the session, but Denny refused the offer. On May 4, the Earl of Surrey, eldest son of the Duke of Norfolk, took the oath and his seat for the borough of Horsham, which belonged to his father, and was thus the first Catholic member under the Act. O'Connell presented himself in the House on May 15, and declared himself willing to take the oath set forth in the Relief Act which had just been passed, but not the old oath of supremacy. As, however, he had been elected before the passing of the Relief Act into law, the Commons, influenced by Peel, rejected his claim by 190 to 116, and decided that he must take the former oath, there being a clause in the Emancipation Act to the effect that the new oath was to be taken by Catholic members "hereafter to be elected," and as he declined to do so they ordered on May 21 that a new writ should be made out for Clare, and preparations commenced for a fresh election. Fitzgerald declined to stand again, so O'Connell was again proposed as candidate on July 30, 1829, by the O'Gorman Mahon and Tom Steele, and was returned without opposition. The Government and their supporters were angry with the great Irish agitator. After fighting him tooth and nail for many years, they had at length been driven into a corner with their tail between their legs; and, forced to drop the old bone of contention, could only impotently snarl at the man who had given them such a beating. The price the Government was doomed to pay for this fit of temper and O'Connell's temporary exclusion was a dear one. Fresh disturbances occurred in Ireland; an Orange procession in Armagh was attacked by Roman Catholics, and ten men were killed; whilst a pitched battle, in which one Protestant was killed and seven were wounded, took place in Clare. As a spur to this ill-feeling between the two creeds, Protestants who killed Roman Catholics were as a matter of course acquitted by Protestant juries, and as men's passions became inflamed by this flagrant perversion of justice every sort of lawlessness was let loose upon the country. In this spirit was the great Act carried out by the rulers of Ireland. Smarting under their ignominious defeat, their Ministers whining like whipped hounds in the corners of their offices, they had resolved at least to snap once more at their unsuspecting enemy before running away.1

One of the results of the measure of Emancipation, foreseen probably by Ministers in passing the Bill, was that the Catholics belonging to the upper classes in Ireland were more or less reconciled to the Government; whilst their anxiety to help their Catholic brethren of humbler social position was rather diminished than otherwise: The reason for this is clear. The

1 Appendix XXVIIIA, quotations from Lord Wellesley and W. E. H. Lecky.

Bill opened the doors of Parliament and municipal corporations, and as this admission only directly affected Catholics of a certain fortune and status, their own personal grievance was removed, and with it the interest they had in agitating for reform.

What scope there would be for a philosophic pen in winding up a history of Catholic Emancipation! For it is an epitome of the policy of Ireland's governors-robbery followed by cruel persecution; then a gradual growth of public opinion, strong enough to irritate, but too weak to force the hand of the Ascendency of the day. Then agitation, exasperation, outrage, promises of reform, failure to fulfil them, and crass ignorance and senseless brutality vying with one another in the government of the disordered country. Then increased agitation, crime and coercion, a greater volume of public opinion, a growth of menial fear in the rulers of Ireland, and lastly, after many years of insult and indifference, redress forced from authority, not through a consciousness of justice inexcusably delayed, but under the influence of menace, and menace alone.

CHAPTER IV

THE NATIONAL SYSTEM OF EDUCATION, 1831

"The difficulty of governing Ireland lies entirely in our own minds; it is an incapability of understanding."-JOHN STUART MILL (England and Ireland).

"Of the Irish qualities none is stronger than the craving to be understood. If the English had only known this secret we should have been the most easily governed people in the world. For it is characteristic of the conduct of our most important affairs that we care too little about the substance and too much about the shadow."-HORACE PLUNKETT, Ireland in the New Century.

THE first scheme of primary education in Ireland of which there is any record was due to the policy of Harry the Eighth.1 An Act was passed under his auspices by the Irish Parliament in 1537 for the establishment of elementary schools in different parishes, which should be genuinely English institutions, where the Irish poor would be taught the English language. It was also enacted that such persons as could speak English should be promoted in the Church, and that every ecclesiastic in authority should take an oath not only that he would preach in English and instruct all under his authority to do likewise, but that he would keep a school for the teaching of that tongue. Under this Act the so-called "parish schools" were founded; their object being to afford instruction to those who spoke or desired to learn the English language, but to none other. The Act however was soon found to be nugatory. In 1788 there were, in 29 dioceses, containing 838 benefices, 361 parish schools, at which 11,000 children were being educated; but no Parliamentary grants were made for their maintenance, and the burden of keeping them up therefore devolved, nominally at least, upon the clergy, who had not the means, even if they had had the will, to charge themselves with their support. In 1810 there were, in 736 benefices-out of a total of 1,125-549 parish schools, probably the largest number they ever attained, attended by 23,000 children, the greatest number of the schools being in the northern dioceses and the fewest in the provinces of Munster and Connaught. Their founders had originally intended them to be thrown open to all children without any distinction of creed, but in course of time, owing to causes which even then were in embryo, they became confined to the lower classes of Protestants;

1 The author is indebted to B. Barry O'Brien's comprehensive chapter on the National Education System in his interesting Fifty Years of Concessions to Ireland.

for they were under the control of the clergy of the Established Church and were therefore avoided, whenever any other source of instruction was available, by the parents of Catholic children. Another class of seminary known as the Diocesan Free Schools, in part elementary, in part of a secondary type, was founded by Elizabeth in 1570. It was enacted that free schools should be kept in every diocese in Ireland, the whole diocese paying for the cost of the school-house, which was to be built in every shire town. The school-master, who was to be an Englishman, was to be appointed by the Lord-Deputy in all dioceses, except in Armagh, Dublin, Meath, and Kildare, where the Archbishops and Bishops of these dioceses were to be responsible for the appointment. Free Schools were hereupon established in most of the dioceses of Ireland. In the reign of George I, with a view to the further efficiency of these schools, the Archbishops and Bishops were empowered to set apart an acre of ground out of every property belonging to thein for the site of a free school to be approved of by the Lord-Lieutenant; but, in spite of this, little progress was made. In 1810 the annual stipend of the master of a Diocesan Free School averaged from £25 to £40. The schools were all kept by Protestant clergymen, and Protestant children of the middle classes formed by far the greater part of the pupils. The total number of free scholars in 1810 was only 380, and the number of schools probably never amounted to more than sixteen. In 1857 there were only fourteen Diocesan Free Schools in operation, and in 1880-1 they were reported by the Endowed Schools Commissioners to be in a state of decay. In fact, they in their turn became exclusively Protestant from the same causes that influenced those of Henry VIII, and thus were shunned in like manner by the parents and children of the Roman faith.

The next educational step was taken in the reign of James I. In 1608 an order was issued from the Privy Council, applicable to the plantation counties-Armagh, Tyrone, Derry, Donegal, Fermanagh, and Cavan-to the effect that at least one free school should be appointed in every county. For this purpose 100,000 acres of the confiscated estates were set apart for "Church School and Corporation purposes," it being stipulated as regards the Corporate lands that a small portion of them should be reserved for the site of a public school. By 1621 four such schools had been established. The policy of James was continued by Charles I, and by 1632 seven Royal Schools, as they were called, had been established, six of them being grammar schools and the seventh an English school. They were nominally open to children of all religious persuasions, and Catholics, Presbyterians, and Anglicans were capable of becoming teachers. As a matter of practice, however, the headmasters belonged exclusively to the

Established Church, as in fact did the majority of the pupils. In 1633 Strafford, the "thorough" Strafford, complained to Laud that school lands were being misappropriated and the schools applied to the mere maintenance of Popish school-masters, and an Act in consequence was passed the same year by the Irish Parliament to redress the alleged evil. After the Restoration the state of all the Royal Free Schools was taken into consideration, and a measure was carried in 1662 regulating their future. management, the Lord-Lieutenant being empowered among other things to remove all schools which were inconveniently situated to places more accessible to pupils and teachers. Although these schools were a trifle more flourishing than the Parish or the Diocesan Free Schools, their progress was insignificant, as was shown by the Commissioners of 1791, who reported that the number of pupils at them in that year was 211, and that out of that number there were only 38 free pupils. In 1879 the whole number of pupils on the rolls amounted to 380, the average attendance, however, being only 361. Of the 380, 322 were members of the Disestablished Church, 21 were Catholics, and 37 were Presbyterians. Therefore the Royal Free Schools were not really "free" in any practical respect, but devoted almost wholly to Protestant Episcopalians, an anomaly which was in keeping with the other features of Irish life.

The Erasmus Smith Schools had a more important history. In 1657 Erasmus Smith,1 conscience-stricken perhaps by the irregularity of his gains, gave some land which he had acquired under the Cromwellian Settlement for the purpose of establishing and endowing a number of free grammar schools in Ireland. He expressed a wish that these schools should be Protestant in character, but he was apparently a man of broad mind, and they were first of all Nonconformist and subsequently Episcopalian. On the downfall of the Commonwealth he obtained a new Charter from Charles II, and consented that religious instruction should henceforward be given in the schools in accordance with the principles of the Established Church. According to the terms of Charles' Charter, those who desired to eventually enter Dublin University were to be prepared for that career. The number of poor scholars whom the Governors were empowered to admit was to be limited to twenty, save in the case of the tenants' children on the Erasmus Smith estate, where no limit was fixed. Provisions were further made for clothing those poor children and binding them, when fit, as apprentices to Protestant masters for the purpose of acquiring the knowledge of some craft. It was further provided that the surplus revenues of the estates

1 Erasmus Smith (1611-1691). At the Cromwellian Settlement he received 666 acres of land in County Tipperary, and subsequently enlarged his holdings, till they reached in 1684 a total of 46,449 acres in nine counties.