The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1842-01-18 00:00:00

TUESDAY MORNING, JANUARY is, is 42

Mr. Oastler deserves well of a generous, Christian
publiC. His labours have greatly conduced to fix at-
tention on the condition of a numerous, a suffering,
and too much neglected class of the community, and
to prepare a train which cannot fail to be of great ul-
timate benefit to society at large. The great leading
principles on which he goes forward in his generous
and disinterested exertions, are scarcely of less mo-
ment, as an element in his works and character, than
the immediate purpose and design of those exertions
themselves ; they are applicable to all times and sea-
sons, and to every conceivable condition of societs.y;
they cannot be appreciated too highly; the man who
exalts and magnifies them, and contrives in any degree
to impress the mind of the more influential orders
with their importance, deserves well of his country ; it
is impossible to foresee to what remote consequences
of utility the success he obtains in any one point may

conduce.
That Mr. Oastler's labours hitherto have not been in
vain, many circumstances might be tnentioned to
prove ; we would rest our demonstration for the pre-
sent, however, upon the fact, that a public subscription
has been entered into for the purpose of testifying the
very high esteem in which they are held, and that early
on the list we find the names of many whose approba-
tion, still more than the liberal donations which they
contribute, it is honourable, and must be most grati-
fying to Mr. Oastler to have gained. That many sub-
scribers may be found in Liverpool, as well as in every
part of the kingdom, to the " Oastler Testimonial," it
is our very anxious wish. This generous man has
been too long a martyr to his humane devotedness in
the cause of helpless and neglected wretchedness ; he
has breathed for many a long day the " sorrowful
sighing of the afflicted and the prisoner," and is him-
self, in an eminent degree, an object for that sympathy
with which his own breast has ever lavishly overflowed
towards others. It is proposed as the design of the
subscription now set on foot to rescue him from his
confinement in the Fleet prison, and to make such a
provision for himself and family as may place them in
circumstances of independence. To contribute to
such a purpose will be a pleasing task—an occasion of
gratefully exercised feeling to all who know anything
of his philanthropic laboriousness, and that noble
cause in which he has made so many sacrifices and
suffered much. We indulge in the grateful expecta-
tion that Liverpool will not he behindhand in this ge-
nerous work, and that her list of subscribers and sub-
scriptions will correspond with that high repute which
she has gained for forwardness in all acts of generous
liberality and benevolence. For the sake of an amiable
and deserving individual, we desire that this may be
the case; but we desire it also as an evidence that the
cause he advocates and the principles he inculcates
have many well-wishers and supporters here.
It is a prominent feature in all Mr. Oastler's public
labours that he fundamentalises whatever political mea-
sure he advocates on the solid basis of revealed truth,
and that he is a " church extensionist " in the purest
and holiest meaning of the words. With the master-
key of biblical lore he finds access to all the secret re-
cesses of political philosophy; and, whilst he precedes
us with a torch showing up all the dark chambers and
dismal abodes of factory wretchedness, with their in-
numerable wan and despairing inmates, he omits not
to indicate the secret source whence all this misery has
been derived, and poured like a flood upon the land.

It is not enough that men read the truth in their
Bibles, or are taught it from the pulpit; they require
to be reminded of its bearing in all the most ordinary
and, sometimes, ostensibly the most remote details of
life ; and in this way the champion of the poor opera-
tive, whether of the field or the factory, has invariably
supplementalised it with a rare degree of power and
effect.

`lr. Oastler is the eloquent and the efficient advo-
cate of a ten hours factory bill, and the firm and un-
tiring opponent of the present system of poor laws ;
and the testimonial now being raised in his behalf will
afford an interesting and useful evidence of the extent
to which he has leavened the public mind with his own
generous feelings and sound principles. Contrast the
tenderness of his views and exhortations with those of
the Anti-Corn Law League, and all their itinerant
speechifiers or literary oracles; they are as opposite as
day and night. It is the object of the one to check
the ruinous and reckless action of the selfish-principle;
of the other to feed it fat, to widen the field of its ex-
ercise, and give it more victims. Benevolence is the
characteristic of the Christian economist ; malevolence
is that of the agitating " free-trader," as he calls him-
self. The one looks to the happiness of his fellow-
creatures; the other only to the accumulation of filthy

lucre, no matter at what expense to the rest of man•

Such a man as Mr. ©artier, then, le, we say,
worthy of being supported by all church-loving, Chris-
tian Englishmen ; and his antagonism to the Leaguers
and their pestilent doctrines will, we trust, not be per-
mitted to go unrewarded.

There would be reason to question the soundness
and propriety of the late measure of the Town Coun-
cil respecting education, if the Romanist priests and
Radical journals did not raise an outcry, and show
that they were wounded by it. That measure claimed
to he of an essentially Protestant and Conservative
character, and, as such, if it were good for any thing,
it ought to be highly objectionable to, and loudly pro-
tested against, by all the stops and organ-pipes of Li-
beralism from the highest to the lowest, and, in the
result, we find that it is so. The Council have there-
fore obtained a piece of evidence to confirm them in
the estimate which they had formed of their own mea-
sure ere it was yet carried into effect. We are under
no necessity of requiring such evidence to be taken as
conclusive upon the question ; but it is certainly con-
firmatory ; there would have been lameness and in-
consistency if things had fallen out otherwise; the
Council must have looked for it, and, now that they
have obtained it, they are not disappointed.
But we should be surprised, and vexed at the same
time, if the Corporation of Liverpool, having taken so
wise, so judicious, and so important a step, should hear
no other note than the hoarse croaking of ravens, or
the dismal screeching of owls, and find nothing
to console them in the consequences of their act
but the silent approbation of their own judgment and
consciences. At this we should indeed be sadly at
fault and miserably annoyed, for we have looked, and
do yet look confidently to results of a much more no-
ticeable, agreeable, and tangible kind ; though for
these we are content to wait.

There are times in which there is great merit in do-
ing what is simply and barely right, and that merit is
now the unquestionable attribute of the Conservative
Corporation of Liverpool. The times, and the act
which they have lately perfected, concur in establish-
ing this virtue as justly theirs. How long has the
public mind been agitated and tormented on the sub-
ject of national and public education ? What vari-
ances, what differences of opinion, and what discords
has it not produced among nearly all orders and classes
of society ?

The advocates of the new system have been subtle
and ingenious, and their sophistical arguments carried
away many. With shame and lamentation we observe
that this jesuitical and atrocious system was established
by government, and is to this day, by parliamentary
grants, supported in Ireland—that part of the United
Kingdom in which sound religious instruction is so
much wanted—above every other ! From Ireland it
was transferred to Liverpool, and from Liverpool we
know not how far it might have spread, if a few va-
liant and fearless champions of the truth had not
raised up a standard against it. A Conservative Coun-
cil is at length elected for this borough, and it will
stand as a proud and honourable monument of their
high principles and tenacious consistency, that one of
their very first acts was to cast out this mutilated mon-
ster, and restore a system in harmony with our na-
tional constitution and the established religion of the

country.
Now we admit that the Council, in doing this, have
done no more than it was their duty to do; but if all
men could on every occasion prevail with themselves
just to " do their duty," it is wonderful what a " new
moral world" we should soon find ourselves in. The
Council had temptations to resist, and difficulties to
overcome, and little to invite them to the performance
of the work before them. There was much plausibi-
lity in the arguments that some education is better
than none, that scriptural instruction would operate as
a religious teat and penal law against Roinanists—and
that by the new system many of the children receiving
instruction in the schools would be put out; and to
have resisted such appeals, in obedience to a severe
and stern sense of paramount duty, is, we say, an
achievement which does infinite credit to those who
performed it. It reflects honour upon our town ; it
makes us proud to acknowledge ourselves denizens of
this great emporium of commerce and civilisation ; it
will greatly exalt the name of Liverpool among the
cities of this vast empire. Let governments, ministers,
or parliaments, decree, or do, as they will, here it has
been unequivocally decided, that the word of God shall
not be put aside for the word of man, nor the people
cheated out of their rights either by cunning artifice,
or insolent presumption.
It has been argued that some of them may thus be
deprived of a useful secular education; but the utility
of that education may well be questioned which only
prepares the young for the finishing hand of the popish
priest. This was the grand but most delusive theory
which in an evil hour opened the way for the liberal
system in Ireland; it was foolishly imagined by the
dupes of the Jesuit and liberal party, that a non-
religious system of education would have the tendency
to withdraw the mind of the people from the influences
of superstition ; and such indeed might he the result,
if there were no popish priest at hand to wield the
machinery which the new system put into his hands.
The State, then, educated, hut the priest turned its
labour and its expenditure to his own profit : the
national system of education in Ireland has had no
other effect, and can have no other, than to strengthen
and consolidate the yoke of popery in that country.
And just the same would be proportionably its fruits
and effects here. The Corporation of Liverpool re-
pudiates the practice, and tramples upon a system
which necessarily produces such fruit. Liverpool de-
sires to educate good subjects for Queen Victoria—not
for Pope Gregory,—and with all its soul approves of,
and confirms the decree of its excellent Council. We
have given an example to the empire, and it will not
be uninfluenttal.

Our contemporary, the Liverpool Journal, is ex-
tremely anxious to expunge the Mechanics' Institution
from the list of donees of municipal bounty—on the
ground chiefly, as we collect, that it was not deserving
of it. It obtained it, he says, under a false pretence
(it promised to give cheap education to the poor), and
it has totally failed so to do. Let nothing then, he
concludes, be taken from such a precedent but a warn-
ing to withhold grants from all such institutions in
future.

There is a candour about our liberal contemporary,
in speaking about this peculiarly liberal institution, for
which we give him credit. We did not expect such an
open confession from any gentleman of " the school,"
and we applaud him highly for it. But he runs with
such breathless haste to his conclusion, that we must
beg to cry " not so fast," at least if he have any wish
to take us along with him.
We contend for the claims Gf the Collegiate Institu-

ion, and we advert to the precedent in the case of the

Mechanics' Institution, not that we rely solely on that
precedent ; for had none such existed, we would still
hope to make good our cause. And what is the answer
we receive ? Oh, that is a bad precedent ; you must
not hope to serve yourself by that ; the recipients of
the public grant in that case deceived the council ; they
solicited it as a charity to the poor, and the poor have
gained nothing by it.
Well, we reply, what is that to us ? We are not go-
ing to deceive the public ; we come forward with no
unreal mockery; we tell a plain unvarnished tale; and
if the mechanics obtained the aid which they solicited,
it is enough for us ; we are entitled to it also, and much

better than they. We care not whether the peculiar
ground on which the mechanics asked the favour con-
ceded failed or not : they obtained it on the ground of

,üblic utility—and that is the foundation on which we

rest. Would our contemporary tie up the purse strings
of the corporation against all grants except those of a
purely eleemosynary character ? or does he suppose

that the poor derive no benefit except from institutions
whose purposes are said to be solely for their benefit,
or which are directly, and expressly, and rea Ily so de
signed ? If se, we differ widely from him on both
points.

The grant to the Mechanics' Institution has turned
out to be on a false pretext; so says the liberal Jour-

nal ; but it cannot now be recalled, and the Institution
continues to dole out its non-religious education to al

that can pay for it. Granted. But here is an addi-
tional claim suggested in favour of an institution
based on religious principles—an institution admirably
calculated to counteract the evil workings of the falsely
pretending, but munificently endowed, and still pro-

gressing academy of lilvnalim

A Conse.

neutralise, so far as it can, the unwise proceed

ink;; 01

its radical predecessors, and the Collegiate lnstitu;ior

ought to obtain four-fold at its hands.
But the Collegiate Institution, says the Journal,
" is not designed even in name for the working classes.'
but to be a college for the chiidren of those who are
able to give them an education of the very best decrip-
tion. What pretext of charity is there here ? On what
ground is the public of Liverpool called on to give

money to aid a college in comueting in the education

of the wealthy, with private tutors ? It is really a most

unfair proposition, and to ask for eleemosynary aid in
accomplishing such an object, is lo ask for the public

chest TO Bb: ROBBED. The grant to the Mechanics' In-
stitution might be right or might be wrong. Consider-
ing what was expected to result from it as an experi-
ment, it might be excusable. But when the experi-
ment has failed, it would he flying in the teeth of all

precedent to give a like sum not even to try an ex-
periment, but to repeat an error which has not even
the varnish of a plausible motive."
What a precious jumble is here !—such indeed as
we shall not attempt to reduce to order. " College
for the working classes !" No, we do hope and trust
the " Collegiate Institution" deals in no such humbug ;
and it is just because it does not, and will not, that we
are anxious to see it liberally supported by the council.
It well becomes this great and opulent town to have
such an institution. Even in a commercial point of
view it would be an important acquisition that it
should establish for itself a name as a seat of educa-
tion and learning, and the municipal council ought to
testify by liberal and substantial proofs its desire to
promote so interesting and useful a result.