The Board was accordingly formed, and fortunately comprised several leading men of each denomination of Christians the Archbishop of Dublin, Dr. Whateley, well known as one of the most exemplary divines, as well as perhaps the most acute reasoner and forcible writer in the Church of England; the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Dublin, Dr. Murray; also well known and respected for his learning and amiability; Dr. Carlile, a Presbyterian minister; Mr. A. R. Blake; Mr. Robert Holmes, the Barrister; and Dr. Franc Sadlier. In 1842, ten years after the Board was formed, there still remained on the Board, many of the same names as were originally enrolled upon it, and I find them thus subscribed to their Ninth Report: Richard Dublin, †D. Murray, Franc Sadleir, A. R. Blake, Robert Holmes, Richard W. Greene, Pooley Shouldham Henry, D.D. John Richard Corballis, Kildare. The present Earl of Carlisle was for some time a member. At the commencement cf their labors the Board were zealously contended with on many grounds, but the Legislature annually confirmed their acts, and voted supplies to be entrusted to their care. It was said that, by not making the reading of the Scriptures compulsory, they cast a practical indignity upon the Sacred Volume; but they naturally replied that as no other school system had been accused of casting indignity on the formularies of the Established Church, when leaving the use of those formularies to the choice, not forcing them against the inclination of the parents, so, no charge could fairly be set up in the one case more than in the other; and it so happened that those who were most violent in making the above allegation, were those upon whom the conversion of the argument became an argumentum ad hominem. It was said that in the Scripture Lessons the tendency to Protestantism was unduly manifested, (Dr. M'Hale found this mare's nest,) but the violent Orange party on the other hand protested that the leaning was on the side of Popery : (Rev. H. Newland.) The Bishop of Exeter said that it was impious to provide schools which were not compelled to provide more religious instruction than was given in the National Schools; and he was replied to by a noble lord, (Lord Suffield,) who asked. why the state of Schools in England should not also be considered? "I have myself," he said, "sons at the public schools in England, as have also some of the noble lords opposite, and I have no objection to join with those lords in a remonstrance against the neglect of religious instruction in English schools. But I must ask why they blame the Government for neglect at the very time when they are giving fuller education to the youth in Ireland than the sons of the noble lords themselves are receiving in England? To arraign ministers for the most excellent regulations which have been made by the Board of Education is absurd. It is a mean and miserable shift of a factious and rancorous opposition." On being called to account for his condemnation of the English Schools, Lord Suffield subsequently asked a reverend prelate, "which were most in the recollection of a scholar on leaving school, the heroes of Homer, or the Lives of the Apostles ?" As regarded the abstraction (alleged only) of clerical supervision, it was shown that the duty of catechizing, as well as preaching, was fully recognized in the Church of England; which Church held endowments on the equitable condition of labouring in its vocation: and it was justly argued, that even if those endowments were too confined, they ought properly to be eked out openly, and fairly, and not by any side-wind appropriation of endowments voted for a distinct purpose. With respect to the abstraction of the Bible (only alleged again), it was announced by Archbishop Whately, one of the Board, that the use of the Bible was not forbidden, but was patent for all who wished to use it; though the Board was not authorized to force it on any;-further, His Grace remarked, "If the people choose to submit, as a matter of conscience, to the prohibitions of the priest, we must not, however we may deplore their error, do violence to their conscience; they have no means of disobeying a prohibition to read the Bible, if they are left unable to read. It would be unfair to require them to shake off this control in the first instance, as a preliminary condition to their acquiring the knowledge which may enable them to decide whether the control is just, or unjust; and, finally, to recognize the civil right of all men to submit their conscience, however erroneously, to whatever rule of faith they think fit, does not imply any acknowledgment that their conduct is right in the sight of God." "The principle of toleration," he added, "without implying such an absurdity* as that all different, and even opposite, religious persuasions can be right in the sight of God, recognizes the right (viz. the civil right) of every man to profess whatever religion he thinks best." That the Scripture Lessons used in the Schools were either a mutilation of or a substitution for the Bible, was denied utterly; the Lessons being no more a mutilation of Scripture than the Rule of Three is a mutilation of Algebra, or than the act of walking is a mutilation of the act of flying, or than the second Proposition in Euclid is a mutilation of the fifth ;-nor had extracts ever been considered a mutilation of a work, so long as they professed to be merely extracts; otherwise the teaching of the Church of England * It may seem, from this passage, that the Archbishop of Dublin would be shocked at the Denominational System of Education of this country, which not only passively recognises several persuasions as true, but actively supports them all. I cannot help it, if it should seem so. would be a mutilation of the Bible, since that Church does not nearly, even with the Lessons of each day, embrace, in its Prayer-Book and Lessons, the whole of the Bible. It was therefore pointed out, that to teach a child to read, and then to offer him a Bible, could not properly be called depriving him of the Bible; though he would virtually be deprived of it, if he were left unable to read, or if instruction were refused to him except on conditions with which his parents, however mistakenly, would prevent his compliance. Finally, Whately, whom I call by his patronymic, not out of disrespect, but because he is one of those great men who earn an unmistakeable reputation which raises them above conventionalisms, reminded the opponents of the National System in (1832), that "The failure of the system, if it should fail, would be a very different event, according as it might be clearly attributable to Roman Catholic priests or to Protestants. Those of the former who may really be averse to education, will be far too wise, I imagine, to exert themselves against it, if they find that Protestants are doing their work for them. In the other case, they must either abandon their attempt, or avow it. In the case of some applications, the parish ministers of the Established Church have, it appears, been applied to, and have refused to join. If they persist in keeping aloof from the schools, it is not unlikely that some of these may be worse conducted than if they had taken a part. Should any of them reply that his conscience will not permit him to do this, there is no more to be said: but then he ought not to complain that the Board has deprived him of all share in the superintendence of education, of which he is resolved to deprive himself by his own act; nor ought he to point to any case of ill success, as a fulfilment of a prophecy which has caused its own fulfilment.”—In a free country, such as England or America, the Board could pretend to no power to hand over to a clergy man those who belong not to his faith ;—and over those who do belong to his faith, a clergyman has as full control in religious doctrine and discipline, in a National School as in any other. But I fear I should weary the reader by multiplying in this place the arguments which have been adduced for and against the National System of Education in Ireland. In a future chapter, I shall endeavour to refute most of the salient points which have been urged in this country against the system; and I shall, therefore, now pass on to show, by a table of the National Schools extant in Ireland from the formation of the system in 1832 up to the year 1849, how triumphantly the cause of truth has in this. instance overborne all obloquy and misrepresentation; viz. so far as progress can do so. Slander may rail at, but it must eventually fail in opposing virtue, reason, and fact; and I submit that there is not in existence a sounder monument of the value of charity and truth, in political experience, than is to be found in the simple table which I am about to quote. In order to enable my reader to make a fair comparison between "this picture and that," I must premise that the Kildare Street Society Schools in 1832 were only 235 in number;—in the Province of Armagh, 195; Dublin, 17; Cashel, 15; Tuam, 8; thus showing an amount of about four-fifths of the schools in the comparatively Protestant population of Ulster. Yet the Society received State support as early as 1815, and therefore had enjoyed ample opportunities of winning the confidence of the people.* * It is worthy of remark, that the Kildare-street Society originally professed the principle of combined education. One of the Reports says that the Association had endeavoured to form "a system which, whilst it should afford the opportunities of education to every description of the lower classes of the people, might, at the same time, by keeping clear of all interference with the particular religious tenets of any, induce the whole to receive its benefits, as one undivided body, under one and the same system, and in the same establishment." Mr. Wyse says, that no sooner had the Society received public money than they commenced, insidiously, to proselytize, and brought forward views which their programme had withheld, |