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

FRIDAY MORNING, SEPTEMBER 25. 1840

We have received a file of the Guiana Times to the
oth of August, inclusive. The Georgetown had just
rrived out with a very important piece of intelligence.

The Governor of Sierra Leone had received instruc-
tions to facilitate the deportation of labourers from that
colony to Jamaica, British Guiana, and Trinidad. The

Times states that this information is well authentica-
ted. We sincerely hope that such is the case. If the
news should prove to be well founded we shall have
every reason to congratulate the planters of British
Guiana upon the success of their agitation for free

substitute, makes room for a fresh slave on a foreign
soil."
In other days, the present critical position of
such
an important portion of the British dominions as the
West Indies would have rendered necessary the im-
mediate assembling of Parliament, in order to apply
remedy to the evils of which we have so long com-
plained. The present ministry, however, appear to be
utterly regardless of the commercial interests of the
country; and it is in vain that the ruined planters
look to them for assistance. They will never interfere
until driven to do so by the irresistible demands of the
people. Let the people of England, therefore. demand
" justice to the West Indies." This is the only waY
to procure a supply of cheap sugar. This is the only
way to annihilate slavery.

The note of preparation for the approaching muni-
cipal elections has already been sounded on both sides.
Meetings have already been held in several wards, and
others are announced to take place in the course of the
present and ensuing weeks. This is as it should be.
It is highly necessary that the candidates should be
fixed upon, and that they should have an opportunity
of stating in public their political sentiments. It is
equally necessary that arrangements should be entered
into, as speedily as possible, for carrying on an active
canvass among the electors. We rejoice to find that
our advice has not been thrown away upon the conser-
vatives of Liverpool, and that they seem determined to
fight in earnest for the ascendancy in our municipal
council. The time has arrived when the people of Li-
verpool seem resolved to get rid of the Radical incubus
that has so long oppressed the " good old town."
As very little time now remains for the work of pre-
paration for the approaching contest, we sincerely trust
that our conservative friends will turn every moment
to the best account. The corporate functionaries—the
paid canvassers of the Market and other Committees--
are busily at work, straining every nerve to serve their
masters, and using all those arts of cajolery and inti-
midation which long practice has rendered so familiar
to them, in order to secure as many votes as possible.

The greatest vigilance and activity are, therefore, in-
dispens.able. The enemy must not be suffered to steal
a march upon us. We must not slumber at our posts.
Above all, let there be no more bungling on the part of
the Conservative ward committees. We have alreadY
lost too much by " mistakes."

The atrabilious editor of the Liverpool Albion ill
very severe in some of his strictures on the proceed-

, -
rigs of the recent great meeting of the Diocesan Board

{Education. It-was not to be expected that such $
lecided and uncompromising enemy of the Established

. _
church, as the editor of the Albion, should pass by
hese proceedings without giving vent to his feelings•

While the Albion affects, in a tone of mawkish fibers-

ity, to give credit to the members of the Diocesan

Society, for honesty of purpose and purity of motive►
he takes good care to neutralise the effect of such an

extraordinary concession, by imputing to the most
zealous and active amongst the friends of the society
motives of a different and totally opposite character.
While he expresses his conviction that the majority of
those who attended at the Amphitheatre had the real
good of society and the advancement of religion At

heart, he sneeringly insinuates that "it is not impos-

Bible that the whole proceeding, and even the societY
itself, may produce results exactly the reverse." Then
follows the cunningly devised and most jesuitical ob'

jection that the Diocesan Society has made " religion
the antagonist of knowledge." This charge is plainly
implied in the remarks of the Albion, though it is not
expressed. A more glaringly false insinuation Was
never indulged in. The editor of the Albion knovis

full well that the Diocesan Society does not oppose re'
ligion to knowledge. It only wishes to render know
ledge subservient to religion. It seeks to persuade the
public that religion is the highest species of knowledge

to which the human understanding can aspire
serts that, unless religion be made the foundation 013
which all human wisdom is to rest, knowledge is no
longer a blessing, but rather a curse, to the great fa'
mily of mankind.
The Albion asserts that " science is only another
term for truth." We must demur to this propositioa.
What is considered demonstrably true, on strictly sC'
entitle principles, in one age, proves frequently, iP-41"-
next age, to be utterly false. Look at the innumerable

changes and vicissitudes to which what is called
ence" :has been subjected, from one generation t°
another, and then inform us, good Albion, how it comes
to pass that what you call " truth" so frequently ton'
tradicts itself.
We have always regarded the Albion as, in some
degree at least, the organ of the dissenters—we mean
the orthodox dissenters—of Liverpool. We believe
its editor either is, or was, in the habit of frequenting
an Independent Chapel in town. We now find that
we have been labouring under a very erroneous ita"
pression. From an expression in the Albion of Mon'
day we are irresistibly led to the conclusion that the
.
editor is a disciple of that school of pigmy geological
philosophers, who profess their disbelief in the Pate'
tench. Unless the Albion belongs to this semi-infidel
sect, how can we account for the strange declaration
that " the better informed among divines have learned
that Moses and geology are not quite so irreconcileable
as was, at first, by themselves asserted." We poi'
tively deny that ally well-informed divine has learned
any such thing. The so-culled science of geology is
utterly at variance with scripture—we mean, of course,
in its chronological speculations. \Ve do not deny that
Moses has furnished us with a history which fully ac-
counts for all the facts which the geologists have been
endeavouring to generalise into a scientific system ; but
we deny most emphatically that any consistent di'
vine of the Church of England has ever allowed that
the " system" of modern geology is reconcileable svitb
the chronology of Moses. We are aware that the
Albion can quote against us the names of several cler-
gymen who have avowed their belief in the ante-diltr
vian dreams of the geologists ; but we deny that suet
clergymen have any pretensions whatever to the cha-
racter of well-informed " divines." They know just
as inuch about theology as the editor of the Albion
does about the objects of the Diocesan Society.
The Albion then accuses the Diocesan Society 01
entertaining " a dislike to knowledge not in the
Church." The society acts upon no such feeling. It
professes an anxious desire that religious instruction
should proceed pari passu with secular education ; but
what man is there who is so insane as to imagine that
this profession implies anything like an abstract hatred
of knowledge " not in the Church ?" Does the Aibioo
believe that the members of the Diocesan Society have
any dislike to the admirable parochial school system 01
the Church of Scotland ? Is he prepared to maintail)
that the clergymen whoassembled at the Amphitheatre
have any hatred towards the knowledge communicated
in the various Dissenting Sunday Schools throughout
the kingdom—the knowledge of the Holy Scriptures ?
We feel convinced that the editor of the Albion must
be constrained to answer in the negative : and yet the
knowledge thus communicated is not in the church.
The Albion ridicules the idea of " godless know-
ledge," as "an absolute nonentity, a thing devoid 01
existence, (the tautology is not ours,) and one of those
airy nothings which inhabit unhealthy brains." Ac-
cording to the sage of the Albion " godless know-
ledge" is "an unknown monster, a palpable contra-
diction in terr- I." The only reason, if reason it can
be called, wh.,'.l the Albion adduces in support of these
assertions, is, that " knowledge is another name for
God himself"' While we admit that the " knowledge
which maketh wise unto salvation" may, in a modified
sense, justify the expression which we have quoted
from our contemporary, we cannot acknowledge the
truth of the remark as applied to knowledge in general-
Indeed, it appears to us to fall little short of absolute
blasphemy. The devil possesses knowledge, but are'
we to worship that knowledge as the Deity ? The in-
fidel philosopher, who denies the very existence of
God, may boast of his extensive acquaintance with the
arts and sciences ; but are we to identify his knowledge
with the sacred name of the Deity ? The thing is
manifestly absurd. The Albion surely cannot mean to
assert that the knowledge of the mechanism of a steam
engine or a watch is but " another name for God."
We cannot pass by one remark riade by the Albion
without expressing our astonishment at the consunr
mate ignorance of the writer of the article on which we
arc commenting. We allude to the extraordinary de-
claration that " Protestantism," in the opinion-of the
editor of the Albion, "had so much confidence in reli.

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