POL1TJCAL AND SOCIAL. 



'425 



the introduction of the Irish National School System. On the receipt of tin- official 

 reply to this report, and its suggestions from Lord Glenelg, who had in the meantime 

 replaced Lord Stanley, it was found that, although expressing a preference for a 

 system which allowed of the reading of the authorized Scriptures in the schools, that 

 official gave his consent to the introduction of the National System where practicable. 

 When Bourke made the contents of this Home despatch known, it was vehemently 

 opposed on the ground that the system proposed was infidel and un-Christian, and in 

 order to pacify the opposition, and reduce 

 the proposal to a practical shape, the 

 system of Denominational Education was 

 introduced. By this system the recog- 

 nized religious denominations in the col- 

 ony were aided from the Public Funds. 

 Each body had its own schools, in which 

 the work of religious education went for- 

 ward side by side with that of secular 

 instruction. In 1844, a Select Committee 

 appointed by the Legislative Council 

 reported in favour of the National Sys- 

 tem, and against De- 

 nominationalism. On 

 the question being sub- 

 mitted to the House, it 

 was carried in favour 

 of the former ; but the 

 proceedings were ve- 

 toed by the Governor, 

 Sir George Gipps, who 

 directed that the De- 

 nominational System 

 should be continued, 

 and this was accord- 

 ingly done. The advo- 

 cates of the National 

 System succeeded, 

 however, in having a 

 sum of ,2,000 appro- 

 priated for the pur- 

 pose of experiment. 

 The two systems con- 

 tinued to work in competition with each other for nearly twenty years, or ten years after 

 the granting of Responsible Government, when the Public Schools Act was passed in 1866. 

 This Measure acknowledged the existence of two classes of schools one purely secular, and 

 the other denominational, both supported by the State and controlled by the Council of 



A HALF-TIME SCIK KIl.-TEACIIEK, AND A STATE SCHOOL IX THE liUMI. 



