On Thursday night the debate on the Irish Education resolu-
tions was resumed in the House of Commons, and Sir Robert Peel got a very amusing intellectual dressing at the hands of Sir Hugh
• Cairns, who was fortunate in having one weak opponent as well as a weak case. The Attorney-General for Ireland had defended the grant to the convent schools for the training of monitors on principles which certainly did not seem identical with those of the Irish Secretary, who had rushed into the subject with his usual rashness before he understood it. The Right Hon. Baronet, however, in defending himself and Mr. O'Hagan at the same time was unlucky enough to say,—so at least says Sir H. Cairns,—that the Attorney-General for Ireland and himself " were quite synony- mous." Sir H. Cairns chaffed him in every possible form for this blunder in both sense and grammar, and at last irritated him into repeating in a stronger form the very opinion against the convent schools which he had endeavoured to retract. It was a personal victory but an intellectual defeat. The House saw no reason to object to a special grant for monitors in the convent and monastic schools so long as these were well carried on, and Sir H. Cairns re- solution was rejected by a majority of 32 (91-59). Mr. O'Hagan would have reason to lament being in any sense, moral or human, " synonymous" as a fact of the universe with the Secretary for Ireland. Fortunately for him that was one of Sir R. Peel's fre- quent and portentous blunders.
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