July 8 and the Crack in the Liberty Bell

BY DONALD DeMARCO

July 8-14, 2007 Issue | Posted 7/3/07 at 12:26 PM

When the Duke of Wellington died in 1852, the order was given to toll the bells in his honor at full peal. No sooner had the ringers commenced, the tenor bell, pride of the church, shattered. Upon inspection of the bell, it was revealed that it had been cast in the year 1769, the year of the duke’s birth. Was the coincidence a matter of chance, fate or Providence? Whatever one may think, it should give us pause.

The American Liberty Bell was rung in Philadelphia on July 8, 1776, to call citizens together to announce the adoption of the Declaration of Independence. Its inscription, “Proclaim Liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof,” is taken from Leviticus 25:10. When it tolled on July 8, 1835, at funeral solemnities for Chief Justice John Marshall, who passed away in Philadelphia, it sustained its celebrated crack.

Concerning John Marshall, it is important to note that his principal legacy was the establishment of a more powerful Supreme Court, with the right to override the states wherever national and state interests clashed.

His opponents, led by Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and, later, Andrew Jackson, often threatened to impeach him and make constitutional changes that would limit the court’s power.

Did Marshall’s legacy influence the “exercise of raw judicial power” in the Roe v. Wade case in 1973? Was the crack in the Liberty Bell at his funeral symbolic of what was to come?

A bell with a crack does not ring true. Its defect becomes the sole center of one’s attention. It is like Caruso with a frog in his throat. Does the note of liberty ring true if it does not ring for “all the inhabitants of the land”? Or, as the Declaration of Independence states, for “all men [who] are created equal, endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable Rights [including] Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness”?

And so, as Paul Kengor noted last week, it was eerily significant that in Philadelphia — City of Brotherly Love, Cradle of Liberty, and, from 1790-1800, the capital of the United States — its City Council would pass a motion (June 2007) to give their city the official title of being “pro-choice.”

Would that redoubtable Philadelphian, Benjamin Franklin, whose remains lie in his adopted city, have voted with the City Council majority? Franklin was the youngest son and youngest child but two of a family of 17 children. Would the founder of Philadelphia, whose effigy tops the city hall, William Penn, have voted “pro-choice”?

Penn was a deeply religious Quaker who deplored violence and insisted on charity for all. In his Fruits of Solitude, he writes: “A man, and yet not have the Feeling of the Wants and Needs of his own Flesh and Blood? A Monster rather!” He observed, most critically, that, “men are generally more careful of the Breed of their Horses and Dogs than of their Children.”

Philadelphia’s City Council, in declaring its city as being “pro-choice,” made a number of egregious errors. It betrayed its history, both locally and nationally, repudiated all those, who, in that same city, signed the Declaration of Independence, and dishonored every citizen of the City of Brotherly Love who, being “pro-life,” is not a member of a community that is “pro-choice” on abortion.

Would such citizens feel impelled to migrate elsewhere as William Penn did, which led, ironically, to his founding Pennsylvania?

Archbishop Justin Rigali, chairman of the U.S. bishops’ Committee on Pro-Life Activities, asked “people of good will” to join him in “rejecting the divisive and erroneous label the Philadelphia City Council has forced upon the citizens of Philadelphia today.” He pointed out that, “In a city where so many people vigorously defend life at every stage, proclaiming Philadelphia ‘pro-choice’ is inconsistent with reality. It unfairly saddles those who support life at all stages with this shameful label.”

The simple fact, one that nine members of the City Council somehow neglected to realize, is that Philadelphia is not uniformly in favor of abortion.

One week later, the City Council agreed, by a 13-4 vote, to reverse its early 9-8 decision to declare Philadelphia a “pro-choice” city.

Perhaps the ghosts of Benjamin Franklin and William Penn are still looking after their fair town.

The Liberty Bell may still be cracked, but woe to those who refuse to acknowledge the reality of that fundamental defect.

Donald DeMarco is an adjunct professor at Holy Apostles College & Seminary in Cromwell, Connecticut.

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