HOME RULE AND EDUCATION.
THE Commissioners of National Education for Ireland have sent to the newspapers a statement on the finance of Irish education which is only the latest of the many considerations which prove the injustice and imprac- ticability of the Home Rule Bill on financial grounds. It is surprising that such a detailed and reasoned criticism of the prospective position of Irish education under the Home Rule Bill should have been sent in the first place to the newspapers, for it is really an official document. The communications of the Commissioners are usually direct with the Government, or at least with the Treasury, which receives Estimates from the Commissioners, and obtains from Parliament the money to meet the Estimates. The reason given by the Commissioners for their exceptional course is curious and interesting. They say that both the Prime Minister and the Chief Secretary for Ireland were unable to receive a deputation, and that therefore (since it is their bounden duty, as trustees of public educa- tion, to bring their opinion to bear upon the policy of the Government) they are compelled to use the newspapers as their medium of publicity. The statement is, of course, not in form an anti-Home Rule manifesto ; it merely points out the necessity for amending the particular clause in the Home Rule Bill which provides for the cost of education. The Commissioners stick to their last, which is education. But the statement is, in effect, a very damning criticism of the Home Rule Bill, which seemed already disastrous enough without this indication of new burdens for the unfortunate British taxpayer to bear. We say for " the British taxpayer to bear" because, although the statement of the Commissioners does not demand that the greatly increased expenditure on education which they stipulate for should be provided for outside Ireland, yet every one knows that this is what must happen—the British taxpayer must pay. Even on the admission of the Government themselves Britain at the outset will pay £2,000,000 a year for the losses on Irish self-government. But that does not repre- sent the whole sum for which the British taxpayer will have to put his hand in his pocket. The just share of Ireland in Imperial expenditure, which Ireland is not to be asked to pay (Army, Navy, Diplomatic and Consular Services, and so forth), amounts to at least £4,000,000 a year. Therefore the total amount to be paid by British taxpayers will be £6,000,000 a year. It is true that the British taxpayer already loses a large part of this sum yearly under the Union, but at all events he has a control over Irish expenditure. Under Home Rule he would have virtually none. Therefore it is fair to say that, whatever the increased cost of Irish education may be, it will fall on the British taxpayer either in the form of direct payments or in the form of remitted debts. It is inconceivable that if the Irish Government went bankrupt Britain would refuse to pay up. She could not in any circumstances look on complacently at an act of repudiation. • The Commissioners are twenty in number, and Roman Catholicism and Protestantism are both represented. According to the latest works of reference the Com- missioners are Sir Henry. Bellingham, Lord Chief Baron Palles, Rev. Henry Evans, Sir Stanley Harrington, Dr. Starkie (the Resident Commissioner of National Education), Dr. Anthony Trail (the Provost of Trinity College, Dublin), Lord Frederick FitzGerald, Rev. David Taylor, Lord Killanin, the Roman Catholic Bishop of Kildare, Mr. Edward Gwynn, Mr. Gerald Deese, Mr. Justice Ross, Mr. Richard Bagwell, Rev. J. C. Clarke, Mr. L. A. Waldron, Mr. David Moriarty, Mr. John McClelland, Mr. Philip Ward, and the Protestant Bishop of Clogher. It would be very interesting to know the exact opinions on the present Home Rule Bill of those Commis- sioners who are Home Rulers in principle. It is com- monly said that the Roman Catholic hierarchy is not, as a whole, in favour of the Bill, but in the absence of publicly expressed opinions it would not be fair to assume definitely that this is so. Like Rosa, Dartle we only ask to know. Possibly, in the light of the Commissioners' statement, some Roman Catholic prelates may now think it their duty to protest against the whole Bill. As we have implied already, however, we do not say that they would necessarily or logically cease to support the Bill as a whole, even if they admitted the truth of the Commissioners' argument that it makes no adequate pro-; vision for education. For the opportunist view is always open to them, that as the British taxpayer must pay in the long run, whatever happens, a great increase in the cost of education would not make any difference to Ireland. " The British taxpayer," the argument would run, "has been told that all he has got to pay is an annual amount equivalent to that which he paid in the year when the Home Rule Bill passed. He may fancy he is safe. But no such limitations are possible in practice. Education is a trans- ferred service,' but if under self-government we spend more than we have got, the British taxpayer must ulti- mately see us through." Whether that view be taken, or whether it be quietly accepted that Irish education is to be run less efficiently under Home Rule than it would have been run under the Union, the argument is absolutely con- vincing against the justice of the Home Rule Bill in the one case or its working quality in the other.
Let us now see what the financial outlook is in Irish education. The burden of the Commissioners' argument is that the education budget has been a continually increasing amount, and that the Home Rule Bill provides only for a fixed amount. The budget of 1908-9 was £1,360,440, but in 1911-12 it had risen to £1,429,590. Thus the average automatic annual increase of the period 1908-12 was £23,000. This increase may be expected to continue. But that is not all. It will become progressively greater as the percentage of average school attendance rises. At present this percentage is low-72.5 in the year 1911. It will probably rise to 80 or 85 per cent. A rise of 10 per cent. would mean 70,000 more pupils, with the inevitable proportionate swelling of the budget. The Commissioners foresee at the end of six years an expen- diture higher by £100,000 a year than the present expenditure. But that, again, is not all. A considerable part of the whole system of Irish education is conducted in the Christian Brothers' schools and in certain lesser schools also unconnected with the National Board ; and if under a Dublin Parliament all these schools were to receive the same grants as the national schools the additional cost would be about £90,000 a year. Even then the picture is not complete. In all this pre- dicted fresh expenditure nothing has been said of the reforms which the Commissioners have been urging for years. These would require a capital expenditure of about a quarter of a million sterling. Last of all, and largest of all, there is the demand for an expenditure on new build- ings and on certain non-recurring charges in connexion with the educational system of £930,000. We all know that the Treasury has often had passages with the Com- missioners over the Estimates. We need not suppose that either under the Union or under Home Rule the Commis- sioners would get all they asked for. But it is clear enough that expenditure will rise, and rise steadily, and that the authors of the Home Rule Bill have done nothing whatever to face the situation. If the Home Rule Bill became law in its present form what would happen would be that the educational system would fasten its tentacles on other Irish departments under the Dublin Parliament and drain away their strength, or it would wane for want of money, or—which is, iu our opinion, almost certain— it would become a new burden on the British taxpayer. The finance of the Bill was already seen to be rutten. The Commissioners show us a new aspect of its rottenness.
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