The Irish Intermediate Education Bill was read a second time
in the House of Lords without a division yesterday week, nor does the Committee on the Bill appear to have been in any degree less prompt in its deliberations. But outside the House an ominous kind of growl has been heard, on the score that in one way or another a great many of the fees paid on results under the proposed measure will go into Irish Roman Catholic pockets. All we can say, in criticising this vulgar and bigoted jealousy of Irish Roman Catholic prospects, is that we trust it will be so, for if it is, it will be because Irish Roman Catholic schools show themselves to be efficient places of secular education. But at present the chance seems to be that the Protestant schools will have a considerable start in the race, and that, at first at all events, they will earn much more than their numerical proportion of the results-fees. Lord Emly remarked yesterday week, in his weighty and cordial speech thanking the Government for the Bill, that when recently at Limerick an advertisement was inserted in the papers for an efficient and educated master, among twenty applicants, the three candidates best fitted for the post were all Protestants, and this though Catholic Bishops were on the committee of selection. The truth is that as the Protestants have hitherto had the lion's share of the middle-class educational revenues of Ireland there will, at first, be far more Protestant masters than Catholic masters able to earn these capitation grants by their teaching. If the Catholics should soon obtain their fair numerical proportion of these capitation grants for good teaching, it will be by a disproportionate amount of effort.
