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

TO CORRESPONDENTS

The letter of our friend "Alpha" we are compelled to withdraw,
although in type. It will however keep. Our remarks u on
the meeting on the Health o' the Town, are also withdrawn,
with a quantity of valuable matter. The pressure of our ad-
vertising favours is the cause of our disappointing our
friends.
In answer to A.B. we beg to refit him to Mr. T. Jordan, of
Christian-street.

Ely Ztherpool &tan Dalt.

TUESDAY MORNING, APRIL 22, 1845.

It is with no little pain that we find ourselves,
upon an important part of the policy of Sir Robert
Peel's administration, in a posture of opposition
not only to that administration, but to some of
our own Conservative friends and fellow-townsmen.
We are told that the success of such an opposition
would be fatal to the ministry ; and that failing
in success, the result of persevering in it must
be an excitement of the public mind, which
will tend to break up the Conservative party, and
to bring back the Whigs to the possession of office
and power. Ireland herself, too, in the event of
the defeat of the Maynooth bill, would he thrown,
it is said, into a ferment of dissatisfaction, if not
even into insurrection • and this, too, at a time when
the possibility of a collision with the United States
may render it an object of the last importance to
have that portion of the United Kingdom firmly
united, and in harmonious feeling with Great Bri-
tain. We owe to those of our Conservative friends,
with whom we may unfortunately differ in the course
which we are pursuing, and to our own character,
some explanation of the grounds upon which we
have taken up our position, which we shall at once
proceed to furnish.

In the first place, we must premise that we do
not regard this proposed endowment of Maynooth
as a solitary measure, or one which can be final.
We cannot, as sane men, look back upon the con-
cessions of the last fifty years and say that we can
stop here. We cannot, when so many past boons
to Popery have failed to proc

nre us peace, flatter
ourselves that this boon can effect so desirable a
consummation. On the contrary, we look upon
the endowment of Maynooth as only another step
in that baneful course of truckling and time-serving
legislation, by which we have, year by year, been
weakening the buttresses of the Established Church
in Ireland, alienating the feelings of her Protestant
population—whose loyalty alone has preserved that
country to the British Crown—and preparing for
the erection there of a Popish domination which
cannot co-exist with the maintenance, in its entire-
ness and strength, of this great empire. We ask of
any candid man, who will look forward a very few
years, whether the tendency of our present legisla-
tio❑ is not towards such an issue,—whether this is
not a giant step in advance. We ask such a man
to look around him, to convas the sentiments, with
regard to the Church of Ireland, of the parties who
are leagued with Sir Robert Peel to inflict this
heavy blow upon her head. How many years of
existence do such men as Mr. Ward, Lord Howick,
Mr. Roebuck, and their Whig-radical allies, con-
template for that Church ? Few indeed. Already
we have a State provision for the Romish clergy of
Ireland meeting us upon the threshold of the next
session of Parliament ; and when Protestant Eng-
land can be brought to swallow that bitter pill ;
when she can consent to tax herself for the mainte-
nance in Ireland of an army of the emissaries of
Rome, it will be but a step further to allow her to
sweep out of that country every vestige of her ex-
isting Protestant Establishment.

We regard, then, the question between Govern-
ment and the country as one involving the whole
issue of the establishment of Popery in Ireland upon
the ruins of her Protestant Church. It is paltering
with the truth to regard it as one involving merely
the degree of support which we offer to the carrying
out of the ambitious views of Rome. That great
apostacy aims at the subjugation of Ireland for her-
self. She seeks her as the pivot of the lever, with
which she hopes to move the great antagonistic
Church of England from its position and its power;
and she is pursuing her object with all that astute
adaptation of the means to the end which has for
ages enabled her to hold so many millions of man-
kind in the darkness of a despotism more fearful
than the world ever saw.

With such convictions, we cannot hesitate for a
moment as to the course which, as consistent
Englishmen and Protestants, we feel bound to pur-
sue with respect to the measure now before Parlia-
ment. We say, unhesitatingly, that we must take
our stand here and now, at all hazards. We say,
moreover, that resistance is less pregnant with
danger now than it will become if we procrastinate.
You may dam up and divert the rivulet, but the
river must flow on to the sea. You may arrest the
handful of snow in its fall; but the avalanche will
laugh at your efforts to stay its destructive career.
But we are perilling, by our opposition, the exist-
ence of Sir Robert Peel's Government. Be it so !
We have not taken up our present position without
calculating its consequences. We acknowledge the
amount of benefit which the Government of the
Right Honourable Baroyiet has conferred upon his
country. We acknowledge the ability with which
he has extricated us from the complicated embar-
rassments of Whig misrule, and placed the com-
merce and the finances of the country in a healthy
and even a prosperous condition. We have gladly
accorded him our humble support of the measures
by which such a result has been brought about ;
and the very excellence of those measures aggravates
the regret with which we see such a Minister mak-
ing shipwreck of himself, his party, and his country.
We say, making shipwreck of himself; for, if the
result of the opposition offered to his present mea-
sures be fraught with the downfall of his Ministry,
as the result, upon his own head be the calamity
which may attend such downfall ! From what
parter was such a total apostacy from principle
as is involved in the endowment of this Jesuit Col-
lege of Maynooth called for ? Ireland never hoped
for it; Great Britain abhors and protests against it;
the world, at its announcement, recoiled in amaze-
ment. It is not, therefore, the Protestant opposi-
tion to the endowment of Popery which is perilling
Sir Robert Peel's Administration, but the blindness
of that statesman to the experience of the past, and
his regardlesseess of the deep-seated feelings of the
Protestant people of Great Britain.
But the question is, can we, acknowledging the
full amount of Sir Robert Peel's efficiency as a
Minister, and grateful as we are for the benefits
which he has conferred upon his country, consent
to purchase those benefits at the vast price de-
manded from us, by the sacrifice—for we repeat,
this is what is demanded from us—of the Protes-
tant security of the empire. We cannot bring our-
selves to make that sacrifice. And, if we are told
that there is danger in the refusal, from whatever
source that danger may approach us, we say, let it
come now, when we have something that we love to
contend for, rather than wait until all is lost that
we revered—all those institutions strewn in ruins
which our forefathers cemented with their blood,
and left to us, as sacred legacies, to be defended as
the citadels of England's greatness and the world's
liberties.

The following, amongst other reasons, are ad-
duced by a Conservative contemporary, for his
acquiescence in the proposed national endowment
of the Popish College of Maynooth
. . . .

"We have said that we refrain from entering into the
present controversy, and our reasons we shall endeavour
to make manifest. The coalition of parties is so startling
—the ingredients of the present opposition are of such a
character—that we cannot understand how the combina-
tion can be productive of anything but evil to the Church,
and a triumph to its avowed and mortal enemies. We
have taken the pains to string together certain names.
which we are ashamed to see in juxta -position—we mean
in the division on the second reading of the Maynooth
bill—and we ask our readers to tell us what the Church,
what can morality or religion expect from this medley of
names, which we submit to their calm deliberation ?"
Our contemporary then proceeds to give his list
of " Evangelical Conservatives" and " Radical De-
structives" who have voted together in opposition
to the measure, and whose concurrence " cannot but
be productive of evil to the Church and a triumph
to its open and avowed enemies."
Now, we take this to be rather tender ground for
a Ministerialist to touch upon. Just thirty " Radi-
cal Destructives" voted with the Protestant mino-
rity against the second reading. This was the ex-
tent of the startling coalition of parties which has
struck our contemporary dumb. But 165 of the
same " Radical Destructives" voted with the 160
Conservatives and placetnen who supported the
bill ! The Church-hating backers of the Ministry
actually outnumbered their Conservative allies. Is
there nothing " startling" in this coalition ? Can a
measure be productive of anything but evil to the
Church which is actually being carried through its
second reading by a majority, the bulk of whom
professedly regard that Church—or the Irish branch
of it—as a " nuisance," and who have already re-