The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1848-10-31 00:00:00

DR. APNEILE AND THE ENDOWMENT OF

ROMANISM.

TO THE EDITOR OF THE LIVERPOOL STANDARD.

Sir,—l was too busy last week to attend to the Mail,
but I now perceive that notwithstanding my distinct de-
nial, he persists in ascribing to me what I altogether repu-
diate, and endeavours to corroborate the charge by
circumstantial evidence derived from reports of conversa-
tions in private society.

I will not pretend to be able to recall or recite the very
words which I have used in conversation upon the sub-
ject of Romish Endowment ; and, although I am not
addicted, at least not intentionally, to indistinctness, I
will not deny that my words, on some such occasions,
may have been open to misunderstanding ; when I said
that if our statesmen determined on endowing the Roman
Catholic priests, they should at the same time, and on
their own principles, do their utmost to liberate the
Roman Catholic people from priestly tyranny ; when I
have shewn what that utmost would be; or when T have
supposed the endowment made, and with the best imagi-
nable securities ; for the express purpose, however, of
shewing further, that even then it could not be conducive
to the peace of the country, or the liberty (whether civil
or religious,) of the Roman Catholic population. Nay, I
am bound to admit, while I lament, that I must have
given some ground for some such misunderstanding.
But of one thing I am quite clear—namely, that I never
changed, no, not for an hour, from the opinion and the
conviction, that Romanism is idolatry, that the national
endowment of Romanism would be a national sin, which
no circumstances could justify, and that even as a matter
of state policy it could never be made to work prosperously.
As to the words ascribed to me by A, in the Mail of
Saturday week, all I can do is to assert, seriously and
deliberately, that I never used them. lam quite sure I
never used them. The notion of " catching liberal votes"
was never present to my mind till I read the words in the
Mail. What T said to Ain the street had reference to a
testimonial to Lord George Bentinck, and no connexion
whatever with the endowment question. Here the issue
admits of no umpire, and the public must decide upon the
relative amount of confidence to be placed in the veracity
of the respective parties.

I might leave the matter here without risk ; but there is
one point on which it may be tested, and, considering the
treatment I have received, I must not scruple to avail
myself of it. The first report of Ato the Mail contained
the " confident statement," which we were assured would
not have been given bad it not been received from " a
trustworthy quarter," that I had been in correspondence
upon this subject with Sir ROBERT INGT.is, and that he
was a consenting party to the proposed scheme with the
proposed conditions. Here are the words

" It is confidently stated, that Dr. I\l`Neile has been in corres-
" pondence with Sir Robert Inglis on this vexed subject, and
" that the latter at least is willing to advocate, or to acquiesce
" in, the state payment of the Roman Catholic clergy, PRO-
" VIDED, the law will at the same time confer on the Irish
" laity, Roman Catholic as well as Protestant, the same cede-
" siastical rights and privileges as the members of the Anglican
"Church in this country enjoy; namely, churching of women
" and burial, as inalienable legal rights. We give this latest
"on dit as we receive it. We should not give it, unless we had
" received it from 4 trustworthy quarter, not likely to commu-
" nicate it to us, unless it had some foundation."'

I denied this amongst other things in my letter of the
12th inst. ; here, therefore, A. and I were at issue. Which
of us told the truth ? Which ? Sir Robert Inglis can de-
cide. Ile has decided. I had not had any communica-
tion with him of any sort, since I last met him in the
spring of 1847. When he saw my letter in the London
oFtanclard, he wrote to thank me for rescuing his name
from the calumny, and added these words which r now
gladly transcribe

"You are most fully justified in stating that I have changed
" no opinion which I ever entertained or expressed on that sub-
" ject. My principle is contained in one sentence—' I must
" never voluntarily and knowingly pay any man to teach any
" error.'"

What now shall we call the trustworthy reporter to the
Mail ? The Mail calls him " a witness of unquestion-
able honour." As the Mail seems fond of mingling a
little poetry with his controversy, neither he nor his
" honourable witness" can reasonably object to the repe-
tition in this place of one of his recent quotations t

" The'only amaranthine flower on earth
Is virtue—the only during substance Truth."

They must not be allowed to escape under cover of the
attempt made in a subsequent number of the Mail to get
rid of this part of the fiction. That attempt was thus
worded :

"It appears thatthis day fortnight a paragraph appeared in
"the Mail stating that the Rev. Dr. M'Neile had become fa-
vourable to some plan of endowment fcir the Roman Catholic
"priesthood in Ireland. That Sir Robert Harry Inglis's name
" was mixed up with the statement appears to have been amis-
.. fed..., hot in eV Mn ;mrebrfeffneo whnteveir in the onntroverny.
" We sincerely regret that it was, for we have long been of opi-
nion that that name renders no lustre-to any good cause, in-
" asmuch as it belongs to a gentleman whose insoluble and im-
" penetrable obtuseness of intellect is an unfortunate obstacle
"in the way of all rational improvement."

A part of the original report appears to have been a
mistake, but is of no importance whatever in the contro-
versy ! To me, and I doubt not to many, it will appear
to be of this much importance, that it proves the reporter
to have been anything but trustworthy.
But why volunteer, as above, to separate it from the
remainder of the report ?

Because it was capable of refutation by a third party,
while the remainder could be refuted only by me. It was
clumsily conceived, and awkwardly retracted; affording
another happy illustration of how difficult it is to make
fiction pass for truth. Should the Mail attempt NOW to
deny that this part of the " confident statement" was sup-
plied by " A.," and thus inform us that he derived his
whole paragraph from "two witnesses of unquestionable
honor :" the date and circumstances of such a denial will
be quite sufficient to stamp it with its-real value.
In the light to be derived from this specimen altogether,
I revert to the " relative amount of confidence to be
placed in the veracity of the respective parties."
I am,. Sir, your obedient servant,
HUGH M'NEILE.
Aigburth)3oth October, 1848.