The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1838-03-06 00:00:00

CONTEMPORARY PRESS.

APHILE AND THE IRISH EDUCATION
BOARD.'
(From the Morning Herald.)
Another letter up on the subject of . the national edu-
cation system of Ireland has been addressed lo Lord
John Russell by the zealous and indefatigable Dr.
M'Hale, titular Archbishop of Tuam.
We confess we cannot but adinire the diligence and
zeal with which this bigoted dignitary of the ROnSish
church watches over what. he Considers the interests of
the religious system of which he is an appointed guar-
dian. We could wish that, without imitating the Irish
champion of the polcy of the Vatican in his fiery into-
lerance of sentiment and. virulence of language,e the ap-
pointed guardians of the Protestant chUrch, copied him
in his zeal and diligence to maintain his own system of
faith and church discipline in all its integrity. The Ro.
rnish bishops are seldom remiss in the vigilance that
watches for, and the activity that seizes upon, every fa-:
voi-irable occasion to advance the interests of their own
church.

The tide of popery which has been let in upon the
institutions of this country by. the bill of 1829, having
formed a confluent current with recreant whiggery,
threatens to sweep away the foundations of our protest-
anrconstitution: As to the "'securities" which Welling-
ton and Peel provided for the protestant religion, they
'have. turned out, as all thinking people supposed they
would be, mere mockeries. Dr. M'Hale will not hear
of-even such protestants as Dr. WhatelY,and Mr. Car-
life providing instruction for Roman catholic children,
and yet no less than On protestant bishops, in support-
ing the bill of " cithOlic • emancipation, voted for al-
lowing Roman catholics not only to legislate for the edu-
cation of protestant children, . but to legislate for the
protestant church itself!
Since that bill was passed ten protestant , bish9prics
have been suppressed in Ireland, to every one of which
Raman catholic bifrhops keep up their titular claim,
awaiting the time when to the barren title they shall add
the substantial temporalities.
Dr. M'Hale says to O'Connell's truckling protegg—
" Alas ! it seems to be the fate of Ireland that no plan
can be devised for her improvement, whether it regards
education or the relief of the poor, that is not to be con•
(Inked by individuals opposed to us by religious and na-
tional antipathies. For the education of the youth of
Ireland a board is constituted, .in.which the chief influ-
ence is exercised by two aliens in -reality—in religion
and country—an English* protestant and a ScotCh pres-
byterian." Here the cloven foot is most incautiously
thrpst from the jesuitical robe of the Romish ddetor.
Who dOes not recollect what an infuriate outcry O'Con-
nell and his' party raised against Lord Lyndhurst be-
cause of his using the word " alien" in a manner less
deSignedly offensive than that in which Dr. M'Hale has
Used it ? Every English protestant and every Scotch
presbyterian is an alien in the eyes of the Archbishop of
Tuam. The " Sassenach," liberal though he be, must
not meddle with so sacred a thing astue education of
'llianan catholic children.
In a former epistle the most rev, doctor declared,that
the Pope alone must be looked to as the supreme .direc-
tor of the education of Irish Roman catholic children.
The celebrated "appropriation clause" was to confiscate
a portion of the property of the protestant chuich for
the education of Roman Catholics,
,Which education, it
now appears, was to have been exclusively under the
direction of the Pope and Romish priesthood, in which
no alien protestant or presbyterian was to be allowed to
interfere. Dr. M‘Hale has demolished the whole system
of Whig delusion on tiliS subject.