The Irish standard., 1898-10-15

firsD presidents of the national school
board, and under his supervision ap-
peared the following paragraph in one OF
the Irish school Readers"
"On the east of Ireland is England.
where the queen lives. Many people who
live in Ireland were born in England
(mostly ''red-coats," spies, hangmcn and
other vagabonds), and we speak the same
language and are called one nation!"
Now" says Mitchell, can any human
being object to this statement? Are not
these things facts? Is not England act
ually to the east of Ireland? Is it not
true that many persons who live in Ire
land We're born in England? Archbishop
Whately himself who devious 10000
year ($5000O Of Irish money under pre-
tense of being archbishop of Dublin Let
us be reasonable. I put 1t to any gentle
man Of we'll regulated mind how the
Irish school book would have looked if
the sentence ran thus: East of Ireland
lies England, the country from which
our famines and ejectment acts come
the country to which our harvests and
herds go, and from which we bring our
rent receipts and archbishops!" Would
not this be directly exciting disaffection
and sedition? The affairs of
Ireland, more especially, do not admit of
being contemplated in a neutral frame
Of mind They have not only their Cath
olic side and their Protestant, but also
their Irish aspect and their British. The
British compilers (of the Irish" school
books) were not wanting to themselves
and to their country. The first edition
indeed of the Irish school books was not
perfect. Nothing is perfect, at first. 1t
is true the editors had studiously avoided
presenting in their reading lesson any
thing in the slightest degree relating to
Ireland, from the orations of Grattan and
Curran, OF from the melodies Of Moore.
But still certain selected passages had
crept in which Dr.. Whately (being an
Englishman), on more mature considera-
tion found to be dangerous In the
Fourth Book of Lessons, for example,
had appeared the Downfall Of Poland
by Campbell, which speaks of kosciusko
and national freedom in dangerously
suggestive manner. There were also
| lines by Miss Balfour To the Irish Harp
Society," There was even. in prose,
Description of the Lakes of Killarney
as If there were not English scenery
Dovedale, Richmond Hill, etc.) more
proper to celebrate and less exciting.
Now, in the second edition of the Fourth
Book, carefully re-edited by DR.. Whately,
all those passages were omitted Moth
| ing of this perilous sort escaped the
eagle-eyed archbishop, and even the pas
sionate apostrophe OF Sir Walter Scott
Breathes there the man with soul so dead
| Who never to himself hath said,
This is my own, my native land? ETC.,
| which had somehow crept into the first
| edition, through inadvertence, was duly
eliminated from the second. The arch
bishop knew that British policy required
Irish children to grow up with souls just
SO dead. And he did his duty. like Il
Briton. An English government will
| not. and dares not, teach Irish children
Irish thoughts, Irish ways or Irish his
! tory, but must use all it's efforts to cxtir-
pate all that"
Exactly And in America, also, the
British agents are pursuing the same
policy, as far as they dare. Is not the
proposition seriously made to expunge
from our school books all reference to
the Revolutionary and 1912 wars with
| Great Britain? And are we not told by
learned orators, learned" preachers,
learned editors and subsidized knaves
of various callngs, every day that Amer
lean law, American constitution and even
American libertyC) are founded on Eng.
lish law, English constitution and liber-
| ty. And these assertions every man who
knows anything at all of law, constitu-
| tion and liberty, knows to be vicious ex-
aggerations or bare-faced lies! The
| English serpent is slavering for the lib
erty of America, and Anglo Yankee trait
! ors are cheering him ON to the climax of
| swallowing it. Watch out for the var
| mint and crush him with your heel.