19 MARCH 1881, Page 3

At the annual dinner of the Benevolent Society of St.

Patrick, on St. Patrick's Day, Mr. Forster expressed his confidence in the prospects of Ireland, and attributed a good -deal of her present difficulties to those jealousies between Catholics and Protestants which had retarded so materially the progress of Irish education. He did not think the average education of the Irish was np to the standard even of England, and it was certainly far below that of Germany. If thereliad been no jealousies between the diffisrent religions, the Irish would have had good education, without even the necessity for compulsion that we had in England, because( their own eager- ness for education was much greater. He prophesied that when they had to celebrate the centenary of the Society—and Thursday was its ninety-eighth anniversary festival,—they would be feeling much more hope about Ireland than they could at present. We -quite trust it may be so, but even if it is, we shall owe it more to the changes in the Laud-laws, than to the progress of educa- tion. Education in its rudimentary stages is hardly a sedative to such a character as the Irish,—is indeed a stimulus rather, which leads it to more facile and more dangerous effervescence.