The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1854-02-14 00:00:00

acted without orders, and even against positive
instructions to the contrary, would be a species of
tyranny to which we have had no parallel since the
days of the Star Chamber and General Warrants.
Lord JOHN RUSSELL has his part to play of pre-
tending great zeal for electoral purity ; but, at the
same time, the real interests of his party are best
served by doing the least, while professing to do
the most.

THE PREMIER still holds out a lingering hope
of the dispute between Russia and Turkey being
settled. by negotiation, but the surest guarantee
for peace will be found in the vigorous preparation
for war. The EMPEROR of RUSSIA, as we ventured
to predict, has driven his pretensions to the verge
of forbearance, and now, the sooner we are pre-
pared at both points—the Black Sea and the
Baltic—the nearer shall we approach:to the long-
desired settlement. The British lion appears to
have been effectually aroused : a naval force suffi-
cient to sweep the Black Sea is already there, and,
in a very few weeks, an equally powerful fleet will
shut up the northern ports of Russia. At the
same time, British troops will be dispatched by
powerful steamers to the scene of action ; and
should the now- demanded concession not be
speedily made, a blow will be struck from which
Russia will not easily recover, demolishing the
work of years of stealthy aggression, and restoring
that balance of power which she has so long been
silently destroying. With ample materials for
attack by sea and land, the hardy mountaineers of
Circassia supplied with ammunition and reinforce-
ments, and Austria compelled to be neutral for her

own preservation, Russia, notwithstanding her
vast territory, will be hemmed in on all sides,
while conditions of peace will be dictated to her
1 from the cannon's mouth far more stringent and
i humiliating than would have been accepted before
force had been resorted to. In the unsuccessful
mission of Count ORLOFF to Vienna and Berlin,
Russia has exhausted her arts of diplomacy, and
shown the strong anxiety of the Czem to secure by
any means, but peacefully if possible, the retention
of the Danubian provinces, and his coveted pro-
tectorate of the Greek Church in Turkey. It is
now also evident that the extremity to which the
quarrel has been driven is mainly owing to the
vacillation displayed by the English Cabinet. The
EMPEROR was not to be convinced by diplomatic
professions that England was sincere in her de-
termination to preserve the Turkish dominions
from Russian aggressions ; and now, when words
are being followed up by deeds, he has advanced
too far-to recede with honour or credit. Any con-
cession at the present time will be a confession of
defeat, unless an ingenious excuse can be devised
as a means of retreat, and we are rather inclined
to think that the skill of Count NESSELRODE will
be exercised to frame such terms of surrender as
will salve the wounded honour of his master, and
at the same time satisfy the demands of the
Western Powers. It may not, however, be so
easy, for, after raising an addition of more than
ten thousand men to the British army, and adding
more than a million to the navy estimates, to say
nothing of the expenditure incurred by France, it
may be a question whether Russia should not be
called upon for compensation for expenses already
incurred, as well as for guarantees against any
future disturbance of the peace of Europe.

THE .RIGHT OF PRIVATE JUDGMENT

THE fact that a departure from one extreme usually
leads to an adoption of the other, is evident in too many
instances to need confirmation ; and the same remark will
apply as well to religion as to politics. OUR SA:vtotra,
addressing the Pharisees, said :—" Ye compass sea and
earth to make one proselyte, and when he is made he is
twofold more the child of hell than yourselves ;" and
modern Rome, in this respect, closely follows the example
of her prototypes of old. Mr. Nrwxr.tiv, as a member of
the Church of England, bore a high character for the
ingenuity of his arguments and the closeness of his rea-
soning; but since his perversion to Rome he has become
notorious for his puerile attempts at argument and the
extravagant absurdity of his conclusions. Last week,
and again last night, at the Concert-hall in this town,
the Rev. W. H. ANDERDON, some time vicar of St. Mar-
garet's, Leicester, and now a dupe of Romish superstition,
made a display of the utter prostration of the reasoning
faculties to which such a perversion inevitably tends. His
discourse last week afforded no evidence of the ingenious
sophistry by which Jesuits seek to delude their hapless
followers, but was a melancholy proof of that mental
hallucination of which he is himself the victim. With
dreary pleasantry he attempted to define a Church as a
divine institution, which presented to helpless man a
system of revelation on which, if he attempted to exercise
his individual judgment, he started with an act of disobe-
dience. Granted the definition, and what becomes of Mr.
ANDERDON'S own position ? The minister of a Church
whose doctrines he had solemnly sworn to teach in their
purity and integrity, he exercises his individual judgment,
or rather want of it, by breaking his oath in order to join
an apostacy which has neither the warrant of Scripture,
the justification of reason, nor the merit of consistency ;
which in one age has set up a particular dogma as indis-
pensable to salvation, in another has repudiated it, and in
every age has altered or amended artides of faith in order
to suit them to the expediency of the time, and gratify
the all-absorbing object of worldly gain and temporal
power. Denying the right of private judgment, Mr.
ANDERDON is himself a melancholy instance of its exer-
cise, with this great difference, that while Protestants, as
such, do it to " prove all things and hold fast by that
which is good," he has rejected Scripture, ignored the
teaching of the Apostles, denied the faith of all primitive
Christians, in order to adopt the wretched superstition
which displaces the Seviouu of mankind for the pre-
tended Mother of Heaven, and believes in Transubstantia-
tion, the exif tence of Purgatory andthe power of indulgence.
Either the Holy Bible is or is not the revealed will of the
ALMIGHTY. If it be, a belief in its doctrines is an ample
refutation of all the absurdities taught by Rome. If it be
not, there is an end of all revelation, for man has no other
means of ascertaining the will of his MAKER. The Bible
and Rome are in direct antagonism, and therefore the
latter sets up the convenient dognia of repudiating all
individual judgment, founding its faith upon popular
ignorance, and enforcing its precepts by denying all right
to question their soundness. Rome is wise in her gene-
ration, to deny her dupes the reading of the Scriptures ;
for the effect would be the rejection of the creeds which
she has substituted. She has cunningly forbidden all
inquiry, for the slightest exercise of the human intellect
would demolish her complicated fiction ; and though we
may wonder that any man who has once drunk at the
pure fountain of Gospel truth should willingly wear such
soul-debasing fetters, we can only attribute it to that
' mental depravity with which the ALMIGHTY sees fit to
punish a wilful rejection of the truth. It will be seen
that the gist of his discourse was the necessity of implicit
reliance upon the teaching of the Church, while his own
career was a practical instance of the.violation of his own
doctrine, with this distinction, that while those who have
been educated in the faith of Rome may plead the excuse
of never having had the means of knowing better, Mr.
ANDERDON'S first step must have been a rebuke to him
for having taken it. He has not even the wretched plea
of ignorance, but, like other waverers, he has coquetted
with the flame until it has burned him ; and such an
example should not be lost upon those still in our Church
who, in their Romanising tendencies, show that they
forget the injunction, "Taste not, tovch not, handle not."

THE LATE. MB. ALExANDER.—Our obituary this week
records the death of Mr. Robert Alexander, for many
years connected with the Liverpool press. Up to the year
1836, he conducted the Liverpool Standard, and from
that time till his death was the principal editor of the
Liverpool Mail. His talents as a political writer were
well known.

PASTORAL AID SOCIETY.—We have much pleasure in
directing attention to the approaching anniversary of the
Pastoral Aid Society, a notice of which appears in our
advertising columns. The Archdeacon of Derby, who
pleads for it on Sunday next, has many connexions with
Liverpool. The Rev. W. Cadman is well known as the
laborious and able minister of a London parish, containing
37,000 souls ; and the Rev. J. Hart will give many
interesting details of the Society's work in Yorkshire. It
is a little humiliating to learn that Bristol and Bath far
exceed Liverpool in their support of the pastoral aid cause,
and that while they contribute a large sum beyond their
own wants, we are a drain on the *eciety'ri rosouross of
Rearly 41,000 a-year,