The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1840-10-27 00:00:00

VOttii).

LINES

On contemplating the proceedings of the late Banquet at the
Amphitheatre, on the occasion of Laying the Foundation
Stone of the Liverpool Collegiate Institution.

We fear not for old England ; though the hatred, dire and deep,
And the ban of wolfish Rome around her holy altars sweep ;
Though the scorner and the infidel—a fierce and traitor band—
Ate mustering to trample her, we fear not for our land !

Whilst hearts as true are hers, as those which beat around us now,
Mad loyalty is left, lil;e that which beams upon each brow ;
Whilst beauty smiles, as now she smiles, and waves her snow-white

To cheer us on the path of right, we feai not for our land !

Whil* England's old nobility—a leal and matchless race,
Like Sandon, Stanley, Egerton, our festive board who grace—
The foremost in her sacred cause are ready aye to stand,
For loyalty and Cistian truth, we fear not for our land !
And England's gallant gentlemen—they fight upon our side,
With all her noble yeomanry, her bulwark and her pride;
Her merchant princes too are here, with wealth of every strand,
To gild our holy banner ; then why fear we for onr land ? •

The mitred prelates of her church—the pious and the pure—
Have girded on their panoply of steadfast faith and sure ;
And marshall'd round, on every side, a holy phalanx stand
To battle for her altar stories, We fear not for our land !

No traitor arm can e'er depress the spirit which is here—
The firm and holy trust which finds a voice in every cheer ;
That trust is in the Word of Life, which, like the prophet's wand,
Laid dry the path for Israel ;—we fear not for our lund !

" Britannia needs no bulwarks—no towers along the steep,"*—
Whilst o'er her loyal hearts and hands their watchful vigils keep ;
And whilst the blessed lamp of life sheds forth its radiance bland—
From every hill and mountain top, we fear not for our land !

We fear not for old England,—for her church and for her crown :
A thousand hands this night would rise to strike the traitor down
A thousand tongues are raady now the recreant name to brand,
Who flinches from her banner ;—Oh! why fear we for our land ?

G. B. J,

* Campbell.

SPEE I OF THE REV. HUGH M`NEILE,
AT THE DINNER TO LORD STANLEY, ON THURSDAY, OCT. 22.

Notwithstanding that we presented a supplement to our
readers n Friday last, we were unable to find room for the
eloquent speech of our distinguished townsman, the Rev.
Hugh M`Neile, at the dinner to Lord Stanley, on the occa-
sion of laying the foundation stone of the Liverpool Collegiate
Institution. In redemption of our pledge, we now lay it be-
fore our readers, convinced that its intrinsic merits will be
recognised by all.
The NOBLE PRESIDENT (Lord Francis Egerton) having
called on the reverend gentlemen to propose a toast,
The Rev. Mr. M'NEILE rose, and the cheering which
greeted his appearance was most enthusiastic. He spoke as
follows :—My Lord, I have to assure your lordship, and you,
gentlemen, that I would attempt some reference to my own
feelings at this moment, but that I am really afraid and
ashamed to do so—afraid, because I think that anything like
an apology about the unworthy individual who bas been
called up to address you would be more presumptive than
total silence. '[lie reception which I have met with has cer-
tainly deprived me for a moment of my usual faculties of ut-
terance. (Loud cheers, during which the rev. gentleman
seemed to be deeply affected.) It is not to be attributed to
any rank, or station, or influence I possess, or can possess,
but I am in some degree reassured by the remembrance that
it is oci asni.ed by th, fact, that I have a heart and tongue
winch 1 rha Go,i arc turned by his grace to the defence of
the institution., of our country, as they are based on the word
of revelation and presented in the formularies, the discipline,
and the order of that church of which 1 am an unworthy but
most attached member. (Vehement applause.)
My lord,—lt is my high privilege to propose for the adop-
tion of tins distinguish d assembly, and I doubt not for their
permanently practical as well as their immediately cordial
adoption, the prosperity of an infant society in direct opera-
tive connexion with our Collegiate Institution. (Hear.)
My lord, every thing conspires to strengthen our convic-
tion that in giving a largely improved education to the com-
mercial tradingsand working classes of our great community,
we are grappling, so far as our exertions can grapple, with
the fundamental question of our times.
- That quepon, truly traced to its source, is not are we to
have peace or war? are we to have a conservative or a de-
structive Cabinet ? are we to have a repeal or no repeal of the
legislative union with Ireland ? are we to have an increase or
a decrease of the unconstitutional influence within the realm
of a foreign ecclesiastical potentate ? These, and all such
things, are secondary and symptomatic. Englishmen, as
they ought to be, soon settle all these. The question is, what
is now to be done for Englishmen? (Loud cheers.) They
are not as they ought to be. They are not prepared as they
ought to e, to meet the great questions which are now more
than everbrought before them, and on which they are now
more than;.ever called to decide.
[Here the mayor's deputy, Mr. Crooke, who appeared to
be labouring under an indistinct conception that it was he
who ought to be speaking, commenced addressing certain
mysterious and piteous sounds to the chairman, which were
suddenly cut short by u summary ejectment, vi et artnis, by
his surrounding friends.]
Mr. WNEILE continued.—The progress of legislation
has placed the wielding in the last resort of the sceptre
of government in the bands of the middle classes of
the community. (Hear, hear, and cheers.) I am not
about to offer any comment upon the propriety or policy
of having done this. I speak of it now simply as a fact in
order to introduce 'in connexion with it, another fact more
immediately the subject of our present consideration. The
middle classes of the community are called to the exercise of
the most responsible duties, for the adequately intelligent dis-
charge of which they have not the requisite information. (Hear.)
Possessing the power, they ought to possess the intelligence
of statesmen. They are substantially their own legislators ;
and to acquit themselves as they ought to do for the safety
and improvement of the country, they ought to be able to
take comprehensive views of the great balanced and balancing .
interests of the state. Not to mention our foreign connexions,
and the high principles involved in international laws, they
ought to be able to sae the inseparable connexion (instead of
any party rivalry) which subsists between the apparently con-
flicting, but really harmonious interests of manufacture and
agriculture, of landlord and tenant, of employer and work-
man, of the liberty of commercial enterprise and the nation-
ality of protecting duties, of sound permanent policy and truly
enlightened humanity, of true religious consistencyand genuine
christian toleration—so that to rush headlong in any one
direction is not only to injure the other side but in the ine-
vitable recoil to injure if not ruin both sides. (Loud cheers.)
Correct views on these subjects, my lord, are acquirements
of no ordinary difficulty. They cannot be had impromptu.
They are the results of painstaking investigation, and discri-
minating wisdom—a field into which no man can enter with-
out a competent stock of preliminary and sound erudition.
(Hear, and applause.)
To question the duty of cultivating the minds of our mid-
dle classes up to a statesman's growth, or to hesitate about
the vigorous performance of that duty, is little short of sui-
cidal madness. We have armed them for the political field,
and now if we leave them ignorant of the great questions and
interests of national policy, we leave them as a ready engine
for mischief in the hands of the experimental empiric, urging
on his one-eyed, narrow theory, to the inevitable upsetting
of the machine ; or to the factious demagogue, clamouring
about patriotism, while his object is to put money in his
purse ; or to the wily traitor, who, practising on their igno-
rance, may turn their energies against themselves and their
country. (Hear, hear, and cheers.)
If it be alleged that it is utterly hopeless to put the im-
mense mass of the middle classes in possession of the erudi-
tion necessary for such high and delicate investigations; that
their habits, and the necessities of their existence demanding
the daily toil of their hands, render such cultivation altoge-
ther beyond their reach : our reply in the first instance is
this—lf so, if it be utterly hopeless to make them statesmen
in ictelligence, then it is utterly ruinous to make them states-
men in privilege—to pat into their hands an instrument, and
a sharp one, wnich they do not know, and cannot learn, how
to wield. (Hear, hear.)
But, my lord, our answer in the second place is this—lt
is not hopeless. Ido indeed believe that it is utterly hope-
less to make the physical and mathematical sciences popular.
I am well persuaded that in those sciences the middle classes,
considered as a body, can never acquire more than that little
knowledge which is a dangerous thing : and experience con-
firms the opinion that those educationists of our day who are
leading their pupils of the middle classes to devote all, or
nearly all, their studying time to those sciences, are not
doing them toe good they intend. A few individual cases of
al os cut .us success may he pointed to, but these con-
fir i .stead of supers .ding the rale. (Hear, hear.)
But my .ord, Inter all, and without meaning to convey the
slightest disparagement of those lofty pursuits where they
can he fully followed, I am free to confess that, notwithstand-
ing the boast of mathematicians that their intellectual ab-
stractions teach men to reason, 1 do not think such reason-
ing is the roost helpful in the attainment of true practical
WiSiliMn, either in this world, or for the next. (Hear, hear.)
I will briefly say wily. In the practical affairs of nations,
as of individnals, the mind has to balance probabilities and
decide on comparative degrees of the eligible and the in-
eligible. For such balancings and decisions, the school of rigid
demonstration is not the best. (Hear.) Calculations conducted
with unerring certainty, either among the unchanging rela-
tions of given quantities, or among the uniform effects, in
due proportion to the distances, of the attraction of gravita-
tion and the centrifugal impetus; are not the most appropri-
ate eiitivators of that practical wisdom, and sound good
sense. Mlle') must daily determine, not between the proved
and the disproved, but between the more or less judicious or
injudicious. (Great applause.)
Most true it is, and will be found, that no very large
section of the working classes ever will, or can, become com-
petently conversant with the abstract sciences. I have said
completely conversant, for I do not mean to deny, that a
superficial smattering (enough for dangerous vanity, but not
enough for real wisdom) may readily be acquired. But my
lord, the working classes can learn what is much better :
better for themselves and better for their country. They
can learn the history of nations, and therein the character of
man, and the dealings of God. (Hear.) These are the elements of
true political science. (Hear.) They can learn, that although
every fact considered as a fact is new, never was before and never
can be again, yet tt at considered with reference to the un-
changing principles of this world's history, there is nothing
new. " The thing toot hair been, it is that which shall be,
and that which is clone, is that which shall be done, and
there is no new thing under the sun." They can learn that
all people, nations, and languages have to do with one great
Ruler, who is the same yesterday and to-day, and for ever.
They can learn the great principles of his moral administra-
tion over the empires of the earth. (Cheers.)
" At what instant I shall speak concerning a nation
and concerning a kingdom, to build and to plant it, if that
nation do evil in my sight, that it obey not my voice,
then I will repent of the good wherewith I said I
would benefit them. And at what instant I shall speak
concerning a nation and concerning a kingdom to pluck
up and to pull down and to destroy it; if that nation against
whom I have pronounced, turn from their evil, and obey my
voice, I will repent of the evil that I thought to do unto
them.'' They can see these principles illustrated, and prac-
tical light thrown upon what is here called good and evil, by
the history of nation after nation ; from Assyria and Baby-
lon, of by-gone centuries, down to the frightful termination
of the last century in France. They can have the applica-
tion of these principles to their own time and circumstances.
My lord, I adopt in seriousness the phrase, however intended,
of the present Lord Chancellor of Ireland, when he called
history an old almanack. For what, let me ask, have we to
change in an old almanack to make it new? Not the pro-
gress of the seasons : these remain the same : not the recur-
rence of the equinoxes, not the evolutions of the earth on
her axis and in her orbit, not the changes of the moon, not
the rising and falling of the tides, no, they all continue sub-
stantially the same ; and what then have we to change )
.only
the dates, and the rare and comparatively unimportant,
though for a moment alarming, prodigies of eclipses of the
sun or moon, and passing comets with their tails of lurid
fire. (Hear.) And so it is with history. (Hear, hear.)
Changing its dates from year to yearoats fundamental
principles are of perpetual recurrence. The real cause
of the overthrow of governments is now what it was when
Pharoah in the pride of power and fancied self-sufficiency,
gave honest utterance to the infidel principle, " who is the
Lord that I should obey his voice ? I know not the Lord,
neither will I let Israel go." (Hear, hear.) The real