The Sun.
London, England, 1849-05-04 00:00:00

SCRIPTURE EDUCATION IN IRELAND.

The Bishop of CASHEL presented a petition, signed
by the Protestant clergy and inhabitants of Middleton,
in Lancashire, in favour of assistance from Government
for national education, and another signed by 43,000
Protestants in Ireland, asking for a fair share of assist-
ance from the Government, for the Protestant population
of that country. The Right Rev. Prelate presented a
third petition from 1,400 of the Protestant clergy in Ire-
land, in favour of the same object. The Dissenters of
every denomination partook of the boon from Govern-
ment for the education of their various sects. And
lastly, in 1847, even the Roman Catholic parents and
guardians of children were, by a minute of Council,
empowered to send their children to those schools
approved of by them, where their religious tenets
were not to be interfered with. He would then
ask, was it just or fair that every other class
should be encouraged in the education of their
children, and that Protestants of Ireland alone should
be excluded from the benefits of the Government grant.
He asked in the name of those Protestants, that as the
old system, which has been represented as impracticable
and unpopular, was broken into fragments, that they
should have their fair quota of these fragments. It is
the doctrine of Protestantism that whosoever takes away
the .use of the Holy Scriptures from any man, takes
away his birthright; and when the Bull Unigenitus,
propagated in 1613, went to that effect, he considered
that he was right in saying that Protestants and
Roman Catholics could not be educated together in
that harmony which he would wish. He would call
the attention of their Lordships to some of the rules of
the Board of Education, one of which is, that children
should not be enforced to read extracts from the
Bible against the will of their parents, and that if
Protestant children were required, it should be only in
those hours when the Roman Catholics were not present,
and' to that rule he should say, that the Protestant clergy
of Ireland fully agreed. What the forty thousand
petitioners require is, that their children should have
the benefit of a literary and scriptural education. The
next difference is, that Roman Catholics must have in-
spectors approved of by them, whereas the Protestant
might be men of hostile feelings, and that the Roman
Catholic children were to be inspected only as to their
literary improvement. He would ask, is it fair that the
Protestants should be treated thus ? Were thby less
remarkable for their loyalty, for :their industry, for
their moral conduct. or for carrying out justice as jurors,
than their Catholic fellow subjects? The conduct of the
Rev. Mr. Medlicott, a Protestant clergyman, in instigat-
ing six policemen, whom ho found at the police barracks
of Portlaw, to defend themselves to the last against a
meditated attack of the mob, in which they most gallantly
succeeded,was an instance, among many that be cited, to
show their ability as a body; though he would say it to
the honour of five of those policemen, that they were
Roman Catholics; and yet such men as these were to be
debarred from the advantages of education. The Right

Rev. Prelate then read a long extract from one of Mr.
Macaulay's essays, the tendency of which was to con-
trast the influence of Catholicity unfavourably with that
of Pretestanti,na in Ireland; and then proceeded to say
that the Protestants of Cork were, if anything,
superior to those of the north. It was to the interest of
the country that Protestants should be allowed the ad-
vantagfai of education, and he would, therefore, call upon
their Lordships, by the respect which they had for the
Word of God, by their regard for the best interests of the
people, by their desire to promote the social welfare of
the community, to give a favourable reception to the
petition now before them ; and to show themselves dis-
posed to give the Protestants of Ireland the' same assist-
ance in education, as was given in that country to all
other classes of her Majesty's subjects.—(Hear, hear.)
The Archbishop of DUBLIN said that the subject of
Protestant education in Ireland was one which deserved
the greatest attention, especially as the objections that
had been raised against it in England, and also in Ire-
land, were founded on an entire misapprehension of the
facts; and he was convinced that if' their Lordships would
think fit to proceed by inquiry, and consent to address
the Throne tor this purpose, they would find that it was
not surrounded by so many difficulties as some were ells•
posed to imagine. The system of education pursued at
the university schools in Ireland respected the religious
faith of the children sent to them; and, iu that respect,
might be considered uniform with regard to them. At
Oxford and Cambridge, there was a limit placed upon
education, which was there confined to members of the
Established Church. At Trinity College, Dublin, this
was not the case; but Protestants, Catholics, and Dis-
senters were equally allowed to participate in the ad-
vantages of the University, without any restriction or
violation of feelings. That might be a good law or
a bad one; but of this he was convinced, that consi-
dering the majority of students to be Protestants,
the scruples entertained by members of that faith could
not be just what they were described to be. With re-
gard to the alleged exclusion of the scriptures from these
Roman Catholic schools, if inquiry were made in the
matter, it would be found quite contrary to the facts,
upon the common meaning of the phrase. It could, and
would be only true in one sense, via., that there was no
right given to the schools to place the scriptures in the
hands of children, that was to say, in other words, there
was no right to force religious instruction upon them in
opposition to the wishes of their parents. On the great
principle contained in that book, of which their Lordships
had that evening heard so much, "Do unto others as
you wish they should do unto you," he thought that
regulation was a very just one, for which of them would
like to have his son forced to study the Koran?—
(Hear, hear.) He thought, therefore, that if the great
body of the petitioners before them were fully aware
of the circumstances of the questions, they would have
paused before they took a step, the tendency of
which was to break up a grant, and to establish
Protestant schools concurrently with Catholic schools in
the same district. In many districts he was sure they
could not exist together, and if they could it would be
at the cost of the most injurious consequences. But the
fact was that Protestants in Ireland were grossly ig-
norant of the question, in illustration of which ho could
tell their Lordships anecdotes within his own personal
experience which would detain them until midnight.
He felt convinced that, if Commissioners were are
pointed to examine into the working of the National
Board of Education, that a great change would take
place in the minds of those persons who were at pre-
sent opposed to it, as shown by the petitions which they
had signed; and he should add, that if it were found
that the Commissioners had not done their duty, he as-
sured their Lordships that there was no person more
willing to be succeeded in office than himself—(Hear,
hear)—for what he did was for the public good, and no-
thing would be more satisfactory to him than to find a
person of more experience than himself to fill the office of
Commissioner.—(Hear, hear.)
The Bishop of LONDON would ask, could it be
thought from 1,300 to 1,500 clergymen in Ireland could
be ignorant of those facts? He should say, with re-
spect to those men, of such well-known experience, that
they do not want the children of Roman Catholics
under them ; what they want is, that they might obtain
the means of educating the children of their own con-
gregation in a literary and spiritual manner, instead of
sending them to Roman Catholic schools, for he should
say that it was agreed to by all persons that all national
schools in the south of Ireland are Roman Catholic;
while, on the other hand, many in the north are
Presbyterian, and that, therefore, most of the public
bounty flows into the schools of those two
sects in Ireland. He thought that that long-
withheld justice should be at least meted out to the
Established Church, for it had not been dealt fairly
with for some years respecting education. He looked
upon it as an invasion on the Divine prerogative, to ex-
clude any child from the use of the Holy Scriptures, and
for that reason was opposed to the regulation that Ro-
man Catholic children should not be present while the
Bible was being read, for he looked upon that as the
basis of all religious education, and naturally he would
not allow any child of his flock to go to a school where
such a prohibition prevailed. He was sure that the
Right Rev. Prelate (the Archbishop of Dublin) would
see, when he reconsidered the matter, that there was no
analogy between the University of Dublin and the Board
of Education, for in that University students were not
restrained from reading the Bible, whereas in the
National Schools, through the monopoly of the Roman
Catholic priests, their children are not allowed to read it.
The Earl of WINCHILSEA said, that when he con-
sidered the oath of a clergyman who bound himself to
God to propagate the doctrine, by every means in season
and out of season, that he was astonished that it should
be said that 1,300 clergymen were ignorant of what they
did in signing that petition; and he looked upon it as a
quibble for the Archbishop of Dublin to say that the
Bible was not totally forbidden in these schools. The
Noble Lord concluded by imploring their Lordships to
give to the Protestants of Ireland justice, in matters of
education, which they required.
The Marquis of LANSDOWNE said that the sub-
ject of education in Ireland had received particular
attention in Parliament during the last fifteen or six-
teen years, and as it had been recently legislated
upon in what appeared to be a satisfactory manner,
he could not hold out the smallest hope that the
Government would, by a new measure, materially
alter the system which at present was acted upon.
These grants of money were intended mainly for the be-
nefit of the poor, and because the majority of the popu-
lation needing education were Roman Catholics, that
particular system of education had been introduced, it
being impossible in any other way to effect the object in
view. He was not prepared to say that, after trying the
experiment for so long a time, they had at length sac-
ceeded in producing a definite and perfect system adapted
in every respect to the peculiar circumstances of the
country; but their experience had at least taught them
this, that it was in the highest degree injuoicious to
make separate grants for religious instruction in various
creeds. The introduction of that principle into their
present system would only end in setting priest against
clergyman and bigot against bigot, and instead of pro-
ducing an exclusive benefit to a class, as would be confi-
dently expected, it would not be productive of good to any.
Notwithstanding the views of the Right Rev. Prelate
he (the Marquis of Lansdowne) thought it would be
most conducive to the welfare of society in Ireland, to
continue the system of education introduced there six-
teen years ago, and supported by successive Govern-
ments, which had gone on increasing in usefulness,
extending benefit after benefit, and attracting not only.
many good Protestants, but the Presbyterian body of
the north of Ireland, who would not be disposed now
to take advice of the Right Reverend Prelate, or to
withdraw the assent which they had given originally to
that system.—(Hear, hear.) Those schools which had
been denounced as Catholic were in no other sense Ca-
tholic than their being so attended, and as for the read•
ing of the Scriptures being excluded, the Right Rev.
Prelate, who spoke second, had clearly shown their Lord-
ships that the exclusion was only confined to certain
hours set apart for studies of a temporal nature, and
therefore strictly proper. He only wished there was as
much scriptural instruction to be met with in many
English cottages, where, though the Scriptures were not
excluded, practically they were not taught. Every Pro-
testant in Ireland, who wished his children to be edu-
cated in the Protestant faith, might receive an education
of that kind if he chose, and he would not go further
into the details of the question than to repeat what he
had before stated, that he could hold out no hope of the
reconsideration of a system which had hitherto marked
out its object with satisfaction and efficiency.—(Hear.)
The subject then dropped, and on the motion of the
NOBLE MARQUIS, immediately after the conclusion of
his speech, their Lordships adjourned, at Twenty Minutes
before Nino o'clock.

HOUSE OF COMMONS, May 3.
The SPEAKER took the Chair at Four o'clock.
CONSIDERATION OF LORDS' AMENDMENTS.
The Lords' amendments to the following Bills were
considered and agreed to :
Darlington Gas and Water Company Bill.
Feltwell Second District Drainage Bill.
THIRD READINGS.
The following Bills were read a third time and
passed :

itansonmoor or Doddingtnn Fifth District Drainage Act
Amendment (to amend and extend the Powers, to
annex other Lands, to borrow Money, and to levy
Rates or Taxes) Bill.
Tay Navigation and Perth Harbour Acts Amendment
Bill.

Whittlesey St. Mary and Whittlesey St. Andrew Union
of Parishes, and for improving the Town of Whit-
tlesey Bill.
CONSIDERATION OF REPORT.
The report of the Caledonian Railway (Lease or Pur-
chase or the Glasgow, Barrhead, and Neilston Direct
Railway) Bill was considered and agreed to, and the
Bill ordered to be engrossed.