§ Sir Robert Bateson presented Petitions from the Synods of Ulster, in Down, Antrim, Dromore, and Londonderry, against the Government plan of Education in Ireland.
Mr. Pringle, in supporting the prayer of the petitions, observed that the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland lamented that it should have gone abroad, from a petition that was presented some time since, that they were favourable to the Government plan of education in Ireland. The fact was, they had been deceived by the statement of the right hon. Secretary for Ireland.
Mr. James E. Gordonsaid, that the statement which he ventured to make, on the presentation of that petition, was now fully borne out. He could not sit down without alluding to the practical argument in favour of a Christian education in Ireland, which had just been supplied by the ludicrous instances of gross and slavish superstition recently exhibited in three, at least, of the four provinces of that country. Who that had heard or read of the hundreds and thousands of infatuated beings, who had been running about that country with a piece of lighted turf in their hands prescribing blessed ashes and pater nosters as a preventative of plague, did not wish to see the schoolmaster abroad among such a miserably-deluded people.
Mr. Humeexpressed his surprise at the statement that the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland had been deceived, and considered it the height of presumption in any hon. Member to make such a statement, no proof having been brought forward that they were so. In regard to what the hon. Member stated, of individuals in Ireland running about with lighted turf, their conduct was not more wonderful, in his opinion, than it had been on those occasions when thousands of them ran after the hon. Member to hear him sport nonsense. They might be as well employed in one way as the other.
Lord Killeenthought that the Government plan of education in Ireland would be attended with the best effect. As to the lighted turf, he really thought it too ludicrous to deserve notice in that House.
Mr. James E. Gordonwished merely to 830 offer a remark, in reply to what had fallen from the hon. member for Middlesex: That hon. Member had said, that the people might be as well employed in running about the country with a lighted turf, as in listening to the nonsense spouted to them by the member for Dundalk. He would tell the hon. Gentleman that there were some people who laboured under the unhappy incapacity of distinguishing between sense and nonsense, religiously speaking, and such men could stigmatize a reference to Divine Providence, as "humbug, cant, and hypocrisy." He would also tell the hon. member for Middlesex, that he had never been the man to spout high treason at public meetings.
§ Petitions to be printed.