LIBERTY
BELL

(August 1752), was cast in England by an order of the Pennsylvania Assembly to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the colony’s existence. Founded in 1701, when William Penn wrote the Charter of Privileges, the colony’s Assembly declared a “Year of Jubilee” in 1751, and commissioned a bell to be put in the Philadelphia State House. The Liberty Bell got its name from being rung at the first public reading of the Declaration of Independence, July 8, 1776, and it cracked as it was rung at the funeral for Chief Justice John Marshall, 1835.

Isaac Norris, the Speaker of the Pennsylvania Assembly, chose Leviticus chapter 25 verse 10:

And ye shall make hallow the fiftieth year, and proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof; it shall be a jubilee.1438

The inscription cast onto the bell, August 1752, stated:

Proclaim liberty through all the land and to all the inhabitants thereof. (Leviticus XXV. 10)1439