The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1848-04-25 00:00:00

TO MR. A. E. FOWLER.

SIR,—You inform me, in the first instance, that you
" have not attempted to analyse exactly the policy, cour-
tesy, and real truth of those expressions," which you have
misquoted ; in the second instance you inform me that
you " have read not much of my writings." The former,
you apparently do not understand ; the latter you cer-
tainly do not. Under these circumstances it is beyond my
power to rescue your ideas from the confusion in which
they are plunged, and consequently to reply to them.
To assist your inquiries I will inform you that I hold
the Government responsible for, the happiness of a Peo-
ple, and the Church responsible for their virtue; that I•
look on England, and I see that neither of her guardians
fulfils the appointed mission.
In this case, who is responsible for sedition ?
To say more would be tantamount to that " open and
advised speaking," which, before you receive this, will, as
a sign of these unhappy days, have been enacted a penal
offence.
Whenever you have " analysed those expressions" and
" read those writings," I shall be happy to reply to your
remarks on the Queen, the Pope, the envoy, scholars,
patterns, revolutionary men, antagonists of my class,
trembling, liberty, equality, and fraternity, licentiousness,,
the milk of human kindness, &c. &c. ; and whatever other
topics your studies may add to these varieties.
I remain, sir, your humble servant,

SARAH MYTTON MAURY.

April 22d, 1848

THE NATIONAL SIN.

(From the London Standard of Friday.)
Truly does the beautiful prayer that will be offered up
in twelve thousand temples this day confess that " in our
prosperity we have too much forgotten the Lonn GOD
ALMIGHTY, that other Lords have had dominion over
us," not only as a nation, but in our individual conduct.
Who these other lords are, the holy man of Uz told more
than three thousand three hundred years ago. His words
plainly say what is the idol in the worship of which men
forget their duty to the Creator of heaven and earth :
" If I had made gold my hope, or had said to the fine
field thou art my confidence.
" if I rejoice because my wealth is great, and because
my hand had gotten much.
" This also was an iniquity to be punished by the judge,
for I should have denied that God is above."—Job xxxi.,
24, et seq.
This has been our national sin, and too generally our
individual sin also, and this is the sin that has at length
" found us out." He who least believes in the oracles of
truth must confess that it is the sin of avarice, the desire
of accumulation, the confidence in riches, that has thrown
the world into its present state of confusion and alarm ;
that has filled the rich with terror, and the poor with des-
pair, anger, and revenge.
In favour of what is called the rights of capital we have
despised the rights of the poor, and in our worship of
wealth we are preparing—how horrible the thought upon
this awful day !—to violate the rights of the REDEEMER
to claim this nation as a portion of his Church. Hence
we have not only provoked the poor to look for change by
our oppression, but taught them to despise that holy law
which forbids to seek change by ways of violence.
The Christian knows and feels that all men are equal
before God ; but that in order to exercise the virtues of
which our nature is capable, we must be unequally placed
in this state of social existence which is of God's appoint-
ment. The Christian knows and feels that this present
life is but a probation for a better, and that if his condi-
tion be one of suffering in it, the good man's sufferings
will be compensated one hundred fold in another state.
He is therefore contented with his lot, and patiently does
his duty in that state of life to which it has pleased GOD
to call him. He who is not a Christian has no such pros-
pect; he must make his paradise in this world, and some
imaginary equality is the basis of that paradise, and justly
so, upon his hypothesis, for there is nothing can justify
inequality in the condition of men in this world but the
prospect of compensation in another. Religious truth is
the only answer to Socialists, Communists, Chartists, and
the other levelling associations ; but in our worship of gold
we have cast religious truth to the winds, and we have the
terrible consequences.