The result of the "new rule" adopted by the Commissioners
of National Education in Ireland, after the report of Mr. Bouverie's O'Keeffe Committee, is precisely what we said that it would be. The Commissioners met on Tuesday, when Lord Monck pro- posed a motion that on Mr. O'Keeffe's satisfying the Commis- sioners that he is a fit person to exercise the trust, they will recognise him as manager of the -Callan schools To this an amendment was proposed by the Ref/. C.1fforell that Mr. O'Keeffe ought to be replaced at -once in the managership, which was lost Iby '7 to 4. An- inquiry was then :ordered into the state of the schools and the dispositions of the parents towards Mr_ O'leeffe as manager, and on the result of that inquiry, which will show; probably, that a great part of the people of Callan do not. -chOose to put their children under the care of a suspended priest;. theCommisSioners Will'act. The Times is very-angry that Mr. O'Keeffe has not been reinstated first, and 'the 'pidicy of keeping- him then inquired into,—a cruel and most unfair suggestion, if the inquiry 'be likely to result; as in all probability, we Suppose; it will result, in showing that a '14sii'pdtitIU' appointment cetil&
hs.rdlY be made. What the House of Commons and-the Committeeof Inquiry decided was, that a trust of this kind ought not to de-
pend on the Official' position of priest, but might to depend On those relations of mutual confidence betiveen the'candidate and the local population whiSh cannot in practise be separated frOni ecclesiastical position. And this is precisely the spirit in which. the Commissioners are acting. Amore monstrous proposal than this,—that a very unfit man for the pod ought to receive it in order to soothe Protestant opinion, or than this,—that a man believed to. be thus unfit should be appointed only in order to be immediately removed, if adequate evidence of unfitness be obtained, cam hardly be conceived by a sane mind. But on Catholic questions. Protestant opinion is apt not to be sane.
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