the occupier of the soil. Then this proprietary right in Ireland has its origin mainly in confiscation, and has been created and was only to be justified by conquest. And in addition to the original evil, the proprietors had not sense enough to see that the evil was sufficient for them, but they added to it 100 years of the most odious cruelty and persecution during the existence of the penal laws. Therefore the original grievance was made ten times more bitter than it would otherwise have been by the persistent folly of the proprietary class, working as they did through a corrupt Parliament in Ireland, and also through the governing power in Great Britain."

Bright's tangible legacy to his fellow-countrymen is the volume of his speeches, but he has also left them a heritage which is intangible, and which now forms part of the very texture of our race; a tradition which will inspire and guide the artisan and breathe fresh life into the spirit of universal freedom, when all the vicissitudes of that statesman's history, when perhaps the very memory of his existence have been swept into oblivion. He exalted the moral vision of the working population of his country and enlarged the sweep of their aspirations-the aspirations of those men who toil and sweat, and are apt to be forgotten and even despised, but who form the backbone of the nation, and without whom the little tailor-made, chattering, apelike section of society that composes the froth and bubbles of human energy, and directs its small intelligence to devising shows, and mock-heroics, and worse things, would soon cease to exist. That noble ideal of impartial and high-souled government by the majority of the whole body of the people for the general good of the community, without distinction of class or wealth, but with every distinction of merit and high character— that majestic ideal was ennobled by Bright and enshrined in the hearts of many sufferers and toiling men yearning for better times, and left to the working millions as his legacy and their heritage, to be eventually made use of for their emancipation. They will not waste it.

CHAPTER XIV

INTERMEDIATE EDUCATION ACT OF 1878

"But not only has Ireland a just claim not to have her education determined by the Protestant feelings' of Great Britain. She has a just claim not to have it determined by other feelings, also, of our British public, which go to determine it She has a just claim, in short, to have it determined as she herself likes."MATTHEW ARNOLD (Irish Essays).

now.

THE National System of Elementary Education inaugurated by Stanley in 1831 had, as we have seen, been riddled with reproach. In 1844 the State grant which fed it had been increased and with it the discontent, and in 1850 it had been condemned without much ceremony by the Irish bishops at Thurles. Although its votaries for a long time struggled to ignore the unpalatable truth, they were at length forced to confess that it had grown out of favour and become an object of suspicion to the alert leaders of Catholic Ireland. The latter, indeed, had every cause from a religious point of view to distrust the system, as it existed in 1850, for the Catholic Commissioners on the directing Board were only two; whilst their Protestant and Presbyterian colleagues numbered no less than five, and this at a time when at least three-fourths of the children in the Primary schools belonged to the Catholic faith. Moreover the secular instruction, which had to be given without distinction to Protestants and Catholics sitting together, had assumed by degrees a sectarian taint; extracts from the Bible and certain religious works of a Protestant complexion having been gradually and insidiously admitted into the schools, which by this means underwent a subtle transformation in regard to their main principle of undenominationalism. In addition to this the Board of Directors had injudiciously acceded to the request of the Irish Presbyterians, who had objected to a day being set apart for separate religious instruction, a rule which up till then had been observed, and the Catholic bishops had consequently taken umbrage and lodged a protest against the further infringement of the original contract. Under such circumstances had the antagonism been bred, which finally culminated in the condemnation of the whole system at Thurles, and this change of opinion was strengthened by Cullen, a zealous Romanist, who succeeded Dr. Crolly in 1 Paul Cullen (1803-1878). Created a Cardinal in 1866. 2 William Crolly (1780-1849).

the see of Armagh in 1849 and became the virtual head of the Irish Catholic prelates.

Various concessions were afterwards made to Catholic susceptibilities, and the system of elementary education was led back to the form in which its founders had primarily intended it to work. The Catholic Commissioners on the Board were made equal in number to their colleagues of the other faith; secular instruction, purged of the spirit of proselytism, was rendered genuinely secular, and books tinctured with sectarianism were excluded from the schools where children of both denominations were educated together. But with all this the system failed. The Catholic and Protestant temperaments were and always had been strangely incompatible and suspicious of one another. The two religions preached diametrically opposed doctrines of moral duty, of honourable conduct, and of personal responsibility; and like oil and water, they might be enclosed in the same vessel, but could never be made to mix. So was it with the vessel of the Irish elementary schools. Separate religious instruction did not flourish in them, and they not only failed to reconcile in any discernible degree the young of the divided faiths of Ireland, but the insidious element of disruption served rather to drive them asunder. The system, it is true, although disliked, was accepted, as a farthing rushlight is better than no light at all; but its growth was exotic, not indigenous to the Irish soil, and had it not been for the subventions of the State, its breath would have become exhausted in the body, and the blood ceased to flow in its veins. The chief proof of this was that the sectarian schools, in which religion formed a large part of the educational course, were, although supported by voluntary funds, everywhere to be met with in Ireland, whilst an education rate in support of the unsectarian National Schools would without any doubt, if collected at all, have been fiercely and perseveringly resisted.

This was the condition of State-fed Elementary Education, but intermediate education for Catholics had not the support of State subsidies at all. It had experienced the lot of other Irish institutions which Dublin Castle had lacked the patience to investigate, the knowledge to judge, and the healthy inclination to ameliorate, and had consequently been greatly neglected. The Diocesan Schools of Elizabeth were nearly all of the secondary type, but they were always few in number and at this time rapidly disappearing. A laudable attempt was next made by the two first Stuarts to establish secondary education in Ireland on a larger scale, and they had founded the " Free Royal Schools" at Armagh, Cavan, Dungannon, Portora, and Raphoe, endowing them with lands equivalent to about £6,000 a year. Then came Erasmus Smith, who established three grammar schools, and granted valuable estates for their support. A considerable

number of secondary schools were also founded, from time to time, by charitable Protestants, and of these Kilkenny College was the most conspicuous; but these seminaries, although nominally open to members of different creeds, became during the Catholic tribulation of the eighteenth century restricted to the dominant sect. After the relaxation of the penal code the Irish Catholics began themselves to establish secondary schools, and although they received no support or encouragement whatever from the State, some of them flourished and did excellent work. A number, too, of secondary schools, the majority of which were for Presbyterians, were established in Ulster; some of these became strictly sectarian, others remained open to all faiths, whilst some received, and others not, pecuniary assistance from the State.

There was no Catholic University to support such a system, and without that support it could not properly exist. The Ascendency, on the other hand, possessed their intermediate schools, which were not only plentifully endowed by the State, but backed by Trinity College, Dublin, the only university which existed previous to 1850, the aspirations of the Catholics in respect to University Education remaining wholly unsatisfied between 1850 and 1879. But in spite of the encouragement they received from the State, the Episcopalian intermediate schools had declined for the ten or fifteen years prior to 1878, whilst the Voluntary Catholic intermediate schools had increased. According to the report of the Irish Census Commissioners of 1871

"The Roman Catholics, wholly dependent upon voluntary effort, and, at the same time, the least wealthy of the population, have increased the number of pupils receiving intermediate instruction (between 1861 and 1871) in the ratio of 2.5 per cent. The non-Episcopalian Protestants, almost equally unendowed, but better circumstanced pecuniarily, show the signal increase of 11'9 per cent. ; while the Episcopalian Protestants, whose private means are immeasurably largest, and who have the practical monopoly of State endowment, disclose the wonderful decline of 145 per cent. Their endowments, therefore, absolutely barren for the rest of the population, are ceasing to fructify for the Protestant Episcopalians themselves."

It was therefore patent that the State-endowed intermediate instruction in Ireland was in process of decay, and that the whole system, as Lord Cairns said, was "bad in quality and deficient in quantity." Thus out of a total population of five and a half millions, in 1871, only 10,814 boys were learning Latin, Greek, or modern languages. That is to say, while in England ten or fifteen in every 1,000 were instructed in these languages, only two in every 1,000 were instructed in them in Ireland, and the system that had for some time worn an aspect of ill-health, was gradually becoming worse. Thus, while the total number of secondary schools in Ireland in 1861 had

amounted to 729, ten years later it had fallen to 574. A Commission had been appointed in 1854 for the purpose of examining into and reporting upon the system, as it existed at that period, and its report had laid bare in all their nakedness its deficiencies and errors. But nothing had been done. At length a second Commission reported still more unfavourably in 1878, and the doctors having been pushed unwillingly into the sick room, a medicine had to be prescribed and a diet suggested. The Act, which passed that year under Disraeli's Government, and which established the system of non-sectarian intermediate education, was due to the inspiration of Lord Cairns, a man of powerful brain and philosophical breadth of view. It breathed life into the torpid body that had hung upon the Exchequer with a dead weight of inutility, and gave an impulse to secondary schools by introducing a system of competition between them.1

The main provisions of the Bill were as follow. A sum of a million sterling was to be abstracted from the Disestablished Church Fund and devoted to the purposes of the new system. A Board was to be formed, called "The Intermediate Education Board of Ireland," seven members of which were to be appointed by the Lord-Lieutenant. A system of exhibitions and prizes for students, and the payment of result-fees to their teachers, was to be established, and examinations were to be held by examiners appointed by the Board in June and July each year at convenient centres throughout the country. The Board was not to assume any responsibility in regard to the management of any of the schools, but the three following rules were in all cases to be observed (1) Students were obliged to have belonged to some intermediate school from the 15th of October of the year prior to the examination, and to have attended at least 100 times; (2) Students prepared exclusively by private tutors were not to be eligible; and (3) no result-fees were to be paid to the managers of schools, where religious instruction was imposed contrary to the sanction of parents, or where the hours for such instruction were so arranged as to trench upon the time allotted to secular study.

Lord Cairns' scheme undoubtedly gave, as he had intended, an impulse to secondary education by the introduction of competition between the schools, and denominations of every shade. made use of its provisions; but the attendance of pupils experienced a material decline after 1881 on account of the diminution in the number of prizes and the amount of result-fees. In 1885 the system was revised with a view to rendering the machinery easier to work, but little advantage was derived from

1 In introducing his measure Lord Cairns said-

"This Bill is the necessary preliminary to a great measure dealing with higher education, the need for which is acknowledged in all political parties. This important Bill is the building of the walls of which a University Bill will be the roof,"