The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1845-05-20 00:00:00

CORRESPONDENCE,

TO THE PROTESTANT INHABITANTS OF THE
COUNTY PALATINE OF CHESTER.
FELLOW-PROTESTANTS,—I again feel myself impelled,
by a strong sense of public duty, to direct your attention
to the proceedings of the House of Commons. The
Prime Minister of the Crown has, in his place in parlia-
ment, emphatically declared, that the late manifestation
of your feelings by respectful petitions, so far from indu-
cing him to relax in the course he has adopted respecting
Maynooth, imposes only additional obligations on him
steadily to adhere to it. Thus it is certain that the en-
dowment of the Roman Catholic College of Maynooth
will be forced, by ministerial influence, through both
houses of the legislature.
As a nation, it is impossible to regard the foundations
of splendid empires in the West, there laid by British
enterprise—the splendid and heretofore almost unknown
empires subdued and acknowledging British supremacy
in the East—our Australian possessions—our incipient
enterprizes among the nearly countless pagan millions of
China, without acknowledging the divine blessing. We
have hitherto, in our home government, endowed and
supported only the religion we believe to be the purest;
and where our arms have penetrated, we have anxiously
introduced its blessings. May we not thus have been
unconsciously an instrument of Omnipotence to introduce
His holy word ? By the opposite course of encouraging
and promoting, from the policy of human expediency,
what we religiously condemn as evil, thereby distrusting
Him, may we not nationally incur the divine wrath, and
the palm of victory, wrested from us, be given to other
and worthier hands ? These are considerations on which
all reflecting minds will ponder, and pause ere they con-
sent to be participators in an endowment for the props-
Igation of religious error, which, the Bible plainly assures
us, is direct rebellion against " God's holy word and
commandment."
I again, therefore, call upon you to make one last effort
against this insane measure of our rulers, by memoriali-
sing the Sovereign for the immediate dissolution of this
present parliament. I warn you that by supineness you
make yourselves participators in its criminality, the com-
mencement only of a series of enactments utterly subver-
sive of all Protestant principle. By using every possible
effort, and by publicly protesting against it, can we only,
as a nation, absolve ourselves, and, as trustees of the
pure principles of Protestantism for our descendants,
hope to transmit them its lasting, invaluable blessings.
I have the honour to be, fellow-Protestants,
Your very obedient servant,
ROBERT DE HOLLINGWORTH.
Hollingworth Hall, May 131 h, 1845.

TO THE EDITOR OF THE LIVERPOOL STANDARD.
SlR,—Will you favour me with a small portion of your
paper, in order to inform a blackguard who scribbles for
the Popish Mercury, that no man of note was required
at Newton, either from Liverpool or any other polling
district in South Lancashire? It was merely a meeting
of the secretaries and other workers.
I am, sir, your obedient servant,
PETER MARROW,
Secretary of the Liverpool Conservative
Association.

May 17, 1815

THE MAYNOOTH GRANT.

TO THE EDITOR OF THE LIVERPOOL STANDARD.
SlR,—Though but a single individual of this great em-
pire, and one of the meanest of her sons, I cannot see the
safety of our religion bartered for expediency, the heads
of government pandering to the interests and canvenien-
cies of time and place,—l cannot see ministerial good
faith, honesty, and principle grossly perverted, without
adding my voice, feeble though it be, to the general cry
of detestation. The supporters of the Maynooth grant
may smooth and polish up that bill as much as they
please ; they may try to make it comely and syren-like ;
they may varnish over every discrepancy, and prevaricate
away every flaw ;—but the wolf must out, though never
so neatly clad in sheep's clothing. We see danger and dis-
grace to our church, and breach of faith, in the foreground,
with the developement and maturity of sinister designs
against that church, yet in the bud, dimly pourtrayed in
the back ; while the picture, taken as a whole, presents a
lamentable view of the lukewarmness and degeneracy of
Protestantism. We want no microscope to see this pic-
ture through the nice spun texture of verbal subtilties
with which they have surrounded it. The very anxiety
which they show to conceal its defects—the tremor, and
excitement, and rage, at any charge against it—but, above
all, their aperantolsgia—the round-about shuffling way in
which they defend it—betray their own conviction of the
untenable nature of its support, and the truth, which
they will not own, that they know themselves on the
wrong side of the question. These men twist the mean-
ing of words, and haggle the application of epithets.
Let them define for me, from either Walker or Johnson,
the meaning of the word bigotry, and say whether our
refusing to subscribe to a grant in favour of that church
which revelled in the death-pangs of martyrs, Protes-
tants, and persecuted our Church from its infancy, can
come under such a denomination in its widest latitude.
A correspondent of the Liverpool Mail says, forsooth,
that those persecutions happened centuries ago, and are
to be attributed to the barbarous character of those times ;
but, superficial a reader of history as I am, I have only
to turn back to the year '9B, when I find the old spirit of
Popery working very vigorously ; and here, begging Mr.
Ward's pardon for the contradiction, Roman Catholic
priests were the fomenters, the heart and soul of that re-
bellion. Six of the name of Murphy presided over the
fanatic orgies of their flocks in county Wexford, and but
for one, of the name of Roche, the bloody scene of Sculla-
bogue would not have been enacted. There were, indeed,
a great many of the Protestant religion entrapped into an
alliance with them—but how? by that delusive bait of
justice and independence to Ireland, which Popery is still
offering, alas ! with too much success to the si rple or
careless, or apostate Protestant. Let us hear the above-
mentioned a little further; the Maynooth College_ has
been endowed some years back. What difference between
giving a sum for its support then, and increasing it now ?
The principle has been established, and it would be the
height of perfidy to retrograde—to quote his own phrase.
What logic ? Because we made a blunder, or committed a
sin some years ago, and now have come to a conviction of our
error is that a reason for our continuing in it ? Because that
grant passed at such a time, and under circumstances to
which its opposers were forced to succumb—is the princi-
ple of endowing a church, which we know to be alien from
God, established as right? No, not if it were sanctioned
by an antiquity as high as the flood—not if the bill were
approved of and carried by Socrates or Plato—not if it
were to conciliate a thousand Irelands, or even bring ul-
timate good to Protestantism, as some would pretend, or
ignorantly hope. The pleadings of the supporters of the
Maynooth grant are truly Jesuitical. One says that it is
only giving the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland its due.
What benefits we have received from that church, what
kindly feeling it has shewn to us, what zeal it has mani-
fested in our behalf, to demand such a reward, I would
fain know. If, indeed, the threatening posture it at pre-
sent assumes; if the manifestation of what it would do if
it could ; if the past and present disturbances in Ireland will
serve to arouse us from our apathy, and make Protestantism
stand to arms and show its zeal for the Lord, then we will
have derived from it a decided benefit. Another argu-
ment used by these men is that that Church is far in the
majority—preposterous argument. Has the extent of a
Church anything to do with its doctrines ? The Jewish
Church of old was the smallest church in the world, and
were its members allowed to tolerate any other ? Were they
allowed to endow Colleges for Magi, or erect temples or
altars for Baal? If the Church of Christ were reduced to
one man would that justify him in supporting any other?
But this argument defeats itself and its proposers; who
have forgotten rather conveniently that Ireland is an in-
tegral portion of the British empire, and that as such the
Roman Catholic Church is far in the minority. An-
other straightforward way of proving that it becomes
us to give a Grant to Maynooth is, by showing the
enormities of our Church, that our bishops are too
wealthy, not like the meek lowly Apostles whose suc-
cessors they hypocritically pretend to be. The Estab-
lished Church in Ireland has not answered its purpose, is
a grievance, &c., &c. Among these reasoners I see two
classes of men, whose growth I view with apprehension,
and whose principles I hold in abhorrence ; but as time
and room prohibit me from entering further into the sub-
ject, I shall reserve my remarks upon them and thei
a future occasion, hoping ti at you, as a staunch def
(conservator) of true Protestant principles, will na
fuse me a place in your columns. Yours, &c..

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