The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1836-08-09 00:00:00

TO WILLIAM RATHBONE, ESQ.

SIR,—In the report of the proceedings of the Council at the
quarterly meeting, on Wednesday last, as published in the Mer-
cury of this morning, I find the following expressions attributed
to you :—"He again took that opportunity of contradicting a
falsehood which was repeated every day, that the Bible was ex-
cluded from the (Corporation) schools ; he himself had read the
Bible, and had heard the pupils read it, in the South Schools;
he had,no doubt it was also read in the North School; and if
the assertion that the Bible was excluded were again repeated,
he must say that it was a most daring falsehood"—
You, Mr. William Rathbone, are a bold man, or you would
not have ventured upon the assertion attributed to you by your
brother counsellor of the Mercury. I will not so far violate the
usuage of civilised society, as to apply to yon the epithets which
the Editor of the Mercury has had the bad taste to use in refer-
ence to a zealous and exemplary minister of this town; nor will
I follow even your own example in saying that you have stated
that which you know to be false, or that you have been guilty
of a most daring falsehood. I will merely request your atten-
tion, and that of the public, to what took place in Counsel on
Wednesday, the 6th of July last, leving you to reconcile your
present rabid disckimer with facts which are notorious to the
whole community.
It may be as well (although hardly necessary) to observe that
in what is termed "the Irish system of education," the intro-
duction into the schools of any version of the Bible is entirely
forbidden, and that certain selections are used instead thereof,
in order to conciliate the catholic priesthood, so far as to get
their consent to instruct the children generally in the knowledge
of revealed truth.—

On the day above mentioned Mr. Joshua Walrusley, is
council, moved a resolution in the following words :
" Resolved, that the Irish system of religious education be
adopted,-and have a fair trial."
Upon which the following amendment was moved by Mr. E.
Cropper:—
°'l
hat the proceedings of the Education Committee be con-
firmed, with the exception of that part which refer to the
religious instruction of the children, and that the proposition to
introduce the Irish selection from the scripture referred to the
reconsideration of the committee, with a recommendation that
the Bible be substituted."

Upon this amendment being put, the votes were—for it 6;
against it, 45.—50 the original motion was put aad carried.
That the clergy, and the inhabitants at large of this town,
understood this to be an exclusion of the Bible from the corpo-
ration schools, and a substitution of the Irish selection in its
stead, the meeting at the Amphitheatre, and the consequent
subscription for the erection of schools, in which the children
of the poor may be instructed in the " knowledge of the truth
as it is in Jesus," proved to you and to your fellows, in a way
that is gall and wormwood to you—and I now challenge you to
the proof, that the assertion Which is daily repeated, and which
I now repeat, that "the Bible" has been excluded by the council
from the corporation schools, is "a daring falsehood"—l am
Sir, your humble servant,
AN ABHORRER OF "LIBERALITY,"
falsely so called.