The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1844-12-10 00:00:00

THE LIVERPOOL STANDARD.

CORRESPONDENCE.

TO LORD SANDON, M.P.

" Never came Reformation in a flood,
With such a heady current."

MY LORD.--If I maybepermitted to estimate your lord-
ship's poll' ica l position in parliament by some ofyour record.
ed sentiments and votes, I should consider that you are not
a convert to Puseyism in the church, or Peelism in the
state. You have an important part therefore yet to play,
for the times must necessarily develope a new arrange-
ment and embodiment of governmental powers and par-
ties, before the dangers which are thickening around us
can be confronted or effectually conflicted with.
We live in an age possessing an insatiable and diseased
desire of change, and of ceasettss aspirations alter some-
thing which we do not want, to the neglect of things of
practical utility which ate indispeasable. This troubled
spirit of discontent, and of a misbegotten ambition, is bu:
too symptomatic of those towering flights of empire, in
the elevations of which nations have been frequently
stricken as with a judgment of Providence. The me-
nacing tides of reform are not confined to our political
institutions : they pervade the entire circle of our domes-
tic relations—political, religious, civil, and social. We
are placed like the Indian amid his hunting prairie—girt
in a circle of advancing fires. No law, order, or institu-
tion is permitted to be at lest: the very skies are dark-
ened with impending theories, threatening us with a chaos
of all the effluents of order thrown into disorder. The
paltering neutrality and indecision of government are only
encouraging the agents of agitation, and gi%ing audacity
to all their m Nernents. Ten years of experience, in an
age so teeming with important and impressive lessons, do
not appear in the slightest degree to have enlarged and
extended the horizon of Sir R. Peel's jud2,ment, but have
rather cowed his courage and increased his indecision.
Matr culated in the weak conciliation policy of Lord Li-
verocol's ministry, he has fallen back on the spurious
toryism which chsramerised its wretched career, when
the opponents of governthent had preference in the ap.
pointments to offices of trust and power, over the ables.
supporters of the constitution. It was this policy which
nursed and fed the powers that confederated their creeds
in 1829, and fused their politics in 1830; before which
the modern genius of conciliation has quailed, arid con-
ceded to clan:our what he refused to the pretensions of
reason and remonstrance.

When we recollect the able and prophetic speech made,
my lord, by your venerated father, against the sweeping
confiscations of the Reform Bill,—which speech remains
to this irtiy the faittifullest illustration of the designs and
tendencies of that bill,—and when we tee the monument*
in Sandon Park, ereoted to the memory of the great
founder of those principles under the influence of which
the entire nation was rallied against revolutionary France,
—we are entitled to expect something from your lordship
beyond the drivelling, split-difficulty politics of the pre-
sent Premier.

I will now °ell, take one out of the department of many
important considerations which press upon the time, and
address you as a neighbour rather than as a constituent.
You have recently taken an active and useful partin some
affairs relating to the restoration of the ancient parish-
church of the county town near which you reside; within
the juri,dict on of which county, though it contains near
halt a million of inhabitants, we have not a single journal,
or other organ of public opinion, possessing political in-
dependence enough to insert this letter. It is no part of
' my intention to offer any criticism on the anomalies of
architecture upon which a large portion of the £lO,OOO
has been expended, in the repairs of the church in ques-
tion; leaving the mixed company of carved saints and
monsters to agree as they be.t. may.
The new interior arrangements of the church have all
a serm-Popish character, and have given great and general
dissatisfaction. Tine extreme lowness of the pews, put-
ting aside their unfitness for feeble age, is such as to
render them very little, if any, better than plain forms,
and impresses you with a sense of doing Popish penance,
rather than offering Protestant worship. We have no
objection to a system of some uniformity, and disapp ove
much of the presence of the occasional towering and cur-
tained pews of the olden time, which secluded a brother
sinner from public gaze, while it obstructed a view of the
clergyman from a portion of his congregation. But per-
sonal discomfort is no aid of piety : to humble the mind,
and to debase it, are essentially diffetent things. It is
true that, in the presence of the Deity, we are all a tho-
rough democracy of sinners ; hut it is not the absence or
the presence of distinctive sittings which will duly regu-
late our duties as Christians, or that will impress the
mind with the equality of human nature before our com-
mon Creator. There has been a proverbial pride in af-
fected lowliness from the days of Plato and the cynics
and when t .e Pope puts on his sprout to wash the f et of
beggars, does any one believe that he either feels greater
humility himself, or sets an Example of it to others ? It
is a prime ingredient, and works profitably, in Popery :
for the power of the priesthood, and the dominian of
priest-craft, take elevation and extent over the prostration
of mind in the laity. There is said to be a natural ten-
dency to idolatry in human nature. The first reformers in
the church (in 717) were Iconoclasts, or image-breakers.
The Greek church arose in that form, and the sect wor-
ships paint and canvas instead of wood and stone. The
Chinese, with less knowledge, had more wisdom ; and
the simple inscription of the name of ConTucius super-
seded all physical objects of irrational worship, or idols,
which are the nuclei of superstition. Burke has said that
" Superstition is the religion of weak minds." But this
is not said with his usual philosophical accuracy ; for it is
rather the cause titan the effect of mental weakness.
Stript of superstition, Spain would be one of the first
nations in Christendom ; a country which, after a quarter
of a century of bloody struggles to emancipate itself from
the more intense thraldom of Popery. is now retrograding
on state tyranny and church absalutism.
It is from the head-quarters of the Anglican church
that
antiquated
positions,h a s gone d
tfhnertnhldthar
forms
r wenis sohfialtlhfealrleßbwnabecrdklo_do
Rubric—
forms retained at a period when the
of
o _es
had
gradually
Pries/Croftro y l od ; but
u t
sloughed off and exploded ; and this is now done, not
the
to t the
majestic usage of
simplicity ceremonies
tandt priesicsl'y:Pfoermweula wh'ch
(mini • •ons and in defiance o
only without consulting tttethlaeiitryr,ebroutoinnstcroarritteeemspt of their
'dna tit trifles,
the end and gthroeuansdc'en
nothing more and nothing less: one encroachment is no
It may bei 't'hbereaaimknigs
sooner tolerated than another is put on the slips. We
may soon expect here that which is producing strife and
schism at ether places—the weekly offertory, in practical
aid of questionable purposes, or to eke out poor church
Itibveinsgusr, id
of
t hEf
ni
priestministering i
n t the ohe
pulpit, t
insteadparis nf poortte ; angownd
of he
shieo
rtnehes i lo
f rw:
doubt,cai
ud r
yh
wt;ol
iairr.
ld comeuu t
tbheag r
et htenttroublest and
n
some shape or another, in the ensuing session ; and we,
as good Protestants, trust that you will be prepared to
meet it. Popery and Protestantism are elementally anta-
gonist principles, as acids and alkalies are antagonist sub.
stances ; and their danger of conflicting is in the ratio of
their proximity. Peace is found in their remoteness
al
and isolation. The endeavour to fuse them in the rudi-
ments of our schools, or work them in harmony in public
appointment., may be a part of the crack political philo-
sophy of the shallowness of the times, in the dearth of
enlarged minds in our senators; but it shows an utter
ignorance of men and things. Sir R. Peel may seek to
moderate and modicate, and dilute and adulterate, our
national faith; while Popery, in some quartsrs, biding its
time, creeps and crawls before the seirit of the age, adopt-
ing its old maxim, divide et impera ;—but we know that
its exclusive spirit is intact; that its boast of bring a
church without schism is true, for it tolerates no freedom
of thought ; and that it will remain " unchanged and
unchangeable."
It has become a maxim with strong governments, that,
to keep power in wind, it must be kept in exercise, in
that direction in which it is most liable to be resisted.
The Peel policy has reversed the principle, and called on
-Protestants to disarm and disorganise themselves, while
their opponents were levying contributions for war, and
giving vigour and discipline to their confederacies. Sir
Robert's starling's cry of " Register ! Register ! Regis-
ter ! ! I " and that " the battle of the constitution is to be
fought on the registration lists," has lost its talismanic
efficacy; and that spirit which placed him at the head of
the government. at an expense of labour and of sacrifices
which no mere power can command, no profligacy bribe
into action, and no doling out of offices remunerate, will
never again rally at the registration-court or at the hus-
tings, under the fustian banner of the Tatnworth baronet;
for to have served as volunteers in his ranks, and fought
his battles, has become a disqualification to serve the
constitution or the country. _ _ _

I reserve, my lord, some animadversions for another
letter, and am, &c.,

* Erected to the memory of the immortal Willi'm Pitt.

t Popery has reduced hypocrisy to a species of science, or
system; being made up, as Coleridge sa d. " of all the conning
of six thousand years." dovetailed with politics and paganism,
and grafted on ambition and selfishness. The triple-crowned
tyrant, who sets himself forth in his bulls as serrus servorum
Del and attache; the fisherman's sea!, has, with his episcopal
staff, in the palmy days of Popery, int•rdicted entire natmns
from Christian rites, pL4ced his foot on the necks of kings, and
deposed sovereigns as a sportsman would dispense with super-
numerary pu!pies: ex. gr.:—
" And I have entyr:lyted Yngelond.
Ther schal no preest synge masse with bond,
Chylde schal be crystenyd non :
My bisschoprycke thou reflect me, •
And Crystendom f rbede I thee.
Preest schal tiler non syngge."
ANCIENT POETRY;