The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1848-12-19 00:00:00

bee. 19, 18484

LIVERPOOL PROTESTANT AND REFORM-
ATION SOCIETY.

On Friday evening the annual meeting of this society
was held in the Concert Hall, Lord Nelson-street. The
ball was crowded to excess, and notwithstanding the
assertion to the contrary by one of our Saturday's con-
temporaries, the great majority were males, and a. large
body of the most respectable class of society. Another
pleasing feature in the meeting was a revival of that en-
thusiasm which manifested itself with such powerful
effect a dozen or fourteen years ago, and before which a
government, disposed to foster and encourage Popery, was
compelled to quail and shrink into deserved contempt.
Th're must have been nearly three thousand present, and
multitudes more would have been present if the ball
would have contained them. The chair was taken by the
Rev. Dr. M'Neile, and amonest those present we noticed
the Revs. Dr. Carpenter, D. James, F. Parry, Mr. May-
nard, Mr. Thomas, F. Barker, S. Fenton, Mr. Councillor
Tyrer, Mr. ex-Councillor Glazebrook, &c. &c.
On taking the chair, the rev. doctor called upon the
Rev. T..__Nolan, who opened the meeting with prayer.

The Rev. CHAIRMAN then rose to address the meeting,
and was received with loud cheers for several minutes.
When silence was restored, he said,—My Christian friends
and brother operatives : It is with sincere satisfaction
that, as your President, I meet you once more in this
-good cause: the cause directly of true religion as it has
been graciously revealed from heaven ; the cause, indi-
Teeny and by consequence, of true liberty, both civil and
religious, upon earth. (Hear, hear.) We have all along
had sound argument on our side, when we represented
Protestantism as the genuine foundation of liberty. We
have now facts, great and important facts, not of ancient
history, but of daily and weekly occurrence in these our
own times, all on the same side. (Hear.) For three
centuries, the distinguishing characteristic of England,
as compared with the great bulk of the Continent of
Europe, has been Protestantism ; and now, the distin-
guishing characteristic of England is her combination of
authority respected and liberty enjoyed. True it is in-
deed we pay for our blessings, as I was told by a French-
man a few days ago : when in conversation I said to him
that here in England we have tranquillity and liberty and
true fraternity, he cut the enumeration short by saying
abruptly, " You pay well for all this." We do so, and
willingly. (Applause.) For what better treasures, I
would ask, can money be given ? Our taxes are high :
our rates are high : our luxuries are dear, compared with
"tiMeantinent_ 1- zuac m t unc-vf those who
have learned in the new school to idolize cheapness.
(Cheers,) I do not see that it is a real improvement
either to poor or rich, either to wages or rents. The
labouring classes in England were in a better condition
when everything was dear, very dear, than they have
since everything has fallen to comparative cheapne.
There is one article, however, in which I do delight in
cheapness ; and in this we have the advantage of the
Continent again, for in this there is no such cheapness in
the world as in England. The article I allude to is one
of great importance—of greater importance, in a national
point of view, if all were duly known and duly considered,
than our public men seem ever to have dreamed of. I
mean the article of Bibles in the language of the people.
(Loud cheers.) The Pope has indeed solemnly affixed
his infallible anathema on that bright star of England's
prosperity, our noble Bble Society ; and wherever his
anti-Christian authority is paramount, Bibles are scarce.
One of the most conclusive and triumphant proofs of how
little authority he has in England,. is, that Bibles are
plenty. Compare these facts with other facts. Different
minds will draw different inferences from the same facts ;
but I now speak of the facts themselves, and, taken sim-
ply as coincidences, they are sufficiently remarkable. In
Spain Bibles are scarce, and have long been scarce; and
Spain has long been degraded, and is now distracted by
civil war. In Austria Bibles are scarce ; and Austria,
disgraced by bloodshed and cruelty in her capital, and
handed over to the Imperial sway of a lad of 18, is endea-
vouring to spell out a free constitution for her diversified
population. In France Bibles are scarce ; and France is
a proverb of revolutionary madness, recklessly and re-
peatedly staining the streets of her metropolis with the
blood of her citizens. In Italy Bibles are scarce ; and in
Italy democracy is in the ascendant, not sparing even the
Pope himself, who is dethroned and a fugitive. (Applause.)
In England Bibles are plenty ; and in England we have
tranquillity, and liberty, and true fraternity,—authority
duly respected, and freedom richly enjoyed. We have
indeed exceptions to deplore, we have offences to record
in England, but they are the exceptions and not the rule,
and some of them are of a most instructive character.
Witness the following, which has just occurred in Bir-
mingham, and is thus made public by the clergyman of
the district. [The rev. gentleman here read the letter
which we gave last week from the Rev. J. Greaves, rela-
tive to the burning of the Bible at Birmingham by
a Roman Catholic priest, and which has since been
acknowledged by the priests of that town.] It is
quite clear that if we would preserve plenty of Bibles in
England, we must preserve England from Romanism.
(Hear, hear, and cheers.) And why did I omit Ire-
land in my enumeration ? Ireland, which presents in
lsereself a most characteristic and instructive sample of
both Romanism and Protestantism ? In the south and
west of Ireland Bibles are scarce, and in the south and
west of Ireland you have a Romish population disaffected
to the Crown of England, and not to be trusted with tha
administration of the laws of England. During the re.:
cent state trials, her Majesty's Attorney-General, though
himself a Romanist, yet being put on his mettle as a law-
officer of the Crown for the due administration of public
justice, felt called upon to exclude from the juries the
-maw:akar" ftialuallizvun north-
east of Ireland Bibles are plentiful, and there you have, in
a most salutary proportion, a Protestant population, the
sworn defenders of the British constitution, as condensed
and ratified in the Bill of Rights, passed under William of
glorious memory (tremendous applause), and accepted
with public solemnity at the coronation of every British
sovereign since. It is in the face of these facts, and such as
hese, that the public mind has been excited by rumours,
which grow in urgency from week to week, that her Ma-
jesty's ministers intend to propose to parliament a bill for
the national endowment of the priests of Romanism in
Ireland, and of course, by consequence, in England and
Scotland. Every constitutional opposition which the
Protestants of the empire can offer to such a disastrous
measure, ought 'to be instantly and efficiently offered.
(Hear, hear.) Already the movement is in progress, as
the recent elections in Devonshire and Yorkshire, as
well as public meetings in different places abundantly
testify. Such a meeting has just been held in Manches-
ter, where my reverend friend and namesake, our noble
fellow-labourer in this noble cause, gave utterance to such
spirit-stirring appeals on behalf of our national Protes-
tantism, and in such a strain, or rather such a torrent of
fervid eloquence, as those persons can form very little idea
of, who have never heard Hugh Stowell. .(Cheers.) And
this evening in Liverpool, I have no doubt sentiments
and arguments, well deserving the most serious consider-
ation of our people and our rulers, will be uttered by
those gentlemen on this platform who have been invited
by your committee to address this meeting. On this
question of the proposed endowment of the Romish
priests, two questions are very frequently asked. By the
friends of the present government we are asked, what mo-
tive can her Majesty's ministers have in desiring this ar-
rangement, if they do desire it, except the general good of
the country : and from their position and the information
they possess, were they not better qualified to form an
opinion of what is indeed best for the country than
any individual, however intelligent he may be, who
moves in the more circumscribed walks of private
life ? And then, not only by the supporters of
the present government, but also by a large class
of despairing politicians, who think everything else
has been tried in vain, we are asked what is to be done,
what can be done for Ireland if you don't do this ? With
regard to the objects which her Majesty's ministers may
be supposed to have in view, I do not think that they can
be fairly accused of any abstract love of Romanism as
such. On the contrary, I believe that the noble lord at
the head of the government very much prefers Protes-
tantism every way, and that if he saw his way to govern,
and to continue to govern—(hear, hear)—the coun-
try, without any further concessions to Romanism,
he would gladly adopt it ; but it must be remembered
that concessions have already gone so far that the
noble lord is in a serious difficulty. With parties
so balanced in Great Britain, that it is no easy matter
to secure even a working majority in the House of
Commons, how can any noble lord or right hon. gentleman
who wishes to carry on the government, dispense with tne
thirty or forty votes of those Irish members who are
neither more nor less than the nominees and mouthpieces
of the priests ? (Hear, hear.) And how can he secure
those votes on an emergency, except by compact with
their reverend masters ? Is this enough to account for
the non-prosecution of known offenders amongst the
priesthood, a measure tending to rivet on the minds of their
ignorant followers the disastrous superstition that their
priests bear a charmed life, or, at least, are not amenable
to the jurisdiction of heretics ? (Cheers.) Is this enougt
to account for sop after sop, in the hope of at last drug-
ging Cerberus into quiescence, if not into friendship ?
Doubtless her Majesty's ministers possess extensive infor-
mation, and are so far in a favourable position for forming
a sound judgment • but we know that a straight stick
thrust obliquely into water, will look like a crooked stick,
and we know that information, viewed through the denser
medium of love of place and power, will look not what it
is, but what it is wished to be. (Hear, hear.) But who
are to blame, that the executive government of our Pro-
testant Queen are in such a humiliating dilemma as to
hold their places at the mercy of the Romish priests of
Ireland. for it really amounts to this, when stripped of all
subterfuge and special pleading ? Clearly and undenia-
bly, the blame is with those electors of Great Britain
who have allowed secular considerations or personal in-
terests to prevail with them at the hustings to the dispa-
ragement or neglect of our national Protestantism. If
the Protestant electors of Great Britain had done their
duty, the Ministers of the Crown of England might have
been in a position to govern with dignity, instead of being
. obliged meanly to court the priests of the Roman schism
in Ireland. This reproach falls, I will not say on any of
you who are here present, but certainly on many who pos-
sess the elective franchise in this borough. By preferring
Peelism to Protestantism, and by so fraternizing with
Tractarianism as to divide their strength, they played into
'the hands of their opponents, and so managed or misma-
naged as to send members to Parliament on whom no
.really Protestant Minister of the Crown would place any
confident reliance in any great Protestant struggle. I
mention this in honest plainness, because this, and pro-
,ceedings similar to this, here and elsewhere, consti-
late the real root of our national disease. If the
electors of Great Britain returned a Protestant House
of Commons, we would very soon have a strong and
effective Protestant government. (Loud cheers.) But
what then, it is asked, could be done for Ireland ?
I will take the liberty of answering the question, first, ne-
gatively, by saying that the endowment of the priests
would do nothing for Ireland, in the sense intended by
the question. The endowment to any practicable amount
would have no effect whatever in either attaching the