A RED HOT PROTESTANT.

Nelson Examiner and New Zealand Chronicle, Volume I, Issue 13, 4 June 1842, Page 52

A RED HOT PROTESTANT.

We cannot resist the temptation to extract from the Examiner the following precious bit of fanaticism. It would be quite a pity that our readers should lose the chance of finding a clue to the origin of the numerous fires that have occurred in Nelson lately : — At the Bolton " Protestant Association," the Rev. Fielding Ould, of Liverpool, was one of the principal actors. As to the objects they proposed, and the demands they would incessantly urge upon the Government they had assisted to place in office, Mr. Ould was explicit beyond the possibility of being misunderstood. — " One of their objects was to obtain the withdrawment of the Maynooth grant, which amounted to £9,000 a-year, and of all the colonial endowments of popery, which formed an aggregate of £70,000 a-year ; and another of their objectß was church extention by grants from Government." The Rev. Fielding Ould has, we apprehend, studied closely the character of that eminent Protestant emissary, Titus Oates, of pious memory. " The orator," says the report, "produced a powerful effect, by his mysterious allusions to the series of great fires which have occurred in England of late years. The Royal Exchange had been burned down. Nobody knew how that was done. (Sensation.) The Parliament Houses had been destroyed by fire. Nobody knew how that was done! (Great sensation.) An attempt had been made to set fire to the shipping in Portsmouth Dock-yards, and nobody knew how that was done ! (Increased sensation.) Only a few weeks ago, the Tower of London was burned, and (here the speaker resumed a low and emphatic tone) and nobody knew how that was done! (Tremendous sensation.) There had also been an attempt to fire the Horse Guards. Now, it was not his custom to impute guilt where there was no proof; but they had good reason to recollect Guy Fawkes !" Such men as Mr. Ould, Mr. Stowell, Mr. M'Neile, and their fellow incendiaries in the employ of the Protestant Association, are itinerating monuments of the bigotry' and intolerence of an age in which a belter spirit ought to prevail. * The next news that we expect to hear is that the Thames has been set on fire ; and so far from "nobody knowing how that was done," we expect there will be found no difficulty in tracing the act to the Rev. Fielding Ould. But what a pity it is that Mr. Ould had not had an opportunity of conversing with Sir Hardcourt Lees on this subject which so warmly interests him, since it appears from the following that that gentleman could have enlightened him on the subject : — Sir Harcourt Lees, who beats out Murphy by odde, says, in a letter to the Birmingham Advertiser, — " I wrote a short but strong letter to the editor of the Times, on Wednesday nigh.t, giving him the name of the incemiary who had. fired, oy a chemical preparation (which my secret informant saw tried, in a committee of twenty-one traitors, sitting in an executive directory in London), the Houses of Parliament, Exchange, and other buildings. I told him the Tower wag fired by the same means, and I charged him to publish my letter. I see, by hi« paper of Saturday, he. has taken no notice."