The Education Question.

Chapter XV.

The Education Question - Restrictions upon the Education of the Catholics - Evasion by the Protestant Clergy of their obligation to establish Schools - The Charter Schools - Struggles of the Peasantry to obtain Education - The Kildare-place Society - Discords in that Body, resulting from their enforcement of Religious Education - A pious Fraud - Mode in which the Education War between the Kildare-place Society and Myself was carried on - Letters; from Doctor Doyle, the Earl of Dououghmore, the Rev. Mr. Armstrong - The National System of Education - Mr. Stanley’s opposition - Withdrawal of the Parliamentary Grant from the Kildare-place Society - Combination of the extreme Factions against the National System - Ultimate Triumph over Bigotry - Moral of the Education War.

In the whole of that mass of wickedness and folly, known under the name of the penal laws, there was, perhaps, no item so wicked or so foolish as the denial of education to the Roman Catholic youth of Ireland. Nevertheless, the statutory provision which forbade Roman Catholics to teach or be taught, was surpassed in evil by a voluntary accession to the crime, of which the clergy of the Established Church were in great numbers guilty. By the penal laws, Roman Catholics were strictly forbidden to engage in the business of education, and they were made liable to special punishment for instructing the children of parents professing their own faith. As a sort of counterfoil to this cruel and most impolitic restriction, a step was taken towards providing means of education for the poor, by obliging the Protestant incumbent of each parish, at the time of his induction, to take a solemn oath binding himself to provide a school and a teacher for the children of his parish, and to defray the necessary expense from out of the revenues of the benefice. This engagement was in a large number of instances altogether disregarded; and as the result the children of the peasantry were, almost generally throughout the kingdom, left without any means of education, except such as the peasants themselves could procure, at first by stealth and in defiance of the law, and, subsequently, in the face of obstacles that rendered a proper system of instruction impossible of attainment. It is true, a vote of some £40,000 was annually appropriated by parliament to the support of the Protestant charter schools; but these were designed as proselytising institutions, and were, moreover, conducted upon principles so vicious, and so entirely opposed to nature, as to lead to their suppression by common consent, though not until their manifold abuses had brought them into notoriety as a public nuisance, and forcibly called for the interference of the government.

Under these circumstances, it became matter of wonder to all reflecting persons, not that an imperfect state of civilisation existed in Ireland, but that the entire population had not relapsed into barbarism. To my mind there are few traits in the history of the Irish peasant more affecting than the persevering energy with which he, for generations, struggled against all difficulties, in order that he might secure for his children some rudiments of education. It is, indeed, scarcely possible for any man, whose knowledge of Ireland dates 50 years back, to think without emotion upon the strange shifts and devices to which this passion for knowledge (for such it truly was) gave birth.

For my part, I cannot reflect, in any spirit but one of admiration and pity, upon the poor scholar, and his ready welcome at the peasant’s hearth; upon the philomath, next to the priest, the object of the veneration of the entire parish, purely from his claims to learning, and often in spite of moral defects and aberrations, little likely to secure public esteem; upon the hedge-school, with its incidents of voluntary contributions to the comforts of the master and the cheerful extension to him of the cordial hospitality of the neighbourhood. Those traits can now be observed no longer, since the state of things that brought them out to view has fortunately ceased to exist. They should not, however, be suffered to pass front the memory, where they can scarcely dwell apart from a kindly recollection of good feelings marred by bad laws, or from a generous pity for the sufferings of a people, steeped in ignorance, and yet striving against hope in the pursuit of knowledge.

At a very early period of my life I became sensible to these impressions; and, fully awake to the responsibility that devolved upon me, as an individual, of doing what lay in my power to avert the miserable consequences that must attend upon a nation which suffers the bulk of its people to increase in numbers, and yet to remain in moral darkness, though living in the midst of the splendour of an advanced condition of civilisation, I accordingly took care that those who were immediately dependent upon me should not lack the means of education, and, I believe, In my time built no fewer than five schools. But something more than individual exertion was necessary to this great work; and, accordingly, it was with pleasure I found myself able to join with an association known as “The Kildare-place Society;” in a general movement for the extension of the blessing of education to all classes of the Irish people, “without any attempt to interfere with the peculiar religious opinions of any.”

My first connexion with this Society was the result of a visit made to me at Lyons by Mr. (now Judge) Jackson, and Mr. Maquay, as a deputation from the committee, sent to solicit my cooperation. Upon the showing of these gentlemen, that the object of the society was to promote general education, irrespective of sectarian views, and in such a manner as should not involve any offence to the religious feelings of the people, I agreed to join it and became a subscriber. The Duke of Leinster, at the same time, consented to act as president. It was not long, however, until the old bane of Ireland, religious discord, interrupted this union, and a war arose, which ended in the formation of the National Board of Education, and the appropriation to it of the parliamentary grant that had been for some years given to the Kildare-Place Society. The cause of quarrel was the determination of the latter to force the reading of the Bible, without note or comment, in all the schools under their control, as the condition upon which assistance for their support would be afforded. I confess I did not at first anticipate that any objection could be made to this condition; and I was strengthened in this belief by the circumstance that some priests in my neighbourhood did comply with it and received aid from the Society.

This was done, I believe, through a sincere desire to procure the means of education for the people; and one reverend gentleman, who is now a bishop, and to whose school I subscribed, did actually get the Bible read daily in the school-room, by the permission of his diocesan (the celebrated Doctor Doyle), at the same time taking the precaution of rendering his submission to the rule of the Society innocuous to the consciences of his flock, by performing the obnoxious operation in the absence of the scholars. I am in no degree inclined to justify “pious frauds;” but in this case there certainly was a good motive and end. The objection of the priesthood to the reading of the Bible being insuperable, the reverend gentlemen alluded to continued their plan, with a view of obviating the effect of that objection in preventing their flocks from being educated; and the end attained for the time was their education.

Such occurrences, as it appeared to me, ought to have convinced the managers of the Society that the rigid enforcement of their rule must operate to prevent the attainment of their object of educating all classes; and as soon as the nature of the difficulty became fully known to me, I did all that in me lay to induce the Society to remove it, and so, at all events, to secure for the children of the poor a free opportunity of moral and intellectual education. The committee, however, was in the hands of a few professional fanatics, who, in that day, were in the habit of seeking, through Protestantism and piety, a ready road to the bench; and so my warnings were disregarded, and a barrier of Bibles built up between the people and civilisation.

Here was a new grievance brought above ground and within reach of the professional agitators upon the other side; and as they did not at all lack the disposition to use it, a new war of opinion forthwith sprung up. To prevent the prosecution of this most unnatural contest, I laboured long and hard. But the professional gentlemen were too many both for me and for themselves; and after driving all liberal Protestants from their counsels, they finally succeeded in causing the withdrawal from themselves of the parliamentary grant, and the establishment (I may now say, with nearly complete success) of the National system of education.

It is a curious, yet humiliating view of human nature, that a retrospect of the occurrences at this stage of the Irish education war presents to the mind. On the one hand are to be seen a body of men, originally brought together for a purpose the most honourable that can be aimed at by human beings - that of elevating the moral nature of their fellow-men - and yet suffering themselves to be induced, by trading politicians, to postpone the attainment of their grand object to the prosecution of a party quarrel, and hunting down, with a virulent energy only known in religious wars, the humblest individual who, wishing to aid them in their course, dared to hint at the folly of building up obstacles notoriously capable of impeding it.

On the other side an observer was, and even at this day, in reference to the same dispute, still is, offended by the sight of a hard fight against civilisation again marshalled under the banner of religion; and all the arts of polemical strategy employed to prevent the instruction of a generation of men, lest they should be taught to read that book which all the disputants believe to contain the inspired word of the Almighty. It is strange that such feelings should exist - most strange that they should have a place in the minds of men in other respects benevolent and enlightened. That they did so exist, however, I had personal opportunities of knowing during my intercourse with the Kildareplace Society. No sooner did I begin to grow troublesome to the lawyers, in my endeavours to render the working of the Society effective, in accordance with its original design, than those gentlemen showed that they would not allow their projects to be so disturbed with impunity.

I was accordingly set upon by professional orators whenever I dared to raise my voice at the public meetings, in support of “the leading principle of the Society;” and when that did not succeed, and opponents of the same cloth came to my rescue, then I was attacked in scurrilous libels published in the newspapers, and, when they were too foul for that channel, printed in pamphlets, and thrust into the hands of passers-by at the doors of the Society House. Of one of my perils among these false brethren I must tell a few particulars, as they illustrate the general state of the case.

It happened that the priest of my immediate parish was a person of not very amiable character or temper, and that he and I had a quarrel, in the course of our relation as tenant and landlord, to the details of which I need not advert. It occurred, however, at the close of a period of several years, during which I had shown him whatever hospitality and civility was in my power; and was engaged in by me, in some degree on the part of his own flock, between whom and himself I was obliged to interfere as a magistrate.

Of this reverend gendeman’s liberality, in the matter of Bible reading, I had an opportunity of judging before he was removed from my neighbourhood, by the fact of his having publicly burned a number of testaments, which had been distributed among his parishioners, with the very best motives, by a lady who was then a member of my family. What then was my surprise when, at one of the meetings of the Kildare-place Society, I found my remonstrances against the impossible condition met by the secretary (now Mr. Justice Jackson) drawing from his pocket “a letter from the respected parish priest of his Lordship’s parish,” in which the reverend gentleman, after roundly abusing me, declared that “it was always his practice” to have the Testament read in his parish schools, and in the chapels, in the Sunday schools. [The poor man never had a Sunday school in his chapel at Lyons.] The insinuation obviously pointed by the secretary, and by others of his learned brethren who spoke, was, that it was Lord Cloncurry, and not the priest, who opposed Bible reading; that I was conjuring up difficulties which existed only in my own mind, and that “so far was it from being the fact that the Roman Catholic clergy were universally opposed to scriptural education, that there were among them to be found some of the most efficient friends of scriptural instruction.”

The result has too plainly shown how entirely at variance with the true state of matters was this account of it and the following letters will show how groundless, even then, was the insinuation made in reference to myself. The Rev. Mr. Nolan, whose name is mentioned in them, was the parish priest referred to with *respect *and *veneration *by Mr. Jackson:- *

The Rt. Rev. Bishop Doyle to Lord Cloncurry.*

Old Derrig, Carlow, March 10th, 1824.

“My Lord - The letter which you did me the honour to address to me in Dublin, reached me only on last night. I regret very much the delay which has occurred, and that I could not until now assure your Lordship, that nothing almost could he more painful to me than that a clergyman of our Church should have excited the just displeasure of your Lordship.

It is our duty to he patient with all; but we should be greatly devoted to those few of your Lordship’s rank who look upon us as fellow-men, and can sympathise with us in our unmerited sufferings.

I write to Mr. Nolan by this day’s post, and will state to him the heads of your Lordship’s statement, as it is just that every man should be heard in his own defence; and as soon as it will be in my power to do so, I shall inform your Lordship of the result of my inquiry, and hope it will prove satisfactory to your Lordship. I have the honour to be, with the highest respect and esteem,

Your Lordship’s most obedient and most humble servant,

J. Doyle.” *

The Rt. Rev. Bishop Doyle to Robert Cassidy, Esq.*

Carlow, February 19th, 1829.

“My dear Sir-I have just now arrived here from Dublin by Maryborough. I wished very much to stop, at least some hours, at Monasterevan, to pay my respects to your father, and speak with you on our political prospects; though, ‘till the bill and the introductory speeches appear, we can only speculate. If they emancipate, as they ought, all things may go well.

I feel how much you have done in the matter of the legacy, and hope you will in a little time be enabled to complete it. I would have been surprised if Mr. Kavanagh had not caused you even useless trouble; for, at war with himself, he must give pain to others.

Old Nolan, as Lord Cloncurry properly enough calls him, is, and always was, a most unmanageable sort of being. I am not surprised at his misstatement. I hoped when I removed him from Lyons he would cease to give trouble; but his habits were not formed but confirmed when I first knew him.

I did not read, for I had not leisure, the report of the knaves’ meeting at Kildare-place; but I am exceedingly distressed at what you state as having occurred. I will oblige Nolan to account to me for his conduct; but, though I reprove him, how can I repair the injury done by him to Lord Cloncurry? I will write either to you or to his Lordship, on hearing from Mr. Nolan. And have the honour to be, my dear sir,

Most truly yours,

J. Doyle.” *

The Rt. Rev. Bishop Doyle to Lord Cloncurry.*

Carlow, February 20th, 1829.

“My Lord - On yesterday I was favoured with a note from Mr. Cassidy, informing me of the pain resulting to your Lordship from a letter written by Rev. Mr. Nolan to the secretary of the Kildare-place Society. I wrote immediately to Mr. Nolan, who called upon me this morning, and expresses his sincere and deep regret for having written the letter alluded to. He was, at the time of writing it, as he is at present, suffering under a most painful disease, which sometimes affects his temper; and was urged, by feelings of dissatisfaction at some then recent occurrences, to indulge in reflections which he now most sincerely regrets. He blames, in his usual manner, Mr. Jackson for having produced his letter, after having, through a Mr. Topham, applied for permission to do so, which permission he, Mr. Nolan, did not give; and thus the public injury which your Lordship has received has been aggravated without his Concurrence.

He acknowledges the exaggerated threat used by him to destroy the Protestant versions of the Bible, if circulated among his flock at Lyons; but says that his approbation of the use of the Sacred Scriptures in schools, was confined to those used by Catholics, accompanied with explanatory comments, as prescribed by the superiors in the Catholic Church. The injury done your Lordship is not much diminished by these explanations. I lament it most sincerely; and Mr. Nolan would regret it more, if possible, than he does, were his health in a less painful or dangerous state. I have the honour to be, my Lord,

Your Lordship’s most obedient, humble servant,

J. Doyle.” *

The Rt. Rev. Bishop Doyle to Lord Cloncurry.*

Carlow, October 14th, 1829.

“My Lord - I have been for some time endeavouring to erect here a small cathedral, with a view not only to provide for the more decent exercise of the Divine worship, but such as would also, by exhibiting a better style of architecture, contribute to the general improvement of the country. I mentioned the matter to some noblemen - His Grace the Duke of Leinster, the Marquis of Lansdowne, of Downshire, Lord Clifden, &c., proprietors of laud, like as your Lordship, in different parts of the Diocese of Kildare or of Leighlin - all of whom were pleased to assist my exertions by some contribution to the building in the erection of which I am engaged. I certainly feel more than ordinary delicacy in praying the notice of your Lordship to such a subject on account of the incessant claims upon your bounty, to which the generosity of your character gives access; but as I am writing to some other noblemen interested in the advancement of the country, and among them to your neighbour, *Lord Mayo, *I thought you would not be displeased with me for mentioning the matter to your Lordship, and I do no more. With the most perfect esteem, I have the honour to be, my Lord,

Your Lordship’s most obedient and most humble servant,

J. Doyle.”

My reply to the request contained in this letter drew on a renewal of the correspondence respecting Mr. Nolan, and brought the two following letters from the bishop:-

The Rt. Rev. Bishop Doyle to Lord Cloncurry.

Carlow, February 12, 1830.

“My Lord - On my return here from Dublin, late on yesterday, I found upon my table the letter of the 10th of this month, with which your Lordship has honoured me.

I assure you there is not a nobleman in Ireland, with the exception of the Duke of Leinster, whom I would be more anxious to gratify than your Lordship; so that if in this letter I do not, in all respects, fulfil your wishes, the deficiency will not be owing to a want on my part of an inclination to do so.

I have not seen the Seventeenth Report of the Kildare-place Society, unless in the mutilated shape in which it appeared in the newspapers, and am, therefore, but imperfectly acquainted with the nature of the calumnies on your Lordship published in that Report. But as the speeches and documents emanating, for years past, from that place, have been chiefly remarkable for a want of candour and truth, it is to me a matter of some surprise that they could give your Lordship pain; for what is the value of good sense, rectitude of conduct, and high character, unless they afford protection against the evil reports and misrepresentations which are constantly emanating from such places as Kildare-street?

I recollect the substance of your Lordship’s communication to me in, I think, February last year, relative to the late Rev. Mr. Nolan. I sent for him at that time, and after hearing him, I wrote you a note, to which I beg now to refer you, wherein I expressed for him, and at his desire, his contrition for the injury he had done your Lordship. I adverted, if I recollect well, to the natural acerbity of his temper, and to the illness under which he laboured - an illness which terminated shortly afterwards in his death. I thought then, and had reason given to me to think, that your Lordship was appeased; and, therefore, was filled with regret when I found, in a letter recently published by your Lordship, a most severe animadversion on the memory of a man removed from this scene of contention-a man who, whatever might have been his faults, had once enjoyed your friendship, and who, your Lordship will permit me to say it, had a right to have his faults buried with him in his grave.

Far be it from me to excuse his conduct. His misrepresentation of your Lordship was most unwarrantable: he regretted it deeply and bitterly. His letter, he said, was written to the Kildare-street people at a moment when trouble and disease embittered his mind. They applied to him for permission to publish that letter, which be declined to give; but they of Kildare-street had a purpose to serve, and did not hesitate about the means of effecting it. They published the letter, and wounded your Lordship; but they sacrificed their own honour, as well as the feelings and character of a dying man.

I confess, my Lord, that I am at a loss as to the mode in which I should, as you require, aid in vindicating your name in this matter otherwise than I have done, by placing in your hands the note to which I have above referred; for your Lordship will not require of me to pronounce of a dead man that he was, whilst living, guilty of ingratitude and dishonesty, when the subject matter of the charge is hospitality exercised towards him; and dealings in houses and lands, of the merits of which I am ignorant, but with respect to which the deceased, who cannot now plead, held opinions the very reverse of those entertained by your Lordship.

For my own part, and independent of this matter, I am quite certain that, besides your Lordship’s unwillingness to be found allied with “certain needy lawyers, showing no other utility than that of doing mischief,” you objected to the Kildare-street system, not because it required the indiscriminate reading of the Sacred Scriptures by children, without note or comment - however you might think such a system liable to abuse - but principally because you found that Catholic children would not resort to schools in which such a system prevailed and, therefore, that money levied off the whole community would be employed to educate the children of only a small portion of the people - but to goad and insult the great majority of them. It was this reason which weighed with your Lordship; and with whom does it not weigh, unless with fanatics, or the weak-minded, on those who love discord, and rejoice when they do evil? And certainly with such a reason, so often avowed by your Lordship, I think you stand so fairly before the country, as to be in no need whatever of my poor testimony for your vindication.

Your Lordship being a Protestant need not assign a reason, as we Catholics are bound to do, why the reading of the Sacred Scriptures without note or comment by children is objected to by us; for your Lordship, as a public man, it is enough to know that the Kildare-street system of education is cast off by the vast majority of the people, and upon religious grounds, which in Ireland have been, and are, and, I trust, always will be, immoveable. It belongs to us Catholics to state the reason of this our determination. We have done so one thousand times, in every place, and in every form; but, like one singing to the deaf, or preaching to the dead, we hitherto have not been heard. Accept, I pray you, the assurance of the perfect esteem with which I have the honour to remain, my Lord,

Your Lordship’s most obedient, humble servant,

J. Doyle.” *

The Rt. Rev. Bishop Doyle to Lord Cloncurry.*

Carlow, February 10, 1830.

“My Lord - I have but an imperfect recollection of the misstatement relating to your Lordship, published at Kildare-place last year by the Society, which holds there its annual meetings. They imported, as I recollect, that your Lordship was opposed to the system of education upheld there, not for the reasons so often and so forcibly stated by your Lordship, but from a disguised feeling of hostility to the reading of the Sacred Scriptures, or, perhaps, to the truths revealed in them. This evil imputation was sought to be affixed to you by a reference to, or quotation from, a letter said to have been written to the Society by the late Rev. Daniel Nolan, sometime parish priest of Kill or Blackchurch, in the Diocese of Kildare, wherein your Lordship resides; and in which letter the writer stated that he discontinued his connexion with the Society, or excluded the Sacred Scriptures from his school, at the suggestion of your Lordship.

I also recollect that the statement thus put forward by the Society was shortly afterwards formally contradicted, and the falsity of it proved, by the brother of the deceased, who, at the time referred to, had been his (Mr. Nolan’s) curate, and is now his successor at Kill, or Blackchurch.

Your Lordship, justly indignant at the attempt thus made to convert your righteous opposition to a mischievous society into a charge against yourself, and at finding this charge sustained by a letter purporting to be written by a man whose opposition to the reading of the Sacred Scriptures without note or comment by children was well known to you, very justly called upon me to oblige him to state the truth, and so acquit your Lordship of this foul charge, so dangerously insinuated against you.

I did, without delay, what your Lordship required, and communicated to you, with the express knowledge and at the desire of the late Mr. Nolan, his avowal of the injury he had done you, as well as the expression of his deep regret for having been misled in thinking or writing what was so inexcusable in itself, and so painful to your Lordship. Should your Lordship deem it proper to further notice this matter, you are at full liberty to make such use as you may judge proper of my note above referred to, as well as of my letter of Monday last addressed to your Lordship, or of such portions of the latter as have reference to this subject.

I am sincerely sorry that there should be any necessity of reverting to these calumnies on your Lordship, now that Mr. Nolan is removed from among us, especially as his conduct in reference to that Society, and to your Lordship, was such as cannot be vindicated; but he was, as your Lordship recollects, a person of very peculiar habits of mind and character. He always considered and designated the Kildare-street people as a congregation of knaves who squandered the public money, and thought himself justified in dealing with them as they dealt with government and the country. I have the honour to be, my Lord,

Your Lordship’s most obedient, humble servant,

J. Doyle.”

I may here introduce two letters which will not only show that my zeal in the cause of education was of an old growth, but will also exhibit opinions, formed under the influence of very opposite circumstances, in reference to the bearings of the question:- *

Richard Earl of Donoughmore to Lord Cloncurry.*

Tunbridge Wells, 7th August, 1820.

“My dear Lord - Upon the subject of your acceptable letter, which, from the staleness of its date, may have, perhaps, escaped your recollection altogether, the truth is the best apology to make. During the pressure of the parliamentary campaign, I put by many interesting objects at the moment, with the intention of giving them an early consideration; but I had laid them by so carefully, that it was but by accident that I recovered them at all, and your letter amongst the number, on making a review of my papers in this place of retirement, to which your friend and my brother, Lord H., have retreated, to breathe a little uncontaminated air during the recess.

The printed paper which accompanied your letter, and of which I more than suspect you are well acquainted with the author, is a correct and judicious statement of the case, and sufficiently proves that if we had fewer parsons, of all sorts and sizes, we should have more education and more morality. Our well-fed ecclesiastics don’t much care for *the book *about which all the racket is made, except so far as it may serve as a bone of contention; and their working brethren of the same cloth will suffer no Bible but their own. I should, therefore, say that there are faults on both sides; and I would either have editions of both sorts, and preceptors, too, of both religions, or I would not include the Bible amongst the school books at all. But I fear it is the fate of our unfortunate country to furnish the field for perpetual religions contentions, and for the propagation of that ill-fated science which is to teach us how to hate one another.

What an extraordinary conflict it is for which my brother and I are to prepare ourselves, and which is to open on the 17th of this month. From having been a member of the Secret Committee, and being, therefore, acquainted with the sort of evidence which is in existence against the illustrious inculpated personage, I can have little doubt of what the decision ought to be, and of what it will be in the upper House of Parliament. In the other House no man living can anticipate the result. The members there seem to have already ranged themselves too much as partisans on one side or the other; and the feelings out of doors are likely to have more weight with the representatives of the people than with our Lordships; and certainly the public have conceived no slight repugnance to the prosecution, if it may be called by such a name. All I can say is, that I wish it was well over.

Knowing as I do your kind partiality towards my brother, I was not surprised at the honour which you have done him, by the light in which you were so good as to place him at the late public dinner. Believe me, my dear Lord,

Always and truly yours,

Donoughmore” *

The Rev. James Armstrong to Lord Cloncurry.*

Hardwicke-street, Dublin, June 27th, 1832.

“My Lord - The petition, of which the enclosed is a copy, has just been despatched to Lord Plunket, who has kindly undertaken to present it to the House of Lords.

The Presbytery of Dublin, from which it proceeds, seldom intermeddle in political matters. They have been stimulated to the present measure, under the hope that the facts stated in their petition may tend to disabuse the minds of many Protestants in Great Britain of the erroneous notions they entertain on the subject of National education in Ireland.

The Presbytery apprehend that these erroneous impressions, if not corrected, will ultimately frustrate the wise and judicious scheme of education lately devised by his Majesty’s present able, liberal, and enlightened ministry.

The opposition given to this scheme in *Ireland *is, as your Lordship well knows, only an indication of that political rancour, by which-under the mask, at one time, of exclusive loyalty, and at another, of religious zeal-factious antipathies are kept up in this distracted country, the minds of the populace inflamed, and the peace of society endangered.

The extensive means of information possessed by the Presbytery of Dublin may, perhaps, give weight to their representations on the subject of National Education. Their total freedom from all political bias will give additional value to their testimony.

Your Lordship has so long supported everything liberal and patriotic, that the Presbytery rely with confidence on your Lordship’s advocacy of their petition. I have the honour to be, my Lord, with great respect,

Your Lordship’s faithful servant,

James Armstrong,

Minister of the Presbyterian Church, Strand-street.”

The war between the Bible-forcers and Bible-burners continued to rage with such fury, that it became, at length, evident to all men, that until it should be forcibly quelled, there could be no chance of accomplishing the great object of a general and liberal education of the people. How this was to be done was then an important question; and during the early part of the second viceroyalty of Lord Anglesey it occupied much of the attention of those who enjoyed the honour of his Excellency’s confidence. It was but too plain that the subject of quarrel between the professional disputants on both sides was not popular education, but the disposal of the large grant annually given by parliament for the purpose of affording instruction to the people. The lawyers and parsons of the Kildare-place Society had a vested interest in this money, which the priests and agitators were desirous of superseding. The most obvious expedient for at once removing the bone of contention, and applying the bounty of the public to its proper use, was to place the responsibility of administering the education fund upon the executive government, and to remove all control over it from any self-constituted and irresponsible body.

This plan I pressed upon the attention of Lord Anglesey, and, at length, in 1832, it was adopted. Mr. Stanley was then a member of the cabinet, and so, in reality, a sort of viceroy over the Lord Lieutenant, and he was, at first, much disinclined to the measure. It was, indeed, the subject of an anxious discussion the very night before he left Dublin, to attend parliament, that session. There dined together on the occasion, *en petite comité *Lord Anglesey, Lord Plunket, Mr. Stanley, Mr. A. R. Blake, and myself; and when we parted, at two o’clock in the morning, it did not seem that the united arguments of the party had produced any effect upon the Chief Secretary. The Church and the Protestants, both of England and Ireland, he said, would not stand the withdrawal of the grant from the Kildare-place Society, and the substitution of a project for united and merely secular education. I presume, nevertheless, that the seed did not fall upon stony ground, as it was but a few weeks afterwards when the plan was broached by Mr. Stanley himself; and during that session, a grant of £30,000 was made “to enable the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland to issue money in aid of schools, and for the advancement of education.” It was Lord Anglesey’s desire to place my name at the head of the commission which be appointed to manage the distribution of this fund, an honour which, anxious as I was that as few elements of discord as possible should be introduced into the new system, I thought it prudent to decline. I had been too prominently selected for the attack of the traders in civil strife, So render it likely that they would miss the opportunity of fastening upon my appointment as president of the new Board, as a Protestant grievance; and, accordingly, at my instance, my friend the Duke of Leinster was induced to take the post of danger.

Then began that combined and desperate effort of the extreme factions to obstruct the communication of knowledge to the people, which has continued, though with gradually abating force, even to the present hour. The ultra Churchmen and the ultra Romanists, for a time ceased from that internecine war which they had so long waged against each other, and coalesced in an unholy alliance against enlightenment and civilisation, agencies equally dreaded by both as the most dangerous foes to their respective antagonism to the cause of liberty and human progress. To my mind that noble cause ever has been, and I humbly trust, ever shall be, a sacred one, to have contended for which is my greatest pride, whether the adversary was a Protestant judge or a Roman Catholic prelate.

In so far as the education of the lower classes is concerned it may, I think, now be set down that the victory over bigotry has been achieved. The best disposed and most enlightened ecclesiastics of all the churches have seen that the opposition offered to the National Education system was purely factious, and being persuaded of that, they have, with few exceptions, withdrawn their opposition to the moral and intellectual instruction of the rising generation, apart from the inculcation of the religious duty of hating each other. If the sad truth that men seldom learn how to guide their conduct for the future by experience of the past were not incontrovertible, I should be tempted to point a moral for the edification of my fellow-countrymen, from the history of the rise, progress, and decline of this education war. It is, in fact, so far as the two first stages are concerned, the true type of many another passage in Irish history. It shows the joint organisation, by honest Irishmen of opposite parties, of a project for the regeneration of their common country. It traces the efforts of the extreme sections of both to baffle a scheme, the success of which they well knew would tend to destroy the craft of discord, by which they live. The subtle attempt to corrupt, by the poison of religious strife, that which public opinion would not suffer to be crushed by open force, is there exhibited; and, as the plot thickens, the customary intervention of England to turn the quarrel to use in her own party contests, is manifested to the dullest observer. Fortunately the last stage of this history differs from the normal standard of Irish political tales. The war has been fought out, and peace restored, without a sacrifice of the just cause. Archbishop MacHale and Archbishop Beresford have beaten each other to a stand still, without damaging, by their joint blows, the cause of the education of the people-honoured in it its defence by Archbishop Whateley and Archbishop Murray. Would that the example might be accepted for the guidance of the masses of Irishmen upon every occasion when the interests of Ireland are made the subject of the mock quarrels of demagogues, whether lay or clerical and, as they have ever hitherto been, the sport and the tools of English factionaries.

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