The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1845-04-29 00:00:00

THE LIVERPOOL STANDARD

But again :

corded their opinions that, to he perfect, the measure
ought to be carried out by a robbery of those funds
with which she has been endowed by our pious fore-
fathers ? The proverb about those who live in
glass houses should really have presented itself to
the mind of our contemporary before he permitted
himself to taunt a body of consistent men with a
sin, of which his own pet statesmen are so especially
guilty.

The gross inconsistencies, into which men are
driven in the attempt to gloss over a bad cause,
ought to he a warning to them to refrain from the
perilous task. If they have bartered long-cherished
principles for any consideration ; if they have
swerved from the professions of a long and honour-
able career; if they have stooped to the degrada-
tion of swallowing nauseous doctrines and adopting
repulsive measures, because gilded by official pay
and sweetened by the possession of place and
power,—let them not attempt to blind the world to
the truth of their position, or hesitate to proclaim
aloud even their own apostacy. There is safety
and honesty in the truth ; contempt only follows
the jusuitical effort to wriggle out of its avowal.

We have been struck with the correctness of this
opinion by the perusal of an article in Saturday's
Morning Herald, which, we presume, we may with
safety set down as the organ of Sir Robert Peel's
Government. Our contemporary and his patrons
accepted the aid of the member for Sheffield and
his Whig-Radical friends, on the occasion of the
second reading of the Maynooth Bill, without even
a shrug or a grimace of repugnance. Liberalism
was then all that was great, good, and enlightened.
The Minister smiled approvingly upon his new bevy
of friends; the Ministerial journalist patted them
on the head as patterns of public virtue and lofty
principle. But, having helped the Government
over the first horn of their dilemma, and enabled
them to inflict a heavy blow upon the feelings of
the Protestant majority of the nation, Liberalism,
by its support of Mr. Ward's motion, has exposed
to the world the strange ingredients of the majority
which supported the Premier in his crusade against
the Established Church of the realm ; and Liberal-
ism is now a very naughty and a very unclean
thing, quite wrong in its philosophy, and totally,
unlearned in the matter about which it has pre-
sumed to lift its voice. Hear how the Ministeri I
Herald cuts up the ground: upon which—let the
fact be borne in mind—one-half of the majority for
the second reading of the Maynooth Bill recorded
their votes in favour of that measure :

" Equally mistaken, though not equally brilliant, is the
popular hypothesis cf the Wards, and Roebucks, and
Macaulays. Their only idea of a Church seems to be a
sort of machine for fabricating " religion," and which is
rendered necessary only by " public opinion." The peo-
ple have a prejudice in favour of keeping up " a religion,"
and out of deference to this prejudice, some sort of " re-
ligion " ought to be kept up. But the only rule these
gentlemen seem to be able to conceive for the selection
of this said " religion," is the popular fashion, or preva-
lent opinion. Whatever ism can secure the majority of
votes, is to be preferred to the first place. If Presby-
terianism has the larger amount of suffrage, then Presby-
terianism is to be " the Church ; " if Episcopacy gets
the most votes, then Episcopacy must be established; if
Popery is the favourite, then Popery is to bear sway. By
the very terms in which they assert this principle, it is
clear, that if Socinianism or Socialism were but the fash-
ion for a sufficient time, it would follow that the nation
ought to have a Socinian or Socialist establishment."
May we ask of our contemporary to inform us,
and the world,—Which are the most consistent of
the two parties—these infidel statesmen (the expres-
sion is his own) or the Conservatives who propose
to endow Popery ? The former, who regard the
keeping up of some sort of religion as a concession
to the national prejudices, can consistently say,
" The Irish Roman Catholics are seven millions ;
therefore, support their Church from the funds of
the State :" upon precisely the same grounds the
latter, who profess that there is such a thing as a
true Church, say, " Endow Popery, which we be-
lieve to be gross error and superstition !" If Ire-
land ever comes to be Socinian or Socialist, upon
the same grounds urged by our contemporary and
the Ministerial supporters of this measure, Conser-
vative as well as Whig-Radical, " it would follow
that the nation ought to have a Socialist establish-
ment"—that justice and expediency will compel us
to endow a college for the better education of Soci-
nian or Socialist ministers. For the life of us we
cannot imagine by what jesuitical windings our
contemporary can get rid of the damaging nature
of his own peevish arguments, addressed to his
temporary allies. _ _

But a more conclusive condemnation of the prin-
ciple contained in the Ministerial Bill is contained
in the following paragraph. Contending against
the argument adduced by the Liberals, that by our
countenance to the Church of Scotland we are pre-
cluded from objecting to support other creeds, he
says :
"The Church of England and the Church of Scotland
are identical in their faith and the object of worship. But
the Socinian takes away some essential articles from the
faith ; and the Romanist adds many. The one worships
a mere man—a fiction of his own creation—one whom he
does not believe to be God over all, blessed for ever,'
and the Romanist worships amere woman, whom he calls
the Queen of Heaven,' and a crowd of Other dead men
and women, who can neither hear nor answer prayer ;
and to whom, nevertheless, he addresses his u.eless peti-
tions,—to the practical disregard of the God of heaven
and earth. Now to treat such perversions as these as on
a level with the faith of the Bible, is nothing more than
a species of disguised infidelity. If the Bible be the
Word of Gon, then is the Romanist or the Socinian in
serious danger. If the Bible be not true, then let us
have done with all national churches, and let those who
want ' religion,' invent it, and pray for it, each after his
own fashion." _ _ _

Why, this is precisely the view which we, as Pro-
testants, take of the endowment of Maynooth. We
thus endow a religion whose observances are " in
practical disregard of the God of heaven and earth."
As a Christian State, we are placing such a religion
" on a level with the faith of the Bible ;" and we
perfectly agree with the Ministerial organ—and
hope that his patrons will digest the admission com-
fortably—that such a course of policy " is nothing
more than a species of disguised infidelity !" Most
heartily we thank our contemporary for the admis-
sion.

"To any one who properly appreciates the reality and
the value of revealed truth, it must ever be unspeakably
disgusting to hear questions of religious faith decided by
an appeal to numbers."
It is disgusting ; yet upon what better grounds
is the endowment of Maynooth advocated by its
Ministerial supporters ? None better, certainly,
unless the ground of fear be better. We are com-
mitting this " unspeakably disgusting" sacrifice of
religious principle and national consistency because
—Sir Robert Peel is our authority—there is a cloud
rising in the west which menaces war with the
United States. We are hoping to bind the dis-
affected Papists of Ireland to our side in the im-
pending contest by the endowment of a religion,
which we know to be heretical and perilous to the
souls of men ! If it is " unspeakably disgusting"
in men who regard religion as a thing only to be
kept up in deference to a silly national prejudice,
and whose form may be shaped according to " po-
pular fashion or prevalent opinion," to offer as the
ground of concession the numbers of those to whom
concession is made ; it is far more disgusting—it is
cowardly and base—to offer as a plea our fear of
Irish disaffection.

The concluding passage of this article is, how-
ever, such an extraordinary one, coming from such
a quarter, that we cannot, without difficulty, believe
that the writer, whilst penning it, has not been
bemused with the idea that he was supporting a
Government which had never made shipwreck of
Protestantism, or forfeited its consistency, by pro-
posing to carry a measure affecting the established
religion of the realm by the aid of the sworn ene-
mies of that established religion. We give it entire
as a curiosity :
" It is a pitiable sight to see a number of men, many of
them filled with good intentions, striving to legislate in
the dark ! They have forgotten to prepare themselves
for their arduous duties, by ascertaining, as they ought
to have done, some one fundamental principle; as a start-
ing point or secure basis. Hence, in their distress for
some semblance of a doctrine or rule of right, they catch
hold of this arithmetical argument, and fancy that a ques-
tion in theology may be decided by rule of three or long
division ! And all who plainly tell them that truth is the
only safe guide, and that truth was never so ascertained,
they al once accuse of " bigotry " and " fanaticism,"
and resolutely maintain, that nothing can be more con-
venient than to determine doctrines by the assistance of
the census, and to proportion creeds to the density of the
population ! "
Certainly we could never have flattered ourselves
with the ability to say anything so severely reflect-
ing upon the Ministerial policy as these remarks of
their advocate, of whom we heartily wish them joy.
We tell them that "truth is the only safe guide" in
legislation. Alas ! why are they about to shut their
eyes to this principle, and to endow and pamper
DANGEROUS ERROR ?

We beg to direct the attention of our readers to
a letter, in another column, addressed by the Rev.