NATIONAL AND AGRICULTURAL EDUCATION (IRELAND). (Hansard, 20 March 1846)

§ MR. WYSE

wished to put three questions to the right hon. Baronet the Secretary of State for the Home Department, of which he had given notice. The first had reference to a very important measure, which formed a principal feature of the Bill he had introduced in 1831, and had subsequently been strongly recommended in the Report of the Committee on Education in 1838. He meant the incorporation of the Board of National Education, as an indispensable means to enable the Board to exercise its functions with proper effect, by empowering it to take land and build schools in districts which, from poverty and other circumstances, might otherwise be deprived of them; and farther to improve and extend generally the advantages of education. He understood from the right hon. Baronet, in the course of the last Session, that that desirable object would be immediately and fully carried into effect. His second question was directed to an subject of hardly less moment—the efficient provision for a higher scale of elementary education, immediately above the ordinary elementary school; and this also had been guaranteed by the Government during the last Session, by a promise to establish forthwith, through the intervention of the Board of Education, thirty-two model schools, distributed through the several counties of Ireland. The object to which his third question had relation was, especially under the present and future circumstances of Ireland, in no wise inferior in its influence on the social and moral character of the people, or of less consequence than either of the others; he referred to 1276 the establishment and encouragement of agricultural schools and colleges. He wished to see not only such institutions founded by the Board, but also encouraged by grants and advice, whenever they deserved it by their management, and benefits, though originating from individuals. He knew of more than one which might on such grounds fairly claim assistance from the Government and Legislature. He need not go farther than an institution at Esker, in Galway, an agricultural college, founded by the very rev. Dr. Smyth, head of the Dominicans, whom to mention was to praise for his intelligent zeal and benevolence, and who stated in a letter that he was actively engaged at that moment in the laudable undertaking, employing not less than one hundred persons in draining and reclaiming the neighbouring bogs and morasses, and coming forward like a true Christian clergyman with his own exertions and funds—an example to all others, lay or clerical—to meet the present distress, and to check the threatened calamity of disease in his neighbourhood. Thinking that such efforts, for every reason, merited aid and countenance from every Government, to say nothing of their ulterior influence on agricultural skill and knowledge, and on the moral and religious character and conduct of the people, he did wish, he confessed, to ascertain how far the Government had anticipated, or were willing to follow out, his suggestion. He would, therefore, without further preamble, ask the right hon. Baronet the three questions referred to, in the words in which they stood on the Paper:—1. Whether the incorporation of the Board of National Education in Ireland, promised to be granted by the Government during the last Session, had been yet carried into effect?—2. Whether any measures, and what, had been taken to establish the thirty-two model schools promised to be established by the Government in the course of the last Session?—3. Had any measures, and what, been taken by the Board of National Education, or by any branch of the Government, to establish, maintain, assist, or otherwise promote, agricultural schools or colleges, in Ireland?