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

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 test and penal law against Romanists—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 be 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, but 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 uninfluential

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 6f the Collegiate Institu-
tion, 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
public 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 really so de
signed ? If so. 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 all
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-

kind. Such a man at Mr. Oastler, then, is, 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 be of an essentially Protestant and Conservative
character, and, as such, if it were good for an thing,
it ought to he 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 he 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.