The Earl of Clancarty.My Lords, I have three petitions to present to your Lordships upon the subject of National Education from parishes in the West of Ireland. They are in substance all to the same effect, and directed against the system of Education at present in operation. The petitioners repeat many of the objections to the National Board, which have been so fully set forth in the numerous petitions at different times presented to this House, but especially during the last Session of Parliament. They feel aggrieved that the Parliamentary grant for promoting the education of the Irish poor is, nevertheless, still exclusively given in aid of schools, which under the National Board are conducted upon the principle, that instruction in the Bible is not a necessary part of Christian Education. They represent to your Lordships that there are 1372 schools in operation, under the immediate super- 1227 intendence of the Prelates and Clergy of the Established Church, open to children of every religious denomination, and actually giving a sound, moral, religious, and literary education to 86,102 children, of whom 29,612 are Roman Catholics, and 8,365 are Protestant Dissenters, hereby realizing to a great extent, what the schools under the National Board have wholly failed of effecting, an united education of the lower order of the Irish people. And they complain, and with reason, that from these schools Parliamentary aid is withheld, solely because instruction in the Holy Scriptures is an essential part of the Education given in them. The prayer of these petitions which I beg most cordially to support is, that the countenance and support of Parliament may be no longer withheld as hitherto from these most valuable and excellent Institutions. As 1 trust that, after the Report of the Education Commission shall have been laid upon the Table of the House, there will be an opportunity for discussing fully the whole of this important subject, I shall only at present make one remark upon it in reference to what has just fallen from my noble Friend (Lord Lorton) upon the present excited state of Ireland, on the question of a Repeal of the Union. My Lords, 1 cannot but view it, and I felt it my duty, so far back as last December, to represent the case to the right hon. Gentleman at the head of her Majesty's Government, I cannot but view it as among the causes that have the most materially strengthened the hands of the agitators of that question, that by the regulations of the National Board, the education and training of the great mass of the Irish population has for many years been, and still continues, to the practical exclusion of the Clergy of the Established Church, the natural friends of British connection, entrusted to the Roman Catholic Clergy who are, as your Lordships' are now well aware, the active promoters of the Repeal movement. If it is objected that the Clergy of the Established Church do not take that part in the superintendence of the schools which the Government designed originally that they should take, I would beg to remind your Lordships that even if the Clergy were to lend themselves to a system to which it is well known that they are conscientiously opposed—and there is no one but must respect the motives of that opposition— the regulations which are drawn up for 1228 the Government of those schools must preclude them from exercising any wholesome influence in them, from taking in fact that part in the religious and moral instruction of the assembled children, which could alone render their presence in those schools of any real service. Let me further observe to your Lordships that the ministration of the Protestant Clergy being by the rules of the Board limited to those of their immediate congregations, while to the Roman Catholic priests is wholly confided the religious training of the remainder, an impression, not a little injurious to the Protestant Establishment in Ireland must be the consequence. It must naturally strike both the poor, whose children attend these schools, as well as the children themselves who here imbibe those early principles and feelings which stamp their character and disposition in after life, that, when the services of the Clergy are thus restricted to the members of their respective communions, they as Roman Catholics or Dissenters have no interest whatever in the Established Church—that it is to be maintained only for the advantage of a section of the population, instead of being designed, as 1 conceive it and every other of the fundamental institutions of the country to have been and to be for the advantage of the whole people. At any time and under any circumstances the violation of the principle of a National Church, here involved, is to be deprecated; but at the present time it obviously must give, and it has given much weight to the arguments of those, who point to the overthrow of the Established Church as one of the objects, and the chief one to be obtained by Repeal of the Union. My Lords, my noble Friend has alluded to the policy, so called, of " Conciliation," I concur with him in viewing it as the foundation of all the past misgovernment of Ireland. The only sound principle of Government, and that which would most effectually conciliate the good will and respect of the Irish people and do away with the desire for a repeal of the Legislative Union, or any other fundamental change, would be to govern in the spirit of our Institutions, and upon the principles of the Constitution, and to administer the laws with firmness, vigour, and impartiality.
§ The Petitions from the Parishes of Ballinasloe, Clinterskerb, and Kilcoleman.
§ Laid upon the Table.