RESOLUTION.

HC Deb 02 June 1874 vol 219 cc867-918

MR. WILLIAM CARTWRIGHT

, in rising to call attention to the proceedings of the Irish Commissioners for Education in reference to the Callan Schools; and to move— That, in the opinion of this House, the action taken by the Board has been marked with inconsistency, and has not been in conformity with precedents or with the spirit of its regulations, said, that he had not the least personal acquaintance with Mr. O'Keeffe, nor any personal interest in the subject to which he desired to call attention; but if he had, his sympathies might be supposed to be with the majority of the National Board. He had had relations of intimacy with some of its most distinguished members, while, on the other hand, he did not even know by sight Mr. O'Keeffe, and he had but the slightest acquaintance with one of the members of the minority. Then, as regarded the religious aspects of the case, he should very much deprecate the introduction into the debate of any questions calculated to engender angry passions, and outside the province of this Assembly. The question he had to bring forward was a purely civil question, concerning the removal of a civil functionary from a civil post by a civil Board, acting upon what he considered to be an episcopal message. He wished to say at once, also, that he entirely dissociated himself from the Amendment of which the hon. and learned Member for Marylebone (Sir Thomas Chambers) had given Notice, as that Amendment raised an issue which affected Mr. O'Keeffe not only as the manager of the Schools, but as a priest officiating at a poor-house. He would show that in this case the Board had departed from the spirit of its rules and from the precedents which had been set, in depriving Mr. O'Keeffe of his civil status as manager of the Schools, and he admitted that if he could not do this, he had no case to bring forward at all. In 1863 Mr. O'Keeffe happened to be removed to the parish of Callan, and he was appointed in due course manager of the Schools by the Board. On the 9th April, 1872, at a meeting of the Board, there was a discussion upon two documents, one from the Bishop, the other from a priest who had been appointed administrator of Mr. O'Keeffe's parish. The first was an intimation from Bishop Moran, that he had seen fit to suspend Father O'Keeffe from his ecclesiastical functions as parish priest of Callan; and the other was from the Rev. Mr. Martin, who stated that he had been appointed administrator of the parish, and requested that the money paid to the manager should at once be paid to him. A Motion, by Mr. Justice Fitzgerald, to postpone the matter to the next meeting, was then adopted; and then, on April 23, the Bishop's missive was brought under consideration. The result of that meeting was that the Board deemed they could take no other action than to defer to the intimation of the Bishop. He did not for a moment impugn the motives of any one of the gentlemen who voted in the majority; but he did think the circumstances of the case so singular that he must ask the House to consider them with attention. For this meeting was the capital one in the whole transaction. The decision taken on this occasion constituted the really distinguishing feature in the case, and all the subsequent Resolutions of the Board were no more than consequences, flowing naturally from this compromising initiatory step. On April 23, the Board accordingly met to decide what should be done to Mr. O'Keeffe, and it deemed itself unable to take any other action than to defer to the instruction of the Bishop and remove Mr. O'Keeffe. But Mr. Justice Morris previously moved that before any action was taken on the document, its nature should be communicated to Mr. O'Keeffe. Under all circumstances this would seem a very fair proposal, but there were special circumstances urging delay. It had been brought under the notice of the Board that Mr. O'Keeffe had instituted a civil suit, which had not come off, to invalidate on civil grounds the suspension on ground of which his removal was demanded. This fact was spoken to by Judge Morris before the Committee, and by the statement of Dr. Henry embodied in the Minutes, where direct reference was made to the pleadings. Notwithstanding this still pending suit, the Board determined to remove—a decision arrived at, however, only by a majority of 1. Now, there was something in the constitution of this majority which it was essential to point out; for this majority of 1 comprised both the Judge who was to preside at the trial of the lodged suit, and the advocate who was to conduct the case. It certainly was not in accordance with the equitable course that prevailed in England, that the Judge who was to adjudicate, and the retained counsel for prosecution, should co-operate to prejudge a case that was pending. But there was yet more. Chief Justice Monahan, who subsequently, after the fatal decision, supported the majority against reversal, in this really decisive division voted against the majority on the express ground that this pending and unheard suit should bar action. The motives which swayed were indifferent; but he thought the fact symptomatic of the feeling prevalent at the Board. It was said in defence of the Board that they had throughout acted in accordance with the customs, rules, principles, and practice of the Board; and this defence had been set up by several eminent members of the Board. But it behoved them to see what their previous action had been, and what the present one involved. Mr. Keenan was examined on that point, and when he was pressed to say whether his view of the conduct of the Board in submitting to ecclesiastical direction was not reducing it to a purely ministerial position, he said, "Yes, exactly ministerial." Now, this was a Board that expended £546,000 a-year of the public money, and he maintained, therefore, that it was a Civil Board which was the medium of communication between the Government and the educational system of the country; and if that Board was to be a simply ministerial Board, and subject to the direction of Bishops, let the fact be known. For the consequence must be that the educational system of Ireland should be wholly in the hands of denominational autocrats, at whoso bidding the Board should pay out the State stipends or withhold them. It was essential to bear in mind that the point involved in this case was not one of sectarian interests—of Protestant versus Catholic feelings—but of general State rights versus denominational bodies as such and irrespective of any particular tenets. He did not think it was the original intention of Parliament that it should be a ministerial Board, or that the people would be content that it should be. The rules of the Board expressed an earnest wish that the ministers and clergy of different denominations would co-operate in the work; and this showed that the Board was not intended ministerially to carry out the wishes of any one body. Further, the Board reserved to itself, in the clearest and most distinct way, power to give or withhold its sanction from all persons nominated as local managers. There was no limitation of their power of withholding their sanction to appointments of lay managers. It extended also to clerical managers, none of whom could be instituted without the direct sanction and approval of the Board, and therefore the Board possessed a directing and not a merely ministerial power. Both Judge Fitzgerald and Sir Alexander Maedonald—the latter of whom had been resident Commissioner for upwards of 30 years—were of opinion that there were no ex officio managers, and that no person—not even a pastor or a priest—could claim to act as manager unless he derived his title directly from the Board. Great stress had been laid upon the precedents in this case. When the Board was challenged in reference to its proceedings in relation to Mr. O'Keeffe, the reply was that it had only dealt with him as it had dealt with other clerical managers who had been suspended or who were under censure. Regarding this allegation as a most important one, he had taken some trouble in order to ascertain the nature of the precedents relied upon in justification of the conduct of the Board with regard to Mr. O'Keeffe, and he ventured to affirm that not one of those so-called precedents was to the point. The first of the precedents referred to in the Report was the case of a parish priest named Keenan, who, while manager, was suspended in 1845, and in which there was a deferential letter from the ecclesiastical authority which clearly showed that power was vested in the Board. They, indeed, never took action in the matter at all until they had a communication from their own Inspector, whereas, in this case, action was directly taken on a Bishop's missive. The second was the case of Mr. O'Farrell, in which the Bishop made no attempt to demand his removal from his office of manager, notwithstanding his protracted suspension. The third case was that of Mr. Sheridan, also a suspended priest for years without the Bishop ever venturing to demand his removal. In all these cases the clerical manager had remained manager of the school for some years after his ecclesiastical suspension, and had at length been removed by the Board at the instance, not of the Bishop, but of the Inspector. The precedents relied on in support of the Board had all been broken down already. But there was a feature in this case which took it out of all precedents, and for this reason—that an appeal was pending on behalf of Mr. O'Keeffe—not to any ecclesiastical authority, but in a Civil Court—which ought to have been decided before the Board —itself a civil authority—took action. He would now mention two precedents, showing that the Board removed unsuspended, and retained suspended priests when it saw fit. The first was the case of the Rev. M. Malone. He was a parish priest, but did something which the Board chose to consider improper—he lent his school room for a political purpose. He was not disturbed in the performance of his duties as a parish priest, but still the Board removed him. That was a case well established, and brought out clearly before the Select Committee. The next case was that of Father Daly, who was a suspended priest for many years—["No, no;"]—at all events, for several years; and he was a manager of schools during those years. Dr. Henry, who was a hard, zealous, and stern persecutor of Father O'Keeffe—a fierce Presbyterian from the North, always ready with arguments for removing Mr. O'Keeffe—when questioned about Father Daly's alleged disobedience to the Board, pleaded want of memory; he could only remember the good dinners Father Daly gave. He (Mr. Cartwright) had a few days since asked a strong supporter of the majority of the Board how it came to pass that Mr. Daly had not been deprived of his office, and the answer was—"Well, Father Daly was a difficult man to tackle, and so we left him alone." It was much to be regretted that Father O'Keeffe was not also a difficult man to tackle. Precedents, therefore, did not justify the peculiar action of the Board in this case. The House doubtless remembered the circumstances under which the Select Committee was appointed. Mr. Bouverie having placed a Notice on the Paper on the subject of Mr. O'Keeffe's dismissal; the Board saw that notice was being taken of their proceedings, and a memorial was presented to the House by the majority of the Board praying that it might be enabled to explain its action. A Committee was accordingly appointed at the Motion of the Government, and the inquiry was made, members of the minority and the majority of the Board giving evidence on the subject of the reference. So matters remained until the 8th of July, when the noble Marquess the then Chief Secretary for Ireland (the Marquess of Hartington), wrote a letter to the Board, enclosing a new Rule for their adoption. The letter stated that, in the opinion of the Government, the Board had only acted according to their own conscientious convictions, and in that statement he readily concurred. He charged them only with error of judgment; but he could not agree with what the noble Marquess added—that what they did was in conformity with the former practice of the Board. The Rule, which was enclosed, stated that the Commissioners reserved to themselves the power of withdrawing a patron or local manager on grounds of unfitness or to promote the harmony of the particular parish; but that such withdrawal should not take place without prior investigation. This Rule was adopted by the Commissioners. Mr. Bouverie thereupon rose in the House and asked whether the new Rule was to be read in the light of the Resolution which he then still had on the Notice Paper, and which he declined to withdraw unless the answer he received was absolutely satisfactory. That Resolution declared— That no person should be removed or debarred from the office of manager of a National School in Ireland by reason only of his having been suspended from the exercise of spiritual authority, or from any ecclesiastical office, nor unless, upon due inquiry, it shall appear to the said Commissioners that his tenure of such office will be prejudicial to the efficiency of such school and to the promotion of sound education therein. On the 11th July Mr. Bouverie asked the right hon. Gentleman the then Prime Minister (Mr. Gladstone) whether the Rules intended to meet his Motion would be insisted upon not only as regarded the past, but the future. The right hon. Gentleman, in the most explicit manner, declared that that was the intention of the Government, and that under the new Rules it was intended Mr. O'Keeffe should be re-imbursed for any loss sustained by him, and that he should be re-instated in his position as manager of the Callan Schools. He (Mr. Gladstone) further admitted that the Government were ultimately responsible for the action of the Education Board. On those assurances, as fully satisfactory, Mr. Bouverie withdrew his Notice. On July 25 the Board met, and, instead of entertaining an application from Mr. O'Keeffe, postponed it to November, upon which they received a despatch from the Government expressing surprise, and desiring them to proceed with the consideration of the case as soon as possible. Thereupon Dr. Henry said that it was the custom of the Board to defer important cases arising in the autumn months until the end of the legal vacation; and on that the 7th of October was fixed for the disposal of the case. Fourteen members met, and a novel form of proceeding was resorted to. It was proposed not to dispose the case according to the terms of convocation, but that the further consideration of the case should be postponed until an Inspector was sent on a roving commission to Callan to inquire into and report upon not only what had taken place, but upon any new matter or information which had subsequently transpired, for the instruction and guidance of the Board. The Inspector sent a satisfactory Report, which showed what the condition of the parish was, and, from that Report, it seemed that Mr. O'Keeffe still had a strong hold upon the people. The Board met on the 6th of November. Seventeen members wore present, the largest number at any meeting. Before the proceedings commenced a protest was handed in against the course which had been pursued by five of the most eminent members, including two Irish Judges, who were both Roman Catholics, on the ground that the proceedings were not only an infraction of the previous practices and precedents of the Board itself, but a direct violation of the pledge which they had instructed the Prime Minister to give to Parliament as to the construction to be put upon the now Rules—a pledge which had enabled them to escape a direct vote of censure. On the Motion of Lord Monck, it was resolved to refuse the application of Mr. O'Keeffe to put his schools again on the roll, and they finally discharged him as not fit to be trusted with the management of the Schools. That judgment was formed, not on the state of circumstances as they formerly stood, but on the ground of new considerations which had been imported into the case. The Resolution was carried only by a majority of 2, the numbers being 9 to 7; and he must call special attention to the Division List. The oldest Commissioner except one was Lord Kildare, and he declined to concur in the action taken by the majority of his fellow Commissioners at this decisive meeting of the Board on November 6, 1873, though before acceptance of the now Rule he had consistently supported the original Resolution—which, however, had been arrived at in his absence—to act on Bishop Moran's certificate of censure. On this capital occasion Lord Kildare, however, separated himself in a marked manner from those with whom till then he had sided, and voted in the minority against Lord Monck's Motion. Bishop Moran having got Mr. O'Keeffe removed, wished another manager to be appointed, but he must be a clerical manager. But the Board, which until now had affirmed that as a matter of course the incumbent of the parish must needs be the manager, chose to consider itself vested with the authority to appoint any one of its selection; and in reference to this step Bishop Moran wrote to the Board a letter which was very remarkable. He said the parish was in a peculiar state; the Commissioners were consequently in some difficulty; he would accordingly withdraw his nominee for the present as a matter of policy, but it must be distinctly understood that he reserved to himself the power of nominating the manager whenever the proper time had come. The Board received that letter and made no reply. Did they recognize that right? Where was the line to be drawn between the power of the Board and the power of the Bishop, in presence of this unchallenged pretension by him. He did not profess to be an advocate of Mr. O'Keeffe; he took his case merely as representing the action of the Board in a matter involving interests far greater than individual. If this was to be considered a precedent for the future, they had no guarantee for the education of Ireland apart from the immediate control of the Roman Catholic Bishops, who could nominate and remove the managers, both lay and clerical, of schools as they thought proper. The Bishop's notification of censure, which was supposed to be sufficient for the removal of Mr. O'Keeffe from his civil status, rested on a very peculiar document; it rested on the assumption that the Bull In Cœnâ Domini was a binding document, whereas it had been formally repudiated by the Roman Catholic Hierarchy of Ireland. The late Dr. Doyle, when examined before a Committee of the House of Lords, stated that this Bull was not then and never had been in force in Ireland, and had been rejected by nearly every Christian country in Europe. Dr. MacHale also stated that this Bull was not to be attended to if it interfered with the obligations we owed one to another. Inasmuch as the notification received by the Board did not rest upon any particular clause, but was levelled in virtue of the whole instrument, a power of the most dangerous kind was assumed. In virtue of the power thus put in action by Cardinal Cullen, he would have been justified in launching, ex informatâ co-scientiâ, which meant a form of procedure involving no citation, nor any single established guarantee for due inquiry, a fulmination against any lay-manager of a school, who had ventured ever, no matter on what ground, to sue an ecclesiastic before a Civil Court. In virtue of that document the censure levelled at Father O'Keeffe, which had been held valid for his removal from an office of civil status, might also have been launched at anyone who got into any trouble with ecclesiastical authority, and would have been equally valid for the removal of any lay-manager of a school by the Board on notification by the Bishop that in virtue of this Papal decree he laid this individual under ban of censure for some delinquency which need not be stated. It was important to know whether this was to be a ministerial Board which was to dispense the State funds at the dictation of an inscrutable authority of this nature. Was the money put into the hands of the Board for the purposes of education in Ireland to be withdrawn the moment the heads of the Roman Catholic Church declared that the conduct of one of their community had not been satisfactory? He had not taken up this question from personal motives, but as one affecting the interests of Ireland in a most serious degree, and determining no less an issue than whether or not the State was prepared to surrender all independent voice in the direction of the educational establishments in Ireland into the unchecked control of irresponsible denominational authorities. The hon. Gentleman concluded by moving his Resolution.

LORD EDMOND EITZMAURICE

, in seconding the Resolution, said, that everyone who had listened to the able and exhaustive speech of his hon. Friend must have been satisfied that abundant reason existed for calling the attention of the House to the circumstances of this case. It was not only that distinct pledges had been given to the House in the matter, and the House had a right to know how they had been redeemed. There was a broader ground than that. Speaking on this question last year, the hon. and learned Member for the City of Oxford (Sir William Harcourt) said, that— This was not a matter merely affecting the schools of a parish in Ireland; it involved one of the largest questions which could possibly be conceived, and which was now agitating every part of Europe—namely, how far ecclesiastical authority was or was not to be supreme over the civil authority of the country."—[3 Hansard, ccxvi. 320.] Earl Russell, in a recently-published book, in which, amongst other subjects, he investigated the relations between Church and State, alluded in the concluding chapters to this O'Keeffe case, and used expressions with reference to it similar to those of the hon. and learned Member for the City of Oxford. Time had fully justified the opinion of the veteran Statesman. This was now the third year in which this case had been before the House, and he thought it was quite time that the question should be settled one way or the other. It was thought last year that it had been happily settled, and he parted with the papers he had collected on the O'Keeffe case with a feeling of infinite relief, and he this year only returned to them with infinite disgust. It was in 1869 that the differences between Mr. O'Keeffe and his curate, who was practically a representative of the Bishop in his parish, began. It was in the following year that his Bishop professed to suspend him, the legality of the suspension being now still in dispute. In 1871 the differences continued. It was in the Spring of 1872 that Cardinal Cullen, acting by virtue of a Papal brief—suspended Mr. O'Keeffe. In April of the same year the Coadjutor Bishop of Ossory informed the Board of the suspension, and the Board, acting upon that mere information, suspended Mr. O'Keeffe from the management of the Callan Schools, and refused him a hearing in defence. Meanwhile, Mr. O'Keeffe had instituted proceedings against Cardinal Cullen in the matter of the suspension. The Board had acted upon the mere information of the Bishop, and upon the Papal rescript, which had since been pronounced by the highest legal authority in the land to be not worth the paper on which it was written. The Board dismissed a man while a civil suit was pending with reference to the very circumstance upon which the Board had given their decision, while it had also been subsequently proved that they had altogether exceeded their power in dismissing Mr. O'Keeffe, inasmuch as they had no such power, but could only refuse to recognize him as manager. For himself, he could assure hon. Members connected with Ireland that he did not approach the subject from any odium theologicum. He did not object to the action of the Commissioners because they were Roman Catholics, but because the course they had entered upon was unwise. Indeed, those of the Commissioners from whom he most disagreed wore not Catholics, and some of those with whom he most agreed were Catholics. If a majority of the Board had been members of other Churches—as they might have been but for an unfortunate alteration made some years ago—he should have been just as ready to criticize the course that had been pursued. He had some connection with Ireland, and he was aware of the great services rendered by the Board to education in Ireland. Those services might have been still greater, and the present difficulty might never have arisen, but for an unfortunate change—made, he believed, by Mr. Cardwell, when Secretary for Ireland—in the constitution of the Board. The Board, as originally constituted by the late Lord Derby, was a purely unsectarian body, and members were placed upon it to protect education and not to advance sectarian interests. The Board now consisted of one-half of a particular denomination, and the other half an omnium, gatherum, which was to make a sort of balance of power. Such an arrangement was calculated to provoke strife, because the members of the Board were now tempted to consider how certain steps affected their sectarian interests. In his able speech his hon. Friend had detailed to the House the subsequent proceedings of the Board, and had shown how men of the highest honour and integrity were the defenders of Mr. O'Keeffe, and attempted to get the majority of the Board to re-consider the course on which they had so rashly entered. But their efforts were useless. They were met by a solid phalanx who were deaf to argument. Meanwhile the trial of "O'Keeffe v. Cullen" was proceeding, and the Cardinal was betraying in his evidence, though unwillingly, the enormous change which had taken place in the attitude of the Church of Borne during the last few years towards the civil power, and was advancing claims which, if recognized, would not only subjugate every Catholic ecclesiastic, but every layman to the orders of the Church, and effectually deprive them both of every civil right. The result of that trial he had already mentioned. When the Board saw at last that they had sown the wind and were going to reap the whirlwind, they came down to this House in the attitude of injured innocence, in the guise—to use the happy illustration of his hon. and learned Friend the Member for the City of Oxford—in the guise of the femme incomprise of the French play; and with all their innocence they were yet so bold as to hope to get a Committee appointed to whitewash them. But that was not to be. And what happened? Only that the conduct of the Board stood out in even worse colours than it did before, and that they were proved into the bargain to have never themselves arrived at any real determination as to the moaning of their own rules. One member said a rule meant this, and another said it meant that, and one said that their continuous practice had always been to do a particular thing, and another said that their invariable habit had been to do just the opposite, and a third member quoted a precedent one way, and a fourth said the third member knew nothing at all about it. He had little doubt that most hon. Members would agree that the proper course for the Board to have adopted was that indicated by Judge Morris, when, in reply to a question before the Committee upstairs, he said—and Mr. Justice Lawson agreed with him— (Q. 1300.) I consider that the suspension of a priest, primâ facie, would be so grave a matter as that it should at once be brought under the notice of the Board and dealt with under the circumstances of the case. In nine hundred and ninety cases out of a thousand I suppose a priest is not, and would not be, suspended for any cause such as would not be also a sufficient cause for the National Board to cease recognizing him as manager; for instance, if there were allegations of misconduct, social or otherwise, I think that we should then inquire as to what wore the reasons why he was suspended. These are very often given verbally, as Mr. Justice Lawson stated yesterday, by somebody who knows the facts of the case. And then primâ facie, I would he disposed to remove him, not upon any rule, not upon any settled ipso facto principle, but as a question of expediency. If, on the other hand, on full inquiry, I found, as I understood in this O'Keeffe case, that the original ground of his suspension was for having resorted to the tribunals of the country, I would consider it rather startling that a Government Board acting under a letter merely from the Viceroy, should remove a man solely on the ground that he was suspended, knowing, or having the full means of knowing, that that suspension was, because he asserted the right of every subject of the Crown to go to law in Her Majesty's High Court of Queen's Bench. I would not for that simple reason dismiss him; I would require the whole circumstances of the case to be brought before me, on notice to him. Well, when at last this very select body of gentlemen, the majority of the Board, had got into the Slough of Despond up to their necks, and had half-choked each other with their own contradictions, they again came down to this House, carrying gifts, and chanting hymns of harmony, and they made his right hon. Friend the late Prime Minister their spokesman, and through him they said that as there had been some doubts as to the meaning of some of their rules, they had passed a new rule for their future guidance in similar cases; and being asked by Mr. Bouverie whether—he quoted his words—whether, as regarded Mr. O'Keeffe, the rule would be "retrospective," and he would be fairly heard and his right to be manager of the schools shall be considered by the National Board, without reference to his being a suspended priest?"—[3 Hansard, ccxvii. 211.] the Prime Minister replied— I can give my right hon. Friend a perfectly explicit answer. I could not entertain the smallest doubt that such a body of gentlemen as the Commissioners, in adopting that rule, have accepted it frankly and fully; and not only so, but I consider myself entitled, from information upon which I can rely without any fear of being deceived, to say that the Commission will give Mr. O'Keeffe the full benefit of the rule if he shall renew his application."—[I bid. 212–213.] That pledge, given in all sincerity, and in the most explicit language by the Prime Minister, was never disavowed by the Commissioners. It was given late in the Session. The moment the House separated, the instant its doors were closed, and public opinion had no longer its natural outlet and the means of converting itself into action, then the Commissioners showed their intention of evading their pledge. It was perfectly clear that, as Mr. O'Keeffe had been removed from the office of school manager simply because of his suspension as a priest, and as the Commissioners had undertaken to act as if that suspension had never taken place—to say nothing here about its illegality—they were clearly bound to begin by restoring things to that state in which they were on the day before the suspension took place. That was the opinion of Judge Morris, as the following extracts would show. He said in a letter— The proposed rule contains two principles:— 1st. That the educational interests of the district is to govern the recognition or non-recognition of a manager. 2nd. That a manager is not to be an exception to the general rule, of not condemning a man unheard. As one of the minority who unsuccessfully contended for these identical principles in the Callan case, I can have no objection to their being declared by a rule. The action of the majority was in contradiction to both of these principles, inasmuch as the manager of the Callan School was removed avowedly irrespective of the educational interests of the district, and without being heard, but (in the opinion of the majority) in the course of a coercive practice. Whether the proposed rule be declaratory or not, I apprehend that with its adoption the Callan Schools and their manager must be restored, as far as circumstances now admit, to the position they respectively occupied prior to the Resolution of Mr. Justice FitzGerald of the 23rd April 1872. I cannot suppose that a practice which is reversed by those who consider it existed is to be applied to the Callan Schools. If I were present on Tuesday, I would move the adoption of the proposed rule, but that it should take effect, in the case of the Callan Schools, viz., by a return to the 'status ante quo.' I feel sanguine this course would put an end to what is truly described as 'an unfortunate division of opinion.' I refrain from contemplating any other result. When the steps that were taken have been thus retraced, any member of the Board who thinks fit can re-open the question of the Callan Schools in the spirit and the mode pointed out by the proposed rule.—I am, &c, M. MORRIS, And, again, further on— A return to the status quo, by the re-appointment of Mr. O'Keeffe at once, appears to me the obvious and most irresistible conclusion from the adoption of the rule, in defiance of which (or of both propositions comprised in it) Mr. O'Keeffe was dismissed. The Government, through the Prime Minister, pledged itself that the rule was to apply to Mr. O'Keeffe, and I fear they and the public at largo may think that this postponement of the inevitable is only trying to play the 'long game.' I desire further to state that, upon the restoration of Mr. O'Keeffe to the position he was thrust from, I am quite ready and willing to canvass and decide upon the expediency or propriety of his being continued manager of all or any of the schools upon the basis laid down in the rule. Justice Lawson concurred in this opinion. But nothing of the sort was done. The long and vexatious course of inquiry and intrigue detailed by my hon. Friend was entered on, with what results the House knew. Circumstances, not only long posterior to the suspension, but actually springing out of it—circumstances which never would, or could have occurred, but for the suspension, wore brought up to criminate Mr. O'Keeffe. In some of those circumstances, he was willing to grant, Mr. O'Keeffe, goaded to desperation by the multitude of his powerful oppressors, and hardly knowing where to turn, acted very indiscreetly; but he hardly thought that anyone, reading the official Papers with an unprejudiced mind, would suspect him of mala fides, while the Board, by their conduct of taking advantage of their own wrong, were entering on a course hostile to every rule of law and morality. The opinion of the minority of the Board on these points was of importance. Judge Morris, Mr. Justice Lawson, and Mr. Morell said, writing to the Chief Secretary— Office of National Education, Marlboro' Street, 11 November, 1873. My Lord,—Having attended an ordinary meeting of the Board this day, a telegram was received from your Lordship, requesting copy of the proceedings of the special meeting of Thursday last, respecting the Callan case. Inasmuch as the resolution of that day, which will be consequently transmitted to your Lordship, sets forth various reasons for rejecting the application, we think it right at once, and before leaving this office, to inform your Lordship that in voting against the Motion, we not alone relied on the protest lodged some days before against the entire course of proceeding, but also challenge and impeach the accuracy and force of several, if not all, of the reasons assigned in the Resolution, and which are, in our opinion, calculated to convey a false impression to the mind of any person not familiar with the facts of the ease. In a communication thus hastily drawn up, it would be obviously impossible to enter into particulars as to each of these assigned reasons, and we, therefore, now content ourselves with pointing out that, though only brought forward in that shape at the meeting of Thursday last, they purport to be based on matters substantially, if not entirely, within the knowledge of the Commissioners before the adoption of the new rule in July last; we con fess our inability to understand why, if these reasons existed, and were sufficient to disentitle Mr. O'Keeffe to be a manager, there was any necessity for an investigation or report by the inspector as to the condition of the schools.—We remain, &c., J. A. LAWSON. M. MORRIS. C. L. MORELL. To the Marquess of Hartington, Chief Secretary for Ireland. Mr. O'Keeffe having had the good fortune to escape from Cardinal Cullen had the misfortune to fall into the hands of Dr. Henry, whose chief object seemed to have been to prove that Presbyter might moan priest writ large. Mr. O'Keeffe in this resembled the famous and unfortunate Servetus, the protomartyr of Unitarianism, who was condemned by the Catholic Bishop of Vienne to death, and in order to escape from his sentence fled to Geneva, where he was captured by the Protestant Pope, Calvin, and burnt at the stake. Now he confessed that he would sooner be tried on a charge of heresy by the Cardinal than by Dr. Henry, because in the former case he would presumably be tried by the canon law, and would have an opportunity of making himself acquainted with its principles and conducting his defence accordingly, while if he was to be tried by Dr. Henry he would have to be furnished with a copy of the code of morality which that gentleman had evolved from his inner consciousness, the rules of which were various but all had one result—namely, the condemnation of the person under trial. But he hoped that however powerful the Irish Board of Education might be, and however great their past services might have been—and they had been very great—they would not be found to be so powerful as to be able to sot the clearly expressed opinion of this House at defiance, as very clearly expressed it was last Session. This was a matter of justice to an individual, and no injured man had ever appealed to this House in vain. He had been told that Mr. O'Keeffe was unworthy of the protection of this House. He had been told that he was a rough fellow; he had even been told that he was an ugly fellow and talked with a brogue. That was not a crime in his eyes. The use of such arguments reminded him of the arguments that were used in the last century to dissuade people from supporting Mr. Wilkes. It was said that Mr. Wilkes could not possibly be a proper defender of civil liberty because he was so ugly, and had a squint in his eye. He was indifferent whether Mr. O'Keeffe was ugly or good looking, or tall or short, or whether he spoke with the tongues of men or those of angels. He was to him simply a man who had been wronged in his civil rights and was seeking redress. In one of the greatest speeches of the greatest orator this country ever had, those who sat in "another place" were reminded that the civil rights and liberties which were enjoyed under the Constitution were the property not only of the rich and powerful, but of every free man. Had Lord Chatham lived now he would have told the House not only that they wore the right of every free man, but that an English ecclesiastic could not lose them; and he would have silenced and put to shame those who wished the ipse dixit of a priest to override the sentence of the Judges of the land, to sway the decisions of national Boards, and regulate the expenditure of vast sums of public money, and would allow the members of each religious denomination, bound hand and foot in the meshes of ecclesiastical law, to be debarred from their civil rights, and grow up a community of slaves in the midst of a free people.

Motion made, and Question proposed, That, in the opinion of this House, the action taken by the Irish Commissioners for Education in reference to the Callan Schools has been marked with inconsistency, and has not been in conformity with precedents or with the spirit of its regulations."—(Mr. William Cartwright.)

THE O'CONOR DON

said, he had hoped that after the action taken by the House of Commons in the last Parliament, the case of Mr. O'Keeffe was not likely to be brought up again. The Committee of last Session, which was, with one exception, composed of men who either then or now held office under the Crown, had inquired into the whole case with the greatest minuteness and diligence. They sat from day to day, and the evidence they took was immediately presented to the House and to the Government, so that no delay might arise in settling the question. The late Government considered the evidence of that Committee, and the opinion of the Cabinet was presented to the House of Commons in the form of a letter, being to the effect that not only had the Commissioners acted with a bonâ fide intention, but that they had acted in accordance with the precedents which governed such cases; and that they would have been establishing a new precedent had they acted otherwise. The letter in which that opinion was expressed was presented to the House of Commons, and was accepted by both sides as satisfactory, and apparently with the concurrence of the supporters of Mr. O'Keeffe. That being so, one would scarcely have expected that the House would be called upon again to go over all the ground which had been traversed by the Committee, and upon which the House had last year come to a decision by endorsing and accepting the action of the Government. He could not, however, allow to pass uncontradicted the statements which the hon. Member who brought forward this subject had made as to the action of the Board in the former cases. In the cases of Dr. Keenan, Dr. Wilson, Mr. Sheridan, and Mr. O'Farrell, it would be found that the same course had been uniformly followed—that whenever the suspension of a clergyman had been officially made known to the Board they instantly removed him. He challenged the production of a single instance in which a suspended clergyman had not been removed, when once his suspension had been officially made known and his removal demanded; although he did not deny that a clergyman might have continued to act as manager for a time after actual suspension, because the Board did not apparently consider themselves bound to act until the fact of suspension was brought formally before them. No clerical manager had ever been continued after his suspension was formally announced by his ecclesiastical superior and his removal demanded. In Mr. O'Keeffe's case the Board had acted in accordance with the precedents laid down by their predecessors. Mr. O'Keeffe was not removed immediately on his suspension; no notice of that suspension was taken by the Board for months after it occurred, nor until it was formally brought before them by his Bishop. It had been attempted on previous occasions to make out that the Board acted in subservience to the Catholic prelacy of Ireland; but that ground, he was glad to observe, appeared to have now been abandoned. Those who knew Judge Longfield, Dr. Henry, the Marquess of Kildare, Lord Monck, and Mr. Gibson—who was the leading adviser of the Presbyterian body in Ireland—would not suspect them of any subserviency to the dictation of Cardinal Cullen or any Roman Catholic Bishop. The Board regarded the question in this light—whether it was desirable that a clergyman should be continued in the management of a school, no matter to what denomination he might belong, after having been formally suspended by his ecclesiastical superiors? Mr. O'Keeffe was appointed manager of these Schools not because he was Mr. O'Keeffe, but because he was the parish priest of Callan and the representative of the inhabitants to whom the Schools really belonged, and whoso children were educated in them. Was there anything inconsistent, then, in the Board refusing to continue him as manager when he was suspended from his ecclesiastical office, and therefore ceased to have the confidence, at all events, of a large proportion of the parishioners who accepted that suspension and regarded him as a degraded priest? With regard to the argument that he ought to have been at once re-instated by the Board after the adoption of the new Rule last year, and that no inquiry should be held in the first instance as to his fitness to regain the managership, there was nothing to warrant this conclusion either from the question asked by Mr. Bouverie or the answer of the late Prime Minister; and Mr. O'Keeffe's letter showed that he understood that he was to prove, in the first instance, that he was a fit person to exercise the trust before he would be restored. The Board, on Mr. O'Keeffe's first removal, had gone through the form of appointing another manager, and it would have been impossible for them to replace Mr. O'Keeffe in the summary manner which some persons demanded. Allusion had been made to the delay-on the part of the Board in coming to a definite conclusion in respect to the application of Mr. O'Keeffe. He regretted that delay, but there were certain reasons for it. They must remember that the time of the year when these occurrences took place was in the Long Vacation, when many Judges were on circuit, and the members who were able to be present would have been open to rebuke if they had passed a Resolution hostile to Father O'Keeffe, as they might easily have done, in the absence of his friends at the Board. The Board accordingly resolved to postpone the matter until November. At the instance of the noble Lord, then Chief Secretary for Ireland, the meeting was held in October, and the Board gave Mr. O'Keeffe the benefit of the new Rule. They made the fullest inquiry, and the majority came to the conclusion that Mr. O'Keeffe was not a fit and proper person to be reappointed. Could the hon. Member for Oxfordshire (Mr. Cartwright) contend that Mr. O'Keeffe was a fit person to be appointed as manager of a school after all that had occurred, or that his appointment would have been advantageous to the interests of education in the district? If he could not, what was the complaint? Nothing but that a matter of form had been disregarded—that he was not set up as a nine-pin to be knocked over. That was trifling with the House. Then, what was the object of the Motion? Was it to restore Mr. O'Keeffe to the managership of the Callan Schools? That was impossible, and he did not think the hon. Member for Oxfordshire thought it was possible. The only object of the Motion really was to break up the National Board of Education in Ireland. ["No, no."] That would be its only logical effect. If it were thought desirable to break up the Board, well and good; but let it be done by a substantive Motion, and not by a side-wind. Let the Board be broken up in a straightforward way, and on the responsibility of the Government.

SIR MICHAEL HICKS-BEACH

, in rising to move the following Amendment— That this House, without expressing any approval of the conduct of the Commissioners of National Education in Ireland in originally dismissing Mr. O'Keeffe from the office of Manager of the Callan Schools, is of opinion, having regard to the course taken by the Board since the adoption of the Rule of July, 1873, and to the existing arrangements for the management of the Schools, that there docs not at present exist any sufficient ground for the interference of Parliament, said, he had not wished to interfere too early with the debate, but he confessed, when he remembered the Notice of Motion originally given by the hon. Member for Oxfordshire (Mr. Cartwright) that he had been somewhat surprised at the course the debate had taken. The first Notice of Motion given by the hon. Member was— That, in the opinion of this House, the action taken by the Irish Commissioners for Education in reference to the Rev. Mr. O'Keeffe was not in accordance with the Rule adopted by the Board; and though, at a more recent period, after the perusal of the Papers on the subject, the hon. Gentleman had thought proper to alter the terms of his Motion, yet it might have been supposed that his speech that night and that discussion would have been confined rather to what occurred after the passing of the new Rule than to a review of the whole question. He must say that a review of the whole question at the present moment was of no practical use or importance. It had been already discussed more than once in that House, and he believed it was thought that, as far as the main principle involved was concerned, it was finally and satisfactorily settled by the adoption of the new Rule in July last by the Board. But as the hon. Member for Oxfordshire had alluded to what preceded the adoption of the new Rule, he wished to make a few remarks on the general question. The practice of the Board of Education in Ireland appeared formerly to have been to dismiss from the office of manager of schools any clerical person who might have been suspended by the episcopal authorities of his Church, simply on the ground of that suspension. Well, if that had been the course, whether in accordance with precedent or not, at any rate for the future he thought no such course could be followed by the Board after the adoption of the new Rule. The new Rule was that the Commissioners reserved to themselves the power of withdrawing the recognition of a patron or local manager, if he failed to observe the Rules of the Board, or if it appeared to them that the educational interests of the district required it; but that such recognition would not be withdrawn without an investigation into the matter, held after due notice to the patron or local manager and all the parties concerned. Now, if that Rule were properly carried out, and strictly acted upon—as he thought it ought to be—it seemed to him that there was no ground for many of the statements made that night. If the Commissioners acted—as he thought they should do—as a directing rather than a ministerial body, they would be fulfilling the functions with which Parliament had intrusted them; and if they ceased to regard themselves in that light, if they subjected themselves to a foreign and external influence, they would cease to fulfil those functions in accordance with the wishes and the design of Parliament. The Commissioners by accepting the new Rule had, it seemed to him, unanimously declared that it was their intention in future to carry out the principle that the mere suspension of a priest should no longer, whatever it might have been in the past, be a ground for his removal from the office of manager of a school; that they would in such an instance hold an inquiry into the merits of the case, and that on that inquiry and on the educational interests of the district would depend their action in the matter. The noble Lord the Member for Calne (Lord Edmond Fitzmaurice) had quoted an answer of Mr. Justice Morris, given to a Member of the Select Committee last year. Mr. Justice Morris said he regarded the suspension of a priest as so grave a matter that it ought at once to be brought under the notice of the Board, and dealt with according to the circumstances of the case; that if there were allegations of misconduct, social or otherwise, the Board ought to have an inquiry into the reasons why he had been suspended; and that Mr. Justice Morris would be disposed to remove him, not on any Rule or invariable principle, but as a question of expediency; but that if, on the other hand, it was found that the ground of the suspension of the priest was for having resorted to the ordinary tribunals of the country, he would object to that being held as any reason for dismissing him from the office of manager of a school. Now, if the new Rule was carried out—and he believed that this was the wish of the Commissioners, and it certainly was the intention of the Government to use their best efforts to see it carried out—then that opinion of Mr. Justice Morris would be practically acted upon in any case which might arise. But the question now mainly before the House was how far the new Rule had or had not been acted upon in the case of Mr. O'Keeffe, and whether that gentleman had any ground of complaint against the action of the Board of Education with reference to his position since their adoption of the new Rule? Could he be considered, in the terms of the 9th Rule, a fit and proper person to exercise the trust of manager, or, was it the fact, in the terms of the new Rule, that the educational interests of the district required that he should be no longer recognized in that position. Those were the points upon which he thought the House would be disposed to form its decision. Into the question of Mr. O'Keeffe's personal fitness he did not wish to enter. In the Papers laid before the House, the Commissioners stated very full and elaborate reasons for declining to recognize him as personally fit to be a manager of schools, and any hon. Member who read the evidence given by Mr. O'Keeffe himself before the Select Committee would be of opinion that many grave and reasonable objections might be urged against his being recognized as manager of the Callan Schools. He would simply take two points; first of all, the removal, which Mr. O'Keeffe himself admitted, of a very able schoolmistress from her position because she did not attend the Communion at Easter in his parish church; and secondly, the mode in which he appeared to have induced one of the teachers of his schools to affix, without the authority of Mr. Martin, the name of Mr. Martin, the rival priest of Callan, to a certificate which was to be sent to the Board of Education in order to obtain from the Board part of the salary for one of his teachers. Without expressing any opinion on them, he yet thought those were charges of very considerable importance, and if inquired into they might have led the Board to the conclusion that Mr. O'Keeffe was not a fit and proper person to be manager of those Schools. But the evidence as contained in the Report was before the House and the country when the promise alluded to in the present debate was made by the late Prime Minister; and, therefore, if the late Prime Minister had undertaken that Mr. O'Keeffe would be re-instated without inquiry as manager of the Callan Schools, those personal objections could hardly be fairly brought against him. But what were the facts of the case? He had looked carefully at the Question asked on July 11,1873, by Mr. Bouverie, and he found that while expressing himself perfectly satisfied with the adoption of the new Rule, Mr. Bouverie required that Mr. O'Keeffe should be fairly heard, and his right to be manager of the Schools considered by the Board without reference to his being a suspended priest. The late Prime Minister replied that the Commissioners would give Mr. O'Keeffe the full benefit of the new Rule, and that he was to make his application; and Mr. Bouverie thereupon expressed himself satisfied, saying that the general object which he had in view was gained. But Mr. Bouverie never asked, nor did the late Prime Minister promise, that he would be re-instated without inquiry; and Mr. O'Keeffe himself never expected that that would be done, for in a letter he addressed to the Board at the end of July he said he had been given to understand that owing to certain changes made in the Rules, the Board would no longer think it their duty to ignore him as manager of the five Schools of that parish which had been erased from their school-roll, and that on satisfying them that he was a fit person for the exercise of that trust, they would recognize him as manager of the Schools. That implied that, in the minds of all who took the most active part on the subject, it was understood that some inquiry would be necessary before he was re-instated. He fully admitted that there was a general impression in the House, after the Question and Answer to which he had referred, that somehow or other Mr. O'Keeffe would obtain the benefit of that Rule. But the notion that he would, as a matter of course, be re-instated without inquiry was not practically borne out by anything stated in or out of the House, and he could not find that the Commissioners ever made such a promise. The main point raised under the new Rule was now far it would be in accordance with the educational interests of the district that Mr. O'Keeffe should again be recognized as the manager of the schools. The hon. Member for Roscommon (the O'Conor Don) was quite right in regretting the delay that had occurred in the consideration of Mr. O'Keeffe's application. It seemed to him (Sir Michael Hicks-Beach) that it would have been better if a matter which had attracted so much public attention had been earlier dealt with. But when the Commissioners came to deal with it in October, they appointed an Inspector to investigate the state of the schools in Callan under Mr. O'Keeffe's management, and that Inspector was carefully directed to perform this investigation with a due regard to the manner in which Mr. O'Keeffe's position, and that of his schools, had been affected by the results of his suspension. The Inspector made what had been admitted to be a very fair inquiry, and the result was as followed:—it appeared there were 1,105 children of school age in Callan parish, and that out of that number, more than 400 were not attending the schools, or were attending schools outside the boundaries of the parish. The fact was that 125 children, representing 47 families, had been withdrawn from Mr. O'Keeffe's schools since April 1872, and sent to other schools, and that a considerable number of families, approximately one half of the total number, refrained from sending their children to any of the rival schools—a fact almost sufficiently accounting for 2,000 of the inhabitants being totally illiterate. No one could say that this state of things was satisfactory as far as the educational interests of the parish were concerned. What was the action of the Commissioners? They declined to re-instate Mr. O'Keeffe in the management of the schools on the grounds stated in the Papers laid before the House. They proceeded not only on personal grounds, not only on the ground of the educational interests of the parish, but also on the ground of having received from the Town Commissioners of Callan an unanimous protest against there-instatement of Mr. O'Keeffe, and because the Callan National Schools Committee had protested against Mr. O'Keeffe's appointment as highly calculated to obstruct the progress of education in the district. Upon all those grounds the Commissioners refused to recognize Mr. O'Keeffe as the manager of the schools; but this by no means showed that they were subservient to clerical influences; because they did not propose to appoint as manager in Mr. O'Keeffe's place the gentleman who had been temporarily appointed to perform Mr. O'Keeffe's priestly functions in Callan. On the contrary, they proposed, subject to the approval of the local parties of all opinions, that a gentleman free from any imputation of partiality to one side or the other should act as manager pending the settlement of the disputes, and suggested Mr. Brassington, the local agent of the Clifden estates and the representative of a family which for 45 years had largely contributed to the schools. Mr. Brassington accepted the charge, the priest temporarily in charge of the parish agreed to transfer his schools to him, and Mr. O'Keeffe himself expressed his willingness, pending his appeal, to do the same, in the interests of education and for the sake of peace and charity. Thus the matter was arranged in November last, and in accordance with the request of the late Secretary for Ireland (the Marquess of Hartington), the Report of the Resolution arrived at by the Commissioners on the subject was transmitted to the Government. There was nothing in the Correspondence to show that the late Government took any action in the matter, and therefore it was to be assumed that they approved of the action of the Commissioners. A sum exceeding £400 was subsequently paid to Mr. O'Keeffe, or his teachers, for the services of the latter since his suspension, and thus the question remained when the present Government acceded to office. What course would the hon. Member for Oxfordshire suggest should be adopted? Here were those Schools, some belonging to Mr. O'Keeffe, and some belonging to Mr. Drea, representing the rival interests of the place, formerly conducted under one manager. Mr. Brassington was a gentleman of position and property in the town, and had also shown his devotion to the interests of education, and nothing could be better than the state of those Schools under his management. Would the hon. Member for Oxfordshire suggest that some or all of the Schools should be removed from the management of Mr. Brassington and placed again under the management of Mr. O'Keeffe, or would the hon. Member wish to revive in this parish those disputes by again replacing Mr. O'Keeffe in the office of manager merely in order that on a future inquiry being made he might be removed? It seemed to him (Sir Michael Hicks-Beach) that whatever might be said in favour of such a course, this much might be said against it—that it would be directly opposed to the best educational interests of the parish. He could not see that any better arrangement could be adopted than that at which the Commissioners of Education had arrived; and therefore, if the hon. Gentleman desired to censure the Commissioners for their conduct towards Mr. O'Keeffe since the adoption of the new Rule, he ought also to have stated to the House in what way he thought they could have better promoted the cause of education. Last year they had discussed this question as a matter of principle, and he thought they had arrived at a satisfactory solution on that subject. He hoped and believed that, whatever it might have been in the past, the National Education Board of Ireland would in future be a directing and not a ministerial Board. He was sure that the mere suspension of a priest would be no reason for removing him from the management of a school; but in the present case, Mr. O'Keeffe's re-instatement would have been impolitic and wrong. If the Motion were pressed, he must meet it with the Amendment of which he had given Notice. Whatever mistakes the Commissioners might have made, they had for more than 40 years directed national education in Ireland; Roman Catholics, Presbyterians, and Episcopalians having, under their guidance, united in favour of national schools, and more than 1,000,000 scholars being on the rolls; while more than £500,000 annually granted by Parliament was under their administration. He hoped that, even on the grounds placed before it by the hon. Member for Oxfordshire, the House would hesitate to censure a Board which had done so much good, and which, whatever its minor mistakes might have been in this matter, had, he believed, acted throughout with a conscientious desire to promote the interests of education in Ireland. The right hon. Gentleman concluded by moving the Amendment of which he had given Notice.

Amendment proposed, To leave out from the word "That" to the end of the Question, in order to add the words "this House, without expressing any approval of the conduct of the Commissioners of National Education in Ireland in originally dismissing Mr. O'Keeffe from the office of Manager of the Callan Schools, is of opinion, having regard to the course taken by the Board since the adoption of the Rule of July 1873, and to the existing arrangements for the management of the Schools, that there does not at present exist any sufficient ground for the interference of Parliament,"—(Sir Michael Hicks-Beach,)

—instead thereof.

Question proposed, "That the words proposed to be left out stand part of the Question."

MR. LYON PLAYFAIR

I agree with my right hon. Friend the Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant that it is better to limit the discussion to the distinct operation of the new Rule. But in doing so the individual case of Father O'Keeffe must be viewed as an illustration of its operation in regard to managers of schools generally; both as to the powers exercised by them, and as to the mode in which State money is spent through their agency. Because, unless the new Rule is acted up to in the spirit as well as in the letter, the future of national education in Ireland would be carried on in entire subservience to clerical influences. Even under the old Rules, the Board possessed the undoubted right to withdraw recognition from a school manager, when it was for the interests of education that they should do so. Unluckily, however, the Board so rarely exercised their right that its very existence became doubtful. The new Rule asserts it more plainly, but its usefulness will depend, not upon its existence, but upon its exercise. The Commissioners have not begun its operation by inspiring us with confidence. It was by acting in practical submission to the clerical nomination of managers, when none of their published Rules indicated that they did so, that this O'Keeffe controversy arose at all. They had in former cases dismissed managers on the ground of clerical suspension, and they construed these precedents into an unwritten rule, which, if it had been understood by Parliament, would certainly have made it difficult for us to vote supplies. The contention now is that Father O'Keeffe was appointed manager because his clerical office was an a priori evidence of his fitness, but that he did not receive the office as a priest. "Well, but it was the custom to receive the Bishop's nomination of a priest as a matter of course; and it was the custom to dismiss the priest if the Bishop suspended him. I admit, however, that though this was the custom, there was no ex officio sanction given by the Rules. If office did not confer a right to the appointment of a manager, loss of office could not carry with it a disability, unless he had become otherwise unfit. Originally, the registered manager was Robert O'Keeffe, appointed to take charge of the secular education in Callan; and he was the same Robert O'Keeffe after Cardinal Cullen suspended him. The Commissioners, then under Government pressure, accept a new Rule implying this secular relation to schools, but the Commissioners mete out to Father O'Keeffe Jedburgh justice—that is, they first hang a man and then try him. They first summarily dismiss Father O'Keeffe, refuse to pay his teachers, plunge a poor priest into some hundred pounds of debt, resist him with official obstacles, render him desperate, and then are surprised that at last he loses his prudence and writes intemperate letters. Now, they use these intemperate letters to declare him an unfit manager, though they virtually admit themselves in the wrong by paying all the arrears of salaries which they had steadfastly refused; but they do not restore to him his position. So much for the personal part of the question. The hon. Member for Roscommon (the O'Conor Don) says that the Commissioners acted in a like spirit to the clergy of the Episcopalian and Presbyterian Churches. I admit that my hon. Friend is right as to fact, but I do not admit that it was right thus to convert a national system, established on an unsectarian basis, into a purely denominational one. My hon. Friend in substance says that the Commissioners had meekly put their necks into an ecclesiastical yoke, and patiently plodded onward, unmindful whether the goad, which urged them on, had a Catholic or a Protestant point. But, as in spite of the manifestations made in Parliament, the Commissioners have shown no appreciation of the formidable danger into which they were leading a system of education, purposely framed to be independent of sectarian influences, it is necessary to call direct attention to the anomalous and dangerous powers over public expenditure given to managers of Irish schools. These will be best understood by comparing them with the powers granted to managers of schools in Great Britain. The managers of our schools, through subscribers, contribute about one-third of their cost, the children, in school pence, paying about another third, while the State contributes the remainder. In England the school buildings are legally destined to education, and the school teachers must be properly trained and certificated. Subject to these conditions, the managers may appoint and dismiss teachers. In Ireland the conditions are quite different. Practically, the managers take no part of the burden, for the whole amount of local contributions, including endowments and subscriptions for all Ireland, are only £13,319. On the cost of a child's education this is only 4 per cent, as compared with 33 per cent in England. But though managers of schools in Ireland, either through themselves or subscribers, scarcely aid education by their contributions, they have usurped the most extraordinary control over the schools. They claim the right to appoint any man or woman to be teachers, whether they have any qualifications or none, and to dismiss them at pleasure. It is true that the National Board may decline to pay a teacher if he be unfit, but it requires a wonderful amount of unfitness to move them to action. It simply amounts to this—The manager claims the absolute power over a teacher that a master does over a servant, only the State, which has no power over that servant, has to pay 86 per cent of his wages, while the local managers provide only 4 per cent. the children paying the rest. Now it is obvious that under this extraordinary arrangement, the Board of National Education ought to have kept themselves free from any recognition of a manager, except on the single ground of educational efficiency. To admit, as they did, quasi clerical managers, practically on account of their clerical office, was to hand over the expenditure of public money from themselves to the churches. This was all the more certain in Ireland, because three-fourths of the schools are non-vested—that is, are buildings absolutely belonging to the patrons. That is not an accident, but a design. In a decree of the Roman propaganda of 16th January, 1841, occurs the following passage— The sacred congregation is also of opinion that it would be very useful that the school-houses should be exclusively vested in the Bishops or the priests. And the propaganda has been well served in the result. Now, observe the position in which the State is placed, unless we distinctly refuse to have any participation in the acts of the Board relating to Father O'Keeffe. He was the registered manager of five Schools. The Cardinal suspends him, whether legally or not is no matter at present. Thereupon the National Board deliberately wipe out these five Schools from the national system, because they doubt whether O'Keeffe is the priest of the parish, although the secular education is going on as before, under the same teachers and the same manager. Surely the House cannot fail to see the importance of the issue. We vote £500,000 for secular education in Ireland; the Board practically hands over its administration to the local managers, who are mainly priests, and these managers in three-fourths of the schools in Ireland have absolute power over the school buildings as well as the teachers, though they contribute only 4 per cent to the expenditure. I do not in the least hide from myself the gravity or difficulty of the situation. The Roman Catholic priests could to-morrow, if they wished it, destroy the system of national education in Ireland by withdrawing three out of every four of the schools. It would be lamentable to alienate the priesthood from their educational efforts in Ireland. There is abundant need of all their energy. Turn to page 35 of the recent Paper issued to us, and you will see a remarkable illustration. Forty-eight parents of school children ask the Board not to re-instate Father O'Keeffe as manager of the Schools, and of these 48, no fewer than 31 are unable to sign their names. In the parish of Callan, with its 4,824 inhabitants, only 2,104—less than one-half—can read and write. A system of management that can allow such results as these is deplorable, and I dare say Father O'Keeffe was no better than many other Irish managers. For, looking into this case, I have been struck with the woeful condition of Irish education. There are nearly 1,000,000 children on the rolls, but only 359,000 are in average attendance. England is bad enough, with its 20 per cent of school absences, but Ireland, with its 64 per cent of truant children, indicates the most wasteful application of public money. Sooner or later you must grapple with the state of Irish education as a whole. In the meantime, I doubt whether my hon. Friend (Mr. Cartwright) would he wise to push his Motion to a division against the Amendment of the Irish Secretary. My hon. Friend has raised a useful discussion, and it may be that Father O'Keeffe will prove a benefactor to Ireland, if the result of this discussion lead the National Board to review their relations to the local managers. And it will be productive of still more good if it awaken the managers themselves to a sense of their responsibilities by showing them that their appointment depends, not on the accident of official relation to a church, but upon the efficient discharge of duties which they have voluntarily undertaken to perform for the national good. But, unsatisfied as I am with the present state of education in Ireland, I desire to vote for the Amendment of the Irish Secretary, because I am not prepared, on a Resolution such as my hon. Friend the Member for Oxfordshire (Mr. Cartwright) has proposed, to shako the present system until the Government is prepared with another in its place. On a substantive Motion for the amendment of the unsatisfactory condition of Irish education I shall be prepared to vote; but not on one of censure without reference to its consequences. But even as regards the Amendment I have some difficulty. It conveys an indirect approval of the "existing circumstances" under which the Callan School is managed. What are they? A layman—Mr. Brassington—manages them to the satisfaction of all parties. But the Bishop of Ossory has written an extraordinary letter to the Board of Education on the subject. He says, while recognizing that layman for the present— I wish it, however, to be clearly understood that I reserve the right of nominating the parochial administrator pro. tem., the permanent manager of said schools, when peace shall be fully restored in the parish of Callan. Well, here is the ecclesiastical demand again put forward in its most arrogant form. That letter is dated 29th November, 1873. The Commissioners do not reply to it. Does their silence mean assent? Does this unrepudiated demand of the Bishop of Ossory form part of the "existing circumstances" under which the Schools of Callan are managed? Unless the Government clearly answer these questions in a satisfactory manner, I cannot vote for the Amendment of the Irish Secretary, though I think, on the whole, it best meets the circumstances before us.

MR. HENLEY

said, he had never read any Papers with more pain than the Papers which had been recently circulated among hon. Members with reference to this question. In these Papers he found that one of the great complaints formerly made against a body of gentlemen was that they condemned without hearing—a matter which was repugnant not only to Englishmen, but to men who were properly constituted, no matter in what part of the world they lived. And then he found that certain things took place in that House, and that the noble Lord opposite (the Marquess of Hartington) suggested to the Commissioners a Rule that might possibly prevent similiar inconveniences in the future. There seemed no good reason why that Rule had not been adopted, or why things had been allowed to remain as they were before it was suggested. It seemed that afterwards there was a sort of pledge given by the late Government, with the consent of the Commissioners, that some retrospective action should take place; but had this been fairly and honestly carried out? The noble Lord seemed to think that the Commissioners were unduly dilatory in postponing until the month of November any consideration of this matter, and he stirred them up—if the phrase might be allowed. And what was the result of this stirring up? They sent an Inspector to Callan to look into the state of things existing there, but they were unable to discover any ground—as far as he knew—for blaming the man they had first tried to ruin, and then they took the most likely steps possible to prevent the bringing about of a state of things such as the majority of that House could wish to see. Next, as soon as this state of facts was set forth, a Member of the Board drew up and sent to the Commissioners what might be called a string of 100 indictments, charging the unfortunate man, O'Keeffe, with everything that could be laid at his door, short of murder—and a copy of this document was sent to Mr. O'Keeffe; but nothing else was done until, a considerable time afterwards, a Report was issued—a Report which could contain nothing new, for all the facts of the case were perfectly well known to all those who were in any way interested in the matter. And then having, as he had remarked, sent an Inspector to visit and report upon these Schools, the Commissioners, when drawing their final Resolutions, took no notice of the Report, except to say that they did not act upon it. They not only did this, but they acted upon the final Resolutions to which he had just alluded when deciding against re-instating Mr. O'Keeffe. Further, they said to Mr. O'Keeffe—"Not only shall we not recognize or re-instate you as a manager of the schools, but we will never recognize any Manager—not, against whom such offences as you are said to have been guilty of are proved, but against whom such offences are even alleged." This was simply justifying their own line of condemning a man unheard. It was, to his mind, the most extraordinary course ever taken in a public proceeding, and not one which savoured of a desire to do justice. This last part of the play, if he might so call it, forced him to hark back and form an opinion as to how far the Commissioners might have been just in their former action. It was impossible for him to divest himself of this idea, because the conduct of the Commissioners appeared so unusual, strange, and unjust that he could have no confidence in such a body. The Motion of his hon. Colleague was moderate in its terms, and he, for one, should be disposed to support it.

MR. SULLIVAN

said, the course of the debate had been considerably widened, notwithstanding the remarks in which the Chief Secretary pointed out that the only matter open to discussion was whether the Commissioners of National Education in Ireland had or had not carried out the resolution passed by themselves at the instance of the late Chief Secretary. That debate was certainly a remarkable one, in which the Minister was cheered by the Opposition, and the ex-Minister (Mr. Lyon Playfair) found applause only from the Ministerial benches. He, for one, found nothing to complain of in the speech of the Mover of the original Motion (Mr. Cartwright), and still less in the speech of the noble Lord who seconded the Motion (Lord Edmond Fitzmaurice). They were speeches devoid of the bitterness which in former debates stirred up much evil feeling in Ireland. He had hoped that a calm and rational tone would have pervaded the whole of the discussions of that evening; but a speech had been made from the front Opposition bench foreshadowing a policy which he challenged the ex-Minister who had made the speech to attempt—in the event of his again obtaining office—to carry out in Ireland. No Government could, he maintained, carry out the system of National Education in Ireland on any other principles than those which had been shadowed forth, by the right hon. Gentleman who had spoken shortly before from the Treasury Bench. In Ireland, previous to the introduction of the present system, statute after statute had been passed to enforce compulsory ignorance, and if the Resolution now under discussion were carried that system would fall to pieces in six months. The founder of the system, Sir Robert Peel, after an able historic retrospect, told the Parliament of the day that it was essential to establish in Ireland a system "from which every suspicion of proselytism should be banished." He saw that it was absolutely necessary to secure the co-operation of the Roman Catholic clergy, as well as to bid fairly for the support of the clergymen of other religious denominations. He knew that without the aid of the Roman Catholic clergy he could never establish a system which had wrought so much good in Ireland, and he was well aware that if a suspended priest was to be maintained as the patron of a school it could never succeed. That was the truth; and the sooner the House was told the exact truth in the matter the better. He warned hon. Members that the national system of education could not be continued in Ireland if suspended priests were to be made patrons of the national schools. The Secretary for Ireland had evidently studied that truth, nor would it be the system which had been foreshadowed by Sir Robert Peel, which would seek for its instrument in a degraded priest for the instruction of the youth of the country. Once a priest was suspended in Ireland, it was impossible that he could remain in his position as a teacher. ["Oh, oh!"]He heard the cries of "Oh, oh!" but he told those who uttered those cries that whether in Ireland, England, or Scotland, no degraded or suspended priest would be allowed to be the manager and controller of schools intended to educate the people. He would ask hon. Gentlemen opposite, from whom those interruptions came, what course it was that they desired the Commissioners of National Education in Ireland should pursue? Were they to constitute themselves an ecclesiastical tribunal to pronounce an opinion on ecclesiastical matters? Suppose a parish priest were suspended by his Bishop, and that he thought the Bulls relating to his case had been misconceived by the Bishop, was he to appeal to the Commissioners to take all the canons of the Church and the proceedings of the Council of Trent into their consideration, with the view of deciding whether the censure of the clergyman was binding in his own Church or not? The case of Mr. O'Keeffe, as stated by himself, was that he had not been canonically suspended under the Bulls; and was he to be told that a mixed body like the Board of Commissioners were to constitute themselves judges as to whether the act had been canonically done or not? and that if they were of opinion a priest had not been rightly suspended he ought to be maintained as a patron of a school? Or did hon. Gentlemen opposite maintain that a suspended clergyman, to whatever Church he might belong, was to be held up as an educational authority to the tender youth of his parish? ["Yes."] Then he did not envy them their opinion, and he felt satisfied that if the attempt were made to-morrow to carry out the policy which had been sketched out by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for St. Andrews University (Mr. Lyon Playfair), the co-operation of the Roman Catholic, who had so largely contributed to bring the system of national education to its present position, could not be secured. Every Roman Catholic Bishop, rather than that a suspended priest should be imposed on his flock, would retire from the system. He was glad, therefore, to see that the Chief Secretary for Ireland seemed to appreciate the gravity of the situation, and he would ask hon. Gentlemen opposite whether they thought that the Commissioners, if the Resolution were carried, could retain their seats at the Board? If not, he should like to know whether they were quite prepared for the resignation of a body of men who for a period of 40 years had administered a system which had been productive of such great results? If the Motion was carried, he ventured to predict that before many months had passed there would be an end of the National Board of Education in Ireland, and that the whole system of which it was a part would crumble to ruin.

MR. WHITBREAD

agreed with the right hon. Member (Mr. Lyon Playfair) in thinking that the debate ought to be confined to what had passed since the compromise of last year. He agreed with him further in regarding the letter of the Bishop of Ossory as the most important—he might say the most ominous—document that had come before them since that time. In that letter the Bishop claimed the right to appoint the local manager of the school; but this could not be made a ground for accepting the present Motion, inasmuch as the new Rule, debated last July, had no reference whatever to the recognition of the local manager in the first instance, but to a withdrawal of recognition on some subsequent occasion. Moreover, one of the first Rules in the Code under which the Commissioners acted was to the effect that the person who brought a school to the Board should have the power to nominate the manager. That was a Rule which certainty called for consideration. It seemed to him that a system by which the patron had the right of appointing the manager, perfectly irrespective of fitness for the post, was a very dangerous one. But that was not a ground on which they could censure the Board of Education. He sincerely hoped they were not going to try this weary case all over again. They had entered into a compromise last year. ["No, no."] He did not remember that any of the hon. Gentlemen who interrupted him had raised their voices against the arrangement to which he referred. Parliament had insisted that the ecclesiastical suspension of a manager was not ipso facto sufficient ground for his removal from the school. The question they had now to consider was whether Mr. O'Keeffe had, to a reasonable degree, obtained the benefit of that new Rule. For his part, he would answer that question in the affirmative. He would ask any hon. Member to read the evidence given by Mr. O'Keeffe before the Committee—given often with much naïveté—and then to say whether he thought him a proper person to be set over the school. Surely the manager existed for the sake of the children, not the children for the sake of the manager; and certainly it seemed to him that it would be totally at variance with the interest of a school to intrust Mr. O'Keeffe with its management.

MR. CONOLLY

maintained that there had been no compromise last year. It was not a subject that would bear a compromise, and Government by now attempting to compromise it would find themselves in a very great difficulty, and would meet with the deserved censure of all right-minded men. Not even the eloquence of the hon. Member for Louth (Mr. Sullivan) would secure Government from the censure of all honest politicians in Ireland. It was impossible to discuss the question on the narrow ground suggested by the hon. Member for Bedford (Mr. Whitbread). The National Board of Education in Ireland appeared before them that night, as certain persons appeared in police courts, with a record of previous convictions against them. They had acted in bad faith, and it was but natural that their first error should be borne in mind. It was not reasonable to call on those who were beaten only by a small majority when led by Mr. Bouverie, now, when they had reasons entirely in their favour, to condone the offence of these men. The system of National Education in Ireland would have been much more efficient but for the mal-administration of the National Board. If the National Board were swept away to-morrow, and five honest men, paid by and responsible to the House, were put in their place, there would then be a system of education on which reliance could be placed. The hon. Member for Louth had no right to beg the whole question by calling Mr. O'Keeffe a suspended priest. He should like to know who made the hon. Member a judge in that matter. As Mr. Fitzgibbon, the barrister, said in the action of Mr. O'Keeffe, this man was a suspended priest; but why was he suspended? What tribunal suspended him? What trial did he undergo? Quibus indiciis? quo teste? Nil horum—Verbosa et grandis epistola venit. An order came from Rome to put down this man without trial and without appeal, without a single crime being alleged against him—a foul and bitter wrong, in which we found that the Board of Education, the Poor Law Board, and the Government were all accomplices.

THE MARQUESS OF HARTINGTON

said, he would detain the House but a very short time, because upon that very limited portion of the question which had been brought before it to-night almost all that he thought it necessary to say had been said by one or more of the preceding speakers. But he had been appealed to upon one or two questions, upon which he thought a brief answer would help some hon. Members to form an opinion on this subject. He had been asked as to a pledge which was given by his right hon. Friend the Member for Greenwich (Mr. Gladstone), when he was at the head of the Government last Session. As to that pledge, he had a distinct recollection that his right hon. Friend (Mr. Bouverie) told him in the House that, so far as he was concerned, he regarded the adoption of the new Rules as perfectly satisfactory. Whether hon. Members liked to call that a compromise or not he did not know; but there was no doubt that the action of the Commissioners up to that time was completely condoned by the acceptance of new Rules, and Mr. Bouverie withdrew his Motion. On withdrawing his Motion, Mr. Bouverie asked his right hon. Friend the Member for Greenwich the questions which had been read to the House as to the view of the Government with reference to the new Rules: but Mr. Bouverie never asked whether Mr. O'Keeffe would be restored as manager of the Callan Schools, and therefore it was impossible that his right hon. Friend should have given a pledge on that subject. Mr. Bouverie asked whether the Government had any reason to believe the National Board would take every means in their power to restore Mr. O'Keeffe to his position as manager, without reference to his being a suspended priest, and the answer was that that would be the case. He (the Marquess of Hartington) maintained that that had been done by the Commissioners, and that pledge had been fulfilled. An inquiry was directed by the new Rule, of which notice was given to Mr. O'Keeffe and to other persons, and when the result of that inquiry was known the Commissioners took into consideration the Report, together with such facts as had come to their knowledge respecting Mr. O'Keeffe. He agreed with the hon. Member for Bedford (Mr. Whitbread) that possibly there had been some want of tact in the proceedings of the Board; but he defied anyone to show any want of good faith in the whole course of those proceedings. He could not altogether agree with the description which his right hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh (Mr. Lyon Playfair) had given of the conduct of the Board. His right hon. Friend said that the Board condemned Mr. O'Keeffe unheard, and that they irritated him. The fact was the Board never condemned him at all. They removed him from his office of manager, but in so doing they did not make the slightest imputation upon his personal character. [Mr. CONOLLY: Oh!] In what way did they make any imputation upon his character? [Mr. CONOLLY: Mr. O'Keeffe was a parish priest, and felt it an injustice to be stripped of his canonicals.] It was the first time he had heard it asserted that the National Board stripped Mr. O'Keeffe of his canonicals. What they did had been very much exaggerated. They did not dismiss him from the office of manager of the school. All they did was to cease to recognize him as the manager, and to break off correspondence with him. The Commissioners had not expressed any opinion whatever on Mr. O'Keeffe's personal fitness or unfitness for the position of manager to the Callan Schools. They simply acted in accordance with the precedents that bound them. The statement of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Oxfordshire (Mr. Henley), that the Education Board had condemned Mr. O'Keeffe without any proof whatever, had not the slightest shadow of foundation or substance. The only document which had not been referred to was the most important one—namely, that giving the Commissioners' reasons for not re-instating him. Those reasons were that the Town Commissioners of Callan, presumptively the exponents of local feeling, had unanimously protested against his appointment; that the School Committee of Callan, who had originally appointed him, and who really stood in the position of patron, had unanimously done the same; and that he was personally unfit for reasons which he would not dwell upon, but which were based on his own confessions before the Select Committee last Session. It had been stated that he was condemned unheard; but what would have been the use of asking him to explain or reply to his own statements, which would lead any Member who read them to the same conclusion as the Commissioners? These reasons were surely sufficient to justify not only a refusal to re-appoint, but a removal; and it would have been a pedantic absurdity for the Commissioners to appoint him temporarily in order to fulfil some fancied pledge never given, for the purpose of afterwards going into these charges and removing him. The Commissioners adopted, on the whole, the most sensible course, while giving him the full benefit of the new Rule, by going into the merits of the case and considering the educational interests of the place. Feeling that if the late Government were not prepared to support the Commissioners' action on this final stage they were entitled to the earliest intimation of the fact, that they might take their measures accordingly, he laid before his Colleagues a full account of the proceedings subsequent to the inquiry of the Select Committee; and without, of course, pledging himself to approval of every step they had taken, he expressed to the Commissioners the opinion of his Colleagues that their action had been, on the whole, substantially right. Had the late Government, therefore, remained in office it would have been his duty, as far as he could, to have defended the conduct of the Board. He had no difficulty in accepting the Amendment of the right hon. Baronet (Sir Michael Hicks-Beach), whose speech had been a very fair one, and he hoped that this troublesome case would now be finally disposed of.

SIR THOMAS CHAMBERS

said, he had never seen a more determined attempt to keep out all the prominent points of a subject engaging public attention, nor a more striking failure of such an attempt, the hon. Member for Louth (Mr. Sullivan) having brought forward all the subjects which had been studiously avoided by previous speakers. The facts which the hon. Member fer Louth had adverted to were briefly these:—Mr. O'Keeffe was a Roman Catholic priest, the parish priest of Callan, the chaplain of the union workhouse, and the manager of the national schools at Callan. A Rescript from the Pope, it appeared, was sent to the Cardinal Archbishop of Dublin, who was not Mr. O'Keeffe's Ordinary or Bishop, under which, it was said, he had been suspended from all clerical functions. Upon an intimation to that effect, conveyed by the Bishop of the diocese, two public Boards, who owed their authority to the House of Commons, and whose actions, therefore, they were bound to watch with the utmost vigilance—the Poor Law Commissioners and the National Education Commissioners—gave practical effect to what had been done in the way of suspension; the former turning him out of the office of workhouse chaplain, and the latter depriving him of the management of the Callan Schools. The people of England said that this was a matter which required looking into; that they thought the Education Commissioners were wrong; and that Mr. O'Keeffe had been treated indiscreetly and improperly. This opinion was endorsed by nearly every person who took part in the present debate from whichever side of the House he spoke. It was admitted fully and justly by the noble Marquess the late Chief Secretary for Ireland, and the right hon. Gentleman the present Secretary of the Lord Lieutenant, that the conduct of the Commissioners towards Mr. O'Keeffe, in acting on the decree of suspension, could not be defended, and it was admitted by the fact of a new Rule having been framed, and by the terms of it. It had required a new Rule to establish the common-sense principle that for the position of a school manager the right thing to be considered was his fitness, and, judging from the Commissioners' action, the old Rule was that the alleged ecclesiastical suspension of a man justified and required his removal from the school management, though a school manager might be a layman, and, if a priest, need not be the parish priest. The Rescript should never have come from Rome, should never have been admitted into Dublin, and should never have been acted upon. All this was a breach of statute law, and it could not be forgotten that Mr. O'Keeffe had been suspended because he had sued an ecclesiastical superior for libel in the Civil Courts—an alleged breach of some ecclesiastical law which could not be recognized. There was no reason in the thing. It was not that the process was all wrong and illegal—although that was so—but that there was no law or justice in it at all. No man could contract himself out of his right to appear in a Court of Justice, and to allow him to do so would be contrary to public policy. All that this unhappy priest had done was to appeal for redress to a Court of Law when he had been libelled. That was why the people of this country took so much interest in this question. They did not care so much about the Callan Schools; but they saw that if this system were to prevail, every branch of government in Ireland would have innumerable difficulties to encounter in the future. It was the bounden duty of that House to watch with ever increasing vigilance and jealousy the action of these public Boards in Ireland, and unless the House stood upon constitutional right, as opposed to the claims of the Roman Catholic Hierarchy, we never should be safe. In his opinion, the House would be committing a flagrant breach of its duty if it did not adopt the very mild form of censure upon the proceedings of the Board in this case which was embodied in the Resolution of the hon. Member.

MR. MACCARTHY

observed, that the Board of Education was established for the welfare of the people of Ireland. It had nothing whatever to do with controversial matters, with ecclesiastical disputes, or political questions. In the present case, as the Board had rightly abstained from inquiring into the validity or propriety of Mr. O'Keeffe's appointment as parish priest, so they rightly did not proceed to investigate the legality or propriety of his suspension from that office. He was prepared to oppose the Motion because he believed the Commissioners acted in perfect good faith, and exercised a sound discretion. The present matter was a delicate one, and if it was meddled with unwisely it would damage the best educational interests of Ireland.

MR. HORSMAN

said, he had taken no part in this question last year either by voting or by speaking, but he felt bound to recall to the House what had occurred in reference to it on that occasion. When the House met on the 11th of July last year, Mr. Bouverie put a Question on the matter to the then Prime Minister, as to whether the new Rule was to be retrospective or not. At that time Mr. Bouverie had a Motion on the Notice Paper censuring the Board for their conduct in this matter, and both sides of the House were unanimous on the subject. Under these circumstances, the then Prime Minister got up, and in reply to Mr. Bouverie's Question, said he could give the right hon. Gentleman a clear and explicit answer, founded on information and upon authority which could not deceive him, to the effect that the new Rule was to be retrospective. Mr. Bouverie and the other Members of the House were perfectly satisfied, and went away under the impression that the matter was entirety settled. It was notorious that Mr. O'Keeffe had been deposed from his office without reference to the Education Board; and when he (Sir. Horsman) saw in the newspapers in the following autumn that the Board had refused to restore Mr. O'Keeffe, he could scarcely believe his eyes, and he felt that a great breach of faith had been committed on their part. He had heard the late Prime Minister give the assurance in perfect good faith, and that assurance had been received in perfect good faith by the House, and he could come to no other conclusion than that the Commissioners had not kept good faith on their part. Under all the circumstances, his hon. Friend (Mr. Cartwright) was, he thought, perfectly justified in bringing forward his Motion. He quite felt what had been said in a perfectly fair spirit by the hon. Baronet the Chief Secretary for Ireland; but, at the same time, he could not but think that the line taken by the Government was rather unfortunate; and, therefore, if his hon. Friend pressed his Motion to a division, he would be compelled, with great regret, to go into the Lobby with him.

MR. LAW

accepted the statement of the right hon. Gentleman who had just spoken as to what had passed in the House last year; but it should be remembered that the Question which Mr. Bouverie asked the late Prime Minister, and which was answered, was not whether Mr. O'Keeffe was to be re-instated, but whether the new Rule was to apply to his case. Even Mr. O'Keeffe himself did not ask to be re-instated under the Rule. What he asked for was inquiry He quite concurred in the view expressed by several hon. Members as to the inexpediency of the Commissioners acting upon any hard-and-fast Rule, or ceasing to recognize a manager simply upon the statement that he had been suspended by his ecclesiastical superiors. The true test was the manager's educational fitness to promote the interests of education in the particular district, and that test the Commissioners had applied in this case. And, as an element of that inquiry, were the opinions and protests of not only the Town Commissioners of Callan, but also of the Committee to whom the Schools belonged, and who had appointed Mr. O'Keeffe, to be ignored? For his part, having simply in view the educational interests of the parish in question, he could not regard either Mr. O'Keeffe or Mr. Martin, his successor, as a fit manager of the Schools. At all events, he hoped the House would not be led to condemn the Commissioners because of an extravagant expression in a letter which they had received from the Bishop of Ossory.

MR. CARTWRIGHT

, in reply, said, the reason he had changed the terms of his Motion was that he might not appear to be in any way the personal advocate of Mr. O'Keeffe. He had argued the question solely on broad and general grounds. He might not even have pressed his Motion to a division; but, after the speech of the right hon. Baronet the Chief Secretary for Ireland, and his statement that he sanctioned the existing arrangements—arrangements which he (Mr. Cartwright) thought unsatisfactory—ho felt bound to divide. He did not seek to censure the Commissioners because of the extravagant expression used by Bishop Moran in his letter to them, but because they had not repudiated the pretensions he had put forth.

MR. DISRAELI

said, he did not rise earlier because he thought the Mover of the Resolution was going to make a suggestion which would have facilitated this course. Nor did he want to vindicate the conduct of the Commissioners of National Education in Ireland. On more than one occasion he had regretted the course they had pursued, and he thought in this matter of Mr. O'Keeffe their conduct was much to be deprecated. Nor did he wish to attack Mr. O'Keeffe personally—quite the reverse. His knowledge of Mr. O'Keeffe was mainly derived from discussions in that House; Mr. O'Keeffe appeared to him to have been a much injured man; and two years ago when this matter was brought before the House he should certainly have supported Mr. Bouverie in the Motion which he brought forward; but before they decided as to what course they should pursue now, he wished, in the first place, to bring the consideration of the House to its exact Parliamentary position in reference to this question. It was not to be found in the ardent rhetoric of the Common Serjeant. The hon. and learned Gentleman adverted to many points with which, no doubt, the people of this country sympathized, and, he (Mr. Disraeli) dared say, also the majority of that House, and with many of which he sympathized himself; but they did not appear to him to be at present under their discussion. Their position with regard to this question in a Parliamentary point of view was this—it appeared to him that when the case was first brought before them more than two years ago, the House of Commons entered into a struggle with the Royal Commissioners of National Education in Ireland on the point whether the patron or manager of a school should be suspended or dismissed without a previous investigation into his conduct. That was the question upon which there had been a struggle between the two bodies, and the House had perfectly and completely succeeded in vindicating the position which it desired to establish. When did it completely succeed in accomplishing that result? It was on that memorable day so often adverted to in the course of that debate, and described so frequently by various witnesses who were present, all of whom had varied in the accounts they had given—which did not elevate one's opinion of contemporary evidence. To that memorable day, he was going to advert, although he should be very careful in the testimony he should offer, and would offer only that which he could prove by record. It was not a mere haphazard conversation that took place in the House of Commons between the Prime Minister and Mr. Bouverie. On the morning of the day on which those remarks were made Papers had been delivered to that House—official, authentic, printed Papers, in which hon. Members would find the new Rule that was introduced into the management of the National Education Board just introduced to the attention of the House of Commons. That printed, document was in everybody's hands on the morning of the night when that conversation took place, and therefore it was not to be treated as a mere casual conversation, but was in fact an important Ministerial declaration founded upon and explanatory of the public document and circular in the hands of hon. Members That was considered a conclusion of the O'Keeffe controversy; he would not call it a compromise, though he did not imagine the word had been used otherwise than as a convenient word which did not too precisely explain the state of affairs. It was offered and publicly accepted as a settlement by the right hon. Member of the House who had the peculiar management of the case of Mr. O'Keeffe. As to the consequence that resulted, he would not weary the House by reading through the authentic records, but he had it there, and one expression alone, he thought, was quite sufficient. Mr. Gladstone said— I can rely, without any fear of being deceived, upon the Commissioners giving Mr. O'Keeffe the full benefit of the Rule, if he shall renew his application. Such, I believe, is the view of the Board—such, undoubtedly, is the view of the Government, and upon the Government, as I have stated, the responsibility ultimately rests."—[3 Hansard, ccxvii. 213.] Mr. Bouverie said— I am perfectly satisfied myself with the course taken by the right hon. Gentleman, and therefore I shall not think it necessary to bring forward the Motion."—[Ibid.] The Government pledged themselves that Mr. O'Keeffe should have the benefit of that Rule, that no person should be deprived of his position without an investigation of the circumstances alleged as a cause for that deprivation. That was a settlement of the question, and it was not for the House now to enter upon the conduct of the Board of National Education in Ireland during the last 20 or 40 years. It was not necessary to consider whether a Rescript was sent from Rome; but they had to ask whether, since the arrangement or settlement of last year, accepted by Mr. Bouverie as representing the person peculiarly interested, anything had occurred which required them now to give an opinion upon the subject. His right hon. Friend the Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant had given Notice of an Amendment to the Motion of the hon. Member for Oxfordshire (Mr. Cartwright), and, like all Amendments that were not printed, he (Mr. Disraeli) believed it had been misconceived by many in that House. It really referred to only two points. It declined to approve the conduct of the Commissioners of National Education; it declined to call upon the House to give any opinion as to the course taken by the Board since the adoption of the Rule of July 1873, looking upon that as a general settlement of the O'Keeffe case; it also alleged, as a reason for this course, the existing arrangements for the management of the schools at Callan. These arrangements were important circumstances to be considered now; they had given considerable satisfaction to the greater portion of the people of Ireland, and to the people of England acquainted with the circumstances. The conduct and character of Mr. Brassington were unimpeachable, and the results he had produced there had been highly satisfactory to everybody, he (Mr. Disraeli) was told, except to the Bishop of Ossory. But when they asked the House, to have regard to the course taken by the Board since the adoption of the Rule of July, and to the existing arrangements in the management of the Schools, they meant arrangements that existed, and not arrangements that the Bishop of Ossory might hereafter wish to substitute. The schemes of the Bishop of Ossory were not the existing arrangements, and if the Bishop of Ossory or any other Bishops were ever to take a course in regard to those questions that was opposed to the law, the Government would not be afraid to vindicate the law; and therefore he trusted the House would not be misled or carried away from the subject before it by the views of the Bishop of Ossory. It appeared to him that the Amendment that his right hon. Friend had proposed was an Amendment adapted to the circumstances of the case, one that was temperate in its tone and clear in its object. His right hon. Friend did not wish in any way to revive old controversies that had been, they hoped, happily settled in that House, and at the same time he did not pledge the House to any approbation of the conduct of the Board of Education in originally dismissing Mr. O'Keeffe from his post as manager of the Callan Schools. The Amendment did not in any way call upon the House to approve that conduct; but it asked them, having regard to the course taken by the Board since the adoption of the Rule of July, 1873, and to the existing arrangements in the management of the Schools, to express their opinion that there did not appear to be any sufficient grounds for the interference of Parliament. All speakers had treated the arrangement of 1873 as very important; some might consider it a compromise, and others a settlement; but all agreed that it gave a new colour, form, and complexion to the whole question, and none were prepared to discard the benefits of that understanding. Complaints of the conduct of the Commissioners might in some degree be just; upon that he would give no opinion; but the arrangement of 1873 placed the House and the Commissioners in a position different from that they occupied two years ago. The other ground on which they were asked to adopt the Amendment was the existing arrangements for the management of the Schools. All would agree that these were matters well worth consideration. On what grounds were they asked to review the settlement of 1873, and to introduce confusion into the present scholastic harmony of Callan? When the Pope's Rescript or other circumstances called for the critical attention of the House, let them be brought forward, and the Government would not shrink from dealing with, them. Could it be said that Mr. O'Keeffe had not had the advantage of the re-hearing which the late Prime Minister promised him, and that he had not received justice in that re-hearing. The matter had not been brought before the House in that form, which would have been a fair and intelligible one. Mr. O'Keeffe did not complain that the investigation into his conduct had not been complete or impartial. No one in that House had made any statement on his part that he had had a "sham" investigation. If any hon. Gentleman was in possession of facts leading to that conclusion, he should have distinctly stated them in debate, and asked an expression of opinion from the House upon them. Under the circumstances, it would be most unwise to support the original Motion of the hon. Member for Oxfordshire, than which he had seldom read a Resolution couched in more vague and hesitating language. It asked them to declare that the action of the Board of Education in Ireland had been "marked by inconsistency." Well, the Board had existed for 40 years. Was it meant that its conduct had been inconsistent during the whole of that time, or only in some particular instance? Why was that not clearly expressed? Then the Resolution said their action had not been in conformity with precedent, but the hon. Mover had not cited a single precedent with which they had not conformed; and as to the Regulation, the spirit of which they were alleged to have violated, the hon. Member did not tell them what he meant by that charge. Instead of a proposition so very vague and yet so dangerous as that, the Government asked the House to adopt a Resolution of a very different character, one perfectly precise, which guarded the House from committing itself to any dangerous admission, and which, at the same time, indicated the reasons which made it wise for the House to sanction it at the present moment. Their Amendment affirmed that there did not now exist any sufficient ground for the interference of Parliament. Let them consider what the interference of Parliament was on that vast question. If the national system of education in Ireland was not adapted to its original purpose, if it was not fulfilling the great duties which the State expected from it, and which from its large endowments the House and the nation had a right to expect, that was indeed a question which deserved the consideration of Senates. Let it be brought before them fairly, and as fairly discussed, but do not let them by a sidewind and in obscure and ambiguous language, because some might be influenced by strong passions which had no strict connection with the subject then really before them, fall into an ambush which they would find, perhaps, full of destructive consequences. The step they were called upon to take concerned one of the most important institutions of the United Kingdom, and it was most expedient that in such a matter they should not act with precipitation. He was bound to say, considering what was the question before them, that it did not appear to him that the House in the course of this almost unexpected debate had completely realized the importance of the issue before it.

MR. NEWDEGATE

said, that perhaps no Member of the House who was present when his right hon. Friend (Mr. Bouverie) received the answer of the late Prime Minister on the 11th of July last was more likely than he to remember the impression and understanding which that answer created. It was clearly understood, that the new Rule of the Commissioners should be applied to the case of Mr. O'Keeffe in the sense of reparation for the injury to which he had been exposed by the decisions of the Commissioners for National Education and the Commissioners of the Poor Law Board in Ireland, which were in their origin and essence illegal. It appeared to him that advantage had been taken of the disturbed state of the parish of Callan, during the last two years, to misrepresent and vilify Mr. O'Keeffe. The right hon. Gentleman the Prime Minister had said that this House had been engaged in a struggle with the Commissioners for Education in Ireland. These Commissioners were the dependents of that House for purposes of their appointment; and he thought that the fact of their having been engaged in a struggle with this House was inconsistent with their position, and afforded ample justification for the very mild terms of censure which the hon. Member for Oxfordshire (Mr. Cartwright) proposed. He should certainly vote for the original Motion, and against the Amendment.

Question put.

The House divided:—Ayes 118; Noes 206: Majority 88.

Words added.

Main Question, as amended, put, and agreed to. Resolved, That this House, without expressing any approval of the conduct of the Commissioners of National Education in Ireland in originally dismissing Mr. O'Keeffe from the office of Manager of the Callan Schools, is of opinion, having regard to the course taken by the Board since the adoption of the Rule of July 1873, and to the existing arrangements for the management of the Schools, that there does not at present exist any sufficient ground for the interference of Parliament.