

1827.] Irish Polemics. 243 



tho many absurdities which will deliver modern statesmen to the cQntempt 

 of posterity. This physical amendment they either cannot or will not 

 produce ; while the rising spirit of the times will not allow them to remain 

 idle. To suffer acknowledged evil to prevail unchecked, belongs neither 

 to the philosophy nor to the Christianity of the age: so to work they have 

 gone, to educate the wild Irish, cramming them with science when they 

 want food, and giving them instruction when they want lahour. To kill 

 two birds with one stone, and to engraft proselytism upon gratuitous edu- 

 'cation was deemed a deep stroke of policy ; but this concealed intention 

 is not better fulfilled than that which is put forward to meet the public 

 eye. To effect this purpose, the polemic turn of mind of the English was 

 again made subservient to party politics ; and there was little difficulty in 

 persuading Parliament to make the reading of the Scriptures in schools a 

 condition of their grant. Thus a new battery was opened against the Ca- 

 tholic church, of slates and pencils ; and tradition and infallibility were, 

 in imagination, destined to fall before a well-directed fire of " Dilworths/' 

 and " Reading-made-Easyes." It so happens, however, that the Popish 

 clergy not a whit behind-hand with their Protestant rivals in the desire 

 of ruling education, and of giving to that flexible twig, the human mind, 

 the precise bend which their interest requires it should maintain through 

 life have, right or wrong, a deep and rooted objection to the perusal of 

 the Scriptures by the laity, except under certain conditions ; and, indeed, 

 s are strongly averse from making the holy volume a class-book, upon any 

 terms. To enforce Bible-reading in schools is, therefore, in itself an act 

 of proselytism, which renders all denial of the principle nugatory. Both 

 the jealousy and the orthodoxy of the priests took the alarm. A warm and 

 acrimonious dispute arose, which terminated in a positive determination 

 on their part to use their influence in preventing the children of their flock 

 from attending these schools, kept, in by far the majority of instances, by 

 Protestant masters, and in which the perusal of Scripture extracts violated 

 the discipline of their church, while it opened a wide and inevitable door 

 to insidious and under-hand proselytism. With great justice they protested 

 against the administration of a national grant being entrusted to the manage- 

 ment of a party, and that party of a religious persuasion hostile to the creed 

 of the subjects upon whom they were to operate. To do the Protestants 

 justice, the Kildare Society sported \isfrenum in cornu with a most osten- 

 tatious openness. No attempts were made to erect Catholic schools upon 

 Catholic principles ; nor were Catholic masters admitted to teach the ABC 

 under the inspection of Protestant superintendents, in numbers at all pro- 

 portionate to the respective population. If, after that, the Catholic bishops 

 chose to trust the education of their flocks to such hands, it at least could not 

 be said that they were otherwise than purchasers, with notice. The result 

 was, as might be expected, that they did not so trust their children ; and, 

 if report lie not, the muster-roll of Falstaff 's ragged regiment is a poor and 

 cold type of the enumerations which have been gotten up, of schools that 

 never were in operation, and of scholars that never attended. Amidst all 

 their poverty, privation^ and depression, the Catholics have made immense 

 efforts to educate their own children ; and the Kildare-street Association, 

 with its parliamentary grant, and all its other " means and appliances to 

 boot," has utterly failed as an instrument of national instruction. One 

 fatal consequence to the tranquillity of Ireland has arisen out of this un 

 handsome juggle ; a little war has been created by it in almost every 

 parish where there is a resident Protestant parson. An army of observa- 



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