative of property, and by property it
could only be exercised ; it was, therefore, only by its
exercise upon Christian principles that those who had no
property could be protected, comforted, and cheered by
it. (Applause.) There must ever be poor; and for this
reason they asked for Christian principles where there
was property, that there might not be an abuse of pro-
perty. [A voice: What creates property ? Labour.]
Every man who so laboured as to acquire property, in
acquiring that property acquired the franchise, and ob-
tained a voice in the representation of this great nation.
(Applause.) All the grand panaceas for the improvement
of society which had lately been proposed must fail ; they
were all planned by men who had no adequate notion of
the real hindrance in the way. The cause was not poverty,
nor party, nor vicious legislation, nor over-population—
these were all symptoms, and it was only for symptoms
that our political physicians prescribed, The real cause,
the real hindrance was sin, and for that they could not
prescribe, as they did not understand it ; they would give
us a world of liberty without a world of holiness, and that
could never be. (Dr. M'Neile spoke for upwards of an
hour, and resumed his seat amidst loud cheers.)

W
Seed. I Produce. I Straw. leight ofl Remarks
Grain.

3i pints or 51 bushelsls93 lbs. 0r'352 lbs. oriThe thin sown was
peck or 33 3558 lbs 64 lbs. per a little later. It was
and 1 pint bshls. per per acre. bushel. sown with great
over per acre. care—two seeds in
acre

1 bushel 16. i bushels 656 lbs. orl4oo lbs. or The thick sown was
19 pints or 37i 3936 lbs. 64 lbs. per rather the better
per acre. bells. per per acre. bushel. sample.
acre.