RESOLUTION.

HC Deb 14 June 1864 vol 175 cc1761-99

SIR HUGH CAIRNS

Sir, I rise to move— That in the opinion of this House the Rules sanctioned by the Commissioners of National Education in Ireland on the 21st day of November, 1863, are, so far as regards their operation on the aid afforded to Convent and Monastic Schools, at variance with the principles of the system of National Education. It is some years since there has been in this House any discussion upon the subject of the National System of Education in Ireland; and the question is one the im- portance of which it is hardly possible to overrate; for an establishment that receives from the Imperial revenue an annual grant of £316,000 deserves the careful consideration of this House as guardians of the public purse, and a system which educates, or undertakes to educate, something like 600,000 children, requires the superintendence and care of the Legislature of the country. In former discussions in his House attacks have been made upon the National system of Education, but the subject which I am anxious to bring under the attention of the House to-night is one in which the complainers are not the foes of the National System, but its warmest and most consistent friends; and the importance of the matters which have originated this complaint may be judged of by the House when I tell them, that the complaint has been made by the most prominent of those who have asserted that the Commissioners of National Education in Ireland have departed from its fundamental principles. The oldest, I think, or almost the oldest member of the Board of Commissioners is the Rev. Dr. Henry, the Principal of one of the Queen's Colleges, and this gentleman, after administering the system for twenty-five years, and speaking of the changes in the rules, the particulars of which I am going to state to the House, protested against them and said, "They amount to a departure from the fundamental rules of the system." I take the next one of the most consistent and oldest friends of the system, the Bishop of Derry, and he also protests against these rules as the introduction of a new principle, and he cannot, he says, "avoid expressing his dissatisfaction and alarm." I pass on to two of the Commissioners—Mr. Gibson and Mr. Hall—who are peculiarly the representatives of the Presbyterian body on the Board, and they likewise enter a protest against the changes in the rules; and then I find a deputation waiting on, the Lord Lieutenant, headed by another earnest and consistent friend of the system, the Bishop of Down, and accompanied by a gentleman, whom we all remember as having been for many years a Member of this House, and who always took a part as a defender of the National System, Mr. Kirk, and that deputation states that "these rules as altered subvert the principle upon which the National System is based. But it does not stop there. I have yet to mention the right hon. Baronet, the Chief Secretary for Ireland (Sir Robert Peel). The right hon. Baronet has always been in favour of, and has lent his aid to, this system, and I find him writing on behalf of the Government to the Board of Commissioners, and pointing out what he regards as a change in the fundamental rules of the Board, which must seriously imperil the principle upon which the system of education is based. Now, these are the friends of the system. I wish to say a few words as to, my own feelings upon this question. I have had the opportunity of stating more than once in this House, that I have never joined those who have attacked this system of education. I believe that, in many respects, it might have been better constituted. I should have been glad if alterations could have been made to conciliate sooner objections which have been made to it; but of this I am satisfied, that the introduction of the system into Ireland has done incalculable good. And of this also I am satisfied, that no more perilous step could be taken towards the country than to overthrow the system. In the Motion of which I have given notice, I refer to certain schools in Ireland which are called "convent and monastic schools," and I have used those terms because I do not know how otherwise to describe them; but I have never in this House attempted, and I have always endeavoured to avoid, the mixing up of this question with denominational differences, and I should have been prepared to take the same course if these schools had belonged to a different denomination. This is not a question of difference between one denomination and another, but it is a question of the fundamental principle of the system itself. It is so long since there was any discussion on this point that perhaps the House will allow me to direct attention to the principle of the National System. The House will recollect that the origin of the system was in a letter addressed by the present Earl of Derby, then Mr. Stanley, the Chief Secretary for Ireland, to the Duke of Leinster. In that letter matters of principle were pointed out which were to govern the Board of Education, and I found the chief of these principles to have been—first, that the new system, while admitting children of all religious denominations to partake of its benefits, would not only make no effort for, but would avoid even the suspicion of proselytism; secondly, that in the schools instruction should be given to children of all churches, in the common branches of education, while they were to have separate instruction in the doctrines of their several creeds according to the appointment of their parents and guardians; and thirdly, that the teachers should be persons who had previously received instruction in model schools in connection with the Board, where the fundamental principles of the National System were carried out. These were certainly three of the fundamental features of the system of National education. I must explain also what the model schools were intended to be. Upon the establishment of the system, district model schools were erected, and there was a central model school in Dublin, the object being that they might train young persons to become teachers in the schools of the Board, and the House will understand the magnitude of the question when I tell them that the cost of the central model school was £17,000, and that of the provincial model schools £110,000, and the amount annually granted to the support of the model schools alone is £24,000. Now, any one who has observed the course of events in Ireland of late, will know that these model schools have been the objects of the special hostility of the prelates and clergy of the Roman Catholic Church. I do not complain of this hostility, for they have a right to manifest it; but the fact no one will deny. Proof of this may be found in the fact that while in the model schools there were 9,700 scholars, there were only 3,626, or about one-third, Roman Catholics on the books, and a very much smaller number in constant attendance, while in the ordinary schools there were 584,000 scholars, of whom 479,000 were Roman Catholics. I believe that in the model school at Sligo there was not a single Roman Catholic child either in attendance or on the books. At the same time that this opposition has been shown to the model schools, there has proceeded from the Roman Catholic Church a demand of a very urgent kind for a separate training of the teachers of the Roman Catholic children. I will show that the Board of Education have in reality granted this, while in name they have professed to refuse it; and I will rely on the admission of the Board itself, that the separate training of teachers is contrary to the principles of the Board, while in reality and substance the thing is done. It may be said by English Members, "What harm is there after all that there should be separate training for teachers of different denominations?" There would be no harm, provided the system were different from what it is. If the Irish system were like the English system there would not only be no objection, but the thing would be perfectly natural; but what we are dealing with, what we are anxious to preserve, is the essential principle of the Irish system, and the consequences of a separate training in Ireland would be such that I think the House should be very unwilling to assent to it. In the first place, if you accede to the demand of one denomination, you must accede to the demand of all for a separate training, and if you accede to that you must accede to the demand of all for a separate education. You cannot justify the separate training of teachers upon any principle which would not compel you to adopt a system of separate education. But that is not all. Of course, if I am right in saying that the object of the model schools built at so great a cost, and supported by so large an annual grant, was to secure the training of teachers and to provide teachers for other schools, the moment that you have separate training out of the model schools you will over- throw them. Still further, if you have separate training carried on, we will say; by hypothesis, in the schools of the convents or monastic schools, the teachers there trained will be the only teachers which the Roman Catholic patrons will accept, and, virtually, the whole of the education of the Roman Catholic population of the country will be in the hands of teachers trained in these separate institutions. With this preface I will proceed to show to the House what the Commissioners have really done, and how they have met the demand for separate training. The first thing done by the Board was this. They began to apply to convent schools the system which has prevailed in other schools of appointing monitors, another name for junior or pupil-teachers. Not only are grants given to convent schools, but sums are given to pay the annual stipends to junior and senior monitors. But that was not enough, for it was found that the payment of these monitors extended only to persons of seventeen or eighteen years of age, and the Board had more recently created a new class of monitors whom they called first-class monitors, whom they describe to be young persons of an age when they become com- plete teachers, and who are to receive grants from the Board for their payment, That may be a judicious or an injudicious course, but it certainly constitutes a breach of a positive rule of the Board. How was it that convent schools originally became part of the schools of the Board? I find that the defence of the Commissioners rests upon this. They say that convent schools were always part of the schools of the Board, and that they are doing little more than was done at all times, and they ask how it is that they can be said to be altering the rules of the Board. I agree that convent schools were included in the schools of the Board; but I assert, and I may be set right if I am wrong by hon. Gentlemen opposite, that until 1855 there was no rule of the Board relaxed upon the face of it; convent schools submitted to all the rules of the Board; they accepted a grant, but it was on a different mode of remuneration, and with that exception prior to 1855 in the published rules of the Board there was no relaxation, convent schools being dealt with on the footing of other schools, or if anything was done it was without the knowledge of the public, and without any communication to Parliament. I now come to 1855. Down to the year 1855 the rule had been that no clerical person and no member of a religious order could be a teacher of a school under the control of the Board; but in that year the following rule was published for the first time:— No clergyman of any denomination or member of any religious order can be recognized as a teacher of a national school. This does not apply to the teachers of convent schools. That was the first time the public were informed of an alteration in the rule. And did the change pass unnoticed? I find that in that year, and as soon as the new rule was published, a protest was signed against it on the part of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church, upon the ground of its Creating an invidious distinction, and giving an undue advantage to one denomination, contrary to the previous principles of the Board. And were they justified in making that protest? Why, I find that in the same rules it was declared that, if the Commissioners should consider a teacher in a non-vested school objectionable, they could withdraw his salary till a suitable teacher should be appointed, that teachers should be trained in a particular way, subject to the direction of the Board, and that they should be classified under certain classes. The teachers of convent schools were manifestly made exceptions to those rules. They were not liable to dismissal by the Board, or to have their grants suspended as the result of any examination, they were not trained or classified by the Board; and it was, therefore, perfectly true, as stated by the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church, that the new rule issued by the Board in 1855 Created an invidious distinction and gave an undue advantage to one denomination. But it was alleged by the Commissioners in their own defence, that they had always treated conventual schools in an exceptional manner. The opponents of the new practice observed, on the other hand, that the rules of the Commissioners had been relaxed in favour of convents in many particulars, not in form or in words merely, but in practice; and that subject was discussed in the course of a debate which took place in this House in the year 1856. During that debate I read extracts from evidence laid before a Committee of the other House in 1854, for the purpose of showing that convent schools were of necessity exclusively Roman Catholic. I quoted the statement of Archdeacon Stopford, a warm friend of the National System, that convent schools must, of course, be schools of separate education, and that it was equally impossible Protestants should send their children there as that Roman Catholics should send their children to schools where the teaching was exclusively Scriptural. Mr. Cross, the excellent and intelligent secretary of the Board, said he Should admit that convent schools must be looked upon as practically exclusive schools. In the course of the same debate, I also adduced evidence to show that in the convent school at Youghal there were religious exercises every hour or half hour of the day, that Roman Catholic catechisms were at all times lying upon the desks, and notices were hung up calling attention to various dogmas of the Roman Catholic Church, and where eight Protestant children were found to be present on the day of inspection, the inducements consisting in the work that was taught and the price paid for it. These charges were taken from the Inspector's Report, formed the subject of investigation by the Board, and in their main features were all substantiated. But these are only instances of a universal practice. Every one who possesses any personal acquaintance with Ireland is aware that these convent schools are strictly and exclusively the schools of one particular religious denomination. I readily admit that they are schools which are productive of great good, that in them the industrial education is most admirable, that the secular education, subject to some grave drawbacks and qualifications, is good, and that the teachers are remarkable for their disinterestedness and their charitableness; but I believe those ladies themselves would be the first to acknowledge that they would insist on teaching their own religion at all times in those schools. I find it was stated before the Committee of 1854, that it was a mere mockery to pretend that any person might at any moment obtain admission to those schools, because the doors were always kept closed, and fifteen or twenty minutes usually elapsed before admittance to them could be obtained by strangers. I mentioned these facts in the debate of the year 1856; and what was the course which the Government pursued upon that occasion? The noble Lord the present Secretary for Foreign Affairs, who at that time was not a Member of the Government though he sat on the Treasury Bench, undertook the duty of answering the attack made on the National Board, said that the cases which had been adduced appeared to be breaches of rules of the Board, and that he had no doubt that the Board would take care that a stop should be put to those proceedings. He did not justify these departures from rule, but admitted that they were errors which ought to be redressed. But the Board has since done nothing to retrace its steps, and the expectation held out by the noble Lord has not been in any way realized. There is another very remarkable fact to which I have to invite the attention of the House. We have lately heard a great deal of the suppression of the Reports of the School Inspectors in England; but the Reports of Inspectors in Ireland have been suppressed in a manner to which anything that has been done in this country is the merest trifle. It had been the practice of the Commissioners in Ireland to make annual Reports to this House. They are bound to do so. And they had also been in the habit, until within the last few years, of appending to their Reports the Reports of the head Inspectors of the different districts in the country. The Board produced these Reports without any abridgment. But they were also in the habit—and very properly — of prefixing to those documents a notice to the effect, that although they produced them they did not feel bound to indorse every statement they contained, or to carry out every recommendation the head Inspectors might make. The Reports of the head Inspectors were submitted to Parliament every year until 1861, but in that year for the first time those Reports were wholly omitted. The volume, however, lost nothing in bulk, the size of it being made up in a great measure by the insertion of the names of all the schools in the country ranged in a tabular form, without any comment, but with a statement on some of the tables that they were taken from the Reports of the Inspectors, not one word of which Reports were produced. The most remarkable Report, I believe, that ever came from a head inspector was made in that year; but although it was made in 1861 it was not discovered until 1864, when, in compliance with a special Motion, it was laid before the House; and I now hold it in my hand. It is the Report of Mr. Sheridan, who is the head Inspector for about one sixth of the whole of Ireland. His district lies in the south, where there is a great number of convent schools. He is himself a Roman Catholic; and he could not, therefore, entertain, in consequence of difference of religion, any feeling unfavourable to convent schools. He invited the special attention of the Board to his statement, and assured them that that statement referred to matters of which no mention had previously been made. He appears fairly to apportion praise and blame to these convent schools, and he goes on to state that thirty-five of them situated in the South of Ireland contain 9,015 pupils, or about one-fifth of the number of pupils in the whole 854 schools in his district. Mr. Sheridan said— These teachers are not classified by the Board, nor are they required to submit to an examination, as the Commissioners take for granted that they are sufficiently well educated to discharge the duties of national teachers efficiently; and, in point of feet, it is undeniable that the majority of them—of the nuns especially — are infinitely better educated than the teachers of ordinary National schools, while it is equally true that they bring to the discharge of their duties a disinterestedness and devotedness to which even the most zealous of the lay teachers can have no claim. It is also undeniable that their schools do an incalculable amount of good. Their pupils receive a moral and religious training of the highest order; they are educated to habits of truth-telling, modesty, order, and cleanliness, and such of them as attend with fair regularity and continue at school till they reach the upper classes are sure to receive an excellent literary education. Mr. Sheridan having thus done justice to these schools, proceeded to notice two circumstances which seriously interfered with their efficiency:— These teachers very seldom have any opportunity of receiving a technical training as teachers, either before or after making their religious profession; and hence, although they are undoubtedly well educated in a general sense, I apprehend that many of them have a very limited acquaintance with those improved methods of teaching and school organization which have received the sanction of experience. The want of such technical knowledge is most apparent in their management of the junior classes. It is a characteristic of these teachers that they are impatient of competition. A rival school, if it can possibly be extinguished, is not allowed to exist. In crowded cities this is, of course, impossible; but in Tralee, Killarney, Newcastle, Kinsale, Queenstown, Middleton, Skibbereen, Bandon, Dingle, and a host of smaller towns, no female schools, except those connected with convents, are to be found; none are permitted to be established. In some of them, indeed, such as Tralee, Killarney, Newcastle, and Dingle, in which there are monks' schools as well as nuns' schools, even the ordinary male National schools have been proscribed. Now, I am perfectly convinced that these teachers, in pursuing this course, are actuated by worthy motives of faith in themselves and a conscientious belief that when, schools are opened adapted for the proper training of youth, they consider they are justified in using every influence to remove them out of the way. Such a course Mr. Sheridan describes as intolerant, and the evils which arise are more than sufficient to counterbalance any good they might effect; and he goes on to say that in very vast populations, where large proportions will attend schools of their own religious community, there was no inconsiderable number of them who attend lay schools that cannot be induced to attend these. That is, I say, they will not, although Roman Catholics, go to the schools, which belong to the conventual and monastic order; and Mr. Sheridan gives a remarkable instance, that in Killarney, where there are two convent schools and one monks' school, every other being proscribed, the consequence is that there are fewer children who go to school than those who do not go to school. The principle of emulation and competition is by this policy extinguished, and they are left to receive pupils without limit as to their teaching powers. The Board, Mr. Sheridan says, deals with these schools differently from the others, for whilst they remunerate the teachers of the others by a stipend and the supply of school materials, they pay the convent schools by a capitation grant, the direct and positive object of which is to get as many children as possible crowded into these schools. The attendance, he says, instead of being restricted to the number of children the schools are capable of accommodating practically, is crowded to excess, and the attendance being out of proportion to the teaching powers, the rate of progress is consequently so slow that it takes a long time for a child to work its way from the lowest to the highest class, and, in point of fact, comparatively few reach that class, for the great majority of the children leave the schools before they have completed half their school course. Mr. Sheridan suggests three remedies for this state of things—first, a better organization with regard to numbers; secondly, the appointment of lay teachers; and thirdly, more efficient inspection. But then he went on to say that no improvement in organization and no amount of skill would make one teacher do the work of two, or ten do the work of fifteen. Could any one doubt when Parliament was asked to give large capitation grants, that they should have been made acquainted with that Report. It was a breach of duty not to communicate it to Parliament. But the matter did not stop there. Mr. Sheridan had said— It is not my intention, however, just now to enter at greater length into the state of these schools and their teachers, as I have it in contemplation to inspect all the other convent schools in my district, and, when I have time, to make them the subject of a special Report. There are, however, two circumstances I must mention which cannot but interfere with their functions—one is, that these teachers have no opportunity of receiving educational training as teachers either before or after making their profession of faith, although they are well educated in a general sense, and they have necessarily a limited acquaintance with those methods of training and school organization which have received the sanction of experience, and the want of which is apparent in the management of these schools. Different opinions, however, prevail with regard to Mr. Sheridan's Report. [Sir GEORGE BOWYER: Hear, hear!] My hon. Friend below the gangway is evidently more disposed to differ from it than I am,-but no one can doubt it is a Report that ought to have been communicated to Parliament, and that when we were asked annually to give large capitation grants, we should have been told what the Board knew the confidential Inspector had informed them, and which Mr. Sheridan describes as unpleasant truths, and all the more unpleasant now that they are offered for the first time, and it was a dereliction of duty not to have communicated them to Parliament. But the matter goes further than that. A short time since I asked the Attorney General for Ireland, who represents the Board in this House, whether Mr. Sheridan had made his promised further Report, or whether orders had been given to him to make it, and the right hon. Gentleman said he had not made it, and that he had not received orders not to make it. I do not care which horn of the dilemma the Commissioners choose to adopt, as one seems quite as bad as the other. There are many ways by which an Inspector might be led to understand it is better not to make a Report until it has been promised. But if there were not, have the Commissioners discharged their duty in not calling upon him for his promised Report, in order that the truth might be known? In the rules which were made last year the Commissioners determined to act upon the principle that these convent schools should be efficient first-class schools, and they gave them that character in their Report and in their rules, in the face of Mr. Sheridan's Report, which they concealed. As soon as they had made these rules, and had come to the conclusion to publish them to the world, this Report was discovered, and they were forced to produce it, and they then instructed the other district Inspectors to inspect and report upon the other convent schools. Having given these schools the character they asserted belonged to them, they directed the other Inspectors to report, which is very like to deciding first and inquiring after. In the meantime the pressure from the Roman Catholic prelates and clergy for a separate system of training went on; and it is now confessed, on the part of the Board, that before any new rules were made they yielded to the pressure by appointing monitors and teachers to the convent schools, which is a direct breach of their own rules. For how did the rules stand before the month of November last. Before that time the members of the convents might discharge the duties of literary teachers, either by themselves or by the aid of such others as they might choose to employ, the salaries of such teachers to be defrayed by the communi- ties; but by the proposed sew rules it is provided that in schools where the teacher does not rank at least in the third class he can have the assistance of a junior monitor, and where the teacher does not rank at least in the second class he is to be allowed the services of a senior monitor. Now there is no teacher in the convent schools in the second or third class. I call upon the Board to show by what authority they violated the old rules. The new rules have not yet been acted upon, and the present moment is the most fitting for considering the question, because in a few days the House will be asked to grant a sum of money, which is to give effect to these new rules. There are only three of these rules to which I need refer. The old rule the House will remember, as I have already said, was that the members of the convent schools might, if convenient, discharge the duties of literary teachers by themselves or others, the salaries of such assistants to be defrayed by the community, and then there is inserted, for the first time, except in the case of monitors. That is to say, they really prohibit teachers in any convent school except those who are paid by the Board. The next alteration is this. Under the head of convent schools the rule says that schools of this class are entitled to the services of paid monitors. But the third alteration is the great one, whether as regards the singular manner in which it is framed or in the alteration which it makes. And when the House hears this rule I think they will see that the alarm which it created is not altogether unfounded. At first sight the rule may appear to be harmless enough. It is this— In the case of a few very large and highly efficient schools the Commissioners are prepared to appoint young persons of great merit to act as first class monitors, with a rate of salary higher than the rate of salaries of the above grades. Now, in the first place, I ask, is this the proper way to make a rule to be enforced in the country and to be acted upon? The Board is to appoint young persons of great merit without describing how that merit is to be discovered; and, finally, at a salary somewhat larger than the paid monitors, without stating the excess of such salary. I have got the admission of the Board of Education itself that this rule was intended to meet the case of convent schools, and practically it meets be other case. I should be sorry to sup- pose that gentlemen of the eminence of those who compose the Board could have used words to conceal their real intentions. But they must be now aware that, knowing the purposes for which this rule was intended, it is most unhappily expressed, and gives rise to the suggestion that it was couched in these terms in order that persons should not know what it was intended for. I challenge the right hon. Gentleman the Commissioner of Education to state to the House, that putting aside the case of model schools, for which there was no pretence to apply this rule, that there is any school in Ireland within the mind and view of the Commissioners to which the rule will apply other than convent schools. I say there is none. If there be one other it is a school in the North of Ireland which is described as a large school. To that alone could the epithet be ascribed. I challenge the right hon. Gentleman to say there is any other school to which it will apply. But whether he accepts the challenge or not, I have the confession of the Commissioners, that it was intended to apply to the convent schools chiefly. Now what would be the effect of this rule if acted upon? They would have junior monitors and senior monitors paid by the Board. They would first have their capitation grant in respect to their pupils. They would then have the monitors, both junior and senior, paid by the Board. Then they would have a new class not heard of before—the first class monitors—the object of which was, that they may be trained as teachers to go out to other Roman Catholic schools in the neighbourhood. The result would be that you would have a separate training establishment where the expense of separate training was defrayed by the State. You would have in substance and reality, the very thing that the Board said when they were asked on the subject they were not at liberty to grant. But what is the effect on the model schools? We have got the estimate upon the table prepared under the direction of the Board, which must soon come under the consideration of the House. And what do I find there? I find that there are struck off from monitors and pupil-teachers exactly the number which makes the diminution of the grant of £2,011. Monitors and pupil-teachers are annihilated to that amount, and a grant requested for these first-class monitors in convent schools of £2,000. So that that amount is actually given to the convent schools which was withdrawn from the model schools. Now, what is the justification of the Commissioners upon this point? The Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, on being waited upon by a deputation, referred to the Commissioners for their observations upon this question. They have furnished his Excellency with an explanatory paper, which has been laid upon the table. Now, I will venture to say, though representing the Commissioners, that there never emanated from any public department a document to be paralleled with this for recklessness and audacity. In the first place, the Commissioners say there is a perfect distinction between monitors and teachers, and that monitors are not teachers at all. Now, I will judge them by their own rules. I will take two passages only from their defence. Under the head of "classification of teachers" occurs this rule— Besides the principal and assistant teachers included under the foregoing head, there are other junior literary and industrial assistant teachers, pupil-teachers, and paid monitors. And the Commissioners in the same document, forgetting their own rule, assert that the teachers, assistants, and monitors are perfectly different things; and under a rule which prohibited paid teachers the Commissioners say that they are at liberty to have paid monitors. But the second observation of the Commissioners is still more remarkable. They say, as to the district model schools being injured, that they were never intended as training establishments for teachers, and that it is quite a mistake to suppose that it entered into their conception to support model establishments as training schools Let me read their own words, for I will ask the right hon. Gentleman to give an explanation, for without an explanation it appears to me to be an audacious evasion of the rule on the part of the Commissioners. I will ask the House to judge between us. These are their words— The district model schools are never intended to be training establishments for teachers. Now, this is a short, clear, and pithy assertion of a fact. Before the echo of that sentence dies away we may read this rule. Under the head of "District Model Schools" they say— The chief object of model schools is to promote a united education, to communicate a literary and scientific education, and to train young persons for the office of teachers, In the same page the Commissioners say that they were never intended for training establishments for teachers. Well, I will now take up the covenant which occurs in all model school leases—in the leases of all the schools under the Board. I find that it is to this effect—it binds all teachers, male and female, teaching in schools connected with the Board, to hold themselves in readiness to attend when called upon at the normal establishment in Dublin, or at one of the district model schools hereafter to be opened, for the purpose of training. I have here before me the correspondence which had taken place between the resident Commissioner and Mr. Wynne, once a Member of this House, and a gentleman we all respect; and in that correspondence I find that Mr. Wynne complained of the manner in which the teachers in the model schools in Sligo were distributed amongst the various denominations. The answer which the Commissioner gave to this complaint was that the district model school is not the model school of a mere town or village in which it is placed, but of the whole district, for the purpose of preparing the future teachers for the 400 or 500 National schools of the district. Now, nearly all of those schools were Roman Catholic ones that lay within that district. But I ask, then, what is the justification for the statement made to the Lord Lieutenant as to a matter of fact? What is the next explanation they give? They say that the district model schools do not supply a sufficient number of teachers, and the object of this rule is to increase that supply. Now, let the House mark the consistency of those statements. What are the facts? The Commissioners say that they amount to 700 teachers a year, and that the model schools only give 130 a year. I will ask the right hon. Gentleman for some warranty for this surprising statement. I find that Mr. Inspector Newall, one of the head Inspectors, says that he cannot get places for his teachers in his district—that one-sixth of the whole only amount to forty in the year; so that, multiplying that number by six, you get the number 240 in place of 130, which the Commissioners say the model schools only give, I also find that in Belfast alone the schools turned out sixty-three teachers in 1861, and seventy-six in 1862, and this is only one of the seventeen model schools in Ireland. I want then to know, if the object of these model schools be to supply a sufficiency of teachers, how that is to be done, inasmuch as I have before observed that the Commissioners have reduced the estimate for the model schools by the sum intended to meet and satisfy the rule of which I complain. But there is another explanation given by the Commissioners. They say that the convent schools have only a small capitation allowance, and that that does not produce as much money as the capitation allowances in other schools; that consequently the teachers in the convent schools are worse off in point of salary than those of other schools, and that it is, therefore, unfair to grudge them this little addition to which I have alluded. But why are they worse off in this respect? They are worse off because they refuse to submit to the rules laid down. If they submitted to those rules they would get exactly the same allowance as other schools. Are they then unfairly paid, and does the country exact from them a cheaper rate of education than from other schools? The Commissioners say that each child in a convent school costs 4s. 6d. altogether, and that each child in any of the other schools costs 7s. 2d. That is to say, the convent school child costs a little more than half what the other school child costs. But Mr. Sheridan says that the children in the convent schools are not half taught; that one teacher does the work of two; and that the inevitable result in such schools is that the rate of progress is extremely slow; that it takes a long time for a child to work his way from the lowest to the highest classes, and that the majority of the children leave the schools before they have completed their education. He says that no improvement in the school will enable one teacher to do the work of two. Now, am I justified in the statement which I made to the House? Then do not tell me that the State pays 4s. 6d. a head in one school, and 7s. 2d. a head in another school, when I am distinctly told that the child in one school is only half taught, and that the school has only one-half of the teaching power they ought to have. What are the protests against the National system? One of the Commissioners said that the rule limiting the allowance to convent schools was made to meet isolated oases; and Dr. Henry, the oldest Commissioner on the Board, said that, in his humble judgment, the repent change in the rule seriously interfered with one of the fundamental principles relating to secular instruction, and that it fostered a spirit of separation and exclusiveness. I invite the House to a passage between the Board of Commissioners and the right hon. Baronet the Chief Secretary for Ireland. I shall even claim the vote of the right hon. Baronet. I find that on the 30th January this year the right hon. Baronet wrote to the Resident Commissioner in these terms— Sir,—The attention of the Irish Government has been drawn to certain contemplated changes in the fundamental rules of the system of national education in Ireland, the effect of which would be seriously to imperil the principles on which the system is based. I have to remind you that the Board has no power to change any fundamental rule without the express permission of his Excellency the Lord Lieutenant. This is much more clear than what I have put before the House. The answer of the Commissioners really raises a question the importance of which this House will see, and the House must determine whether they will have a control and authority over the Board of Commissioners or not. The Commissioners disown control. In their answer there are one or two very curious things. Although there is not a word in the secretary's letter relative to convent schools, or any enumeration of the changes which the right hon. Baronet conceived to be fundamental, the Commissioners accept the suggestions and the insinuations, and they at once enter into the question of the convent schools. They say, "Oh, it is the convent schools you are speaking of;" and they tell the Chief Secretary it is no business of his. They say, moreover, they are quite sure that the Lord Lieutenant will agree with them. They further say, "We don't care for either you or the Lord Lieutenant, because the only thing we have to do is to get our money from Parliament, if we can only scramble through the Estimates"—I call the particular attention of the Chancellor of the Exchequer to this—"If we can only scramble through the Estimates and get the money from Parliament, we may spend it in any way we like; and with anything connected with the spending of money you have nothing to do." The House will consider the relations which exist between it and the Board, who receive £16,000 a year, and they will consider the extent of the information contained in the Estimate. The secretaries to the Commission, in reply to the right hon. Baronet, wrote as follows:— That though it seems to them there is nothing in the charter of incorporation forbidding the change of any rule of the Board, they are aware that, by one of the rules which were approved by the Government in 1855, it is provided that the Commissioners are not to change any fundamental rule without the express permission of his Excellency the Lord Lieutenant. We are directed further to state that, in approving the recent rules, supposed to be referred to by you, the Commissioners are of opinion that in so doing they made no change in any fundamental rule; and they are disposed to think that the Lord Lieutenant—to whom, in answer to his Excellency's letter of the 23rd ult., they have now forwarded a communication on the subject of these rules—will concur with them in this opinion. Then they proceeded to lay down four fundamental rules, and I should very much like to know where they got them from. Certainly there is no document before Parliament which contains them. These are the rules— 1st, Those rules which protect the children from interference with their religious opinions; 2nd, those rules which entitle the pastors to give religious instruction to children in vested schools; 3rd, those rules which regulate and confirm the rights of the patron, and the succession in case of a vacancy; 4th, the rules which give to managers the right to use the schools, or to the public the right to visit them, in order to see that they are properly carried on. They contend that these rules are not fundamental. I however understand these rules to be fundamental in this way, that they are solemnly established by the Board, and published to the world, as are the rules with regard to teachers, and with regard to convent schools—the one as much as the other. But so shortsighted are the Commissioners that they actually forget that if they are right in saying these four rules are not fundamental, and that therefore they may be changed without the consent of the Lord Lieutenant, the result will be that the very rule which says that fundamental rules cannot be changed without his consent is not itself fundamental and might itself be changed. That, I think, is not an argument that can be sustained for a moment. They went on to speak of the taxpayers and the House of Commons. This makes it proper for me to ask the House to observe that to the Estimate for this year there is appended a Vote relative to the creation of first-class monitors. The House knows pretty well what the class was created for. It was created for the convent schools, and for training teachers in the way I have pointed out. This is the information for the taxpayers. The note is— In order to perfect the monitorial system the Committee are convinced it is necessary to extend somewhat the period of monitorial service where special aptitude is manifested either for training teachers or for receiving the instruction. Do the Commissioners mean to say that the ladies at the head of nunneries, who never have been trained for teaching, who have never been put in possession of the technicalities of teaching, are peculiarly qualified to instruct pupil-teachers? I have no doubt that the time is coming, and that it is coming very fast, in which the House will have to consider the constitution of this Board, if it desires to retain the system of National Education in Ireland. Originally the Board consisted of seven Commissioners. The number was subsequently increased to ten, and later still to twenty. Only imagine a system of education in England conducted by twenty persons selected from different parts of the country who could never be got together! The result must be that the whole executive management must be left to clerks or cliques of a limited number of the Committee. The subject has before occupied attention. Mr. Cross, the secretary, appeared before a Committee of the House of Lords, and said a numerous Board was very undesirable, that three Commissioners were enough, and ten too many. The Bishop of Deny also said he was satisfied, from experience and observation, that if the system was to be saved there must be three paid Commissioners in the place of the present Board. Practically, this happens: in Dublin there are six, seven, or eight Commissioners—one in Belfast, one in Derry, and so forth; and the difficulty of getting them together is so great that the Dublin Commissioners do the whole business. I have brought this question before the House, this being a branch of the Legislature which has always been desirous to promote Irish education. If I wished the National system to fail, the best way would be to let it alone. I believe that two years would, in that case, overthrow the system to a certainty; but if the House desires to retain the system in the efficiency and spirit which has hitherto attended it, I call on the House, while yet there is time, to show the Commissioners that their course is one in which they will not be supported by the House, and to do so by affirming my Resolution.

MR. DAWSON

said, he begged to second the Motion. He had always been of opinion that the true and only groundwork of a National System of Education in Ireland must be based on the Earl of Derby's declaration in favour of combined religious and secular instruction. He had, therefore, always rejoiced at the advancement of the system under difficulties almost unparalleled; and he now protested against the recent departure from that Bound principle. No concession to any party ought to be permitted. The rules of the system should be common to all, and indiscriminating in their application. In the answer of the Government to-night there should be no mystification about the rules, but there should be laid down some broad and general principle upon which there could be no misunderstanding, and for the maintenance of which the Commissioners hereafter should be held responsible. As it was not likely that the Irish people would ever agree where a question of religious opinion was discussed, he would avoid all controversy which was more likely to excite the passions than promote reconciliation. No clergyman of any church should be permitted to undertake religious instruction, excepting at certain specified school hours, and then only to children of his own persuasion, as no parent could be expected to approve of the teaching of any minister not of his own faith. He was not about to express an opinion whether the educational grants, although differing in their form, but still proceeding from the State, should ever have been granted to these institutions. He objected to any extension of the exception. It was sheer nonsense to suppose that the convent schools could be made instrumental for the purposes of united education. The late rule promulgated by the Board must bear with it these characteristics. It must weaken the authority of the model schools, whilst it encouraged the hostile attitude of the other schools, which would assume the character of training establishments. The State had expended large sums of money for the establishment of these model schools, but in doing so it had acted wisely and well; and although the course of education pursued therein might not be altogether free from criticism, and although it might be impossible to say that the children were of an exclusively unmixed class, they were valuable as training establishments to those who were hereafter to be intrusted with the development of the system. He could confirm what had been stated by his hon. and learned Friend that a growing dissatisfaction had arisen in Ire- land with regard to the Board of Education. In the place of the present Board he would gladly see appointed three salaried Commissioners representing different denominations—the Episcopalian, the Presbyterian, and the Roman Catholic; and to these he would add a fourth, the Chief Secretary of Ireland for the time being, who in Parliament should be held responsible for their acts. He would rather that these duties should be of an executive and administrative than of an original character. Let Parliament lay down a system of administration impartial in its rules, and giving common justice to all without favouring any political creed. If such a change were made, and the system were hereafter to be honestly and efficiently worked out, it would render education in Ireland abundantly productive of the greatest blessings to all classes of the community.

Motion made, and Question proposed, That, in the opinion of this House, the Rules sanctioned by the Commissioners of National Education in Ireland on the 21st day of November, 1863, are, so far as regards their operation on the aid afforded to Convent and Monastic Schools, at variance with the principles of the system of National Education." — (Sir Hugh Cairns.)

MR. O'HAGAN (ATTORNEY GENERAL FOR IRELAND)

said, he would not shrink from the responsibility of replying to the very able speech of the hon. and learned Member for Belfast (Sir Hugh Cairns), because he thought it was quite fit and becoming in one who had been assailed, not so much in that speech as in the agitation of which it was a very mild expression, that he should say, on behalf of himself and others, what he conceived ought to be satisfactory to any reasonable man in relation to charges which he knew, so far as imputations of motives were concerned, to be utterly unfounded, and which he believed to be, in relation to fact, equally unfounded. He had for some months past been observing the demonstrations—to use a word which was familiar to them in Ireland—which had been made in the press and on the platforms of certain districts of that country; and, beyond a doubt, the accusations which had been made against the Board of Education had been of a very grievous character. There had been accusations made against men of whom, although he was one of them, he presumed to say they were persons of the highest station in Ireland, and who had devoted their time and their thoughts—their anxious thoughts, in the face of much unfounded aspersion and much unmerited obloquy, to the advancement of the social and moral improvement of their country. He was very happy to have this question ventilated in the free air of the House of Commons, because he thought the opportunity was there afforded him of justifying those men, and, above all, of justifying one who was unjustly attacked, and whom, being a friend of his, he could with all sincerity describe as a man of the largest accomplishments and of the noblest nature; a man who having early achieved intellectual triumphs in a University in England, such as were unexampled in that University, had devoted his life in an office far below his mental and social attainments for advantages which, in a worldly point of view, were very contemptible indeed but with this reward for him—that he had been able to confer benefits on the poor people of Ireland which would make his name an honoured one when the heats of party were over, and slander was at an end. He was happy to speak in that House on behalf of Mr. M'Donnell; and he thought that before he had concluded it would be patent to the House and to the world that the accusations which had been—in terms, gently, but in effect, strongly—urged by his hon. and learned Friend the Member for Belfast against him and his Colleagues, that they had been false to their trust—for it was no less than that—and that they had altered fundamental rules of the system without the sanction of the representative of the Sovereign, were accusations without a shadow of foundation. He could clearly understand this Motion if those at whose instance it was brought forward plainly avowed that their object was the one suggested by the hon. Gentleman, who had just addressed the House, at the close of his speech. He could well understand the movement if it was avowed that the object was not to bring before the public miserable charges which he should demonstrate to be unfounded, or to discuss a thing which was wretched and contemptible, whether they regarded its influence on society in Ireland, or as a pecuniary burden on the State; but to destroy a great institution, and substitute for a representative Board which commanded, in a great degree, the confidence of many and Various parties in Ireland, a Board of three paid Commissioners—a Protestant, a Presbyterian, and a Roman Catholic. This was the object of the agitation and the attack, and the object of the clever speech which they had heard to-night. That he believed. But what was the charge which he had to meet? Not embarrassing himself, in the first place, with the number of criticisms which his hon. and learned Friend had so ably made on certain documents, he should meet the broad charge against the Board—namely, that it had introduced an innovation; that it had connected the convent schools with itself, and dealt with them in a mode different from that in which they had been dealt with before. That charge was put forward in this way—that a fundamental change had been accomplished in the rules of the Board, and that the change so made had not the sanction of the Government. Now, he asserted that no change had been made which in any way conflicted with the duty of the Board, or interfered with the established principles of the system. He asked the House to consider this question very deliberately, not with reference to the position of individuals, but with reference to the safety of the system which he and many in Ireland believed to be connected with the best interests of that country. He believed that, although the system might have errors which ought to be corrected, and imperfections which it might be well to remedy, it had advanced the morals and intelligence of the people of Ireland, which was one of the most moral and the least criminal countries on the face of the earth. He asked the House to remember this great fact, that though the hostility to the National Board had been multiform and long-continued, though it had to contend with much of party spirit, it had so commended itself to the confidence of the people of Ireland, that the number of schools had increased from 789 in 1833 to 6,010 in 1862, and that in 1863 the number had still further increased to 6,163. The total number of children attending the schools, which in 1862 was 812,527, notwithstanding the depression which existed in Ireland, and the enormous emigration which had borne such vast numbers from the shores of that country had increased in 1863 to 840,569. With such facts before it, the House should be cautious before it came to a decision which might be most detrimental to the future interests of this great institution. Now what had been the relation between the conventual schools of Ireland and the Na- tional Board from its first establishment by Lord Derby? Soon after the famous letter by which the Board was founded, the question arose whether these schools should be connected with the Board. In point of fact, they had existed before the Board itself existed, they had been useful to Ireland, and had educated the people at a time when the State gave no aid for the purposes of education; and even the Kildare Place Society had helped these convent schools, giving them books and school requisites, though the managers of the society could not be accused of peculiar leaning towards the Irish Catholics. The matter was brought formally before Lord Stanley and the Irish Government, it was discussed by them, and in the first or second Report of the Board, answering the pamphlet of the Bishop of Exeter who had assailed them, the Board said that upon this point they had communicated with Lord Stanley, who thought it desirable that those schools should be brought under their superintendence, and that they should grant aid to them, which they accordingly had done. That was the Report of 1836. In 1837 there was a Commission of Inquiry of this House, and Mr. Carlile, a very able man, and a minister of the Church of Scotland, who was at the time resident commissioner, in reply to Lord Stanley, said the Board had received applications from some schools connected with nunneries and monasteries, that they had felt a difficulty in knowing how they were to proceed, and what the Government wished on the subject, but that, after communicating with Lord Stanley, they had unanimously resolved that it was desirable to include these schools. The House would see whether the effect of the Motion before the House would be exactly in harmony with this unanimous decision of Lord Stanley's Commissioners. In the same Report it appeared from the evidence of Dr. Kelly, now Judge Kelly, that when the convent schools were allowed to be taken into connection with the Board, Protestant and Presbyterian clergymen were applicants for the adoption of this course. The Presbyterians in the North of Ireland had taken a strong part in the discussion of this subject, but urged that the aid given to these schools should be withdrawn or diminished on the ground that they were exclusive and sectarian, and that the public ought to have nothing to do with them under a system of united education; but the effect of the amended rules in Ulster had been to make the Presbyterian schools there, to a large extent, as exclusive as the convent schools, and the Commissioners were quite right in 1839 in putting the two classes of schools very much on a par in point of exclusiveness. It was said that the connection of the convent schools was brought about in a concealed way; but in 1854, during the inquiry which took place before the House of Lords, this point was gone into particularly, and in a Report prepared by Earl Granville there was a specific reference to the convent schools, and specific suggestions or directions were given, which were communicated to the Board, and must have been known to the public. There was thus the fullest opportunity of inquiring thoroughly into the annection, and of ascertaining what the conditions were. The fact was that the convent schools were, from the very inception of this system, recognized as worthy of connection with it, and as institutions which might be aided for the public advantage, and quite consistently with the principles of the Board. These had been a vast deal of talk about united education by a number of very energetic agitators here and there, and it was asserted that only those schools should be aided where there were children of various religious persuasions. But this never had been the principle of the Board. Its principle had been to establish certain rules under which every school seeking aid should come, that those rules should be of such a character as to prevent the possibility of proselytism, and that there should be a complete protection for a religious minority against a religious majority. That was the principle of the Board, and the principle of Lord Stanley's letter was, that there should be good secular instruction without interference with peculiar religious tenets. Qui haeret in literâ haeret in cortice. It would be an abuse of the principle which that letter contained, if it were contended that no school should receive aid from the State unless it had a mixture of scholars. The value of the Board was shown in the representative character which was now assailed—that it had adapted itself to the peculiar circumstances of Ireland, that it had not acted in a doctrinaire spirit, but that respecting the great principle of religious freedom, it had not sought to tamper with the purity of religious faith, and therefore it had afforded aid to every school which could honestly accept aid upon the terms indicated in the constitution of the Board. Besides adapting itself to the circumstances of the country, it had respected the opinion of the people, and consequently it had been able to confer, as he believed, great benefit upon the country. Then what was the state of the case with regard to the principle as indicated by the Board itself, and as bearing upon the question before the House? In an able Report of the Commissioners of 1844, it was stated that the principle had been from the beginning that the National schools should be open alike to Christians of all denominations, and that accordingly no child should be required to receive religious instruction to which its parents or guardians might object. Under these circumstances, the convent schools came into connection with the Board. It would surely have been wrong if the Board had refused to admit those schools. Having been admitted into connection with the Board, it was not necessary for him to dwell upon the efficiency of those schools; but, as the question had been mooted, he would just refer to one or two authorities upon that point, to prove that they had been of great benefit to Ireland, and had more than repaid the amount of assistance which had been extended to them. Dr. Henry gave it as his opinion that it was most important to retain the conventual schools under the Board, as they had more than 40,000 children under their charge, and he believed that the education imparted was of a very excellent character. Mr. Keenan, the present chief Inspector, spoke highly of conventual schools as giving a valuable elementary education, and Dr. Sullivan bore testimony to the value of those schools in training teachers. It was quite true that Mr. Sheridan had reported against those schools, but that gentleman's opinion was set against the authorities he had mentioned, and the Board could not be required to act upon the opinion of a single Inspector, however able, whose experience only related to a particular district. Then came the question whether these schools in respect of payment were such as they ought to be. They had been originally paid precisely as all other schools under the Board by a capitation grant. For the first ten years they received 10 per cent upon all children enrolled, and afterwards 15, and then 20 per cent upon all children in attendance. In 1839 the system of classification was established; the nuns could not, from the nature of the case, take the burden of that system, and the result was that at this moment these conventual schools, which were teaching more children than the Church Establishment of Ireland, and teaching them most efficiently, received something like one-fourth of the first-class teachers and one-third of the ordinary class. They did the work of the State most effectively, and they received about 7s. 2 3/2;d. per head, including monitors, while common schools got something like 14s. 4d. The convent schools, therefore, were doing work for which they were not paid. What did the whole of this agitation amount to? £2,000 was sought for a new class of monitors, to be divided between the convents and convent schools. The rule did not recognize the convents, but to large and very efficient schools certain advantage was to be afforded. Upon that was based the whole of this agitation. The pretence was not the reality. It was to destroy the convent schools, or separate them altogether from the Board. Such being the historical relation subsisting between the Board under the authority of Lord Derby, under the able men who had been Commissioners, and under the sanction of Parliament, he now came to consider whether there had been a violation of any fundamental rule in providing that in certain large and efficient schools a third class of monitors should be provided. For a course of years—more than twenty —the monitorial system had been established by the Board; it had been altered from time to time; it had been increased in efficiency by the Board; and when the Board, having large experience, very slightly modified that system, by a mere administrative act, for a mere administrative purpose, it would be very hard for the House to come to the conclusion that there was a change in fundamental principle which required the assent of the Lord Lieutenant before the Board should be allowed to act upon it. He read extracts from the Reports of 1843 and 1844, which showed that the Board had established the system of monitors, paying them from £4 to £7 a year. In the latter year they had fifteen boys and fifteen young women in training for that purpose, and they hoped gradually to bring forward a body of masters and mistresses thoroughly qualified to undertake the management of the schools. They did not ask the assent of the Lord Lieutenant to that. It was regarded as a mere administrative act. It appeared quite clear that no fundamental principle was involved in the arrangements which had been made by the Board with regard to the monitors from 1843 to 1860, and, indeed, nobody had suggested that such was the case. That being so, was the Board, he would ask, to be condemned as having betrayed its trust because it had not appealed to the Government to confirm the particular alteration in question? In 1855 a second class of junior monitors was appointed, who were to receive a smaller sum ranging from £2 to £4 a year, and the Commissioners in that year said that "in the case of schools commanding a larger attendance and distinguished by their superior efficiency, it should be allowable to appoint two or more monitors." It would at once, therefore, be seen, that if a covert design lurked under words almost identical in 1864, that same design must have been present to the minds of the men by whom the Report of 1855 was drawn up. Yet in 1855 no one presumed to say that a fundamental change was made in the rules, or that the Lord Lieutenant should have been consulted in the matter. It was stated on the other side that in 1862 the Commissioners, acting without any legal authority, instituted certain monitors in a certain school in Dublin; but the transaction was a very simple one, and one which had been recognized by every set of Commissioners from the first. It became a serious question with the people in Ireland, who took an interest in educational matters, whether or not it was desirable to continue the monitors after a certain time in connection with the Board for a short period. There were, it should be borne in mind, two classes of monitors—the seniors and the juniors. The senior class continued in connection with the Board until about the age of eighteen, at which age a monitor became eligible to receive a teachership. It was, however, found that though eligible he or she was rarely elected, because there was a feeling that it wag better that persons of maturer age should be appointed. The result was that when boys or girls arrived at the age of eighteen, and found they could not get a teachership, they left the school, and in many cages emigrated; so that though educated for the public benefit, and at the public expense, they were lost to the public service. It occurred, therefore, to rational people in Ireland, that it would be a matter of great impor- tance that these children should be continued in connection with the Board until the period at which they might receive teacherships, and it was considered that by keeping them for a period of two years, that desirable object might be accomplished. And what, he would ask, had been the practice of the Board since its institution? It did not frame rules until it had some means of ascertaining whether they were workable and wise by experiment, and acting upon that principle they came to the conclusion to add to the two classes of monitors which he had already mentioned a third class, which might continue to operate in the schools. Such, then, was their appalling interference with the settled institutions of the country, and the fundamental principles of their constitution. Two or three collateral matters had been mixed up with that question, certainly not for the purpose of making it clearer and more comprehensible. It was not the fact that convent schools were the only schools with which the Board would deal under that rule. The rule extended to every large and efficient school in the country, whether Protestant, Presbyterian, or Catholic. [Cries of "Name!"] He believed there was such a school in the town of Belfast. [Sir HUGH CAIKNS: "I expressly said that no school could be named but that."] The rule had not yet been acted upon, but he was informed, on the authority of as trustworthy men as ever breathed, that there were some fifty, or perhaps sixty, schools in Ireland which would be perfectly capable, from their size and efficiency, of availing themselves of the operation of the rule. That was an answer which ought to satisfy any reasonable mind. As to the model schools, the allegation of the hon. and learned Member was that they should be and were the training schools of Ireland. Now he would assert the contrary of that. The model schools grew up in this way. When the Board was originally constituted it did not appear to have occurred to anybody that more than one model school would be necessary; but very soon the Commissioners took a different view, and began to establish model schools in the various counties of Ireland. That was done, not in order to train teachers, but that, as the name implied, models should be set up, complete in all their parts, as examples to be followed in the rest of the schools throughout the country. A model school, no doubt, trained teachers to a certain extent, but every school under the Board where there was a monitor also did the same in a degree; and it would be quite contrary to the principle of a model school to make it an institution for the training of teachers only. The hon. and learned Gentleman said the model schools were sufficient to supply all the teachers needed for Ireland; but the fact was they had 7,247 teachers in all in connection with the Board, and only 3,331 had been trained in those establishments. There were 700 teachers required every year, and the model schools did not supply one-half of that number. The authority of Mr. Newall had been cited in opposition to that calculation, but Mr. Newall must have been under a mistake, for in the year to which he referred there were actually 732 new teachers required. It might be confidently asserted that the model schools ought not to train all their teachers. It was a wise arrangement to have those schools retrenched. There were thirteen of them in Ulster; he did not know whether there was one in Connaught, and there were not many in Munster. It would be monstrous to think of sending young persons from one province to another to be trained as teachers, when they would be at a great distance from their parents and friends, and when an enormous expense would be incurred without securing any better results than were now obtained in a much more economical manner. He maintained, then, that the model schools neither were nor should be the training establishments for teachers in Ireland. Attention had been called last Session by his hon. Friend the Member for Longford (Mr. O'Reilly) to the question of the model schools, and that hon. Member certainly raised an argument with reference to some of those institutions which appeared not to admit of a very easy answer. The expenditure made upon them was regarded as excessive; and the Treasury, having had the circumstance brought to its notice, had done what he generally did—namely, performed its duty, and directed the Commissioners to look into the matter, with a view to curtail any useless outlay of public money. The Commissioners obeyed their instructions, and suggested a reduction of £2,500, which was agreed to by the Treasury. That proceeding had no possible connection, either in intention or in fact, with that other arrangement, the Creation of a third class of monitors. No doubt in the Belfast school a considerable reduction had been made; but in that school it turned out that there was a teacher for every twelve pupils. In the Enniscorthy school it also turned out that there was a teacher for every eight pupils. He had endeavoured to present broadly to the House the history of the connection of the convent schools and the monitorial system with the National Board, and he said, again, that whether the object of this Motion was to effect a small arrangement, or whether it was really designed to effect the connection of convents with the National Board, the case had entirely failed. If the objection were confined to the arrangement, he answered that it was according to the settled practice of the Board, and was justified by the necessity of the case. If he was told that the desire was to sever the connection of the convents with the Board, as had been suggested elsewhere, and as would seem to be the legitimate corollary from the argument which they had heard that evening—even though it might not be intended—then he invoked the authority of Lord Derby, the founder of the system, and referred to the unbroken course of action of the Commission, to the admirable results which that course had produced, and to the danger and destruction which its abandonment would undoubtedly involve. The people of Ireland had a great regard and a deep love for their conventual institutions. They were attracted to education by those institutions as nothing else could attract them. Would it not be a pity and a shame to deprive them of those advantages which they had heretofore enjoyed at so trifling a cost to the State? It was not desirable that they should in dealing with Ireland act always with the rigidness of logic or in the narrow spirit of doctrinaires. It was necessary to look to the feelings of the people, to the position of the people, and to the traditions of the people in order to govern Ireland rightly. The people were impulsive, they were impressible, they were ardent. Sometimes they exhibited an excess of love and hate; but those very circumstances, their peculiar history, and the position in which they stood, entitled them to and required for them special generosity and special kindness. They might be sure that if they gave them kindness it would be answered by trust; and if they gave them kindness they would return more than gratitude. That had been too often forgotten, but it ought especially to be borne in mind with reference to this question. The schools to which the people were most deeply attached were the convent schools. They were to them a sacred thing. If the connection which had been wisely established and well maintained between those schools and the National Board was severed, the people of Ireland would be led to repel and repudiate the principles of that body. It was not desirable to produce such a result. It was desirable to inspire the people with confidence and with trust. There was in operation in the country a great influence — an incalculable power which would exist whether hon. Members desired it or not, and it would be infinitely better to accept that influence, to cultivate kindly and friendly relations with it, and to utilize it as far as possible. Dean Kernan, of Dundalk, in his evidence before the Lords' Committee of 1854, stated that the connection between the convent schools and the National Board had done a great deal to remove the suspicions with which the people, the clergy, and the bishops of Ireland at first received the National system, and that if that connection was broken their confidence in it would be gone. These were grave and weighty words. The Motion before the House would very much endanger the connection to which this distinguished dignitary of the Roman Catholic Church attached so much importance, and therefore he hoped that the House would not agree to it.

MR. WHITESIDE

said, that the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Attorney General for Ireland having anticipated that his hon. and learned Friend the Member for Belfast (Sir Hugh Cairns) would make an attack upon the National Board, had prepared a speech, the greater part of which was not ad litem, and had with scrupulous care avoided the three important points which were alleged by his hon. and learned Friend. This, which the Attorney General treated as a trifling and contemptible matter, had excited the opposition of all the respectability of the North of Ireland, and even some of the right hon. Gentleman's colleagues had protested against this act of arbitrary power, which was justified or attempted to be palliated by him as a mere act of administrative authority. But what was the opinion of the organ of the Government? The Chief Secretary for Ireland, writing from Dublin Castle to the resident Commissioner, said that the attention of the Irish Government had been drawn to "certain contemplated changes in the fundamental rules of the system of National Education in Ireland, the effect of which will be seriously to imperil the principle upon which that system is based," and reminded him, as resident Commissioner, "that the Board of Commissioners, as incorporated by Royal Charter, has no power to change any fundamental rule without the express permission of the Lord Lieutenant." These were the expressions of the Chief Secretary; and then the Attorney General, who ought to be his right hand, to sustain him in his exposition of the law, stood up and said that there was not a word of truth in that letter, that no fundamental rule was altered or amended, and that the changes had no foundation except in the imagination of the right hon. Baronet. He believed that both as to law and fact the right hon. Baronet had stated exactly that which it was his duty to state. It was a very pretty quarrel as it stood, and there he was quite ready to leave it. What could be the value of a Government the leading members of which differed point blank from each other? The National system was founded in succession to the Kildare Place Society, a tolerant institution, established by the Church to which he had the honour to belong, and it was a significant fact that those who now advocated an exceptional policy for the Roman Catholics and the Presbyterians persistently refused the smallest concession to the Established Church. It was quite true that the Kildare Place Society gave their good books to the Roman Catholic convents, but on one condition, that they would read and understand them. One of the books so given was the New Testament. The Kildare Place Society insisted that it should be read, and on that point, after some time, a split took place, and the National Board was established. For several years the new system worked very well. It was supported by Archbishop Whately, the foremost man in Ireland; but at length Archbishop Murray died, and then the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland received a new head from Rome. That personage immediately took the government of the business into his own hands. He at once objected to the books which had been assented to by the right rev. Dr. Murray, and when Archbishop Whately said that he had induced his clergy to join the National Board on the faith that those books would be used, Dr. Cullen replied that he had nothing to do with engagements entered into before his arrival in Ireland. The result was that the Commissioners, like obedient men, kicked the books out, and when Archbishop Whately asked to reason it with them they flatly refused, for it was a remarkable peculiarity of the National Board that it never reasoned. Archbishop Whately, who was a logician, charged them with having departed from the principle on which the National system was founded, but they declined to give any reply, and contented themselves with obeying the behest of Dr. Cullen. Finally; the Archbishop told them they had been guilty of a breach of faith to the public, and withdrew from the Board. No doubt they were glad to get rid of him, for the presence of an eminent, honest, thinking man must have been a great obstruction to their proceedings. Shortly afterwards the Synod of Thurles published its decrees, all of which were aimed directly at the National System of Education, as originally established, and ever since the Board had acted in exact accordance with the commands of the Synod. Lord Derby intended that there should be a combined literary and a separate religious education. The Synod of Thurles decreed that an end should be put to that principle, and Dr. Cullen openly and honestly advised his clergy to take advantage of the National system in order to defeat the plan of its founders. All the Roman Catholic children were withdrawn from the model schools, one of the objects of which was, notwithstanding what the Attorney General had said, to train young persons as teachers. It appeared from the Reports of the Inspectors—a body of gentlemen, many of them Roman Catholics, for whom he had the highest respect—that the plan adopted was, first to establish a convent school in 'the neighbourhood of a model school, and then to induce Roman Catholic parents to transfer their children from the latter to the former. In some cases, not merely were the pupils withdrawn, but the paid monitresses were directed to resign. Thus the schools established to carry out the original principle of the Earl of Derby were gradually brought to the brink of ruin, and now the question arose, where the masters and mistresses were to come from who were to continue what was still preposterously called the National System of Education in Ireland. Upon these convent schools he made no attack whatever. They were conducted by highly respectable ladies, deserving much praise for their zeal and devotion. But he could not stand up and conscientiously say with the Attorney General for Ireland, that he believed conventual and monastic bodies to be best fitted to undertake the education of mankind. He believed the account to be strictly correct which was given of them ill that Report of the Roman Catholic Inspector, which was shamefully concealed from Parliament, and even from some of the Commissioners of National Education, till one of them found it out, and led to its being moved for in that House. In that Report they were shown to be founded on virtuous intolerance. The Attorney General for Ireland had said that complaints had been made about nothing at all. But it was impossible to read those able protests without seeing that they were levelled against the system of giving money for the spread of the religions principle, the very reverse of that animating the National system, against diverting the funds intended for the secular education of the country to the training of masters and mistresses in religious establishments, so as to indoctrinate the country with their peculiar principles. Into the Emancipation Act clauses were introduced forbidding the establishment of monastic institutions in Ireland, but to the very establishments proscribed by the law the State was now paying money for the education of youths. A clergyman of the Established Church could not get so much as a book from this National Board, which the country was taxed to support. Books, money, influence were all handed to monks and nuns, friars and Jesuits, to carry out their views. And this was called even-handed justice. What has been the result of this action of the Board? The Lady Superioress of Baggot Street Convent modestly demanded that no leas than forty monitresses should be sent in one consignment to that institution, that large number being requisite, it was stated, to satisfy the wishes and feelings of the general population of Ireland. The reasons on which the demand was based were ably set out in the despatch, for attached to each of those convents, he believed, there was always a highly educated and distinguished member of some confraternity: the document closed with a reference to the recognition attributed to the right hon. Gentleman the Secretary for the Colonies of the importance of separate denominational training establishments. The object of the application was to supply the places of the teachers who before were taught in the training establishments and in the model schools with others trained upon their conventual system, [Mr. O'HAGAM: Read, the answer of the Commissioners.] The answer was dated 1864, and he need not remind the right hon. Gentleman that there was such a thing as the House of Commons. Only for it he knew not what would become of them in Ireland. The answer stated that it was entirely out of the power of the Commissioners to comply, with the request made to them. But if that were so, it must have been equally out of their power to give paid monitresses, which was the same thing under another name. They knew there was to be a full discussion in the House of Commons. [Laughter.] A laugh, he might remind the hon. Gentleman, wag no argument, and he should be glad if he would debate the matter in sounds less audible but more sensible. The spirit underlying all these movements might be gathered from the letters of Mr. Kavanagh, a zealous Roman Catholic, formerly holding high office under the National Board. In one letter addressed to the Earl of Carlisle, he boasted of what the Catholic strength of the country had already achieved, adding— We have our heel on the neck of the National system, the vitals of which are well-nigh strangled. Formerly, the matter in dispute between Protestants and Roman Catholics was as to the reading of the Scriptures. That stage had long since passed, and a reference to the reading of the Scriptures was scarcely ever heard in the present day. There were 3,000 schools, of which 3,000 priests were patrons, and as to what became of the Scriptures in those schools it was not necessary to inquire. He wished to speak with all respect of the National Commissioners. They were, however, a Board; and a Board was a thing without heart, without feelings, without substance or affections—in short, it was a Board. He asked the House, which had visited with its indignation practices in the Educational Department in England not one-hundredth part as much to be complained of as those in Ireland, to express its opinion fearlessly on the conduct of that Board, and in particular to remember its suppression of a most valuable Report. That document reflected the highest credit on the abilities, candour, and honesty of the gentleman who framed it. His division of the subjects treated of was most skilful, and in it he showed conclusively that the alleged success of the National system in secular education was purely a myth. Mr. Sheridan in that Report said, that should his conclusion be verified it behoved the Commissioners to take some steps to effect a radical change in the course of the secular instruction. Having that Report before them, it was the duty of the Government to act upon the information which it contained. He regretted that the principle on which the Commissioners enforced, endowed, and enriched these schools, for the purpose of overthrowing the model and training schools, was that of carrying out Ultramontane views. No doubt the Secretary for Ireland would follow him in debate, would vindicate his letter, and with his usual frankness would state why he differed from the Attorney General on this subject. But the present discussion gave him and those around him no redress. The system pf united education was a myth. He would admit that some Protestant children went to the Roman Catholic schools, and that the humbler classes of Irish children went to the convent schools because they were religious institutions. But the principle of the Board was that the schools should be opened to all classes of Her Majesty's subjects alike. Would any one say that these convent schools were intended for Protestant children? He believed that they were intended to separate the Roman Catholics from the Protestants, in order to educate the former as the priest wished. He had been assured by a Roman Catholic that every book in these schools, even those on secular subjects, was to be permeated with the spirit of the Catholic religion. This was a big and mighty question. It might be asked what part the Established Church in Ireland would take in it. He did not ask for one guinea for the Church Education Society, but he wished the reins to be held tightly over the secular system of education in Ireland, so that it might not be perverted or spoiled. He thought that secular system good. He was willing to take the books, the training, and the inspection of that system, but the Church would never give up the right to use the Scriptures, in the schools. The great principle of Church education was just as strong as ever, and the society had 1,800 schools open, and about 40,000 scholars. Yet the Board would not give any books to the schools of the Church Education Society, while they gave them to the nuns, who were far more exclusive. The question now arose what was to be done with the Board? There could be no doubt it must be knocked down. The right hon. Gentleman (Mr. Cardwell) constituted a Board of twenty in number, and every one rightly prophesied that they would meet to debate, and not to administer, the affairs intrusted to them. That first thing would be to get rid of the Board. It would be for the House of Commons to say whether there should be paid Commissioners in its place. He would ask the House whether it was possible, in the present condition of this question, to coerce the consciences of any class of persons? He asked them to consider whether it was not possible to extend to all classes of Her Majesty's subjects the blessings of a good sound secular education in addition to that religious education which Protestants had always contended for, and which they would not be true Protestants if they did not contend for still? He would entreat the House, in justice to the Roman Catholic as well as the Protestant population of Ireland, to affirm the Resolution so logically advocated by his hon. and learned Friend the Member for Belfast.

MR. MAGUIRE

moved that the debate be adjourned.

Debate adjourned till To-morrow.