The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1851-08-26 00:00:00

TO CORRESPONDENTS,

"X. A."—The exposed iron work in the Eaele, Australian
packet, is all galvnnised—we believe by Mr. John Hamilton.
" H. B."—The cities of London, York, and Dublin have each
a lord mayor.

We shall be happy at all times to receive communications
on subjects of local or general interest ; and if our friends
will be good enough to authenticate the same by their signa-
tures, for our own satisfaction, we shall feel obliged.
" Timoleon" is in type, and will appear next week.

tiberpoof :z). tanbarb.

TUESDAY MORNING, AUG. 26, 1851.

THE POPISH DEFIANCE.—WHERE IS THE
ATTORNEY-GENERAL ?
THE Popish Priests of Ireland, with some assistance
from the Italian emissaries lately appointed to
pretended sees in England, and with sue!) Irish
members as are dependent for their seats upon
priestly nomination, have held what they are pleased
to call an " aggregate meeting of the Catholics of
the Empire." As regards audience, it was well
attended ; for when did a Dublin artisan or shop-
keeper not prefer a " spouting" exhibition to the
more dull occupation of minding his own business?
But as an aggregate meeting even of the Romish
sect of the empire, the thing was a downright and
decided failure. And yet it was a most instructive
sight for the heads of the true Church Catholic to
see, that, aftercanting of profession and of falsehood,
the ultramontane heresy was there in its old shape
and form, not an error abandoned nor a crime
repented of; fighting as it was three hundred years
ago against enlightenment and human freedom,
and trying to import into the nineteenth century a
quarrel of the sixteenth. Could we listen to the
illiterate friar Cullen, who taught that " the sun is
two yards in dj,ameter," without recalling
Lydiat's life and Galileo's end ?
Was not John M`Hale a fair representative of
Bonner blithe as shepherd at a wake,
Feeding red fires and dancing round the stake ?
and as if the picture was to be filled in, in all its
parts, the only Irishmen of noble rank who joined
the priests were the Lord of 'Gormanstown and his
brother—the descendants of " bloody Preston,"
who led in the massacre of 1641. For the Irish
members, we have narnediheir motive. Ambitious
grocers like Mr. Reynolds, and prudent barristers
like Mr. Keogh, cannot abandon their seats in
Parliament when they can keep them with a little
" blarney," and surely if the priests drive up the
electors to the poll, they cannot refuse to say a word
for the priests? If Mr. George H. Moore and Mr.
Ouseley Higgins had deserted the " aggregate
meeting," it would have been the blackest of ingra-
titude ; for the latter individual, totally devoid of
genius or attainments, was carried in for Mayo, by
their personal 'violence, against the opposition of
Isaac Butt, one of the most learned men that ever
graced a profession, and one of the most accom-
plished advocates since the days of Curran. Such,
then, is the personnel of a body that is to defy
the law of this country. They are to be the
Luthers of Popery, and show the same boldness in
a bad cause that the great Reformer showed in the
cause of justice ,and of truth. But is this course
to be allowed to proceed ? Is the whole strength
of the law of this nation to be defied by a few hire-
lings of an Italian 'Priest ? Sir Frederic Thesiger,
to guard againstthe danger of an Attorney-General
being swayed 'by ministerial reasons, added a clause
admitting a private prosecutor. Is this to lie idle?
We know very well the Popish cunning and equally
Popish cowardice of holding this meeting in Dublin.
It is to screen the masquerading impostors who
assume the titles of 'English sees from the danger
of an indictment:in England. By this course they
know that they must come before an Irish jury in
whose oath, instead of the words "true verdict give
according to the evidence," there ought to be sub-
stituted "'verdict give 'in terror of the Priest."
Besides, at present you can only indict the news-
paper proprietors and not the mock bishops, except
the documents they sign are given up; and to do
the Papists justice, they have allowed our unfortu-
nate order to suffer in their stead whenever they
had the opportunity. Daniel O'Connell defending
the proprietor of the Dubuc, ;Pilot for a libel that
he (Daniel) wrote, was a graphic illustration of
Romish courage and Romish honesty; but the
" desired effect' was obtained : Daniel got off, and
Barrett went to gaol—no great misfortune, after
all ! But the Attorney General ought to force
these Popish priests to the shift of evading their
own act. He ought to give them the opportunity
of the " martyrdom" they pretend to desire, and
we should then soon find that, as usual, the news-
paper proprietors would be left to defend the Right
Reverend fathers. Mr. Lucas, of the Tablet, who,
from being a member of the body of the Quakers
when he believed too little, has become a furious
Papist when he believes too much, has a very fair
chance of bearing the brunt of any prosecution.
We do not for a moment pretend to reason about
anything in the way of argument adduced at the
Dublin meeting. A specimen of it is the complaint
of Mr. G. H. Moore, " that the bill ignores the
Catholic Church of Ireland." Bill is not a mis-
print here for bull, nor Catholic Church of Ireland
for Catholic Church of England, though an impartial
observer would be apt :to think so. Argument,
then, is as useless as it was with the Bishop of
Toledo, who, when hard pressed by a heretic, and
asked repeatedly, " How would you answer that?"
replied, in a passion, " With a tar-barrel !" There
is no reply of which Friar Cullen is worthy but an
indictment, and the true Bishops of Ireland are
bound to lead in the effectuating of the law. The
Lord Primate's titles are assumed not even by a
native Irishman, but by an Italian monk of real or
pretended Irish descent, thrust into the office against
the will even of the Popish priests themselves—a
mere emissary, spy, and servant of the wretched
Camarilla that has placed the incompetent old Pope
in the plight he now enjoys, and made the chief
outward insignia of apostolic power to consist in
the attendance of the troops of France or Austria.
When James Usher, the pious, the venerable, the
learned, the dauntless, wore the mitre of St.
Patrick, such a man as Paul Cullen would have
thought twice ere he could have called himself
" Archbishop of Armagh." And who are these
Popish Bishops ? On their own ground they are
utter impostors. Repeatedly their episcopal suc-
cession has been broken. When the Duke of
Ormonde assumed the 'Viceroyalty, in the time of
Charles 11., there was but one of them in the whole
island of Ireland, " an old man, broken and bed-
ridden, who calleth himself Bishop of Cloyne ;" and
in the Primacy of Armagh the Romish succession
has had at least a dozen breaks. When Paul
Cullen tells us (and proves what he says) that
Launcelot Dowdall had an immediate successor,
he will do some service in bolstering up his title.
At present, he and his fellow-agitators are as much
Bishops of the sees they usurp, as Joe Smith's
agents are, as they call themselves, " the twelve
apostles." The irrefragable Usher put that question
at rest for ever—and, by the way, let us here ask
why some Protestant body or society does not give
the public, in the cheapest possible form, Usher's
great works on the Irish Church, which laid open