THE IRISH EDUCATION BILL.
[To THE EDITOR OF TES " SPECTATOR-1
SIR,—Can nothing be done to strengthen the hands of Mr. Forster and Mr. Leatham, and to support their statesman- like and truly liberal utterances last night on this great question ? What is coming to English Liberals ? Is it to be a settled thing in England that "Liberal princi- ples mean equal justice to everything and everybody, but Catholics and the Catholic religion ?" That is the more Christian form of the new intolerance ! Cannot those who have given way to it see that the step is a short one, and a logical one, to the non-Christian form of the same amiable and enlightened creed?—" Liberal principles mean toleration of everything and everybody, but Christians and the Christian re- ligion ?" That is the form of it which threatens to spread upon the Continent, but which is only slightly perceptible in Eng- land, where it is content to work with the lever of Protestant fanaticism, for the present.
But I cannot argue the question now. I do hope you will stand firm, Sir, though you will be nearly alone in the Press, in the attempt to convince our "No Popery !" poli- ticians that the question is simply whether our Irish fellow- subjects shall have an educated or an uneducated clergy, and a University in which to educate them. It will be Parliament's fault, if the education given is not real and thorough. So it will, if any unfair competition with the Queen's University is permitted. These are details for discussion.
Is it possible that an act of national justice can be refused, out of alarm at the phrase "concurrent endowment," when the whole system of elementary education in England is full of the thing ? Shall men who care more for principles than words be scared, because the imaginary vice of "religious en- dowment in disguise" is seen in it, though it needs Noncon- formist spectacles to detect what is wholly invisible to the naked eye of unprejudiced political vision ?
The Government, if it makes a serious attempt to solve the difficulty, will need the support of every dispassionate man. I looked in yesterday at the " Church Defence" meeting, in time to hear an excellent Tory M.P. try to terrify the Bishops and Clergy with the awful consequences of Disestablishment, as seen "in a Bill now before Parliament," by which the Roman Catholics were "claiming the lion's share of the spoil !" I fled from Scylla, and fell into Charybdis. Taking refuge, as I hoped, in the peaceful atmosphere of the Jerusalem Chamber, where the Tyndale Memorial meeting was going on, I came in for the passionate peroration of a fervid Protestant, who saw a manifestation of the power of the " priest-party " in this same dreadful "Bill now before Parliament,"—which, by some odd process of reasoning, he connected with the "parallel attempt" (as he called it) in the French Legislature ! When such cowardice and confusion are in the air, surely those who really
mean what they say when they profess belief in equal rights of' conscience, and in the value of education for promoting both religious and political light and freedom, should speak out firmly and together.—I am, Sir, &c., St. Saviour's, Hoalon, June 26th. JOHN OLKLEY.
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