The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1844-07-16 00:00:00

TO CORUESPONDENTS.

Our Ormsbirk correspondent's statement has not surprised us.
Complaints of a similar kind have already reached us. It is
only on a footing w.th all other efforts of the league in their
ruinous objects, one of which is the reduction of the wages
of the poor man. We hope ail the parties alluded to as hav-
ing received but five shillings for their two days' work, wit
know how to treat the agents of the league it they dare to
show their faces in the neighbourhood again.
The lines of "F. A." are certainly not without merit, but they
would require a few slight alterations to make them suitable
for publication. If others of cur poetical correspondents
would devote a little more time to the correction of their versi-
fications, we should be much obliged. The publication of
their communications would then be much more satisfactory
to themselves, and we should be spared co.isiderable trouble.,
REGULATIONS AFFECTING STEAM PACKETS.—We have by acci-
Gent mislaid the communication of our correspondent on this
subject, but we quite concur in his opinions so far as we re-
member them. It appears that even the river steamers (cros-
sing only to Cheshire,) are allowed twenty minutes to land and
receive their passengers, at George's pier, with little or no, or
comparatively a small quantity of luggage or articles to be
taken on board ; while only the same time is allowed for larger
vessels bonnd to Ileaumaris, the Isle of Man &c., by which
great inconvenience is occasioned, and danger incurred by
by parties anxious to embark, and to whom sufficient time to
ensure comfort and safety is not allowed. lie suggests that
these larger vessels, when they can come along-side the sea-
wall should have more time allowed, which we think is but
reasonable. He also suggests that a separate landing-place
should be appointed for them, in which, too, we concur. We
think it is the duty of the " conservators" of our steam-
navigation (which has done much fur the port) to take the
subject into their speedy and serious consideration. If we
have, from want of recollection, in aught, mistaken our cor-
respondent. or omitted any of his suggestions, he will please
to send us another note, and we shall attend to it.

Ebr Etberpool

TUESDAY NORAING, JULY 16, 1844.

If we do not live in such eventful times as those
of the last generation,—if no present master-afflic-
tion, or danger, presses upon our country,—we fear
it cannot be denied that we are surrounded with
sufficient portents of future and not far distant ca-
lamity. It is true that England is still first amongst
the nations of the world—first in arms, in wealth,
and in civilization. She is still able, as of old, to
maintain her proud position against any power, or
combination of power, which can he brought against

her. Like a mail-clad warrior, confident in her
innate strength and the tried metal of her panoply,
she keeps still her proud stand amidst contempo-
rary powers,—at once the peaceful arbiter of their
contentions and the stern represser of international
wrong and crime. But, though strong externally,
England, nevertheless, bears that within her own
bosom which threatens eventually to sap the foun-
dations of her power, and to yield up to the grasp
of anarchy and destruction the noblest empire upon
which the sun ever shone. A consuming cancer is
gnawing at her heart, which, if not arrested in its
spread, must, at no distant period, induce national
decrepitude, and ultimately bring down upon her
the fate of those empires which, once almost as
mighty as her own, are now half forgotten things,
whose names are dimly recorded on the page of his-
tory, as warnings and emblems to mankind of the
fleeting character of all monuments of human power.

What is it which has been for centuries past the
fruitful source of England's greatness—the basis of
the proud position which she has held in Europe,
and of the happiness of her own people ? The con-
formity of her institutions to the requirements of
God's word; her firm and faithful attitude of pro-
test against all the error with which self-seeking
man has striven to overlard the plain teachings of
that word. From these have arisen the moral in-
fluence which she has been able to exercise amongst
nations. From these have resulted the rational
liberty which she has been enabled to afford to
Englishmen ; their freedom of thought, of speech,
of action ; and the protection which they have been
enabled to afford to oppressed humanity in all climes
and under all circumstances. England has been
great and prosperous in proportion as she has been
FAITHFUL—in proportion as she has clung to the
Truth; and she has retrograded in power and hap-
piness as she has swerved from the assertion and
maintenance of the truth.

From such a fatal backsliding—from such a na-
tional abandonment of the high principle which
once animated the councils and the mind of the
British nation, we look for the evil days which we

fear are in store for us. Where is now to be found
the manly recognition of our duty—the first of all
duties which we owe as a favoured and Christian

people—to support against every assailant, external
and internal, and at whatever sacrifice, national or
individual, that pure Protestant church which we
acknowledge to hold in its holy keeping, the truth—
all the truth, and nothing beyond the truth—which
is our surest guide in legislation as in the every-.
day affairs of life ? Alas ! we see it not in any one
of the great parties which now control the destinies
of England. It is not in fainting, time-serving Con-
servatism, any more than in that cold and haughty
abstraction which we call " Liberalism." It is not
to be found in our philosophy; it is rarely even to
to be heard, fully and plainly enunciated, from our
pulpits. In profession, we revere the wisdom of
Cult Book, of which our Church is the divinely-
appointed expositor ; but, in practice, we treat that
wisdom as mere theory, excellent and admirable in
itself, but too transcendental to be taken as our guide
in the regulation of our mundane affairs.
To the working of this infidel spirit—we must at
all hazards call things by their fitting names—to the
working of this infidel spirit, which has taken hold
of the national mind, is directly traceable the bulk
of those evils which now afflict and distract society,
and whose issue we dread to contemplate. But
more especially we trace them to this spirit animat-
ing the legislative bodies. Can it be a legislature
acting upon the teachings of the word of God which
refuses, or neglects, to extend the borders of his
Church in our land—which sees spiritual destitu-
tion on every side, and yet hangs back—" counting
the cost"—from the plain Christian duty of remov-
ing that destitution ? Can it be such a legislature
which, with the divine command ringing in its ears,
"suffer little children to come unto me," prefers to
hand them over, chained in ignorance, to the con-
suming Moloch who demands them for factory
toil ? Is it such a legislature which upholds a poor
law, whose iron despotism tramples in the dust the
weak and the afflicted—whose leading principle is,
that " the poor shall cease out of the land"—that
human philosophy shall work out what divine autho-
rity has declared shall "never" be ? It is not such
a legislature. It is one which palters with its own
convictions of right; and prefers the teachings of
temporary and mistaken worldly expediency to the
solemn warnings of divine truth.
The fruits of such a forsaking by the legislature
of the only faithful guide, in this life, of the cause
of nations as of individuals, are to be traced abun-
dantly in the unsettled temper of the national mind,
acting upon, or aggravated by, the physical evils
which have been induced in our social system. We
have taught our masses, whilst we have been chain-
ing them down to the necessities of an artificial
state of society, to look forward to wild and specu-
lative social changes for the improvement of their
condition ; and they are, even now, fast progressing
towards that state of feeling in which the resort to
physical force will be welcomed for the working out
of their various objects. In one portion of the land
the incendiary is at work; and the very food for
which his hungry family are crying out is nightly
sacrificed to the gratification of ignorant and savage
every side agitation is busy, directing
revenge. On
the passions of the many against the persons and
the property of the few; whilst dissent, infidelity,
and Popery, leagued together in an unholy and re-
'felting confederation, are insidiously approaching
the consummation of their labour of generations

past—the destruction of those noble institut
which have formed the machinery by which Eng-
land's greatness has been advanced, and of that
Protestant Church which has formed their bulwark,