THE EDUCATION QUESTION IN IRELAND. T HAT it will be necessary
for the Unionist Government to come to close quarters with the Irish Education question, if not in the next Session, at least in the earlier part of the new Parliament's life, is a fact which will be admitted on all hands. But dealing with the question of Irish education—elementary, intermediate, and academic —means dealing with the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland, that is, with the Irish hierarchy. It is no sort of good to reconstitute or rehandle Irish educational problems on abstract grounds, or for politicians and officials, sitting at their desks, to say such and such a system is the best fitted for a country divided, like Ireland, between conflicting sects, or to insist, because a suggested scheme is in the abstract fair and reasonable, that there- fore the Irish Catholic Church ought to be able to accept it, —must indeed ultimately accept it with gratitude because it is so obviously fair and reasonable. That was the old method of treating the matter, and an utter failure it proved. Fortunately, however, the lesson of that failure has not been thrown away, and we now realise clearly that if the Education question is to be settled, it can only be settled by first coming to terms with the Irish Bishops and by giving them, not what we think they ought to want if they are reasonable and intelligent people, but what, in fact, they do want,—provided, of course, that doing this does not involve an actual injustice to some third set of persons. For minute theoretical injustices or apparent partialities we care nothing. As long as the State can and does prevent individual and practical unfairness, it must not worry about what is, after all, only political symmetry. The great object is to find out exactly what the Irish Bishops and priests want, and what they regard as the scheme that will satisfy them and give them not their abstract rights perhaps, or what an impartial third person would call their rights, but what they themselves consider to be their rights. This having been discovered, it should be the duty of the Govern- ment to try to meet the views of the Catholic Church as liberally and as completely as they can, without however doing anything to infringe the true principles of religious liberty.
Under these circumstances, it is most fortunate that the Irish Bishops should have just now formulated their views in regard to the various branches of the Irish Education question, and most important that all who are interested in the Irish question as a whole should study these views in detail. This being so, we shall make no apology for quoting at length the essential portions of the resolutions passed at the meeting of Irish Bishops and Archbishops, which took place at Maynooth Col- lege on Friday week. The Bishops begin by declaring that they renew the protests which the Bishops of Ireland have long been making against the great injustice with which Catholics are treated in educa- tional matters. "In the first place, with reference to University education, we have to complain," say the Bishops, "that, while the wants of other religious bodies are amply, even lavishly, supplied, we, who are the immense majority of the population, are condemned to the intellectual and material loss which the deprivation of higher culture entails on a whole nation unless we consent to accept it on conditions from which our consciences revolt." They go on to say that, though they abstain from formulating the University system which would best satisfy their claims, they will observe that these would be satisfied substantially—" (a) by the establishment and endowment in an exclusively Catholic or in a common University of one or more colleges conducted on purely Catholic principles, and, at the same time, fully partici- pating in all the privileges and emoluments enjoyed by other colleges of whatever denomination or character ; (b) by admitting the students of such Catholic colleges equally with the students of non-Catholic colleges to University honours, prizes, and other advantages ; and (c) by securing to Catholics in the Senate or other supreme University Council of a common University, should such be estab- lished, an adequate number of representatives enjoying the confidence of the Catholic body." Now we are bound to say that in our opinion there is nothing in these demands to which honest objection may be taken. Personally, we think that Roman Catholics, like other people, are better for a wide and liberal education, and that such a wide and liberal education can be more satisfactorily obtained in educational establishments like those of Oxford or Cambridge, where all creeds are wel- comed and treated with fairness and with due respect for their special religious views, than in close and confined colleges where Roman Catholics will be in immediate contact with none but their co-religionists. But if the spiritual leaders of the Irish Catholics think otherwise, that is their affair, not ours, and the responsibility for the mistake, if mistake there is, will be theirs. When they say clearly, We will be satisfied with nothing less than the educational segregation of Catholics,' it is our duty to bow, for there is no sort of infringement of the true principles of religious liberty. No Protestant or Agnostic is injured by the establishment of a Catholic University, and by the Catholics having the educational system they like, when he has the University system which he prefers. The notion that the Protestant is injured because part of the 'Queen's -taxes-which he pays will go to the Catholic University, is futile and absurd. If he is injured, how much more the Quaker when a new ironclad is launched, or the materialist who regards all religion as degrading superstition, when the Chaplains' salaries are voted in the Army and Navy estimates, or when the House of Commons pays for its own prayers. In our opinion, then, the Government may grant to the full the demands of the Bishops as regards a Catholic University, without doing any injury to the Protestants. What the Bishops say as to intermediate education is as follows :— "As to the system of intermediate education, it is keenly felt as unfair to Catholics that the Catholio members are in a minority on the Intermediate Education Board. This unequal treatment of the Catholic body is the more striking, and the more obviously indefensible, inasmuch as the pupils of the Catholic schools have for many years carried off far more than 50 per cent. of the prizes, exhibitions, and medals awarded by the Intermediate Edu. cation Board." This again, it seems to us, is a reasonable demand. Provided that there is an appeal to the Irish Education Office, it seems only fair that a Board which deals with more Catholic schools than Protestants ones, should have a majority of Catholics. The question is clearly one on which the Government could make a reasonable set- tlement. The question of primary education is of course far more complicated. On this matter the Bishops say :— "On the subject of primary education, we beg especially to call attention to two grievances which we have repeatedly complained of individually and at our meetings, and which have been specially set forth in several official reports, notably in the report of the Powis Commission of 1868-70, and in the report for 1886-87 of the Educational Endow- ments (Ireland) Commission, as urgently calling for re- form. We renew the claim so frequently put forward by us for the adoption of the recommendation made in the report of the Powis Commission in reference to the re- moval of restrictions upon religious freedom in schools that are attended exclusively by Catholic or by Protestant children in districts where sufficient school accommodation is provided for all the children in separate schools under Catholic or Protestant management respectively. We have also to complain that the existing model schools, although strongly condemned by more than one Royal Commission, are still maintained at a heavy expense to the State, mainly for the benefit of middle-class Protestants." As to the model schools we should like to reserve our opinion. We have no desire to see bodies that are doing good educational work overthrown ; and should therefore like to see the case for the model schools fully argued. In regard to the main contention, however, we have no hesitation. We see no sort of reason why, in a school attended exclusively by Catholic children, a Catholic atmosphere should not prevail. We can pretend to no special sympathy with those who think that the minds og the young cannot be influenced for good without the dis- play of symbols ; but if Roman Catholics think so, we are dead against any attempt to prevent them acting on their belief. We would of course protect Protestant children from proselytism at all costs ; but it is both ridiculous and ungenerous to say that what are purely Catholic schools shall not be conducted in the only way in which Catholics consider schools can be properly con- ducted, because in theory a State school ought to be always in a condition which would make it at any moment theoretically acceptable to a Protestant parent. By no means will we keep up the theory of a neutral atmosphere when it merely worries the Catholics, and does not pro- tect anybody. Mr. Morley, we know, had not the courage or the inclination to remedy this grievance as the Bishops suggest, but we hope and trust that Mr. Gerald Balfour will show that he has both more sympathy and. more bold- ness in attacking the problem.
Taking the Irish Education question as a whole, it seems to us that the Bishops' resolutions have very greatly advanced its solution. What they ask is, in our opinion, quite capable of being granted with perfect fairness to the Irish Protestants ; and, therefore, we desire most strongly to press on the Government the need for thorough, timely, and generous action. If they adopt the Bishops' demands they will not give Ireland an ideal educational system, possibly they will give her what is theoretically a bad one ; but at any rate they will give her what she wants, and what will satisfy her without injuring any one's religious faith. If you can say as much as that for an Irish poll- tical question, there is no need to seek for further per- fections. You are as near the true course as you are ever likely to get.
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