The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1850-11-12 00:00:00

TO CORRESPONDENTS

Had .the. letter headed " The Romish Hierarchy" not been
privately authenticated, we could not have believed that
" a Liverpool Clergyman" would have deliberately penned
such statements. It is little use mincing 'matters in the
present day, and we shall therefore openly avow that several
of the writers assertions are as unbecoming a clergyman of
the Church of England as they are historically untrue. As
has been well remarked, "when Papists.have been put to
death they were both tried and executed for treason, which
is an offence against the State. The only way in which it
can be said that such persons suffered for religion is this,
viz., that their religion led them into treason." Our cor-
respondent seems inclined to submit quietly to the Pope's
recent insolent assumption, unless measures of his own are
adopted to resist it. Well, in the language of the Times,
"Let those who believe the Pope and Cardinals to be
better friends to the Church and people of this realm than
the Queen and Privy Council, remain quiet. Let those who
believe that they have more to dread from Rome than En-
gland, from the representatives of St. Peter than of St.
Stephen's, be up and doing."
A correspondent suggests to the clergy the propriety of reading
from their pulpits as occasions may offer, portions of the
Homilies of the Church of England. These valuable church
formularies might be largely circulated with excellent effect
at the present moment.
To.: length of the Cooped meeting yesterday has compelled us
to postpone the publication of a number of artic'es which we
should have been glad to have otherwise inserted.

7Liberpool &tanbartis

TUESDAY MORNING, NOV 12, 1850

We publish to-day the closing letters in the im-
portant correspondence between the Rev. Dr.
M`Neile and Archdeacon Wilberforce, the whole of
which we have carefully placed before our readers.
The Archdeacon is evidently smarting under the
masterly exposure of his unsound and unconstitu-
tional principles, and his chagrin and disappoint-
ment are exhibited in his constant desire to escape
from the real points in dispute, and in a vain en-
deavour to fasten on his opponent a charge which
he must know to be as unjust as it is calumnious.
The artifice is utterly unworthy of a man in much
less repute than the Archdeacon. We are
glad to hear, on all sides, that the public are satis-
fied with the Doctor's arguments. They have been
well driven home.

WE . cannot give our approt al altogether to the
proceedings of what is called the " tradesmen
party" in our Town Council, on the occasion
of the recent election of Aldermen for the vacant
Wards.- It is perfectly true that such an honour
as an Aldermanship is as justly due to an
honourable tradesman as to a merchant. Possibly
the former party have been a little overlooked in
times past in the bestowal of such honours. It
ought -to be borne in mind, however, that there
.are valuable members of our community, whom
we can only expect to see in the Council as chosen
members of the aldermanic body. We cannot, for
example, expect such men as Mr. Swainson to
court the favours of a constituency. Election-
eering tactics are foreign to their habits. Mr.
David Hodgson again has deserved well of the
Protestant population of Liverpool ; and we regret
extremely that claims like his should be thrown
overboard, at the present crisis, to seat in the
aldermanic chair gentlemen who were previously
secure in their seats as members of the Council.

The uncompromising tone of the letter, ad-
dressed last week by Lord John Russell to the
Bishop of Durham, has tended at once to raise his
lordship in the estimation of the Protestants of
Great Britain, and to add fervour to their expres-
sions of indignation at the recent insolent aggres-
sion of the Papacy, which are now ringing through..
out the land. It is a document worthy of the
.ancestral fame of his honoured house, and holds
out in prospect, so far as the Premier himself is
,concerned, a result which will be regarded with
delight by every sincere churchman. We have a
right, we conceive, to hold his lordship pledged by
it to far more than a mere protest against the
-usurpation by the Pope of the Queen's authority in
this realm. It the existing laws are not strong enough
to protect her Majesty's subjects from such
attempts " to impose a foreign yoke upon their
minds and consciences," the propriety of adding to
their strength, we are assured, will be deliberately
considered ;" and if the words of a statesman in
these modern days mean anything definite, we
have a right'to conclude that such yoke, as sought
to be exercised in this country, will he practically
put down. In the same spirit we ought to be
enabled to interpret the censure hurled against
those unworthy members of our own Church, who
" have been the most earnest to forward their flocks

step by step to the verge of the precipice.' " When
his lordship says of such apostate churchmen, " I
have little Lope that the propounders and framers
of these innovations will desist from their insidious
course ; but I rely with confidence on the people
of England, and I will not bate a jot of heart or
lope so long as the glorious principles and the im-
mortal martyrs of the Reformation shall be held in
reverence by the mass of the nation," we have
surely a right to expect that we shall not be left to
work out the Church's purification from their insi-
dious teachings, unaided by the government of
which his lordship is the head. It would give us
heart and hope indeed to see his lordship and his
colleagues acknowledging in their policy those
" glorious principles," and reverencing the " im-
mortal martyrs of the Reformation," by thrusting
oat from the ministry of a Protestant Church a
body of men who have crept into it to deface the
purity of its doctrines, and to lead their betrayed
flocks into the darkness and the bondage of Rome.
This, and nothing short of this, is what we
ought to be able to hope for at his lordship's
hands, if his letter is to he regarded as containing
the declaration of the minister as well as of the
But hese, unfortunately, misgivings and
fears throng upon our minds. To enable him,
consistently and firmly, to embrace such a course
as that which he has chalked out for himself, Lord
John will find himself under the necessity of nulli-
fying some measures, and recalling some profes-
sions, upon which he has rested a large portion of
his political reputation. This view of the subject is
very forcibly put in a letter which has just been
addressed by Mr. Disraeli to the Lord Lieutenant
of the county of Buckingham. The writer says:—
" I have always understood that, when the present Lord
Lieutenant arrived in his viceroyalty, he gathered together
the Romish Bishops of Ireland, addressed them as nobles,
sought their counsel, and courted their favour. On the
visit of her Majesty to that kingdom the same prelates
were presented to the Queen as if they were nobles, and
precedence was given them over the nobility and digni-
taries of the
,national church ; and it was only the other
day, :as I believe, that the Government offered the office
of visitor to the Queen's Colleges to Dr. Cullen, the Pope's
-delegate, and pseudo Archbishop of Armagh, and to Dr.
Millale, the pseudo Archbishop of Tuam. What won-
der, then, that his holiness should deem himself at liberty