The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1842-12-09 00:00:00

some points on v

of secular education apart from religion. Really, to go into
such a sea of controversy as the whole subject opened, and
which ought to have been settled long ago, was impossible;
and therefore he hardly knew where to begin. He would,
however, commence with expressing his surprise that gen-
tlemen calling themselves conservatives, and who acted upon
those sentiments in all other respects, should be found
starting with some new sc

heme,,,vhen that which was already
in progress was answering the expectations with which it had
been framed, when it was increasing the number of scholars,
when it was establishing a wholesome discipline, which had
been greatly retarded by the agitation that had taken place in
that room to induce the Roman Catholic parents to with-
draw their children from the schools, and by an agitation
among Roman Catholics from one end of the town to the
other

And when the town had expressed so unequivocally
its approbation of the course now pursued, when the large
majority of the council was decidedly opposed to any
chonge really to light up and resuscitate the agitation
which men had thus desired to put down, what but a
desire to distress their own party could have induced
them to re-open this question ? Mr. George Hall Lawrence,
for whose kind and conscientious feeling he had great respect,
but under whose judgment he would not willingly place him-
self on this question, had told the Council that he had stu-
died this subject; and he had studied itso hard indeed that he
had become bewildered in consequence of being unable to
distinguish between principle and expediency. He said he
would do in public what he would not do in private. If this
was .a matter of expediency; if the Protestant and Popish re-
ligions were mere matters of political difference ; if they were
not, the one in strict conformity to the revealed will of God,
and the other in opposition to it, then he could understand
one gentleman who said " Here are two ways, one takes me
fifteen miles round about, but both arrive at the same point."
But their position was otherwise. One man said " I can
stand upon principle in my private capacity, but in my pub-
lic capacity I can not." Then they had had a long infer-
ential argument as to what municipal regulations entailed
upon the council. There again the gentleman was in a per-
fect fallacy. What did they sit there for but to decide ac-
cording to law, what according to their judgment would be
the best appropriation of their funds? If they had been acting
contrary to law, point it out, and they would willingly make
the amende honourable; but as far as it appeared to him the
practise was in conformity with the law. He must have
strange notions of how the laws of the country were ad-
ministered, who said, " because I am in a minority I must
have precisely the same advantages and power as you who
have a decided majority, though my minor views are unjust
and unfair, or inexpedient or improper." Every govern-
ment would be upset if that was to be the principle upon
which we were acting. The council were taunted with
having practised a system of exclusion ; but gentlemen who
made the tannt were probably unaware that whatever
might be the practise pursued now, the former body
practised exactly the same. They now said "we are
anxious that there should be no religion in particular, so that
every man may come." We now said, "we do not teach a
religion that man has framed, we are not under mere tem-
poral princes, but we are under the declared will of God,
and we cannot teach any thing but that which he has given
us to teach ; we have swept out from our house, namely,
the schools, the idolatry that was within its walls, and those
who are idolators will not come there." When you (look-
ing at Mr. Earle) were in power—
Mr. EARLE.—Look at the Mayor, and not at me. Your
arguments have no force upon me, and most probably none
upon your friends.
The MAYOR.—Order, order. _ _ _

Mr. EARLE.—I beg pardon, Mr. Mayor. He looked at

Mr. HoonsoN, in continuation, said he should say some-
thing to Mr. Earle by and bye. Having swept the house,
and cleared it of these things, they, as became true Chris-
tians, professing the religion of the Bible, left every man to
come in who would take the Scriptures clear and unadulter-
ated, without note or comment ; they kept out all abomi-
nations from within, without excluding any body; they
would not go into the temple of idols ; they would not bow
down to Juggernaut—neither would they submit to pollu-
tion ; and if the former heresywas to be again taught in these
schools, they would withdraw the Protestant children from
the contamination of such contact. Now, to say they were
guilty of intolerance or injustice was absurd; he denied the
position in tato, and threw It back upon those who asserted
it, and said, " it is you who cast the stone ; you do not ap-
prehend the exact similarity of your own case, because you
would make your will your law to constrain us to pursue it;
you enforced a system that was as objectionable to us as
our's can by possibility be to you; and, mark, with this
great difference—the Roman Catholic population of Liver-
pool is a very poor part of the population, contributing next
to nothing to the public funds, and you want us to apportion
nineteen-twentieths of the whole money to the education of
the Roman Catholics !" True enough the schools became
empty at first; but why? Because the Roman Catholic
priesthood turned out the children of their persuasion; they

would not adopt the pure word of God, nor come near the
schools. Now he came to the question of secular education
as apart from religions instruction. He dared say they
should be asked, "will you not keep these children from
running about the streets ? Will you not give them
some good, because they cannot take all the good? Will
you not_ keep them from herding in our various streets,
and courts, and allies ?" In the first place, he thought
the whole statement a fiction, that they were running

He believed they were too much occupied to do
so. The Roman Catholics, too, had built their own
schools, and they would have taken them to themselves,
whether we had them or not, but that might be a matter of
opinion. The question, however, was secular education
apart from the religion of God. He contended that it was a
gross mistake—that there was no foundation for it in Scrip-
ture—that it had no support in history—to suppose that
secular education alone was a benefit. Instead of leaving the
poor and ignorant in the simple lot they possessed, and leav-
ing them to run riot in our alleys, supposing that position
was true, which he denied—it was giving them the power of
unsanctified knowledge ; and, according to their degree of
knowledge, it enlarged their sphere of mischief. Mr. Hodg-
son then quoted passages from Plato, Bacon, Burke, and
Allison, to shew the dangerous tendencies of unsanctified
knowledge; that with the increase of knowledge there came
an enlarged power of committing the most fearful mischiefs.
He was aware that the reformers, as they called themselves,
had taken a great deal of pains to teach little ragged children
Latin and a great variety of things. Now, their parents in
many cases when they went home had not even a potato to
give them ; and in ninety-nine out of a hundred of their
cases the need of the stomach must be supplied by the
labour of the hands. There was false sympathy and vanity in
attempting to teach them that which would not only be useless
to them but a positive nuisance, disqualifying them from every
occupation belonging to their position, and raising them to a
station in which they were good for nothing. The great
thing, be contended, was, to improve these poor children in
the knowledge of the Bible, and, next to that, to give them
such an education as would not disturb the course they were
ordained to pursue. He was willing that every man should
rise, but as he who rose would rise from superior talent, and
not from this false sympathy and forced education in unsuit-
able circumstances, it was idle to attempt it, and worse than
idle, for it was wasting the public property, endangering the
public morals, and giving food for Botany Bay and the gal-
lows. He knew perfectly well that the gentlemen who advo-
cated the amendment did so in perfect sincerity, and that the
opposition of the Roman Catholics to the existing system was
given in sincerity likewise : they were desirous of forwarding
the object they had in view, and so were all classes of men.
The attempt, therefore, to conciliate, by mixing up two oppo-
site principles in the way that Mr. Lawrence proposed, was
one of the vainest ideas that could enter into the head of any
man. Further, the existing elements of the British consti-
tution had, by the removal of restrictions upon the Roman
Catholics and other sectarians, necessarily entailed upon
England the continual conflict of opinions for the rea-
sons he had just mentioned. Whilst under the autho-
rity of defined limits each man knew how far he could
go ; but now the door was open to ambition each man
pursued his own object with different degrees of power ; the
consequence was, that the system was disturbed, and would
be so long as the present state of things lasted. The stronger
party, which, thank God, were the Protestants, would keep
down the weaker ; and the constant effort of the one and the
other to gain their object, would end, if not timely corrected,
in discontent and the disruption of society. This would
cause fresh enactments, and the effect would be that all those
who sought to gain power by the removal of restrictions
would find they had lost power by it, that they had at last
lessened their privileges instead of gaining any. As to the
suggestion of selling the schools, he would go into that when
the proper time came ; but he begged to say, that ,when the
time did arrive, be should object to any such proposal. The
great battle field of religious principle was education. " Train
up the child as he should go," and you trained him to that

which was good ; but, if you did not he would assuredly go
into error. They had been charged with intolerance. It
was their bounden duty to give a sound Protestant religious
education to the children under their charge ; but how could
they pretend to give sound religious instruction upon a
vital question, when the same children saw that they admitted
into the schools, persons who would avowedly say that they
need not be taught it at all? The Church of Rome was always
a political church ; and if she gained this cause, she would
gain a lever and a power against us, which we should
not be able to gainsay. The council had another duty
to perform—it was their duty to uphold the truth by their
example, to preserve that truth, and to bring others to it.
He would persecute no man. He did not say that the poor
should not have secular education, but in the present case
they were not only called upon to give secular education,
but to put aside the Bible. That was a very extraordinary
position ; and he thought he could refer to documents ad-
dressed to Mr. Blackburn, in which it was made clear that
the Bible was excluded under the former system from the
schools.

Mr. BLACKBURN.—No such thing.
Mr. HODGSON thought, however, that he could convict
Mr. Blackburn of inconsistency in the motion which he had
brought forward. Did he mean to say, that if the Bible was
locked up in the schools, they could be said to use the Bible
in them ? No. What was it, then, but an exclusion of the
Bible, if the children were allowed to come in on the express
condition that they might not use it? Was not that an ex-
clusion of it?

Mr. BLACKBURN.—It is not an exclusion, but only a non-
enforcement of it. _

Mr. HODGSON said he had a very different notion about it,
but the public would judge. Mr. Hodgson proceeded with
his address at considerable length ; and he concluded with
an eloquent call upon the council to maintain the present
system of giving sound religious and Protestant education to
the childr.ln of the poor.
It being now twenty minutes to five o'clock, Mr. ASPINAL
said, that as the council had been sitting for more than five
hours and three quarters, they must be exhausted, and he
would, therefore, move the adjournment of the debate.
(Cries of " Adjourn.")
Mr. BUSHELL seconded the motion, and it being carried,
the debate was adjourned till Wednesday next.

THE ACCIDENT ON THE VERSAILLES RAILWAY.--The
important trial arising out of this awful accident concluded
on Saturday last, when it was decided that the administrateur
deligue, the provisional director, the chief of the Paris station,
the civil engineer, the chief of the station at Versailles, and
the inspector of the service, should all be arraigned as
" guilty of homicide through imprudence."