The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1846-06-02 00:00:00

in shilling numbers there have come out twelve
numbers; and in the tenth, which I have now in my
hand, there are notes appended by the translator—very
valuable notes. In one of theni be informs us—
" These principles are by no means obsolete or extinct. They
have boldly avowed and eloquently indicated in the 19th cen-
tury by de Bonald, de Mastre, and other ultra montane writers
in France. The time for their open avowal in Britain and Ire-
land has not yet come. it would be tedious' says the Count
Montlosier, to name all the ultra-montane doctors ; they
amount to above a hundred, almost all Jesuits After this we
can understand on the one hand the furies of the League, and
the horrible assassinations to which it led, and on the other, the
just apprehensions of Louis the 14th and Lewis the 15th, and
the precautions which our magistrates may have taken to this
effect. At the present time can it be said that such apprehen-
sions are chimerical? Yes no doubt, and I hope so in so far as
respects corrying them into execution ; but are not such doc-
trines embellished, as we have seen them in our day, with a
racy eloquence. sufficient to shake allegiance, and to produce,
sooner or later, violent commotions ? Thanks to a celebrated
writer, nothing is wanting to us in this way ; he gives us the
formulas cut and dry. After a chapter in which he esta-
blishes the papal supremacy over temporal sovereigns, M.
the Count de Maistre, takes the trouble, for our greater
convenience to draw out himself the terms to be employed for
an act of deposition. In another chapter we find, The most
humble and respectful remonstrances of the states general of
the kingdom of met at —, to our holy father Pope
Pins 7th,' to the effect of deposing their sovereign. These re-
monstrances end as follows.—' It ist o you. most Holy Father,
as the representative of God upon the earth, that we address
our supplications, that you would deign to absolve us from an
oath of allegiance which attaches us to the royal family that
governs us, and to transfer to another family those rights which
the present possessor can no longer enjoy, but for his own infe-
licity and ours.' "

Not one jot of the most arrogant claims ever put forward
by the most ambitious Pope has been given up by the
Popedom. It has been politic to refrain from asserting
the claim in open terms, but no part of the claim has ever
been authoritatively relinquished. They are ready at any
time when it shall seem politic to reassert it, to make that
reassertion. The way is now clearing for them in Eng-
land. It is no longer an offence,- or will be no longer
when this bill becomes law, to make the assertion. I
should tell you that the excuse pleaded, as an argument
for the repeal of the statute, was. that the common law of
the realm is sufficient to guard the Queen's supremacy, and
that we do not require a statute for the purpose. I do
not suppose there are many of you much versed in the
law, but I may inform you concerning the common law of
the land that its practical safeguard depends upon the con-
struction put upon it by the practising lawyers and the
presiding judges in our courts, and in the last resort by
that of the law lords, to whom the final appeal is made, in
the Upper House of Parliament. I need not inform you,
that in point of fact all these respectable functionaries
with the single exception of the Lord Chancellor, might,
in the present state of our laws, be Roman Catholics.
To their construction of the common law the question
might as a matter of law then be left. And what is a
law prohibiting an offence which enacts no penalty fur the
commission of that offence ? You ought to be aware that
at common law, although lawyers may show you cer-
tain acts are illegal—there are no stipulated r.enaliies ; that
it depends on the mind of the judge after the verdict has
been given, and the act, whatever it is, is thus contrary
to the common law of the land. But without a statute
there is no penalty ; the penalty as I said is in the option of
the judge. It may be a day's imprisonment, or a year's ;
or banishment for life ; it may be a fine of 6d, or £20,000 ;
it is arbitrary. Hence we value our statutes because they
make the appeals to our courts of law definite. In this
statute the question is thrown open for argument ; full
claim of the Pope's supremacy is brought out in their
own canonists before you ; a fair opportunity is thus
given; for arguing this question ; and I ask, is it not
proper, is it not fitting, that you should have informa-
tion on the subject ? Is not the time come when
you ought to charge yourselves with procuring right
information on the subject? and is not the time come,
when your authorised pastors of the national esta-
blished church of the realm should feel it their duty
to give yon information on this subject? and I would
respectfully appeal to my brother clergymen of the Estab-
lished Church, who may be of opinion that it is quite
right to repeal the statute, and I would call upon them—
of all ranks and degrees—our bishops, deans, archdeacons,
all in their respective places, as well as on the inferior
clergy, to put the members of the church now in pos-
session of the facts and arguments of this case, seeing that
the question is open, and the shelter of the statute no
longer afforded to Englishmen. (Cheers.) You have heard
the claim of the Bishop of Rome to pass uncontrollable
sentence upon kings and princes, because he has a power
that excels all the earthly power of kings and princes.
The question naturally arises, where did he get it? (A
laugh.) Who gave it to him? (Hear.) The answer
readily is, he received it from the Lord Jesus Christ,
through St. Peter. But, unfortunately for the effect of
that answer, the king received his authority from the
same divine source. (Hear.) And one of the elements
of valuable instruction which I now desire to bring before
you to refresh some of your minds, to instruct others, is
upon this great question of the divine origin of civil go-
vernment. (Hear.) The divine origin of civil govern-
ment was felt to be very much in the way of 'the Pope's
claim to supremacy over princes at the time of the Re-
formation ; and therefore the Protestant reformers in-
sisted largely upon this truth of the divine origin of civil '
rule. I think it highly probable that few, if any among I
you have realised any doubt or difficulty about
Men reading their Bible could never entertain a doubt,
while men who desire to get rid of the authority of the
Bible, have invented theories of this matter, and you I
ought to be apprised of them. I think lam performing
an important office in refreshing, as I said, some of your
minds, and instructing others on this great subject on the
divine origin of civil government. [The rev. gentleman i
here entered into a scriptural argument, proving the divine
origin of civil government.] Civil rule is then an ordi-
nance of God. This truth was felt to be a very
great hindrance in the way of the asserted supremacy
of the Bishop of Rome ; for if the authority of the King
be derived from God, as truly as the authority of bishop,
upon what pretext could the bishop attempt to usurp
authority over the king ? If they both came from the
same source, how should one assume superiority over the '
other. It is a remarkable fact in history, that this 'eery
point was damaging the Popedom. The time had passed
when assertion, without some reason, or some show of
proof, could practically move the communities of Europe.
They demanded a reason; and if no authority had been
stated to decide many minds on the subject, the divine
object of civil rule, proved by the references, would
have been most fatal to the Popedom. It was to that
point among many others, but to that point chiefly,
that the then newly-started society of the Jesuits came to
the rescue. How came they to the rescue ? Why, they
saw how this matter bore on the popedom, and they boldly
denied the divine authority of civil government. They
asserted that all civil rule was a mere compact of the na-
tion. They asserted the omnipotence of the people ; and
thus they made the omnipotence of the people to har-
monise with their views of the supremacy of the pope,
because they said God did not appoint the pope at all, but
the people. God did appoint the bishop, and therefore
the bishop was paramount. This was their argument ; so
that, in point of fact, the Jesuits were—l will not say the
original inventors, for it may have been thought of before
—but as far as the modern history of Europe is concerned,
they were the re-introducers, if not the original inventors
of the supremacy of the Pope, and that civil rule could be
traced no higher than a compact between the people and
their rulers. This is illustrated in the history of Ranke
also. It had been for a long time the received opinion in
Europe ; an opinion received without much examination
that the Roman Church was favourable to monarchical
government ; and that an opposition to the church was
akin to rebellion in the state, but at the time of the re-
formation it was found that this was a mistake; it was
found that Romanism was favourably to monarchy only so
long as monarchy was favourable to Romanism, and that
where a monarch presumed to think for himself and to
differ from the Pope ; the agents of Rome appealed to the
against the monarch ; the stirred up
his own vacsels
against him, and they represented him as well as them
as mere creatures of the supreme bishop; they preached
insubordination to them, deposition against him. This is
a very instructive part of the history of Europe, and you
ought to be in full possession of it. It is curious enough
to see how some our modern politicians, drawn aside by
the liberalism which asserts the supremacy of the people,
declaring all power proceeds from the people, rejecting,
as an exploded notion, the divine right of kings, snd ap-
pealing to the people as the source of all power. Here
these men are taken in the snare of the Jesuits, and lend-
ing themselves to remove the statute against the supre-
macy of the Pope. [The rev. gentleman then showed
from Scripture that the supremacy claimed by the Bishop
of Rome over the other bishops had no true founda-
tion.l I must now, he proceeeded, call upon some
of my rev. friends to follow up these arguments, and give
you further instruction, reminding them that the
time of authority is past, and the time for argument is
come; and I must remind you that it will not answer the
purpose merely to manifest your zeal at meetings of this
kind, but you must exercise your understandings to give a
reason for thehope that is within you. Let me tell you that
there are many of the emissaries of Romanism ready for this
line of argument; they have been preparing and drilling the
disputants, and now that the restriction in the way of dis-
pute is removed by the statute being repealed, they have
their controversialists ready. If the field be open for ar-
gument, and if those upon one side are prepared, and
those upon the other side are not prepared, what must
the end be ? Are we afraid of argument ? (Loud
cries of "No, no, no.") No, but I will tell you
what we are afraid of. We are afraid of ignorance ; lam
afraid of your ignorance, and I am afraid of the ignorance
of my reverend brethren in the church—of the ignorance
of dissenting ministers; I am afraid of the ignorance of
Protestants in general—that they have not been studying
the subject as they should do, and that they are not pre-
pared for the argument, and they do not know what their
adversaries are pledged to do, and that they are gulled by
what their authors choose to say. Do you think that the
emissaries of Romanism are fools enough to tell at once
the real objects they have in view ? (Hear, hear.)
No. The fact is, they have too much to hope
from the ignorance of Protestant governments to tell
their meaning all at once. (Cheers.) The rev. gentleman
closed a speech of more than an hour's duration, which
was listened to throughout with great applause, by ad-
dressing a few words of exhortation to the operative por-
tion of his audience.

The Rev. H. CARPENTER apologised for the absence
of the Rev. Messrs. James and Parry, and read a letter
from the Rev. J. B. Owen, whose name was mentioned
in the placards calling the meeting, and who was pre-
vented attending by an engagement in Leicestershire,
which was received with loud applause. He then said
that he was happy to have it in his power to make a state-
ment relative to the concluding remarks of the chairman,
which he was sure would be as gratifying to his reverend
brother as it was to himself, and that was that he (Mr.
Carpenter) could, from his own personal knowledge,
testify that many in that room were well acquainted with
the articles of Church of England—(loud cheers)—and he
trusted many more, who were unknown to him. (Ap-
plause. The principal Azad met clietiugutaltius feature