The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1843-08-08 00:00:00

TO CORRESPONDENTS.

The letter of S. W. on the Collegiate Exhibition, and
also that of H. "on the designs for the terraces of the
Prince's Park ", are under consideration for next week.
We are compelled this week to postpone our notice of a
variety of new publications received, from many of
which, however, we give copious extracts. Me shall
make up lost ground next week.
The Chairman of the Meeting of Porters, held on
Thursday last, has requested us to say, that neither
that meeting, nor the petition which emanated from it,
had any connection whatever with the Complete Suffrage
Association, as represented by a radical paper.
Owing to the pressing demand for the STANDARD last
week—above what we bad anticipation of—we were
unable to furnish copies to many parties who applied
for them during the week. We have always arranged
to baee a few papers struck off beyond the number of
our regular sale ; but in our growing circulation, and
from the short time which, since our change of pub-
lication, we have had to ascertain its probable amount,
we cannot so accurately form a judgment of what num-
ber of any particular impression may be required. It
L would greatly oblige us, therefore, if our friends would,
when possible, apply for their copies on Tuesday ; as,
after that day, we cannot guarantee to supply them.

Ebr Ziberpool &tanbarb.

TUESDAY MORNING, AUGUST 8, 1843.

The ma vellous unanimity of the Romish priest-
hood in Ireland upon the subject of Repeal has at
length been explained; and that by no less trust-
worthy an authority than Dr. the titular
Bishop of Tuam. That a body of men, having
daily before them the hideous misery, and its atten-
dant crime, which fester throughout the mass of the
Irish people, should be readily stung to the necessity
of some prompt measure for their relief, is but rea-
sonable and likely; that such a body of men, of a
hostile faith, should direct their eyes, when investi-
gating the cause of Ireland's assumed grievances, to
the existence of an Established Protestant Church,
is to be expected; that the possessions of the Pro-
testant landowners should be regarded by them with
a glance of jealous cupidity, and the Protestant insti-

tutions of their country with dislike, is only natural.

But that the entire priesthood of Ireland should
concur in overstepping all these objects, and place
their sole dependence in a measure apparently so
hopeless of achievement as Repeal of the Union
between the two countries—a measure only to be
consummated by a successful rebellion—was not so
obvious and required such an elucidation as that
with which the worthy and right reverend father has
now furnished us.
It might be urged indeed, and has been urged,
that the priesthood of Ireland contemplate, as the
result of the establishment of a domestic legislature,
the erection of a Romish supremacy in Ireland. It
is quite probable that, as their ultimatum, some such
notion is swimming in their imaginations. But sen-
sible and clearheaded men, such as are to be found
amongst the Romish hierarchy, could not fail to be
impressed with the conviction that the time has not
arrived for such a consummation. Such men would

not, we feel assured, have hazarded a struggle for
such an object yet, had they not been impelled to it
by that pressure from without which is pointed to
by Dr. Mg-hie. Popery would have postponed for
awhile the gratification of her giant ambition, had
he not found that Protestantism was treading on
her heels and threatening her strongholds!
Here is the evidence, as given us by his Reverence
at the late Repeal demonstration in Mayo.
" As a proof of the necessity for repeal, the rev. gen-
tleman referred to a petition for an increase of the grant
to Maynooth College, which had for some time past been
labouring under great pecuniary embarrassment. That
petition was laid before the Irish government, and the
Secretary's answer was—" In case of an increased grant
what quid pro quo are the trustees of the college prepared
to give the government?" or, in plain English, what equi-
valent would they give the government for their money ?
The Secretary accordingly enlarged on the necessity of
giving in return a larger control than the government
were hitherto invested with, and this accounted for the
feelers that had been sent out for some years back from
Parliament, as well as other quarters, about revising their
books of theology, and expunging some objectionable
passages, and infusing into them some little of the en-
lightened spirit and toleration of the age; and further,
those suggestions were seriously entertained by many
well-meaning Catholics. But he would venture to say
that the Catholics of Ireland were not yet prepared, and
never would be, to hand over, for an additional grant to
Maynooth, to the Secretary of the Castle, any further
control over the education of their priesthood. (Hear,
hear.) The quid pro quo was at the bottom of every-
thing. This it was which Whigs and Tories, for they
were all equally Saxons, aimed at in their grants for edu-
cation, and in all their insidious overtures for pensioning
the Catholic clergy (hear, hear); and he was convinced
that if the government did get the control demanded it
would soon happen that their books of instruction and
theology would be intrusted to some Saxon prelate whom
habitual revilings of the Irish people and their creed hap-
pened to place on one of the archiepiscopal thrones of
Ireland, recommended by the bigotry of his past life as
the fittest instrument silently to work their perversion.
(Loud cheers.) But he would not suffer one of those
literary Vandals so much as to touch a leaf in their theo-
logy, unfashionable as might be the black letter in which
it was written : since it stood as a record and memorial of
the venerable antiquity of the Catholic faith, and of the
claim of its adherents. (Cheers.) "
It is perfectly clear, then, that it is the growing
Protestant Spirit of England, and the Protestant
spirit, too, of England's Government, which is hur-
rying Popery in Ireland to a leap from a precipice.
Rome dreads that the foulnesses of Maynooth may
be dragged to the light of day. She fears that her

pestilential doctrines, which she has so seduously
striven to hide,—which she has quibbled and lied to
conceal from the searching eye of the devoted cham-
pions of Protestant truth,—should be revealed to the
gaze of an indignant Protestant people. She fears
that "objectionable passages "—how mild the term!
—should be expunged from her Books of Theology;
that "some little of the enlightened spirit and tolera-
tion of the age should be infused into them": and
rather than have "a leaf in her Theology" disturbed,
her priesthood are ready to give the signal for rebel-
lion, and to make the effort to arrest the spirit of
truthful enquiry, by the desolation of that unhappy
land amongst whose benighted people they have
reared up their baleful superstition!
But there is more even than this in the language
of the designing priest. It is plain that a domestic
legislature in Ireland is no longer the comparatively
harmless object sought for in the Repeal of the act
of Union! SEPARATION from Protestant England
is now the distinctly enunciated object. Popery can-
not any longer endure contact with the Protestant
Institutions of Great Britian. She can no longer
submit to toleration. She cannot stand, surrounded
as she is, whilst a portion only of a United Empire,
by that spirit of enquiry which must ever exist
amidst a Protestant people enjoying free Institutions.
Popery, to be strong, must be isolated. Supersti-
tion, to be fast rooted in the hearts of a people,
must dwell alone and in darkness. And such a
position it is to which the Church of Rome would
now reduce unhappy Ireland. From her proud
position as an integral portion of the greatest empire
in the world—with civilization and wealth ready to
flow in upon her, and to lift up her oppressed peo-
ple to the level of their British countrymen—a reck-
less priesthood are preparing to plunge her hack
into semi-barbarism and utter insignificance amongst
the nations of the earth,—to render her a blot upon
the face of creation, a spectacle of wretchedness
and intellectual darkness for the world to gaze upon,
with amazement and with shuddering.

It is with pain, but scarcely with surprise, that
we contemplate the fatal inroads which a masked
system of popery is making amongst a really worthy
portion of the people of England, as evidenced in
the proposal of Lord John Manners, to revive in
this land monastic institutions. Had such a dispo-
sition been the offspring of sickly sentimentalism ;
had this proposed re-establishment of one of the