The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1841-12-21 00:00:00

c.)livinei:

he atttltai•s of this

most atrocious and beastly libel felt in their in►cost
souls that they were making their dastardly attack on

Christian clergymen and defenceless females, when
they sat down to their work of calumny. Had it been
otherwise they might not have feared to put forth the
falsehood, but they would have thought twice, roost
likely, before they would have exposed themselves to

the consequences of a series of imputations so false,

.efous, and abominable. As it stands, the thing
is cowardly and contemptible ; and we have put it be-
fore our readers, in order that they may perceive to
what base shifts the enemies of our cause will resort
in their extremity. Our cause, indeed, will not be in-
jured by such egregious and glaring falsehoods ; not
because their tendency is harmless; not because lying
and calumny are devoid of their accustomed capacity
to do mischief; but because, as we well know, Con-
servatism is wide awake and prepared to meet and
frustrate the various tricks and devilish devices of the
enemy. A regulated system of the most monstrous
lying is not a thing in itself to be despised ; the Whigs
have found it before now a very powerful auxiliary,
and would do so again, if their mendacious inventions
were permitted to go forth unnoticed and unexposed.
The miscreant production which we have been just
noticing is .a tolerable sample of the craft, and should
serve to fill every generous mind with indignation and
abhorrence against that detestable system which dis-
guises itself under the name of Whiggery or Liberal-
ism. So elaborate a piece of impertinence, however,
cannot be altogether disposed of in a single article of
any moderate length ; and we reserve a few farther
comments to another opportunity.

It has been the boast of some of the journals which
advocate the extreme views of the Oxford Tractarian
party, that their labours have contributed much to
strengthen the zeal, and increase the number of the
church's friends, and that, both politically and religi-
ously, they have done the Conservative cause some
service. That there is a sort of zeal engendered by
Puseyism, we should not think of denying; on this
head there is evidence enough ; but that it is a zeal cal-
culated to promote such ends as its advocates assume
for it, or that has in any degree produced them, we
deny, both from the nature of the thing in itself, and
from the absence of all evidence to support the position.
One of the advocates of the party, we remember, re-
ferred us, some time since, to Leeds as a locality in
which the preaching of very high church doctrines,
and a veneration for outward things, almost Tracta-
rian, had wrought marvellously in favour of the church
and established institutions. In reply to this refer-
ence, we asked how it happened, if this were the case,
that Leeds had been able to return but one Conserva-
tive member,—whilst here in Liverpool, where no such
" high" doctrines are taught by any of the clergy, we
have been able to elect and re-elect two staunch Con-
servatives—overturn all the long and high castle-build-
ing of the Radicals, and strengthen our cause by giving
to the borough the benefit of a Conservative Municipal
Council, as well as parliamentary representation ? We
do not recollect what reply, or whether any, was given
to this query; but as Leeds has been mentioned as a
quarter which has profited much by instruction in the
recondite mysteries of high churchmanship, we are
induced on this occasion to ask, how it came to pass
that, last week, a church-rate for the purchase of a
piece of burial ground, confessedly much wanting in
the parish—the old church-yards being quite over-
stocked—was almost unanimously rejected, the rev.
and worthy vicar of Leeds himself presiding at the
meeting ? Of the churchwardens, it seems, seven out
of eight are Dissenters. It became the duty of one of
them to bring forward the proposition of the rate—
which would impose a trifling levy of not more than
eleven-pence in the pound on the rate-payers—hut as
this gentleman did not happen to be the churchman,
of course he did not feel himself hound to say anything
in its favour. In fact the motion had no supporters,
and was condemned and lost without a single voice
being raised, or at least heard in its favour—and be it
asked wherefore ? Was it that there was no need for
the object proposed, or that the rate was excessive, or
that any reasonable ground of objection of such sort
existed ? Oh, by no means—the rationale of the thing
was not called in question at all ; its condemnation was
simply that it was " church"L•qf the church, and for
the church—and, therefore, odious in the eyes, and to
the taste of the assembled majority. The assembly
broke up in the highest state of satisfaction, and the
learned vicar descended from his chair without having
been able to advance the interest of his defunct parish-
ioners in any degree by his motion. Now, we ask, is
this a fruit—this one of the beneficial results which,
we are informed, we may look for from the promulga-
tion of Tractarian doctrines—this an evidence of the
zeal and love which her children may be expected to
display for the church, as the new leaven takes effect,
and duly operates upon their affections ? But there
was a little episode to the transaction which will bring
it in still more lively colours before our readers. Whilst
this church-loving assembly stood, or sat, in proud
consciousness of their unanimity and power, and in
joyous anticipation of putting a flat negative on the
dissenting churchwarden's bill, Mr. E. Baines, jun., a
Liberal of the first water, presented himself to view,
and was received with a storm of hisses and indigna-
tion ; and for this reason—there had gone a rumour
abroad that he had been gained over by the vicar, and
had promised to support the projected rate. So high
did the tide of passion end prejudice rise and run
against this once popular favourite and leader, under
the withering influence of this imputation, that he
would not be heard for a moment in his own defence—
and what he would have said, appears, ex necessitate
rei, as an article in his own paper next day.

In the article he declares that he is a much injured
man ; that, although he had distinctly allowed that
there was great want of more cemeterial accommoda-
tion for the church, he had never promised that he
would support a rate for procuring it; that he had
supposed the levy to be imposed would he a burial-
ground rate, and not a church rate ; and that, finally,
his object in attending the meeting, and in attempting
to gain a hearing, was not to give any support to so
obnoxious and illiberal a plan as that brought forward
by the vicar and his party, but the contrary.
We have only one comment to make on this busi-
ness, and it is this—that if the doings of these Leeds
people be taken as a specimen of the direction which
high church preaching gives to men's thoughts and
actions, the less we have of it—for church and state
interests—surely the better.

Churchmanship at Leeds may he in a very high
state, for aught we know, in matters of ceremony, and
other affairs deemed of great moment by tractarian
writers; but for any useinl ecclesiastical or political
purpose which men in general think important, it is
in an exceedingly low plight indeed. • We have never
had any other idea of the tendencies of such church-
manship as the disseminators of Oxonian heresy preach
up. It is altogether too late for the present age. If it
were taught universally in our pulpits, it would drive
many out of the church into the ranks of dissent; be-
tween dissent and the church it widens the breach,
and makes reconciliation hopeless; and with regard to
the neophytes themselves, what should we expect from
men who descended from the " pure serene" of gospel
teaching to the beggarly elements of the world, and
let down their understandings, grovelling in the dark,
to all the contemptible materialities of superstition ?
We would humbly suggest that a deputation from
Liverpool should be sent over to the great cloth mart,
with a view to put their churchmanship and conserva-
tism, generally, on a better footing..

At the various great meetings which have been
lately held, in Derby, Leeds, and Manchester, for agi-
tating distress, strong, and perhaps we should say
startling, statements have been made by parties who
must be supposed to possess competent knowledge on
the subject, with regard to the declining state of vari-

ous branches of our manufactures. To refuse all cre-
dence to these frightful narratives would require great
power of nerve, or an extraordinary effort of scepti-
cism, arising from the lowest conceivable views of hu-

man nature ; and, for our part, we cannot go such
lengths. A certain amount of truth there must be in
such representations,—and if it be in the power of go-
vernment to afford a remedy for so calamitous a state
of things, no exertions on their part, we should say,
could be too great to discover and apply it. At the
the same time, it is a circumstance which unavoidably
raises a doubt on one's mind with regard to the real