The Press. — 1858-09-18 (London, England)

THE PRESS, SEPTEMBER 18, 1858.  are under inspection, and it is pretended that there is complete impartiality between the two religions. Englishmen may, however, rest assured that this is all pretence. They are hotbeds of Popery ; and, moreover, they have been set up as rivals to Protestant schools, the Board doing all in its power to oppose and destroy the Bible schools of the Established Church. But although this is the real truth about the National system in Ireland, we are constrained to confess that we see at present no hope of its amendment. What, therefore, we ask for, and what we rejoice to think the most influential members of the present Government are pledged to, is this—to withdraw the ban from the Bible schools, and not to refuse to those schools a share of the public grant for no other earthly reason than because the Bible is read to all the scholars who frequent them. If the Protestants of England really understood this question—if they knew that really 200,0001. a year of the public money is spent in educating Irish youth in Popery the most unmitigated, and that not one single farthing of that large sum is devoted to aid a Bible school—we feel well assured that years ago this folly and injustice would have been rectified. But the present system has been bolstered up by the grossest misrepresentations, and by an artful appeal to rules which " kept the word of promise "to the ear and broke it to the hope." We ourselves well remember, in one of the debates in the House of Commons, a member (who was then a Cabinet Minister) getting up and making a series of assertions utterly false, and which it was a disgrace to him that he did not know them to be false. We trust, however, we are now on the eve of better days. We want to see Ireland continue happy and contented ; and we are quite sure that in a country with a Protestant sovereign, in which a Popish priesthood is treated by its rulers as a power to be feared, and, therefore, to be unduly conciliated and allowed to defy the laws, happiness and contentment will not and cannot be of any permanent duration.  that doubtless it would be treated with open ridicule by those who in their hearts would feel most strongly its significancy. It is this. Let all letters addressed to the Romanist prelates, giving to them their illegal territorial titles, be sent either to the dead letter-office or the Protestant prelate of the see, whose legal title is usurped. This step, we know, would be represented as miserable and contemptible petty spite. It would be nothing of the kind : it would simply have the effect of letting the people of Ireland know that the constituted authorities would no longer be parties to a breach of the law. It seems a very small matter, but it is a very large one ; for it would have a powerful effect in counteracting the mischievous notion that ecclesiastical is superior to the civil power. It would be felt through the length and breadth of the land ; and if the mind of the poor Papist be capable of being influenced by the display of a cardinal's pomp, it is not incapable of being influenced by the priest's suggestion that the Government dare not refuse to acknowledge the illegal titles. "Try," says the priest, "if there be not such a person as the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Dublin. Direct a letter to him, and see if it does not reach him." The experiment is accordingly tried, and, of course, being successful, it is accepted as a proof that the prelate is stronger than the law. There is another matter in the government of Ireland which we trust will occupy the serious attention of the Lord Lieutenant and his advisers. We want to see the dissolution of the Orange societies ; but still more we want to see the Government in a position to ask them to dissolve. But the Government can only place itself in that position by being able to say to the Orangemen—" We have effectually suppressed Ribbonism. The inadequate protection afforded you by the Government against those murderers and disloyal conspirators called you into existence. They exist no longer. We ask you to disband." Whenever the Irish Government can address  this language to the Orangemen, their request, we are sure, will be complied with. Until they ran, they have no right to make it; for, be it ever remembered, the Orange Society is a legal corn- CONSERVATISM, AND THOSE WHO binatiou against the most violent outrages of