The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1842-10-21 00:00:00

TO CORRESPONDENTS.

We have not received the Manchester Chronicle for several
weeks. •
"J. II." The verses of this writer, although pretty, do
not come up to our standard.
" Ignotus Baud Ignarus" is unreasonable, but we can afford
to pass by his ignorant and ill-natured remarks.
Some poetry and a letter from " Anglo Catholicus" stand
over.

We were unable to send the papers by the first post on Tues-
day last, which will account for any irregularity in their
delivery to our country subscribers.
We are sorry to have given " An Episcopalian" unnecessary
offence. The difference between us is extremely slight ;
arid we feel persuaded that if the question to which he
alludes were argued by us, the entire point of differ-
ence would resolve itself into a dispute about words.
NON TALI Auximo.—Our correspondent, we dare say, is
quite right with respect to the cause which is said to have
influenced Mr. Robinson, of Great George's-street, in
withdrawing his pretensions to represent that ward. The
support of such a journal as that to which he refers, would
damn any candidate.
The Correspondent who offers us, for the purpose of being
lithographed, a drawing of Mr. William Earle in the fight-
ing attitude which he assumed towards Mr. David Hodg-
son, on Wednesday's council, is thanked. The exhibition
of lulus naturffl in Leigh-street would be his market, if
he could manage the subject in wax work.
We are compelled to postpone "A Few Thoughts on Wednes-
day's Council ; " and when we do insert them, we shall
take the liberty of changing the title. The public is nail-
' seated with the balderdash which appears thus headed in
the columns of a contemporary ; and as our correspondent
is evidently " a thinking man," and not a mere jay in the
feathers of an owl, we shall not subject his communication
to the suspicion of emanating from a similar silly source.
To a correspondent who addresses us for the purpose of re-
plying to the circular, recently issued by Mr. James
r Abbott, and commented upon by various Radical contem-
poraries, we say, read the able exposition of this per-
son's conduct, given by Mr. Bramley-Moore, in Wednes-
day's council. After such a tomahawking, Mr. Abbott
looks quite as foolish—and something else—as our corres-
pondent could possibly wish him. By this time we dare
say the " Clerk to the Clerk of Committees" has intimated
as much to his double, the law stationer.
A charge of inconsistency, such as that referred to by " S J,"
who reiterates a few of the witticisms of Mr. Alderman .
Earle, is easily brought, but in this instance is not very
easily proved. Mr. Parker, in his remarks before the
Birkenhead Commissioners, argued for the stoppage of the
steam-boats on Sundays during the hours of divine service,
and we are not aware that he offered the slightest obstacle
to the closing of the public-houses during the same period,
but on the contrary, was always anxious they should be so
closed. Paobably, if Mr. Parker were afforded an oppor-
tunity, he could place the matter in a stronger light than
this ; but we merely state the circumstances as they strike
us at the moment, for the satisfaction of our correspondent.
Mr. Parker is pursued with unrelenting hatred not only
by his unscrupulous opponents, but is sometimes ungene- ,
rously assailed by parties who profess to be guided by the
same principles as himself. Let him, however, persevere,
and he will obtain the support of all whose opinion or
good wishes are of the slightest value.

Ebt Eibrrpoot &tanbarb.

FRIDAY MORNING, OCTOBER 21, 1842.

In the speech of Mr. George Hall Lawrence, at the
recent meeting in West Derby Ward, there is one
position in particular to which we cannot at all accord
our assent; and yet, from the frequency with which it
has been put forward by the same gentleman, both in
the Council and out of it, we suspect that it is viewed
by him as incontrovertible. Mr. Lawrence is " sorry
that the Council has interfered at all in the question of
education ;" that it has undertaken to provide educa-
tion of any description for the poor of the borough.
It ought not to be "an educating body ;" but why it
ought not Mr. Lawrence gives no reason, good or bad ;
and we are therefore left to surmise -and to suspect
that the real objection is the inconvenient 'necessity
which is imposed upon hesitating and wavering Con-
servatives to make up their minds with respect to the
nature of the education to be afforded.

Putting out of view, for the present, the question as
to the system of education to be adopted in the schools
of the Corporation, we must maintain, in direct oppo-
sition to the opinion of that gentleman and those who
think with him, that it is both good and proper that
the Council should be "an educating body." It is
the bounden duty of the Council to provide for the
education of the community for whose local wants it
legislates. We deem it indeed almost criminal, and at
any rate most unwise, in any body similarly consti-
tuted, to neglect so important a duty. Better, undoubt-
edly, than any sanitory regulations ; and better than
the most effective police—more conducive to the end
which these merely restrictive engines have in view—
is the diffusion of sound scriptural education amongst
the people. All experience goes in support of this
assertion ; and for a public body, invested with the
responsibility and the power of providing for the
health, the morality, and the security of a large com-
munity, to confine its views to merely watching and
paving, to police and prison regulations, whilst it
neglects the far more important and effective aid
which the diffusion of sound scriptural education
would afford even to the temporal objects which they
contemplate, is, we repeat, unwise, and almost cri-
minal.

And well indeed would it be for the nation, and for
mankind, if the principle for which we here contend
had been universally acted upon. For to what, let us
ask, is to be attributed the mass of immorality, and
consequent misery, which is to be witnessed amongst
our large towns ; and which is at this moment im-
posing upon ourselves the necessity of erecting an ad-
ditional prison at an expense of not less than one hun-
dred and fifty pounds ? To this. Ife have drawn toge-
ther, by our commerce or our manufactures, large numbers
of our fellow-beings, to toilfor us; and we have restricted
the guardianship offered them by the law to a mere care
for their bodily wants and their bodily safety We
have either given to the population around us no
education at all, or that which is almost worse than
none. We have never sought or adopted the proper
means to make that population a Christian population
and the result is before our eyes—in our expensiv
police, our gigantic workhouses, and our crowded
prisons. The want of sound scriptural teaching to
the children of their poor in time past, is the source of
the crime and want which pervades them. Schools,
not prisons, should be the remedy. And we ask, is
any government, local or national, a wise government,
which shall tell us, with Mr. Lawrence,—we are a
watching, lighting, and imprisoning body, hut it is
beyond our duty to become " an educating body" ?

The Council cannot better work out its acknowledged
legitimate objects than by promoting the education of
the people—than by becoming an instructor of the
children of the poor; and, this admitted, we come to
the question,—what is the nature of the instruction
which it is bound to provide ? What, in fact, iS
EDUCATION, viewed as an instrument to effect the
purposes which all governing bodies have in view--
the increased comfort, morality, and security of the
people? We answer, SCRIPTURAL TEACHING, not
because the law enjoins that it should be such—that it
should be, in fact, more than this, a teaching in the
Scriptures as interpreted by the Church of :England ;
but because experience has proved that none other is
effective, even for the purposes of the utilitarian him-
self! For mere secular education, we entertain a
profound contempt. It never made a man WISER, in
the true acceptation of the word, or BETTER.

In this opinion we find ourselves confirmed by a
powerful contemporary, the London Times, who has
of late devoted his valuable columns to the advance-
ment of a system of scriptural education by her
Majesty's Council.

" The most acute memory for facts," wrote that journal'
on Wednesday last, " the most cunning skill in art, and the
most rapid and comprehensive, nay, even the most cultivated
power of investigating the depths and intricacies of science,
are quite compatible with the most consummate rascality--
quite compatible with the most finished immorality—the
most subtle and irreligious faithlessness. We do not, of
course, mean to say that a diligent training in the arts and
sciences does not tend to refine, or even to purify, the mind ;
and we should be the very last persons to say that such train-
ing, when well directed, and made a subordinate part of a
sound system of teaching, is not the greatest and most
powerful of moral agents ; but by itself it is, as we see in its
too frequent results, quite capable of co-existing with the
worst immorality. And when it becomes not a discipline,
but a mere dry teaching of facts, as e.g. the distance to the
moon, the right ascension of Sirius, or the existing of
HERCULES or WAT TYLER, its moral effects are even rather
pernicious than otherwise. A little knowledge is then found,
as in a late memorable case, to be a dangerous, a very danger-
ous thing."

Nor is that neutral kind of instruction in religion,
towards which the feelings of Mr. (Jeorge Hall
Lawrence are evidently wandering, much better than
mere secular education. On this point, too, perhaps,
he may be desirous of hearing the opinion of the same
writer.

" The plain practical view of the case is, that this sort of
neutral knowledge can neither make a boy better nor worse.
Let people open their eyes to the fact that the greatest rascal,
have been in many instances extremely proficient in their
acquaintance even with Scriptural facts. A man who bunts
through the whole sacred volume in search of what he thinks