The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1847-08-31 00:00:00

PRIESTLY PERSECUTION IN KINSALE.

(From the Cork Constitution.)
Before we received the following letter we had heard of
the persecution referred to, as well as of the scene in the
street—a scene possibly in keeping with the principles of
the Priest, and the spirit of his system, but utterly at
variance with the spirit and principles of the British Con-
stitution. We did not, however, feel at liberty
to allude to it, as our informant, though himself
satisfied of the accuracy of his information, was not'an
eye-witness.

The writer of the letter gives us his name, and all we
can say is, that the performers in the deeds which have
disgraced the town, and put in jeopardy the lives of res-
pectable inhabitants, ought to lie indicted. Nothing
short of legal conviction and legal punishment will stop
them, unless, indeed, their Bishop interpose, and pe-
remptorily forbid a continuance of conduct which has
provoked the reprobation of almost every respectable
Romanist. We believe, in fact, that a representation has
been made to him—at least, we heard that a deputation
was to have waited on him yesterday in order to invoke
his interference. Whether he will think proper to grant
it we know not, but the sufferers must be protected. For
our parts, we wish they had the manliness to abandon a
system whose priests are prosecutors, as they in their own
persons feel, and to defy the despotic intolerants who,
proud of the power which they derive from the darkness
and delusion in which their :votaries are nursed, trample
with relentless heel on every professor of their creed who
ventures to disobey them. Flow can—we put it to them
as men—how can they continue allegiance to a tyranny
which they strengthen by submission ? What do they
gain from it—what do they owe to it ? Where witness
they anything of the kind among Protestants ? Where
is the clergyman who would dare to threaten the poorest
of his people ? Where is the congregation that would
not feel itself degraded by a voluntary tolerance of the
insult And why should Romanists be less independent ?
In a Romish country there would be reason for it,
for in such a country the rack would rend, or the
pincers tear them if they moved a lip against ecclesiastical
intolerance; but in a free country, protected by free lows
and surrounded by free men, wily not assert the liberty
the law allows, and crush the tyranny that tortures them ?
It is their own interest we are consulting when we exhort
them thus. Policy might, perhaps, council us to refrain,
and let the Priest strain the cord until it snapped ; but
humanity must not be postponed to policy. As fellow-
subjects we have a fellow feeling. We desire their eman-
cipation— their emancipation in the best, the highest, the
' mast ennobling sense the term can be employed in; but
are they worthy of emancipation if they make no effort to
achieve it ? If ever there was a proposition plainer than
another in Romanist experience it ought to be this—that
without spiritual freedom political freedom is impossible.
Talk as Romanists will, they are the veriest serfs, the
mass of them, that ever bent neck or knee to tyrant, and
their tyranny is the most.vulgar, the most brutal, the
most despicable and the most degrading that ever sunk
the soul in slavery. When will they awake to a sense of
their humiliation ? When will they burst the chain and
stand up in the attitude that becomes them ? When will
they teach their teachers that they have rights with which
intrusive ecclesiastics must not intermeddle ? When will
they go forth in the freedom which the poorest Protestant
would not part with to the proudest Priest that ever strode
'in purple ? Do they not in their hearts feel that there is
a difference between the servility of their system and the
liberty of ours ? And which is the more conducive to in-
dividual comfort and national elevation ? Let them look
at the history of the world—at the condition of Europe or
of America North or South, and let their consciences
whisper which ?