§ Mr. Wyse, on rising to bring forward this Motion, said, that he had long looked for an opportunity of submitting to the House a plan for the advancement and improvement of the Education of the middle classes in Ireland. It was a portion of a more general project, the outline of which he had, on a former occasion, ventured to trace, beginning with the consideration of the elementary education, and ascending, through natural and just gradations, to the superior or university education of the country. Government had adopted the first portion of these views, and had, he trusted, permanently established a system, which, with a few alterations, to give
* Hansard (new series) vol. xiv. p. 52.809 greater efficacy and extension to its regulations, and the final solemn sanction of a legislative enactment, would fully vindicate to itself (what no system that had preceded it could claim) the character as well as name of a national education. They had now to proceed somewhat further, and having secured to the lower orders of the Irish people an unshackled participation in this first of human blessings, a good education, to open to the middle order in the State, what he was prepared to show was still more important, the springs of that knowledge which was best suited to their position and influence in the community. To arouse the Government and Legislature to a sense of this duty—to a due appreciation of its necessity and advantage—to originate something practical, and at least to begin what others, he was assured, were much better qualified to finish, was the object of the present Motion. He wished to lay the first stone of an improved system of education for the middle classes, and he should rejoice if others would from thence be induced to raise the superstructure. If, indeed, he had been allowed to choose, he should have preferred another form for his Motion. He should have preferred making the question of the diocesan schools subsidiary to the plan, instead of appearing to hold it out as the principal. But even such form was not without its advantages. It would convince hon. Members that he had no desire to spoliate, but to amend—no intention to throw down, but every anxiety to repair and to build up. The Church, indeed, was in this, as in most other questions of the present day, the principal agent; but he could not unnecessarily claim the alliance of popular feelings in such a cause. The subject was neither Protestant nor Catholic; it was the business of every man in Ireland. In this broad and national spirit only should he treat it. He knew too well, from recent instances, with what obstacles all education reform must have necessarily to contend. He felt that he had to battle with a fierce array of old misconceptions, and modern hostility; he was conscious that he trod upon slippery ground; but he had, in the deep and firm conviction, not the growth of to-day, nor of yesterday, but of many years, a staff of strength which he knew and felt would bear up his steps. What was insanity today would be common sense to-morrow. 810 Changes the most striking had occurred almost in the time that the House of Commons had been talking of them. He proposed to go on as he had begun, not unnecessarily or abruptly interfering; with old institutions, but after first reducing them to their original object as far as possible, he would make use of them as the nucleus about which to group new improvements. He did not look to the destruction, or suspension, of either the diocesan or royal schools, but to the correction of their abuses—to recalling them to their original institution—to their enlargement and improvement, both in management and instruction, in such a manner that, whilst there was no departure from their original institution, they should be rendered infinitely more available to the purposes of that general and improved education which was demanded by the light of the age, and the wants and wishes of the middle and the professional classes in Ireland. He thought they might each with very slight modifications, better arrangement, and a greater extension of public pecuniary assistance, be raised to the importance of a scientific as well as literary academy. Every county in Ireland would thus be provided with precisely that education which was most required by the spirit and purposes of actual society. We should have a race of surveyors, navigators, engineers, architects, chemists, and agriculturists, raised for the natural uses of the nation itself at home. We should no longer be indebted for our imports of intellect, as well as commerce, to other countries. The intellect of our own people, so long allowed to run away to waste, could be brought into active, wholesome, and useful operation. Food on which the mind of the country could feed without injury, would be plentifully produced; a new order of men would raise a barrier against the vices and abuses, but, form a link between the virtues of both the higher and lower orders of society. In fine, the mind of Ireland would gradually be brought, by this severe and healthy discipline to a sound matter-of-fact, practical, and persevering temper. All our institutions would thus acquire a better guarantee both for their security and improvement, and the popular feelings be quietly and almost imperceptibly weaned away from the desire and love of change and agitation. These were great, but in his mind they were also most attainable objects; 811 to attain them, however, it was first necessary to ascertain our materials; to ascertain them it was necessary to inquire; such was the purpose of the present Motion. He called for returns of the actual state of the diocesan and royal schools; many of these returns, he was well aware, had "been already furnished, but they had in general been very ill classified, and did not go to suggest any alteration. Now, he looked, in the first instance, for a distinct and ample expose of the entire system; and in the next (from such persons as he thought best qualified to give it), for every suggestion which could tend to render these schools more available to the purposes of general professional education. When such returns should be before the House, he should then be prepared to proceed, by bill or otherwise, to the more general plan of the education of the middle classes in Ireland. For the present he should limit himself to the consideration of these diocesan and royal schools to state the practicability of their improvement, and the urgent necessity there existed (on a comparison with other countries) of an immediate exertion to found at once something like a system of education for the middle classes in Ireland. Those classes were supposed to have little susceptibility of scientific cultivation. The national temperament was too hot and imaginative; it was said not to consent easily to the coldness and restraint imposed by the gravity of the sciences. This allegation might well be contested on many theories, but he preferred having at once recourse to a less questionable test—to experience. Now, experience lay completely the other way. It was true, indeed, that the Cork Institution had been instanced in the south of Ireland as a failure; Government, after some years' trial, had withdrawn their grant; the lecture rooms, even when tickets were issued gratis, were stated, though erroneously, scarcely ever to have been crowded. But these defects were easily accounted for; the system was injudicious; lectures were desultory, and generally little more than ingenious idling, without accompanying instruction. Government had not gone too far, but had not gone far enough. The application of the institution to Lord Leveson Gower proved that a little broader policy at the outset would have produced precisely the opposite results. In the very same city and about the same time that these charges were 812 made there were educating in the Catholic schools alone in geometry, eighty; in algebra, sixty; in mensuration and navigation, a still greater number. But if the south was supposed to give no great indication of this spirit, what could be said against the north? Look, for instance, to Belfast. Before the establishment of the Academical Institution of that town it was not possible to meet in the district more than four or five mathematical students. What had been the case since? From 1814 to 1825 there was not less than 1,368 students who had passed through the mathematical classes; they might now be very fairly supposed to amount to 2,000. Not less than 1,200 had advanced in the same period, to the study of the differential and integral calculus; 189 had become mathematical teachers (in 1831 they amounted to 300), and had materially contributed to spread the passion for scientific acquirements through every part of the country. It was not the mind nor the men, neither the faculty nor the desire which was wanting; it was the opportunity and the means; it was Belfast Institutions which were required to give the faculty and the desire, the outlet it struggled for, the fair play it had a right to, in every county and city in Ireland. The people of Ireland were, then, just as much entitled to their chance of the advantages of scientific education as the people of this country or of Scotland. But they had these advantages at home, if they only knew how to look for them, and one of them consisted in those schools to which he was desirous of attracting the attention of the House. Why had they been so unavailing? was the first question. How could they be made really available to these purposes? was the second. The history of these schools involved many considerations, and he should endeavour to treat each in that order which might make them somewhat more intelligible than, he believed, they actually were to a majority of this House. He should endeavour to show—first, that these schools were of strictly Catholic and national foundation; secondly, that the Church solely was originally bound to support them, though subsequently, as in the case of the repair of Churches and other charges, it shifted the burthen, in great part, to the shoulders of the people; thirdly, that notwithstanding these alterations, the Church had continued altogether to neglect the obligations 813 which both divine and human law imposed, and suffered the schools to diminish and fall into decay; and fourthly, that it was the bounden duty, both of this House and the Government, to bring back the Church to the performance of these engagements, and see that institutions destined for the people, should not be lost to the people by either connivance or concurrence in the abuse. There was an impression prevalent, that the diocesan schools were originally Protestant, and destined exclusively to Protestant purposes; nothing could be more erroneous. They were originally Catholic, and were still open, under the very statutes under which they were retained, not created, to Catholic as well as Protestant. In one word, they were, and had always been, in principle, though not in practice, strictly national. Catholics, and especially the Catholic Church, had been calumniated for her presumed hostility to instruction. Her councils spoke another language. One of the councils of Lateran ordains, "that means shall be procured in every parish for the support of a teacher, whose duty shall be to instruct the clerks and all the poor gratis." By a succeeding council, provision was made in like manner, "for a lecture in divinity, whenever the church should happen to be a cathedral." And in other cases, a schoolmaster should be provided, and empowered to collect a stipend from the rich, but bound to the instruction of the clerks and other poor gratis. The Council of Trent, the great concluding council of the Catholic Church, enforces the same obligation, (session 5, c. 1st); and when a sufficient maintenance for teachers in cathedrals could not be procured, by the gift of a Prebend, the Bishops (and this was precisely the principle of the diocesan schools) were empowered to lay their clergy for the purpose, under contribution; even in the poorer parishes a schoolmaster was ordinarily provided, lest that necessary work of piety should be neglected. Catholic countries still adopted these canons. Catholic England had transmitted them in the preservation of her parochial and cathedral, or collegiate schools, to Protestant England; and even Scotland, boasting, as she justly did, one of the best systems both of primary and secondary education in Europe—Presbyterian Scotland had only copied the system of Rome and Popery. The celebrated Act of William 814 (1696) was only a transcript from a Scottish law of the fifteenth century, which was itself the enforcement only, by civil sanction, of the original canon of the Catholic Church. Henry and Elizabeth introduced the Reformation into Ireland, but they did not always destroy, they often applied what they found existing to the purposes of the new arrangement. Henry retained the parochial, Elizabeth the cathedral or diocesan schools, and precisely on the principle he had been describing. Her Statute (12th Eliz. c. 1st) was very specific. It enacts, "that there shall be found henceforth a free school in every diocese or of this realm of Ireland, whereof the master should be English, the Lord Deputy to have the remuneration, except in the dioceses of Armagh, Dublin, Meath, and Kildare. The school-house to be placed in the principal shire town, at the cost and charges of the whole diocese, without respect of freedoms, by the desire and oversight of the ordinaries of the diocese, or of the heirs general, and of the sheriff of the shire. The Lord Deputy, or Chief Governor for the time being, according to the quantity or quality of each diocese, to appoint such yearly pension for the schoolmaster as he shall think convenient, whereof the ordinaries of every diocese shall bear yearly, for ever, the third part, and the parsons, vicars, prebendaries, and other ecclesiastical persons of the same dioceses shall pay yearly, for ever, the other two parts, by a yearly contribution, to be made by the same ordinances." This law, then, left no doubt that it was the Church, not the laity—the dioceses, not the country, which were to provide—not one word of religion—at least, not one word of exclusion or restriction. It was for the whole people; and ten years, it must be remarked, had then elapsed after the passing of the Act of Uniformity. Sir John Davies indicated how much was hoped from the institution. The very year after, he stated, that to give a civil education to the youth of this land, "there should be one free school erected in every diocese of this kingdom." But those hopes were not continued to be realised: already, in the reign of William, decay had been felt, originating from an anxiety to throw the burthens on the people. By 7th William 3rd, c. 4, Justices of the Peace and Judges of Assize were required to give this Act in charge to Grand Juries, and to be very circumspect in seeing the 815 same put into execution. The 8th of George 1st, c. 6, exhibited similar complaints; and in order to gratify and encourage the execution of the law, it allowed the Church to allocate land, and thus exonerated, at least in part, the existing incumbents. 5 George 2nd, c. 4, further extended this indulgence, and, for the first time, evinced the disposition to throw the burthen on the laity. It first proceeded cautiously; it was permissive. Tenants in fee tail and for life were empowered to grant land, not exceeding one acre, for those purposes. But 12th George 2nd, c. 9, and especially 29 George 2nd, c. 7, proceeded boldly. The first still required, indeed, in strict language, that the Archbishop or Bishop, &c., should provide the land, not exceeding one plantation acre, "to be for ever deemed and reputed to be the place for the free school of the said diocese; and that, until such piece of ground shall be set out, the free school shall be kept in such convenient place, within the said diocese, as the Archbishop or Bishop of the same can procure," &c.; but, then, it threw the burthen of the building, or repairing, in part, of these schools on the country. The Grand Juries were empowered to present such sums as they should find reasonable for their respective proportion, towards building or repairing such diocesan school, to be levied upon the whole, or such part of the said county, as should be situated in each respective diocese. There was a display afterwards of great severity. The Archbishop, &c., were empowered to sequester the profits of the benefice of any beneficed clergyman who should not pay his proportion to the schoolmaster, at the visitation, or within three calendar months after. But, as was anticipated, this respective proportion was impracticable, and 29th George 2nd, c. 7, threw the whole building and repairing, through the same machinery of Grand Juries, on the people. It was a lamentable fact, that Ireland was more deficient in education than any part of Europe. He did not wish to spoliate, but was anxious that funds should be raised to remove the ignorance of the middle classes in Ireland. They had the means in their hands. They had only to support diocesan schools by the means provided in the reign of a Protestant princess, Queen Elizabeth. This was a subject to which few had given due attention, and he was anxious to develop it to its utmost. He 816 would, therefore, move an Address to his Majesty praying him, that the Commissioners of Education in Ireland might be instructed to inquire into the number and state of the diocesan schools in that country, and to consider whether their system of education might not be better directed to more scientific objects.
§ Motion agreed to.