The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1842-09-13 00:00:00

TO DANIEL O'CONNELL, ESQ., M.P., &c.

A worthy author to ground a report of antiquity upon, who, in
relating the matters that fell out in his own time, descovereth him-
self to be as egregious a liar as any that this day breatheth in Chris-
tendom! ! !"—Primate Usher's character of Captain Philip O'Salli-
vani Religion of the Ancient Britons, page 92. London, 1631

SlR—The strain of exaggeration and falsehood which runs
through the pages of all the Romish writers, political or his •
torical, from the Reformation to the present day, has unfor-
tunately exposed them to the scorn or contempt of the reli-
gious and literary world, and rendered the revival ofliterature
and invention of printing the slow but certain instrument of
annihilating the delusions of Popery.

Under this impression, I cannot but think that yoih recent
speech at the Jesuits' meeting in Liverpool manifests the
same spirit of falsehood and exaggeration which has been
justly charged upon the controversialists and political writers
of your communion ; and that while your abuse of Liver-
pool, and one of the brightest ornaments of the religion of
the realm, is highly honourable to both, the publication of
your rhapsody and the replies it will inevitably elicit will tend
in no small degree not only to cool the zeal of the Protestant
conciliators, but open the eyes of multitudes of the dupes of
the Popish clergy to see and abhor the delusions attempted
to be thrown over them and their posterity by agents such as
Captain Philip O'Sullivan was in the reign of Queen Eliza-
beth, and the Lord Mayor exhibits himself under the milder
sway of Queen Victoria, whose religion you speak of in such
atrocious terms as should exclude you for ever from her Ma-
jesty's presence, and occasion your expilsion from the House
of Commons, which you once termed, from the knowledge'
you bad of one of its members, an assemblage of 600 scound-
rels. Language like this sounds harshly in modern ears; the
repetition of it, even in its'condemnation, cannot but be pain-
ful, and the necessary reply to it sounds somewhat like the
unchristian rendering of railing for railing.
After reading your resolution for founding a place of
worship for the members of a society prohibited by law from
remaining in the kingdom, much less openly holding their
ministrations in one of the most Christian communities in it,
you indulge yourself so wantonly in the use of scurrilous
language as proves that such a man as you show yourself to
be cannot be a competent judge on any case connected with
the maintenance of Christianity. Your " words of sarcasm
and scorn," whose virulence excited the laughter of your
auditors, fell powerless from your lips, as far as respects the
fair fame of Liverpool, and could be agreeable only to the
lowest of the low, who owe the food they eat and the clothes
they wear to those whom you denounce as merciless bigots—
the opulent Protestants of that town—whom you hold up to
their execration for building churches, and encouraging able
and exemplary ministers' from Ireland to officiate in them.
The language which you used respecting Mr. M`Neile,
was such as could dishonour none but a man capable of using
it ; but it proves more than you intended—it demonstrates,
to his honour, that the success of this gentleman's ministry
there has given a mortal blow to the hopes of the Jesuits at
that time surrounding you—men invited there, no doubt, by
the parochial clergy of the Romish church, and sent to them
by the college de propaganda fide, to maintain the cause of
Antichrist, when they themselves were no longer able to do
so. No gentleman, no Christian, could disgrace himself so
far as to call such a clergyman " a fellow who had an excel-
lent trade in lying—one whose charitableness was paid
for by the yard—whose falsehoods and calumnies were re-
munerated by the pound !! " The use of these false and
disgusting metaphors, marks the society in which your
early years were spent, and when you call that splendid
orator " a lump of a liar," you must have taken it for
granted that you were addressing an assemblage of ruffians,
and their loud laughter proved how " like loves like," and
how congenial such language was with that which marks the
conversation of the lowest dregs of society.
As to Mr. M'Neile's being calumniator general of the
ancient faith of the land, this is an allegation quite in the
style of Captain Philip O'Sullivan. The object of your in-
sane and malicious vituperation is a maintainer, and an un-
answerable one, of the faith of the ancient Britons and the
ancient Irish, when, in the sixth century, they rejected the
dominion of Rome, and the missionaries from Derry and
lona were introducing Christianity in the north of England,
such as they had been taught by the Greek in opposition to
the Latin church.

The doctrine now preached in the Protestant churches of
Liverpool is, for sum and substance, identical with that pro-
pounded by St. Columbkill, St. Aidan, and many other pro-
pagators of Christianity, long before the novelties of Popery
had been introduced into Ireland or England. But it was
easier for you, both from education and habit, to call a suc-
cessful preacher of the gospel a liar, than to reply to his ar-
guments, as some one of the Jesuits near you ought rather to
have attempted to do.
As to your expecting to hear Mass in Westminster Abbey,
it reminds me of the message sent to the neighbourhood of
Londonderry, by one of your predecessors in agitation, in
the month of October, 1641, when he said that he expected
mass would be celelebrated in every parish church in Ire-
land before the ensuing Christmas-day. His expectation,
however, was not gratified. The rebellion he had excited by
language like yours was put down ; and while the same re-
ward for the head of a Popish priest and that of a wolf was
offered by Oliver Cromwell's Irish government, Sir Phelim
O'Neill was hanged, quartered, and beheaded in England.
" Felix quern faciunt aliena pericula cantum."

Mass is not likely 'to be celebrated during your lifetime in
Westminster Abbey, although you may hear it, as Phelimy
Roe did at Tyburn, with a halter around your neck, confess-
yourself to be an unworthy member of the Church of
Rome.
As to your seeing what you call " the waves of catholicity
extending day after day—bearing on one after another," and
its rapid extension over the whole globe, this also, in O'Sul-
livan s style, is a vision existing in your own imagination
alone. From the encouragement given to Popery in Eng-
land and Ireland, by a succession of timid and vaccillating
governments in both countries, for the last half century, an
imperium in imperio has arisen in our empire, and Popery
undoubtedly has had an increase in both countries, which
exhibitions like yours are calculated to expose in an alarming
manner : but the growth of evangelical religion, particularly
in Ireland, from the blessing of the Most High God upon
such men as the object of your slander, has raised a fresh
and firm banner against the further growth of a caricature of
religion such as your Catholicity may be called, a system of
superstition calculated to dishonour God, and render his
people ignorant of his word here, and consequently blind as
to their welfare in the countless ages of eternity.
In your enumeration of the triumphs of modern Popery,
you begin with North America; but the one archbishop and
27 beggarly bishops there have been but the recruiting offi-
cers for the -Unitarians and other infidels in it, one of whose
disciples, Miss Martineau, favourable, of course, to their
most useful instruments, you naturally quote, as saying
" that all America would soon be Popish ;" and you quote a
novel writer, a dealer in fiction like O'Sullivan and yourself,
in proof of the " purity" of the lives of the transatlantic
Romish priests, without remembering that in Italy, in France,
in Spain, in Portugal, in the Low Countries, and in Ireland,
similar proofs, from writers unused to mingle falsehood with
truth, have been long requisite, but never yet adduced, in
vindication of the sullied character of the "corporation of
bachelors," who, in disregard of the example of St. Peter,
profess celibacy. As to your quoting the King of Prussia as
an enemy to the reformed religion, because that monarch, if
you speak truth, prefers for the Christians of his realm the
name of Evangelicals to that of Protestants, you make a dis-
play of ignorance and feebleness in argument quite charac-
teristic of a man struggling in vain to maintain a bad cause.
The time will come, in God's name, when the word Pro-
testant will become obsolete, when no error has been left to
protest against, when all the ends of the earth will be turned
from darkness to light, and the surface of the globe shall be
full of the knowledge of divine truth as the occean is of water ;
and in the meantime, the words Protestant and Evangelical,
when compared to Popery and her twin sister, Unitarianism,
who is likely to outgrow, if not survive her, may be deemed
synonymous. In the meantime, the progress of Protestantism
is steady and increasing in North America, and the vallies of
Ohio, which you ignorantly mention as strong holds of Popery,
have had the benefit of the Christian labours of Bishop Chase,
and the Clergy of this extensive, diocese. Upper Canada is
rapidly becoming a Protestant, and, consequently, a peace-
able and loyal dependency of the Imperial Crown of Great
Britain and Ireland. And if Lower Canada has been of late
years the reverse, and produced such Demagogues as the
Lord Mayor of Dublin, to the disturbance of its peace, and
and covering its plains with blood—this may be attributed to
the ill-fated establishment of Popery in it, and such machina-
tion as your speech has proved to be now in operation at
Liverpool.
As to France, we know what Popery has achieved there :
how it favoured the designs of Voltaire, Rousseau, and the
philosophical infidels of that country. How it dishonoured
human nature by the massacre of the Huguenots in 1569, and
and the revocation of the edict of Nantz, 1686. And it is to
be noted, in contradiction to the alleged decline of Pro-
testantism on the Continent of Europe, that the Reformed
religion-is flourishing in France, where it was so long and so
cruelly persecuted—that the power of the Pope has been set
at nought in Spain—and that a Protestant Church is tolerated
even in Rome.

Was the whole power of Popery in Europe able to revive the
Bishopric of Jerusalem, which has been so recently achieved
by the Protestant King of Prussia and our own truly Christian
Queen, whose religion you have so malignantly belied and
revived? What do you think of the late consecration of the
five Protestant Bishops of foreign sees, by the Archbishop
of Canterbury ? is this a decline of the Reformed religion
on the earth ? Have the whole of the titular Bishops in
North America as competent and permanent a maintenance
as the new Bishops of Gibraltar and Malta, two cities not
long since overshadowed by the darkness and delusions of
Popery. _

But I cannot pass the boundaries assigned to such articles
as this in a newspaper. So, waiting for a reply to this letter,
if your multiplied avocations, or capability, will permit you
to maintain your late allegations among the Jesuits of Liver-
pool—l remain, Sir, a close observer of your movements, and
a faithful monitor of the unhappy results of them, whichlare
but too likely to result to yourself and your deluded ad-
mirers, JOHN GRAHAM.
Magilligan, near Londonderry, Aug. 29, 1842.

WASPS.—These tormenting insects are enormously plenti-
ful this year. Great care should be exercised in the eating
of newly gathered fruit. We have heard of two dosen wasps
having been found busily at work in the interior of a plum.—
Bristol Mercury. At Worcester market last week these
insects were so numerous and troublesome, that the market
people were obliged to burn rags, in order to drive them
away by the smoke.

RITES OF THE WESTERN PAGANS IN OLD AMERICA.—
" The most important part remaining of these ruins," we
quote from Mr. Stephens, "is called El Sacrificatorion, or
the place of sacrifice. It is a quadrangular stone structure,
66 feet on each side at the base, and rising in a pyramidal
form to the height, in its present condition, of thirty-three
feet. On three sides there is a range of steps in the middle,
each step seventeen inches high, and but eight inches on the
upper surface, which makes the range so steep that in the
ascending some caution is necessary. At the corners are
four buttresses of cut stone, dimishing in size from the line
of the square, and apparently intended to support the struc-
ture. On the side facing the west there are no steps, but
the surface is smooth and covered with stucco, grey with
long exposure. By breaking a little at the corners, he saw
that there were different layers of stucco, doubtless put on at
different times, and all had been ornamented with painted
figures. In one place we made out part of the body of a leopard,
well drawn and coloured. The top of the Sacrificatorio is
broken and ruined, but there is no doubt that it once sup.
ported an altar for those sacrifices of human beings which
struck even the Spaniards with horror. It was barely large
enough for the altar and officiating priests, and the whole was
in view of the people at the foot. The barbarous ministers car-
ried up the victim entirely naked, and extended him upon
the altar, pointing Out the idol to which the sacrifice was
made, that the people might pay their adorations. The altar
had a convex surface, and the body of the victim lay arched,
with the trunk elevated, and the head and feet depressed.
Four priests held the legs and arms, and another kept his
head firm with a wooden instrument, made in the form of a
coiled serpent, so that he was prevented from making the
least movement. The head priest then approached, and with
a knife made of flint, cut an aperture in the breast and tore
out the heart, which, yet palpitating, he offered to the sun,
and then threw it at the feet of the Idol. If the idol was
gigantic and hollow, it was usual to introduce the heart of
the victim into his mouth with a golden spoon. If the vic-
tim was a prisoner of war, as soon as he was sacrificed they
cut off the head to preserve .the skull, and threw the body
down the steps, when it was taken up by the officer or soldier
to whom the prisoner had belonged, and carried to his house
to be dressed and served up as an entertainment for his
friends. If he was not a prisoner of war, but a slave pur-
chased for the sacrifice, the proprietor carried off the body
for
the same purpose."