The Sun.
London, England, 1853-08-08 00:00:00

THE OBSOM

IRELAND, &c.

( From, the Press.)

It is not at all improbable that events now occurring
behind the scenes at Dublin may lead to political con-
sequences of importance.
The Na. tional Board of Education has never been po-
pular with: the ultramontanists. The system was not
offered by its founder, Lord Derby, as the most perfect
that could be devised in theory, but as the only one
that the State could consistently establish in Ire-
land. 1.70 educate the Roman Catholics through the
old Prote;stant schools was manifestly impossible, espe-
cially afto r the act of 1829. On the other hand, for the
State to found Roman Catholic schools, and to allot
public ra oney for their separate support, would be
enacting 2. rule that would, in its working, prove a
lever for overthrowing the Protestant Church. It is
obvious, however, that this is the point that Dr. Cullen
-nd the ialtramontanists are aiming to reach. This is
the end to which they are desirous of arriving by cir-
cuitous approaches. They attack Archbishop Whateley
ostensibly in order to damage the Board ' • and, as soon
as they :shall have destroyed that, they hope upon its
ruins to erect an ascendancy over educational influences
in Irelan,i.

Nor ai•e they without hopes of obtaining English
allies in what Lord John Russell would have called,
three years since, "their insolent and insidious" schemes.
On Tuesday last a journal, 'notorious amongst the daily
press for its scarcely concealed patronage of their in-
tention. exults at the approaching obsequies of the
National Board. Its invidious rhetoric was displayed
ir. innuendoes against what it was pleased to call
" colourless Christianity" and " negative religion,"
while it went the length of asserting that the
Board was expiring of " senility." It happens,
indeed, that, owing to deaths and official changes,
the National Board, within the last five years,
has received a reinforcement of several new mem-
bers, amongst others Mr. Murphy (the Master
in Chancery), Sir Thomas Redington, and the
Roman Catholic clergyman, Dean Meyler ; while, in
respect of its efficiency, although it is no more than 23
years old, it has now half a million of children attending
its schools, with nearly six thousand teachers ; and with
this vast machinery it requires for its purposes in the
present session of Parliament a grant of no less than
183,000/.
We notice these imputations upon the efficiency of
the National Board, not, however, for their importance,
but as the symbols of a policy yet unrevealed. For our
part, we believe the choice lies between the system
founded by Lord Derby and Obscurantism. Give up
the national system, and the Obscurantists must triumph.
The Irish Roman Catholics are too poor to build schools
and support teachers. They did not do so when
their country was more prosperous than now,
and it is absurd to suppose that Parliament
would give nearly two hundred thousand pounds
yearly to an Irish educational system presided
over by the priests. At the same time it would
be rash to under-estimate the audacity of the allies of
Cardinal Wiseman in the Cabinet. We may, possibly,
yet hear of the appropriation clause in another shape—
viz., that of separate sectarian education in Ireland, with
the sanction and support of the State. It is not impro-
bable that some plan of the kind is now being elabo-
rated under Cullenian auspices to be advocated in due
course with Gladstonian subtlety. In 1834, at the an-
nouncement of certain propositions, the Whig party was
rent asunder, and Sir James Graham "knows the rea-

son why." He and his colleagues may require to be re-
freshed as to a similar inquisitive disposition in the public
if they palter with proposals which tend in the same di-
rection.

The proceedings of Thursday in the House of Com-
mons furnished two more instances of the prevailing
disposition on the Ministerial side to play into the
hands of the Obscurantists. In abandoning his motion
for a committee of inquiry on nunneries, the convenient
Member for Bath broke down a no longer useful bridge
of retreat, while he dexterously yielded the prestige of
victory to the ultramontanist allies of his political
friends. In the second instance, Lord John Russell,
however mindful, of the " insolent," conveniently for-
got the "insidious" part of Romish aggression on our
unguarded social machinery, when he strove, by a side
wind, to destroy the law of superstitious uses, by
giving the priestly interest a perpetual exemption from
those provisions of the New Charitable Trusts Bill
which were intended to protect all alike against spiri-
tual or temporal fraud, whether practised by Roman.
Catholic death-bed harpies or lax latitudinarian trus-
tees. The noble lord might have regarded this new
" sop" to the spiritual reversionists as an amende, nega-
tive and Whiggish, for some of the superfluous insults
of the Durham letter ; but the amendment of Mr.
Headlam, limiting the operation of the meditated
licence to two years. was adopted by Lord J. Rus-
sell as the sole means of saving his own. Even
this amendment was too subversive of the object of the
Ecclesiastical Titles Act, and of the principle of the
general law relating to charitable trusts, to be permitted ;
and on Sir Frederick Thesiger resisting it "as an ad-
mission that a system was to be applied to Roman
Catholic charities different from that adopted towards
others," there was a very close division (in which, it is
worthy of remark, Lord Palmerston was not available),
resulting in the adoption of this Headlam-on-Russell
rider to the bill by a majority of only eleven. The
effect of the whole affair is to give to the ultramontanist
organisers of the money power of the faith a two years'
licence for their operations. In the case of the Irish
education system, and of conventual establishments,
they are not so fortunate ; being condemned to the
tantalising task of continually watching the fluctuating
tide of public indignation.