6 JUNE 1874, Page 6

THE LAST OF THE O'KEEFFE CASE.

IF the change of Government has done no other good, it has saved the system of National Education in Ireland from rash and violent encroachment. Had Mr. Gladstone remained in power, it was obvious that the Conservatives were prepared to endanger that national system in relation to the O'Keeffe Case, for the sake of availing themselves of the Orange or Bismarckian sympathies of a knot of Liberals who would have combined with them to overthrow the Government. But once installed in office, they are much too wise to promote the cause of denominational and voluntary education in Ireland by suddenly giving the coup de grtice to the moderate and bene- ficent system of the National Education Board. Consequently when Mr. Cartwright moved on Tuesday his vote of cen- sure on that Board, Mr. Disraeli and his friends deviated in a remarkable manner from their policy during the last two Sessions, and fell back for support on the front Bench of Opposition. They declined to exonerate the Commissioners from blame, but they declined to blame them. They would not say, as a Government, that it would have been right to refuse to reinstate Mr. O'Keeffe,—though the Irish Secretary indicated pretty clearly that that was his own opinion, —but they declined to say that it was wrong. They saw no reason for interfering with the action of the Commissioners, and so the action of the Commissioners is virtually sustained. And thus the Government which came in as a Protestant Con- servative Government on the cry of breaking with Rome, and especially with Cardinal Cullen, has calmly accepted the logic of Irish fact, and allowed itself to administer Catholic Ireland on common-sense rules, without deeming it a matter of principle to bring a hornet's nest about its ears only by way of abstract protest against the existence of hornets.

The O'Keeffe Case has gone through a good many minute phases, and errors have been made on both sides in the course of the discussion. The friends of the Board made a blunder, into which we, amongst others, fell, in supposing that the Presbyterian ministers or Catholic priests of parishes were ever, by any rule of the Board, made ex officio managers of the parochial schools. On the other hand, it is per- fectly clear that, as a plan of general administration, it has been the policy, and the very wise policy, of the National Board to appoint to the management of parochial schools the functionary most likely to command the confidence of the whole parish ; and of course, this functionary in Catholic parishes has usually been the Catholic priest, and in Protestant parishes either the clergyman of the Episcopal Church or the minister of the Presbyterian congregation. This choice has been dictated by obvious prudence. If you want your schools well attended, you must have a manager in whom the parents have confidence. In the case of a school in which there is religious teaching, the recognised religious teacher of the parents whose children attend the school, is the person most likely to com- mand that confidence. Then, again, if there be a breach between this teacher and his ecclesiastical authorities, as there was once in the case of a Presbyterian minister, a Dr. Wilson, and as there has been several times in the case of Catholic priests, it will generally happen that there will be a great division of popular opinion as to the merits of the quarrel. Some of the people will take the side of the ecclesiastical authorities, and some the side of the inculpated minister or priest ; there will be hot disputes, and if the functionary about whom the battle rages be retained as official manager of the schools, a great many of the parents will withdraw their children, as a mode of expressing their loss of confidence in him. Under such circumstances, the Commissioners of National Education would, of course, do very ill to retain such a man as their manager ; whether he be in the right or in the wrong in his battle, is not the question for them ; the question for them is, how far he fulfils the condition of commanding the confidence of the parents in general; and though he be even " on the side of the angels," and fails to command their confidence, he will be a very bad manager of a parochial school. Take the case in dispute. Let us suppose that Father O'Keeffe was most un- justly and illegally suspended by his Bishop. Yet none the less, as Sir Michael Beach showed, "125 children, represent- ing forty-seven families, had been withdrawn from Mr. O'Keeffe and sent to other schools since his suspension ; and a considerable number of families, approximately one-half of the total number, refrained from sending their children to any of the rival schools,"—for fear, we suppose, of being thought to take a side in the quarrel. Again, the Town Commissioners and all the trustees of the male and female schools for the

people had protested against his appointment." If, there- fore,. the Commissioners, when they gave Mr. O'Keeffe the benefit of the new rule that the displeasure of an eccle- siastical authority should be no reason in itself for dis- missing a manager, and that they should take into account "the educational interests of the district " in considering their course, had restored Mr. O'Keeffe, they certainly would have given him the benefit, not of the rule, but of the infraction of the rule. The " educational interests of the district " clearly required them not to reinstate Mr. O'Keeffe, and they would have been as disloyal to the new rule as to the old precedents, if they had done so. Had it happened, as in very rare cases it might happen, that the manager had carried his whole parish with him in his quarrel with the ecclesiastical authori- ties, without laying himself fairly open to any charge of unscrupulousness, then no doubt the new rule, and the true motive, if not the apparent significance of the old precedents, would have alike pointed to the reinstate- ment of such a manager, his bishop notwithstanding. But clearly this is unlikely to happen very often, while a parish minister or parish priest really represents an ecclesiastical body to which the people are attached. And whenever it does not happen, then the new rule will make no sort of change in the policy, though it will in the form given to that policy, and the ostensible reason advanced for putting it in execution. All the talk about subserviency to Rome and so forth is pure moonshine. The object is to get a manager whom the people will trust. If the people are Romanists, it is childish to stand by a manager whom the people have ceased to trust, solely because he is taking a Protestant stand against the authorities of his Church ; just as, if the people are Presbyterians, it is equally absurd to stand by a manager whom the people have ceased to trust, solely because he is taking up an Anglican position in favour of Episcopal rites.

It is the great disadvantage of our Parliamentary Govern- ment of Ireland that the English are so excited by the mere gleam of the red stocking of a Cardinal, that they lose their heads, and begin immediately to talk a political jargon which may be called incipient Bismarckism,—a jargon which would result, if our administrative Governments did not keep their heads cool, in measures infinitely more fatal to our Government of Ireland than the Falck laws can ever be in Prussia. For in Prussia, the Catholics are in a great minority, and even among the Catholics there appears to be—at least, in Silesia— an indifferent and disaffected element by no means ill-disposed to State interference. But if, in deference to the heady notions of screaming Protestants, like Sir T. Chambers for example, we ever attempt to govern Ireland on Bismarckian principles, we shall certainly succeed in making every Irish Catholic twice as Romanising as he was before, and Ireland itself twice as difficult to govern ; but we shall not succeed in eradicating one single false ecclesiastical notion from the Irish mind. Ireland might be governed in either of two ways. It might be governed, if the opposite mode of governing it had not been long conceded, by a strong bureaucratic administration which did justice everywhere,—justice short and sharp, —which studied the wants of Ireland, protected social and intellectual freedom, developed material prosperity, and yet conceded nothing to the demand for popular institutions. Ireland would not, we suspect, greatly dislike that kind of government, if really wise and strong of its kind, and might flourish greatly under it. On the other hand, Ireland may be governed on the popular principle, by really consulting the wishes of the people on all local matters, and yielding the imperial consent and support for the system adopted. But on any system betwixt and between, Ireland cannot be governed. To give her popular institutions, to admit fully popular rights, bat whenever this popular method leads to results distasteful to a Protestant people liable to deadly attacks of moral nausea on the mere mention of Papal Bulls and Cardinals, to veer round and capriciously insist on being guided by Protestant sympathies,—that is not possible, but is the mere insanity of insular British prejudice. Yet this is in effect what all this absurd fuss as to the action of the National Commissioners in the O'Keeffe Case really means. These Commissioners have not been predominantly Catholic. Still less has the majority been so. The divisions have generally shown a majority of Protestants alone, for the course taken by the Commissioners. Some of the strongest apologists of that course have been Protestants, though statesmen rather than Pro- testants. They have seen that it is of no use to hover between two opinions. If the system of National Education is to con- tinue, it must be by keeping to a policy which satisfies the

parents of the children to be taught. If it is to be thrown over, it cannot be thrown over more completely than by giving the people notice that managers whom they distrust will be favoured on account of that distrust, and that managers whom they desire will remain unrecognised in consequence of that desire. Yet that is the short and the long of the policy at which the chief assailants of the National Board of Education have really aimed. They are so eager to show Rome where her power is to stop, that they are quite indifferent to the prospects of popular education in Ireland. They are so determined to say to the Church, Here shall thy proud waves be stayed,' that they take no thought at all whether the order of arrest takes most effect on Romanist priests, or on the secular intelligence of the certifi- cated schoolmaster and schoolmistress. It seems a simple thing to make up your mind that you cannot, on popular principles, govern a nation of Catholics without breaking your- self of the taste for making from time to time spasmodic and capricious protests against the drift of their sympathies. But the British Member of Parliament has hardly yet reached that rather elementary stage in the political primer. At least, when- ever affairs on the Continent excite him, he swings back with a sudden rebound to his old state of mind. His moral nature bristles once more in the old way ; his reason is on furlough ; and the result is that we have O'Keeffe grievances dragging their slow length along. Fortunately our administrative Govern- ments are apt to be cool and sane, even when they come in with bouncing Protestant war-cries and notes of defiance to Cardinal Cullen. But it would be well for all parties if we could but learn a little wisdom, and without paying any respect to ecclesiastical decrees as such, confess at once that what we must pay respect to, in governing a Catholic people on popular principles, is the effect on the mind of the people which those ecclesiastical decrees, however unworthy of respect in them- selves, have produced.