The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1845-05-27 00:00:00

prayer with the vi

And now comes the question—What course will
Sir Robert Peel and his colleagues adopt in this,
Having spurned the petitions of
-pire on the subject of the
are they prepared to recant at the
__.eir Right Reverences of Rome ? Is
,ir " Gigantic scheme of Godless education" to
be licked into the orthodox Popish form, or will
the4heasure be withdrawn altogether, seeing that,

their dilemma

the Prete

is of the er

Maynooth Bil

dictation of ti

without the sa

ction of

can reasonably I

the Church," no hope
!d that the laity will be
3 of the educational faci-

permitted to av

lities which it offers

questions. We shall certainly never have the har-
dihood even to guess what these men will do, or
will not do. The Globe of Saturday, we observe,
seems to think that the bill will be withdrawn, in
_ence to the Popish party ; a course which, be-
.ng insulting to the Protestant portion of the people,
towards whose wishes no deference has been shewn,
is not an unlikely one to be pursued.

One of the most telling of the arguments used,•by
Conservatives, in defence of the Ministerial policy
of aggrandizing Popery, consists in a shrug of in-
credulity applied whenever the dangerous character
of the tenets of the Romish Church, and her ambi-
tious aim at the subjugation of universal Christen-
dom, are brought upon the carpet. " These are
old-world tales"—it is said by some—" unworthy
of the present age of enlightenment;" whilst by
others we are gravely rebuked for "uncharitable-

in imputing to our Roman Catholic fellow-
countrymen opinions which they have long ago ab-
jured. Romanism, it is urged, is changed from
what she was. She is harmless, toothless, fangless.
True it may be that her denunciations of vengeance
and extermination against heretics remain on the
pages of her class-books ; but she no longer teaches
True that her doctrines and practices—
which we declare to be " braspheraous fables and
idle conceits"—things " damnable and idolatrous"
—still remain unchanged ; it is uncharitable, how-
ever, so to regard them in our legislation. True,
again, that her temporal and spiritual power are still
regarded as intact, by her members and her priest-
hood ; but, then, we are told, " how idle now to
fear a poor old gentleman at Rome, loaded with in-
firmities, and only anxious to pass the remainder of
his days in peace !" On every side Popery is ex-
tenuated, coaxed, and petted as some injured inno-
cent with whom the world deals too harshly;
whilst those who dare to stem the delusion, and
proclaim her true and unchanged nature, are pointed
at as "bigotted," " illiberal," and "uncharitable."
We are ourselves not inclined to shrink from the
consequences of the position which, as Protestants,
we have taken up against the measures in question.
We are not to be driven from our convictions by an
incredulous shrug or a nickname. Rome, we main-
tain, is the same as she was centuries ago, still grasp-
ing at universal dominion,—still the enemy of li-
berty of thought and actions in every clime—still,
Proteus-like, adapting her exterior and her profes-
sions to surrounding circumstances, but ever ar-
riving at the same ulterior objects. Within what
period, we *ask, has this alleged change taken place?
Within what period has she ceased to be dangerous

to Protestant

recisely twenty years ago
,swan thus expressed his

an emi

of the danger of admitting Popery. to the er

joymen

e pro-

3e minds of men

,ould I

t is most ex-

taunted in this wii

abject of those securities which
erable a part of the Roman Catho-
re they content, I ask, to give us those
a taken by every other state in Europe ?
ere is not a state that admits their professors,
does not keep a direct controul over their appoint-
t.

have not heard

used to form so consid

lie professions

unities which ai

" It is

snat tnere wilt be a
any right honourabl
Pop
the
mt..;

fter you have decided in
tition, if you should do so,
1 end of all religious animosity; and
iend asks, " are you afraid of the
I am not afraid of the Pope.nor of
afraid of a powerful internal
' om great numbers are dissatis-
ciples of religion."

pretender; but I
y in this country.

ere the views of the statesman in question,
ith respect to the consequences of what was called
Catholic Emancipation. Have they failed .n nne
.1 • v-r

These v

LAW! leugious animosity been allayed
Has the Church in that country been
- -1_ • • -