\ 



( cli ) 



land, not issued through the Science and Art Department, but that 

 the sums allocated by your Honourable House in support of the na- 

 tional Collections of Antiquities in England and Scotland are ac- 

 counted for by the Trustees of the British Museum and the Scottish 

 Board of Trustees, respectively, without any control or interference 

 from the said Department ; considering, also, that they cannot 

 accept such change of the medium through which they should 

 transmit their estimates and receive their issues, without placing 

 in the hands of said Department a control over their action in 

 the higher pursuits of learning, altogether out of the sphere of said 

 Department, fatal to their independence, and detrimental to their 

 usefulness, have declined, and must continue to decline, to apply for 

 any issue of said Grant through said Department, whereby said Grant 

 will remain unused, and the intention of your Honourable House 

 in voting same be further disappointed. 



14. Issues of said Grant are urgently required for the necessary 

 purposes of the Eoyal Irish Academy, which, if long deprived of 

 same, must greatly reduce its establishment, and contract its means 

 of promoting the objects of its Charter. 



May it therefore please your Honourable House to take 

 such measures, as to your wisdom and justice shall seem 

 meet, to cause the charge of accountability for said vote, for 

 1876-7, which, for the reasons aforesaid, has been rendered 

 practically unavailable for the object intended by your 

 Honourable House, to be re-transferred to the Chief Secretary 

 for Ireland, 



And your Petitioners, in duty bound, will ever pray. 



[seal.] 

 \^The Schedule above referred to.'] 



" Science aivd Aet Depaetment, 



" South Kensington, (S. "VV.) 



''2nd May, 1876. 

 "Sib, 



" "With reference to the arrangements which the Yice- 



President of the Committee of Council on Education has made with 

 the Chief Secretary of Ireland and Mr. W. H. Smith, I am directed 

 by the Lords of the Committee of Council on Education to request 

 that you will move the Lords Commissioners of Her Majesty's Treasury 



