The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1845-08-05 00:00:00

RELIGION IN ENGLAND AND FRANCE.---1 am full of
admiration for your people and your-country, not only for
your industry, and which, by the grace of God, has
brought England to such riches and power; not only for
the zeal, the devotedness, the sacrifice, the enthusiasm,
which true religion meets everywhere in your Evangelical
dominions; but also for that civil and religious liberty
which you will very seldom find on the continent, and
which is one of the greatest glories of England. I am
astonished at the eloquence of your political orators and
religious speakers. But could I be permitted, Sir, to
venture one remark, to point out one contradiction, one
defect ? I may perhaps err. but I express my sincere and
respectful feeling. . . . We on the continent, especially
in Switzerland, have always looked to England, as to a
serious, Protestant, religious country ; and to France, as
to an infidel nation, very apt to laugh, to rail, to abuse re-
ligion, but for some years we have remarked a very singu-
lar transformation. When there is some discussion on re-
ligious matters, in both Houses of France, we find, gener-
ally, a serious and respectful frame of mind ; while in
England we meet, sometimes, words of contempt for
Evangelical people, their faith, their meetings. We are
quite astonished at this; we cannot understand the mat-
ter. What is the reason of that remarkable phenomenon ?
Perhaps, that the religion with which French senators
have specially to contend is a religion of man, and that
man finds ever respect for a human system ; whilst the
religion with which British senators meet is the religion
of God, and the wisdom of God, which is folly to man.
I hope, Sir, that matters will change, and that this reli-
gious and Protestant country, will have now and ever,
religious and serious representatives. To be a serious,
religious country, that is, Sir, in the world the honour of
England !—D'Aubigne's Speech at Manchester. .

CAPITAL PUNISHMENT FOR MURDER.—That which
renders the punishment of death peculiarly appropriate, in
our estimation, in the crime of murder, is not by any
means its retaliatory character ; the sentiment, that
" blood must have blood," is one which we have no de-
sire to foster; and if some less grievous penalty would
have the same effect in deterring from the et ime, we should,
of course, willingly adopt it. Our ground of approval is
this, that it presents to the mind an antagonist idea most
fit to encounter the temptation to the crime. As this
temptation must generally be great. and often sudden, that
antagonist idea should be something capable of seizing
upon the apprehension at once—of exercising at once all
its restraining efficacy. Imprisonment for length of years
—the mind must calculate and sum up the long list of
pains and penalties included in this threat, before its full
import is perceived. But death ! And then the after-
death ! For what makes the punishment of death so sin-
gularly applicable to the case of murder is this, that it
awakens whatever may exist of religious terror in the mind
of him who contemplates the crime. On the one hand,
be is about to commit a deed on which there are not two
opinions ; it is not a crime made such by the laws ; it is
not even a robbery, for which he may frame excuses out
of his destitution, and the harsh distinctions of society ; it
is murder, which heaven and earth, rich and poor, equally
denounce. On the other hand, his guilt will bring him
almost immediately before the tribunal of God, as well as
the judgment-seat of man. No long interval weakens the
impression, no long space holds out the vague prospect of
repentance and amendment, and compensatory acts of
goodness ; but if he will lift the knife, if he will mingle
the poison, there is the earthly executioner ready to trans-
fer him to the still more dreadful sentence of the after-
world ! The same opinion which condemns the crime of
murder here on earth, as the most atrocious that can be
committed, follows him to that other tribunal; and all
that his imagination has been accustomed to depict of the
horrors of infernal and eternal punishment, rushes at once
upon him.—Blackwood.
THE BUXTON WATERS.—Tbe tepid waters of Buxton,
whether drunk or used as a bath, or made use of in both
ways, are found to be especially useful in cases of rheu-
matism, gout, neuralgia, spinal irritation, and certain forms
of derangement of the digestive, urinary, and uterine
functions. The effect of these waters on the system, whe-
ther in health or disease, is essentially stimulating. The
stimulating effect is usually produced more immediately,
and in a more marked degree, when the water is drunk,
than when it is only used as a bath ; but the effect is ge-
nerally of much shorter duration. When the water is
drunk by a person in perfect health, it frequently produces
a slight sense of giddiness, followed by a sufficiently per-
ceptible degree of increased warmth, and the usual marks
of increased action that attend the use of any other stimu-
lant. If, however, the water has not disagreed with the
system, these indications will be found to pass away very
speedily. If not thus rapidly got rid of, or the internal
u,e of the water be continued under improper circum-
s'ances, the excitement increases, the irritation is set up,
marked by thirst, loss of appetite, headache, quickened
circulation, and other symptoms of feverishness and de-
rangement. The effect of the bath on a healthy system is,
that the momentary shock at the instant of immersion is
followed promptly by re-action, with a decided general
glow and increased vigour of mind and body, increase of
appetite and of general secretion and excretion. This is
apt to be followed in the course of a few days, the use of
the bath being continued every day, or even if used some-
what less frequently, by some degree of sluggishness of
the organs, and, these indications being unheeded, by fe-
verishness and general derangement. It need hardly be
said, that no such eff, ct would succeed the drinking of
repeated tumblers of warm water at the temperature of
82 degrees, nor would such be induced by bathing re-
peatedly in warn water of this temperature ; and this
would be sufficient to show, that the tepid waters of Bux-
ton have specific and remarkable effects upon the human
system, and be a priori evidence that they may be influ-
ential in certi in cases of disease. The fact that these wa-
ters are so essen ially and largely stimulating renders es-
pecial care necessary that they be not made use of under
improper circumstances, and that every means be taken
to render the cases to which they are adapted as fit as pos-
sible for their beneficial operation.—Dr. Roberteon'a
Guide to the Use of the Buxton Waters.
VOLTAIRE A MONEY-MAKER.—Resolving henceforth
to be a man of fashion, with literature for the occupation
of his mornings, he determined also to increase, if possi-
ble, his fortune by some preliminary methods, to such an
extent as should enable him to dispense with the usual
gains of literary employment—in other words, to exert
his talents according to his own taste and bent, without
caring whether the results might or might not pass mus-
ter with royal or ecclesiastical censors, and receive or 1
want accordingly the protection of the law as property.
What method he took remains in some obscurity ; that
dabbling in the funds was one of them, all his biographers '
seem to take for granted. We have little doubt that this
was the chief resource, and, moreover, that he was assisted
by persons in high station, who sheltered their own dis- 1
graceful traffic in the raw material of official knowledge,
by conducting it in the name of this roturier stripling.
Lord Brougham seems to think that Voltaire owed his
largest accession of wealth to some merely commercial
speculations, in which he engaged under the guidance
and patronage of one Falconer, an English merchant,
during the few years that he spent, when still a very
young man, in or near London. Where Lord Brougham
found this story we are not aware. To the old suspicion
that he profited very much by the Mississippi bubble, he
objects that Voltaire was not apparently resident in Paris
during that insanity ; but he admits that be might have
speculated through agents, and that he had Parisian
friends well skil'ed in such affairs, seems the best ascer-
tained fact in this department of his history. It is pro-
bable that he continued through life as determined a
stock-jobber as his disc:pie Talleyrand; and there were
not a few occasions on which Voltaire must have possessed
means of access to government secrets both in France arid
elsewhere, as precious for the purposes of this trade as
Talleyrand himself, or any surviving liberal but one, ever
enjoyed. There is no doubt that long before his fortieth
year he was master of an estate not only abundant, but
splendid. After that time he seems to have acted as a
sort of banker to many of the French nobles, and even
to several of the smaller German potentates. When he
died he left, besides some landed possessions, a monied
capital producing a revenue of full £7,000 a year—equal
in France then to double the sum in England now, at
the very least. And we see no reason to suppose that
any part worth mentioning of this great fortune was de-
rived from the sale of those productions which had been
piled on or under every counter in Europe, during half a
century of uniform and unrivalled:popularity.— Quarterly.
THREE GENTLEMEN AS ONE.—Any one who reads
the evidence on which the report of the committee on the
Dublin and Galway Bill is founded. will see that the
charges against the company are completely substantiated,
The examination of the witnesses forms a little drama,
revealing, through the medium of some very amusing
dialogue, a succession of the most startling incidents.
The characters comprise a mixture of villains and victims,
though the former greatly preponderate. We have wrong-
ful shareholders and rightful shareholders—few enough of
the latter, by the way—and a benevolent old gentleman
who has just returned to his native lari,4loler long years
of absence. Such are the principal dramatis persona? who
figure in the strange scenes which bare just been enacted
before a committee of the House of Lords on the Dublin
and Galway Railway. The principal character—if the
term character can be applied to a person who pretends to
none—is one Stinton, an importer of French leather, alias
William Baldron, a silk throwster, disguised occasionally
as Henry Penton, a ship-broker. This singular, or ra-
ther this plural personage, has a most extraordinary ta-
lent for personation; and he so completely puzzled the
committee before whom he appeared that their lordships
could not make out whether it was Stinton, or Baldron,
or P
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letters
from himself to himself, and receiving correspondence
for himself as somebody beside himself, appearing in
three disguises within one hour, and becoming three se-
parate shareholders in one railroad within the same brief
period. Proteus himself could not have surpassed the
promptitude with which Stinton changed himself into
Baldron, then to Penton, and then to Stinton back again.
It is said of Proteus that "he was difficult of access, and
that when consulted he refused to give answers by assu-
ming different shapes." Such did Stinton prove himself
when before the committee; for just as their lordships
thought they had fixed him as Baldron, whose letters he
bad opened and received, he suddenly eiodes a question
as to his being absolutely, Baldron, by exclaiming, " Sup-
pose me to be his clerk ; thus leaving his examiners as
much perplexed as ever what to make of him. Scarcely
had he started the notion of his being Baldron's clerk,
than he pops back into his original character of Stinton,
and then making another dodge, with an air of sincerity,
exclaiming, " Truth is best —a somewhat late discovery
on his part—he acknowledges to his being the personator
of William Baldron. The entire evidence of this extra-
ordinary man gives us a curious insight into the way in
which railway shares have been procured. A schemer
has only to select a few different names, and get his let-
ters taken in at a few different places, in order to multi-
ply to any extent his chances of allotment of shares, and
his prospects of gain by the premium.—Times.