The Liverpool Standard, and General Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1854-07-04 00:00:00

SANITARY DOINGS

TO THE EDITOR OF THE LIVERPOOL STANDARD.
Sin,—Although a Raven, I am not a croaker. But
ler which even a Raven must

instances

If I were to express all
oarse. But as I wish to
a grave subject, connected with cer-
doings, I must subdue my feelings, and

utterance to 1
I should actu.

throat,

NI raa:

ei:vthin

IC I love o d corporations, and, of
In fact, I am as thorough an old
I feel angry when I see any
are called) removed. Now,
Sir, I cannot help feeling annoyed when I see a new Cor-
poration, like that of Liverpool, using sweeping measures
for what they are pleased to call " the sanitary improve-
ment" of our town. • It is, indeed, some comfort that "the

Ild beca

e could wish.
abuses (as the

tonoire

Sanitary Committee" are going 'very leisurely about the
work, and that a great many of our crowded thorough-
fares, as well as courts and alleys, are left untouched,
where, to my satisfaction, I see the system of surface
drainage so thoroughly carried out, that I am in good
hopes of finding there many a good fat feast yet. My
sable friends, Cholera and Death, are indulging in the
same expectations. How would the "Sanitary Com-
mittee" like me to poke my beak into their drawing-
rooms ? Why, then, should they poke their noses into
mine ? Just ask them, will you, to do as they have done
hitherto—leave these places alone. I hope the report that
they are going to cleanse them is not true. I have no
objection to their removing the dirt, and improving the
sewerage of the more open thoroughfares by the introduc-
tion of their new system, because neither I nor my sable
friends aforesaid look for our food there ; but it is rather
hard upon myself and my friends that the officers of "the
Sanitary Committee" should poke their noses into every
hole and_corner, in order to smell out what they call
abuses

I do not make these remarks from want of con-
fidence in " the Sanitary Committee," for I believe they
have no intention of disturbing my favourite haunts ; but
if they should be contemplating a descent upon the more
densely populated parts of our town, for the purpose of
carrying out their new-fangled notions there, and carrying
away from there, by means of pipes laid underground, the
filth which now, so much more comfortably, and so much
more to my satisfaction and that of my friends, glides
along the surface and perfumes the air—if that is what
they mean, as you have their ear, just dissuade them from
it, will you ? Or, if you cannot, why then ask them to
go on with their improvements as leisurely as possible,
and leave these places untouched as long as they can. By
doing this, you will oblige my sable friends and myself.—
Your affectionate brother of the quill,
Tower of St. Peter's Church. A RAVEN.

P.S.—You may be anxious to know how this letter got
into your box. The fact is, I got one of the boys of the
Blue School, who has a grudge against the Mayor and
Captain Greig for stopping his holiday, to put it there.

PROPOSED FREE CHURCH,

TO THE RIGHT REV. THE LORD BISHOPOF CHESTER

LETTER 11.

My LoaD,—A desire to arrest the flying folly of the
moment—those epea pteroenta which, after leaving their
unsettling impression in the minds of the simple, pass
into their native obscurity, as beneath the vigilance of men
who are acting under the inspiration of great principles,
—and to condense it for the judgment of your lordship,
has postponed the apology which, at the outset, I was
about to offer for obtruding myself upon your attention-
That apology shall consist in a simple recapitulation of
the circumstances under which I write, whose notoriety
I shall trust to being outweighed by their importance.
I wish to state, therefore, to your lordship, that I am
one of a number of Churchmen who have been induced,
by considerations of a very momentous kind, to contribute
some of their abundance and some of their economy to-
wards the erection in this town of a church whose features,
so far as they present a contrast to most similar under-
takings, were to have been a strict adherence to the order
and spirit of the Prayer-book, a due provision for the re-
verence of the worshippers within its walls, and its more
unreserved, practical dedication to Christ, through His
poor. The needful preliminary in such works is to secure
the formal concurrence of the Bishop, a concurrence which
is usually, as a matter of course, accorded, and that too
with a certain measure of thankfulness and gratulation.
In this instance, however, it has been announced to the
subscribers that your Lordship has been pleased to declare
that you will not consent to the building of this church.
Now, that the consent of the chief ecclesiastical ruler
should be required in these schemes must be, in the con-
viction of the promoters of the one in question, an arrange-
ment not of accident, but of principle. To those who
accept, iu its truest sense, the dictum which fell from the
lips of the martyr of Antioch, the ordained of apostles
1800 years ago, 'Do nothing without the Bishop," this
provision is a Catholic necessity, and its reversal incon-
sistent with their plainest professions. Yet it is equally
incongruous to conceive a bishop absolutely repelling the
charity of his people, and forbidding the devotion of their
substance to the honour of his Master, and the good of
that Church over which he is set to rule, "not as having
dominion," but as being a fellow-helper of its faith and
good works. It cannot be denied, therefore, that this is
an extraordinary exercise of prerogative. It cannot be
denied that it is eminently calculated to provoke an in-
quiry among the laity, as to the nature of its signification,
as to the exact rule of conduct by which it has been im-
pelled, and what in turn it prescribes to themselves. It
is not possible that such an inordinate act of power can
subside with an intimation that detailing objections
is disagreeable, for the detail is due to the body who ask
for episcopal concurrence, in a sense in which they may
contend that they can claim it ; nor is it to the purpose
to say that this detail would be " ineffectual" for that is
assuming, on your Lordship's part, that the legitimate
effect would be the abandonment of the work, and not to
manifest whether or no its abandonment should be re-
quired. No, my Lord, the spirit of your Lordship's office,
appointed not for destruction, but for edification, the spirit
of reason and religion desires that some account should be
taken of an act which bears upon its face the aspect of a
too bold indifference to their plainest dictates and require-
ments.
We wish to know, my Lord, why we are denied the
liberty to spend our money in God's service, and, accord-
ing to the prescriptions of the Church, by God's servant
and the Church's officer. We wish to know why we may
not make provision for the constant offering of the daily
sacrifice according to the rule of God's Church in all
ages, and to the express order of this branch of it to
whichl we owe, and your lordship doubly owes, obedience.
We wish to know why we may not offer, in argeness of
heart, to some of the countless outcasts from the appro-
priated churches of a swarming and neglected city, a place
where, free from the poor contempt which bounty some-
times pours upon its recipients, they may worship our
common Father, and realise the brotherhood of Christ.
We wish to know why, amid the failure of surrounding
schemes to evangelise the masses of the population, and
to exert the influence of the Church upon ignorance and
vice fast becoming too gigantic for control, we may not,
by a stricter adoption of the mode which the Church has
herself propounded for the administration of her work,
attempt to find a supply for the inefficiency so sensibly
experienced and acknowledged. We %ish to know if this
prohibition be the result of caprice or of principle. If of
the former, what there is in a proposal of unusually fair
pretensions to call it forth ; if of the latter, what principle
that rules in the breasts of bishops can justify the obstruc-
tion of a project so practical in its details, and so pro-
raising in result.
My Lord, these are questions, could we but see it—could
we but tear away the veil which custom has spread over
our eyes,—in themselves too grave to be accounted as the
production of an affected solemnity, or an attempt at
declamation. They involve considerations which must be
recognised as important by our rulers, or which, in shaking
the Church to its foundations, will one day startle the
decorum of a cathedral close, and disturb the via inertice
of a bishop's palace.
My Lord, to put your case in the strongest light, and
present it in that view in which perhaps your own mind
will desire to present it to yourself, the only plea that I
can suppose to have at all justified to your lordship this
act of authority, is this, that the promoters of this under-
taking are meanly actuated by an artificial taste for a few
ceremonial peculiarities which common usage has not
gratified ; that they are ready to raise heaven and earth,
and interrupt the course of united effort, for the special
acquisition of a few indifferent forms or useless orna-
ments ; and that for this purpose they are forward to plead
the technical countenance of rubrics, while they show
themselves indifferent to the paramount object which the
Church commends to the desires and diligence of her
children. It might be presumed, therefore, on your lord-
ship's behalf, that these two positions will be endea-
voured to be maintained—first, that the popular mode of
administering the regimen of the Church of England is so
adequate to the work she has to accomplish, that no room
is left for the adoption of other means, nor necessity for
the trial of new experiments ; and, secondly, that, there-
fore, this scheme, so far as it does differ from common
agencies, does so by peculiarities, which, being unneces-
sary, peculiarity alone renders obnoxious.
Taking, then, the latter point first into consideration, let
me remind your lordship that the very head and front of this
scheme are Daily Prayers and Weekly Communion. Is,then,
the restoration of that frequency of the " Breaking of the
Bread, and the Prayers," which frequency was the very
badge of the apostolic Church, and the prominent course of
apostolic life, whose declension was always considered as the
resultof a love waxing cold, and theharbinger of yet further
decay, rendered by its peculiarity in these days indifferent,
so that it is a mere question of a technical refinement of
obedience ? Admit, what none will deny, that in the
purest times of Christianity—that in the times of the
apostles themselves the service of the Church consisted,
and
was expressly believed to consist, in this frequency of
ministration, and what can be thought of a plea which
disco es the revival of that frequency on account of
its novelty ? Why, it was the same plea of " novelty"
that dictated imperial edicts in the first days of the
Church. It was an intention to evade the conse-
%names of such edicts which drove the first disciples of
the faith into caves and catacombs to celebrate with dan-
gerous frequency the §oeial rite of our religion. It