The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1843-02-14 00:00:00

Ebe ktberpool Atanbarb.

TUESDAY MORNING, FEBRUARY 14, 1843

In a recent publication, we pointed to some expres.
sions made use of by Lord Stanley in the House of
Commons, from which we were led to entertain a very
sanguine hope that, at length, the government was
about to take upon itself the important duty of pro-
viding more efficiently for the religious instruction of
the people. In this hope we have not been disap-
pointed. On Thursday, in reply to a question from
Mr. Hawes, the Premier embraced the opportunity of
stating the course which the cabinet proposed to take
with respect to the question of Church Extension ;
and although upon one point we are a little disap-
pointed with the decision to which Sir Robert and his
colleagues appear to have come, yet viewing the exist-
ing state of the national revenue, and the widely-spread
distress of the commercial and industrial classes, we
are satisfied for the present to receive, as a boon gained,
and a principle, to some extent, concegied, the measure
proposed by them.

Sir Robert, on behalf of the government, admits the
deficiency of the means of affording religious instruc-
tion to the people which has, for some years past, been
a subject of complaint and regret to most right-minded
members of the community, and has been, session
after session, urged upon the attention of the House of
Commons by Sir Robert Inglis and other Conservative
members. He admits, in similar emphatic language
to that made use of by Lord Stanley, and to which we
on a former occasion referred, the baneful effects
which such deficiency is producing upon the moral
health of the population, and points to the recent ex-
cesses in the manufacturing districts, as affording evi-
dence of the state of society created. He admits the
duty of the• state to provide a remedy for such a state
of things ; but here the ever-cautious statesman
pauses, in order apparently to throw a damp upon our
satisfaction. We must not, he interposes, imagine
that, although prepared to make these admissions, he
is prepared, at present, to recommend a large grant of
the public money for the purpose of supplying the des-
titution which exists. He is not so prepared; but he
hopes to be able to make available for the objects in
view the credit of the funds which will at some dis-
tance of time, however"—accrue in the hands of the
Ecclesiastical Commissioners. In plainer terms, the
government, we presume, will advance, in exchequer
bills or otherwise, taking as security the sums falling
mo the hands of the commissioners, a certain yearly
ount, to be expended in the erection and endow-
ment of churches in those districts where the deficiency
of church accommodation and the want of religious in-
struction for the population is greatest.
_ _

Such is, we believe, a fair description of the pro-
posed measure of Sir Robert Peel's government, in aid
of Church Extension. That it will satisfy the most
ardent of the supporters of the plan advocated by Sir
Robert Inglis, and of the sincere friends of the Church
of England, we do not believe. We are not, our-
selves, satisfied with it, and yet we scarcely know that,
at the present moment and from the government of
Sir Robert l'eel, we were justified in expecting more.
On the one hand, it affects to admit and establish the
principle that the state is bound to care for the supply-
ing of religious instruction adequate for the increasing
wants of the population; but then it stipulates that the
means for providing that supply must be furnished
from the existing property of the Church. How far
the increasing of the endowments of small livings—
which we have always understood to be one of the
prominent objects of the Ecclesiastical Commission—
can progress pari passu with the devotion of the funds
at its disposal to Church Extension, we know not;
and we are afraid that, until the details of Sir Robert's
measure are before the house, we must suspend our
judgment as to its value to the community. 'We feel,
however, at present, that we have gained something,
although time may prove that gain to be, for all prac-
tical purposes, almost infinitesimal in amount.

As COnServatives, we have never hesitated to de-
nounce any parts of the policy of the present Admi-
nistration, against the principle or the details of which
we entertained objection. Such, we believe—and it is
an honourable trait, which the organs of the Whig
party—have seldom had to boast of—is, and has been,
the practice of the entire Conservative press of the
country. We feel that, whilst we possess at the head
of affairs men to whom the fame and welfare of our
country is dear, we possess also men who would spurn
in, their supporters, that reckless and dishonest adula-
tion which, to cloak an error committed, or to screen
the offender, would vote or swear that black is white,
that falsehood is truth, or that folly is_wisdom. We
know that we belong to a party, each individual mem-
ber of which can afford, and dares, to be honest.
In pursuance of such a course, it may have been
expected from us to join in the outcry—somewhat too
loud for the occasion, we think—which has been raised
against a certain proclamation issued by the Governor-
General of India. We have not done so, and for this
especial reason. We dislike the taste and the spirit in
which that proclamation is dictated. It is absurd in
style and vicious in conception. It is in fact an error,
' and a glaring one, of the noble lord. But, on the other
hand, it is too much a Godsend to the faction which is
now making it their cheval de battaile, for us to aid in
magnifying its importance. Practically, we believe that
it can produce no results, prejudicial or otherwise, to
the cause of christianity, or to the peace of India ; and
the indiscretion which it displays we leave to be re-
buked by the Government, of which Lord Ellenbo-
rough is an important and valuable official.

But, we may ask, do the wretched " rump" of the
Whig faction in Parliament, or their organs amongst
the press of England, hope by the clamour which they
are just now raising upon the subject of the despatch
in question—do they hope by misrepresentation,
buffoonery, and caricature, to blind the eyes of the
people of this empire to the blessed result of Lord
Ellenborough's policy in India, and its contrast with
the disastrous issue of that of Lord Auckland in the
same country ? Do that' hope that the people of
Christian England can be duped by professions of pious
horror at the tone of this or any public document or
public proceeding on the part of those very men who
scrupled not to bring into the presence of virgin roy-
alty the atheist, Robert Owen ? Can these men hope
that the flimsy veil which they have assumed can hide
from discerning men—whatever be their political
creed—the utter hollowness and insincerity of their
motives ? Surely, they cannot. The world sees the
gnawing dread of coming shame, and perhaps punish-
ment, which prompts their hollow and hypocritical
professions ; and will disappoint them in the hopes
which they entertain of the success of their cunningly
devised movement.

Lord Ellenborough's conduct, as a whole or in de-
tail, will be submitted to the judgment of the country.
We doubt not what will be the verdict, for Englishmen
were ever just. But be that verdict what it may, ano•
they issue still remains to be tried, and MUST BE
TRIED, and WILL BE TRIED, let Lords John
Russell and Palmerston wriggle and fence their utmost.
The indiscretion, or even the guilt, of Lord Ellenbo-
rough cannot blot out the memory of the disasters of
Cabool, or of the policy which led to them. That dark
page in the history of our country must be cleared up,
BY A FULL AND SEARCHING PARLIAMENTARY
ENQUIRY!

The untiring energy with which the propagators of the
baneful heresy of Tractarianisrn continue their crusade
against the Protestantism of our Church is astonishing ;
the expedients employed, and artifices resorted to, for
the purpose alike of overreaching the watchful and of
beguiling the unwary, are equally surprising. The Tracts
for the Times, 'Lis true,. have been discontinued; but
only to make way for a different mode of attack. The
popular novel and the nursery tale are now made the
vehicle of the same poison that formerly flowed through
the channel of a mystical and elaborately obscure
ract. The subject of Church Architecture is even
pressed into this unhallowed service. Good men must
therefore be on their guard, and watch narrowly the
tendency of every new publication they receive, and
the working of every new society with which they
connect themselves : otherwise they may be uncon-
sciously giving countenance to doctrines which they
abhor, and actually undermining the foundations of
the very church they are only desirous to strengthen
and extend. We have been led to these remarks by
the perusal of a most important document that
ap-
peared in the Belfast Commercial Chronicle of the 4th
instant, being a memorial to the Lord Bishop of Down
and Connor, (and which appears elsewhere,) signed by
upwards of fifteen hundred of the lay gentry of his
diocese, including eleven deputy-lieutenants and fifty_
four justices of the peace, professing their attachment
to the Church : " We venerate," it affirms in the first
paragraph, " and would uphold her in all her offices,
discipline, ordinances, and doctrine, from a persuasion
that they are in accordance with, and based upon, the
Word of God; " and protesting against the " false
doctrines upheld and promulgated in the Tracts for
the Times;" the cause of present alarm being, as
expressed in the memorial, " the introduction into
these dioceses of a society for the ostensible purpose
of Church Architecture, in connexion with one of a
similar character in England—the Cambridge Camden
Society—the existence and proceedings of which latter
institution have too manifest and painful a connexion
with the errors and doctrines already referred to."
'Tis painful to think there should have arisen an
occasion to call forth such a memorial; but, now that
it has arisen, the consequences. are chargeable not on
the memorialists, but on thug
,who have rendered
such a step necessary. 'Tis cause of thankfulness to
the true friends of our Church, as she is, that, in her
moment of difficulty, she numbers in her staunch
friends the rank and intelligence, no less than the
piety, of the land. We have no fear for our beloved
Church. " Her foundations are upon the holy hill :
God loveth the hill of Sion."
The Britannia, in the passage that follows, speaks
the sentiments of thousands. The article was written
in reference to the appointment of Dr. 011ivant (late
Vice-Principal of the Welsh College) to the Regius
Professorship of Divinity in Cambridge, in preference
to a competitor said to be of high Tractarian princi-
ples :

"The attempts to introduce Popery into the Church of
England are notorious ; the feebleness of all the remon.
trances made on the subject is unluckily not less notorious.
The timidity with which authority has ventured within sight
of the discussion is actually melancholy ; and the triumphant
tone which has been adopted by the party is arrogant and of-
fensive. All is concession, all trifling, and all utterly incon-
sistent with the manliness which ought to characterise the
possessor of national confidence on matters of such infinite
interest. It is now that the theologians appointed to the
leading offices of the Universities must expect to be looked
W. They must explain to the country and their colleges how
it can be that, for a hundred years, the Church of England
has been ignorant of her own principles; how it is that the
adoption of Popish forms, gestures, and vestments is essentia I
to religion ; and how it is that a rejection of the foulest super-
stition of Christendom is a schism, a rebellious defiance of
the divine will ? Let Dr. 011ivant look to those things, and
let him crush the traitors who assert them. Sincerity before
God may not be the best way to the favour of the world ; but
t will after all, be a better comfort on his death-bed, than if
the crosier of Canterbury lay in his dying hand.
" We solemnly call upon him, and up all
the influence arising either from
rank oron from office in the
who possess
Church, to consider the condition in which their silence or
their submission is placing the people. They are suffering a
succession of changes to be made wholly offensive to the na-
tion. We can tell them that discontent and distrust are
growing up on every side ; that the people ask—why are those
changes of worship, and even of clerical robes, more essen-
tial now than they have been for the last hundred years ?
Why are we to approach Popery any more than our Protestant
forefathers? Why are we to adopt even the externals of a
religion which our common knowledge of the scriptures iden-
tifies with their degradation—a religion of frivolous ceremo-
nial, false doctrine, and fabulous miracle? Has the Church
of England required any of those restless changes? Has she
grown more unscriptural within the last hundred years, or
more inactive, or more unacceptable to the empire? Quite
the contrary. On the other hand, has Popery disclaimed any
of her absurdities, any of her persecuting doctrines, any of
her fierce anathemas against Protestantism ? Not one. Why
then, are we to put our sacred freedom at her mercy ? Woe
be to those who do these things ! Woe be also to those who
wink at them !"

Whilst an enquiry was pending into the wholesale
charges brought by Mr. Rushton against the manage-
ment of the Liverpool workhouse, taken with
such evident alacrity by his worthy fellow-labourer
the editor of the Liverpool Journal—we studiously ab-
stained from offering a remark, or indicating an opi.