The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1844-09-10 00:00:00

THE LIVERPOOL STANDARD.

PINEAPPLES.—It was in 1694 that preserved pineap-
ples, shipped from the French West India islands of St
Domingo and Guadaloupe, were first seen at dessert in
Paris. The tree had been originally transplanted from
Asia to the West Indies, where the heat of the climate
preserved it from degenerating. " Although the fruit of
the pine be fibrous," says Father Dutertre, " it melts into
water in the mouth, and is so well-flavoured, that you find
the taste of the peach, of the apple, of the quince, and of
the muscatel, blended together." It is plain to perceive
that Father Dutertre was friand, and that he possessed, in
matters of the table at least, the science of analysis. The
pine," says Dr. Rogues, " is impregnated with a corro-
sive juice, which may be extracted by steeping the root for
one or two hours in sugared brandy." Lovers of pine cut
it up in slices, cover it with sugar, and bathe it copiously
over with sherry wine. Jellies, ices, an 1 creams, are also
made of this fruit; and the Italians prepare with it a li-
queur which is called manaja, and which is really deli-
mous.—Fraser's Magazine.
AN AMAZON.—The most remarkable circumstance
that perhaps ever occurred under a native government,
was the arrival of a European lady, desiring and gaining
military service under the Poonah government, by whom
she was long known as " Jamal Khan," and highly reve-
renced. 'fhis lady was the wife of a respectable barrister
in Madras. From some extraordinary combination of
circumstances, or a peculiar character of mind, somewhat
similar, perhaps, to that which led Lady Hester Stanhope
to desire the title of Queen of Palmyra, Mrs. Hail took
the command of a battalion in the Nizam's service at Hy-
derabad, and, finding reason to dislike her position, came
to Poonah, intending to take military service under the
Peishwa ; but a brahinin whom she implicitly trusted,
rnsp.o considerationllrnceanut
he de
of her being a woman and a stranger, she was incarcerated
,tadso,
ft
fuahi
fully
vest,l
hdy
usefule trcapable
aahe Sheisianaa
vAbwwv
neeano
gl
excitingsgst
sefaht pmaado
knok
edi
etinshtn handsome
fashion,tmo
sht Damascusf
oere,
o,aaoafi ni
neddssldwdwlcai
wosokt uhroebjdudr
uoa,
.ftadguanel
nhslolodhauftheysi
Aa.
ea, 0
vwawrppecnaesl
snduer;
hremwhsav
:eepea
her
in one of the hill forts, near Poonah, until shortly before
flowingbdddi provingeor nealrudmsrnbdteteea and be unworthy
although seized ando fhbeherea rlt
iernewuansd confidence,sepr
spared,
ehdi
he
he
be
sex and courage being well calculated to excite the super-
stitious reverence of the native soldiery.—Mrs. Poston,.
ECCENTRICITY OF SELWYN.—Like all wits, he had
some strange peculiarities, and one of the oddest fancies
was a taste for witnessing executions! He would go miles
to see a man hanged, but to see him beheaded he would
cross the seas, and submit to the greatest inconveniences
and privations. Ills friends often made merry with this
eccentric foible, and whenever a trial, or execution, or
suicide of more than ordinary interest took place, never
failed to give him the earliest information of it. When
the first Lord Holland was on his death-bed, being told
that Selwyn had come to inquire of er his health, he
said—" The next time that gentleman calls, show him up.
If I am alive, I shall be delighted to see him ; and if I am
dead, he will be delighted to see me!" The execution of
the rebel lords in 1745 afforded him a rare treat, and he
witnessed their decapitation on Tower-hill with feelings of
the most philanthropic satisfaction. Some ladies taunt-
ing him with his inhumanity in attending to see Lord
Lovat's head cut off, he replied—" Why, I made amends
by going to the undertaker's to see it sewn on again."
When Damien was broken on the wheel, for attempting
to assassinate Louis XV., Selwyn, who had journeyed to
Paris for the express purpose of witnessing the entertain-
ment, mingled with the crowd in a plain undress and bob
wig, when a French nobleman, imagining, from the deep
interest which he took in the scene, that he must be a
hangman, addressed him as such. " No, no," replied
Selwyn, " I have not the honour to be an executioner; I
am merely an amateur !" Horace Walpole, who knew
him well, observes, in reference to the practice of state
criminals dropping a handkerchief on the scaffold, as a
signal for the executioner to strike—" George Selwyn
came to town the other day to have a tooth drawn, and,
true to his ruling penchant, he told the man that he would
drop his handkerchief for the signal."—Bentley'sshiiscel.
TIIE MOVEMENT TO POPERY.—But, startling as the
Dissenters' Chapels Bill is, it falls entirely into the shade
when contrasted with the proceedings of these same Con-
servative ministers in the matter of Roman Catholic
wrongs and Roman Catholic necessities. First, we have
all the old laws which were intended to restrain, or, it
may be, to extinguish Popery in the realm, repealed at a
stroke. Do we object to this? Far from it. The penal
laws had, in point of fact, repealed themselves, and there-
fore the formal revocation of edicts which forbade Papists
to ride horses of a greater value than £5, or to go to a
greater distance than five miles from their ordinary dwell-
ing places, except by license, was about as harmless an
inroad upon the Constitution as could well have been
made. But we do object to the manner of making it, as
well as to the avowed purposes for which it has been
made. There was a great deal too much of the ostenta-
tion of Liberalism in the Chancellor's mode of announc-
ing the intentions of the government. We are no advo-
cates for persecution, Heaven knows! Laws which in-
flict punishments upon men for their religious opinions
are a disgrace to any statute-book, and we cannot lament
that these, virtually dead as they have been for years,
should be erased from that of England. But we are not
willing, neither, we suspect, are the people of England, to
t- Popery flattered and encouraged at the expense of the
Church. The Bishop of London ventured to hint, that
the end of a session was not the most convenient moment
for making great changes in the Constitution, and sug-
gested that it would be respectful and becoming to allow
the bishops some voice in the discussion of a point which
so deeply affected the Church. But his lordship was
laughed to scorn ; and, in a house where he sat alone to
represent his order, measure after measure was repealed,
every one of which had avowedly been enacted for the
purpose of upholding the Protestant Church, and defend-
ing the civil liberties of the nation, which. a Popish mo-
narch had endeavoured to destroy. We lamented this at
the moment, and we lament it still. And though we en-
tirely approve of the corollary which followed, namely,
the facilities which have been afforded by law to devout
Roman Catholics, of endowing chapels, and otherwise
providing for the growth and stability of their church in
this kingdom, it would be ridiculous to deny that, the '
whole measure is such as would have been resisted, twenty
years ago, to the death, by the very men.gs have done this?
who are now the
main promoters of it. Could the Win
Would they have dared, however willing they might be, to
propose it ? But we have not yet done with the proofs
"
which the proceedings of the late session afford—that now,
and only now, has the movement," so much spoken
about of late years, begun. The Roman Catholics, in-
stead of accepting with gratitude the minister's proposal,
meet it with a haughty disdain, and refuse to co-operate
with him, because he has dared to mix up, in his commis-
sion of management, an equal number of Protestants and
Papists. Nor is this all. Though of the Protestant com-
missioners all, except one. may be Dissenters, the Papists
object especially to that cne ; not because he is either a
Churchman or a Protestant, but because he is nominated
to the office, by virtue of which he enters into the Com-
mission, by the Protestant Archbishop of Armagh. Of
course, the gentlemen who held this language are careful
not to urge the claims of their own prelates to take any
part in the management of this mixed Commission.
Wounded as they are by the bare proposal of placing the
nominee of a Protestant bi-hop in a position to take a
share, however minute, in the guardianship of property
devoted to Roman Catholic purposes, they cannot so far
forget themselves as to require that their own bishops
shall interfere with the bequests of Protestants, or, in-
deed, be connected in any way with a court of which the
constitution is so distasteful to them. Is it so? Very
much the reverse. The Roman Catholics demand, first,
that their bishops and priests shall be recognised as such
in the act of Parliament ; and next, that the Popish Com-
missioners shall all be bishops ; and that to them, and to
none other, power shall be committed of controlling, re-
gulating, and otherwise apportioning, whatever lands or
money shall come from Popish benefactors, and be in any
way applicable to Popish purposes. Has Sir Robert Peel
yielded to these most audacious demands. We lament to
say that he has. Popish bishops and priests are now for-
mally recognised in their official characters by the legisla-
ture. To the Popish members of the commission, exclu-
sively, the management of all Popish bequests is entrusted ;
and though, in very decency, be was obliged to hold out
against the formal nomination of Popish prelates as Com-
missioners, a Conservative minister was neither afraid nor
ashamed to insinuate that care should be taken, in the
actual arrangement of the body, not to overlook the
claims of their reverences. If all this be not " the move-
ment," we should really like to know what is. Mean-
while, poor old Mother Church is wing sadly to the wall.
She comes forward to entreat that a Welsh bishopric shill
be spared, and being heartily joined by the people of the
Principality, she so far prevails that, on the motion of
Earl Powis, a bill is brought into the Upper House for ef-
fecting a very trifling change in the Church Temporalities
Act. The Lords are favourable to the arrangement. The
Church is gratified. It is by no means clear that the bill
will not pass the Commons also. How does the Conser-
vative government act? Why, it pleads the royal prero-
gative ; extinguishes the bill just as the Lords are about to
pass it, and then tells the bench of bishops that they have
nothing to do with the laws except to obey them. In like
manner, a proposal by the Bishop of Exeter to provide
chaplains for the onion workhouses is scouted. " The age
for chaplains, both at home and abroad, has passed away.
We are no enemies to the Church, far from it; but, if
you suppose that we are going to expend the public mo-
ney in any effort to instruct the people in the peculiar
dogmas of the Church, you are very much mistaken. It
is the doctrine of modern Conservatism to keep the
Church down. We won't destroy her. Oh, no ! But
we shall do all we can to prevent her from exercising any
more the supremacy which used, in former times to belong
to her." At the great dinner in Glasgow, when he was
elected rector of that celebrated university, Sir hobert
Peel told his audience that he could worship God just as
satisfactorily to himself in a Scottish kirk as in an English
cathedral. "We should not be surprised to hear him de-
claring, on the occation of his first visit to reformed May-
nooth, that he is as ready to be present at the sacrifice of
the mass by John, archb shop of Tuam, as to receive the
holy sacrament from the hands of Charles James, bishop
of London. All that we have as yet been writing about is
actually done; what further remains to be accomplished
we are scarcely left to surmise. We quite expect to see,
ere another year pass over us, an accredited minister from
the Court of St. James to that of St. Peter at Rome.
And in due time, after the Charitable Bequests Bill shall
have accomplished its purr oses, it will be no object of sur-
prise to us, to find two Established Churches, or, possibly,
no Established Church at all, recognised in Ireland. And
all will have been the work of a Conservative government!
Well, why nut? Other sciences do not stand still; why
should the most important of all, that of government, be
kept stationary? Vice la varie'le" I Success to " the
movement!" say we. But it is really very hard that not
one among the ex-ministers can be found to chronicle its
progress. Oh, for a Lyndhurst on the Opposition
benches ! What a fluttering of eagles he would make in
the Conservative camp !—Fraser's Magazine.