The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1841-03-16 00:00:00

eve-poor law should be thought insufficient, we have
then only to examine the system itself in all its parts,
when we shall find every imaginable argument fur-
nished us for redoubling the energy of our resistance

in the overwhelming multitude of evils inherent in and
inseparable from it. Towards the poor it is brutal ;
towards the rich, or the non-necessitons, it is offensive
without being economical. Turn, overhaul, anatomise
it in what way you will, investigation only increases
abhorrence and strengthens the repulsiveness of every
right feeling against it. We enter into no details ;
they have been already submitted to the public in va-
rious shapes, from the rending asunder of every natu-
ral tie in the workhouse bastile—the separation of pa-
rent and child, husband and wife—the doling out of
sustenance calculated to the very verge of death by in-
anition—the surgery and the medicine by contract—to
the prison death-bed, and the felon burial—all these
have been already supplied abundantly, and we need
not dwell upon them. We have only to pray that in
Liverpool we may be spared the tender mercies of so
vile a system, and to urge upon the benevolent inha-
bitmts of this great city the strong necessity of using
every legitimate means to avert the calamity. It is the
cause of the poor, and we should feel it a sacred duty
laid upon us not to be lukewarm in it. A deputation
has been appointed by the special vestry to proceed to
London for the purpose of presenting their remon-
strance; but we shall despair of the success of their
enterprize unless the inhabitants generally strengthen
their hands by taking some, further mode of evincing
the deep interest they feel in a matter so exceedingly
momentous. The petition now in course of signature
is an efficient mode of doing EO.

INHABITANTS OF LIVERPOOL, HASTEN TO SIGN

IT! TUERE IS NO TIME TO BE LOST

In order to give the Jews the municipal enfranchise-
ment which is sought for them, it is only necessary to
remove out of their way that declaration which. pur-
ports to be made "on the true faith of a Christian."
It is contended that this obstacle ought to be removed
because Daniel Saloinans, Esquire, is quite a respec-
table person, and because there are others of his nation
of a like grade, and of equal respectability in society;
and secondly, because the policy acted on of late years
has been one of relaxation and comprehension. On
these positions the argument for the proposed enfran-
chisement is mainly built; but whatever validity it
may seem in the mind of some men to possess, one
thing is certain—that it does not at all meet the prin-
ciple on which the objection to concession is founded.
We are not concerned particularly about Mr. David
Salomans, or his status in English society; we may
allow him to be all that his vouchers say for him ; we
prefer no impeachment against either his moral or po-
litical character, or against that of his kinsmen and

nation residing in this country : it is something quite
immaterial to our immediate views. And as to the
other position, all we shall say is, that if parliament
must continue to do wrong ad iqfinitum, because it has
done so once, then of course it is useless for us to say
more upon the subject. But these are arguments of a
very lame description indeed, and unworthy of serious
refutation.

To allude to the " true faith of a Christian," is, we
have seen, an occasion of laughter, and a matter of
ridicule, in the House of Commons. The Irish tail
always attend well drilled and *prepared on this point.
Their secreta monita are, to laugh down everything
serious. They cheer and applaud every sentiment
that favours the dishonour, and the erasure from the
statute-book, of the very name of our national Chris-
tianity; and seldom does it happen that they do not
punctually obey, or even better, their instructions.
Were any one to speak of " the true faith of a PA-
PIST," the mockers would instantly become grave as
Trappists, and serious as fasting eremites. The reli-
gion of the Roman pontifex maxinzus absorbs all their
reverence, and commands all their affections ; but not
So with Christianity : they hate the very name (unless
in company with the Pope), and more particularly that

of our national church. And what is the consequence
of this anti-Christian, devilish system and practice's
'Why, that few have the moral courage to encounter
it—that it scares away many of the Conservative
Party—and, consequently, that when heads come to
be reckoned on questions of the deepest moment, the
Lumbers stand too often in the proportion that we find
them on this Jews' question, when the expunging of
the declaration " on the true faith of a Christian" was
carried by a majority of 137 to 24. Such is the dis-
advantage that our national Christianity labours under,
in consequence of the admission of Papists into parlia-
ment ; and yet the precedent is held up to us as a good
One, and even insisted upon as a sufficient reason for
extending the same measure of mistaken liberality to
the Jews'

The position taken by Sir Robert Inglis is the true
One, and, we need not say, was wholly unaffected by
the " farrago of cant" given utterance to by the Colo-
nial Secretary in his attempt at reply. " You have
put the question," said his lordship, " on a theological
ground : are you aware that that is a mode of proceed-
ing quite unusual here, and which was not so done
When the Catholic claims were advocated ?" And the
more the pity, say we ; for the " theological ground,"
as his lordship calls it, is just the ground that, had it
been properly defended, would have presented an in-
superable barrier to those pretensions. Theological
references, we observe, are dreadfully annoying to
your Liberal ; and he would persuade himself that
they never can be c't propos,—no, not even when a Jew
seeks admission to the privileges of a Christian state!

The Colonial Secretary alleges that it is intolerant
in the state to ask a man about his religion, in order
to ascertain his qualification for office or preferment.
But if so, it must be intolerant to ask him what sort
of house he resides in, or what property he possesses,
in order to test his fitness for voting for a member of
parliament, or for sitting himself in that house. The

one sort of test is just as much symptomatic of into-
lerance as the other; and until society fall back again
to first principles, and return to primitive barbarity,
some such " intolerance" we must ever have.
To make Mr. David Salomans an alderman may
seem to some to be a mere bagatelle; but if Mr. Salo-
mans cannot have that honour conferred upon him
without an act that goes a great way towards unchris-
tianizing the state, then this bagatelle becomes a very
grave affair; and we are intolerant enough to think
that it would be far better to leave the Hebrew gentle-
man plain Mr. Salomans to the end of his days than to
perpetrate a deed of such evident national apostacy and
sacrilege. Papists and liberals may laugh, and it is
only natural they should, especially when they seem in
a fair way to win ; but Papists and liberals have no
desire to preserve our constitution in church and state,
or, we believe, in either, and are glad therefore to asso-
ciate with them all those who, if true to their own prin-
ciples, must be its bitterest foes. On the other hand,
every departure of the state from its position as Pro-
testant and Christian is a matter of serious grief and
deep regret to those who consider its christianity to be
intimately connected with its highest interests, its li-
berty and welfare in every possible relation and aspect.

Our Whig cotemporary, the Albion, has kindly essayed
to involve us in a quarrel, and argues that because we
dissented last week from the proceedings in the Town
Council on this question, we have therefore put all the
conservative members in the same category with the
Whigs and liberals. We are sure that our conservative
friends did not so understand us. When we speak of
the Council in general, we speak of it as a Whig body,
existing as such by the grace of a small majority, which
Is alone accountable for its measures ; and if some of
our conservative friends have agreed with the majority
on this question, it is a casualty that we may have re-
gretted, but which certainly did not enter into our con-
templation at the time we wrote the observations re-
ferred to. Of the importance of that " union which
is strength" We are as fully sensible as our Whig co-
temporary, who shows how highly he appreciates it by
seeking to sow dissention in our camp ; but much as
we value it we would not wish to attain or preserve it
by requiring others to dissemble their opinions, or by
shrinking, when the occasion required it, from a can-
did avowal of our own ; and this, we think, is good
conservative practice, which our friends will likely
agree with us in, and applaud rather than censure us
for pursuing. The " ingenious device" of the Albion
on this occasion—in which, by the by, there is a strong
spice of the malicious—will, we venture to say, be dis-
appointed of its object.