There was rather a confused debate on Wednesday in the
Commons, on Lord F. Hamilton's National Education (Ire- land) Bill, the object of which was to require the rules of the National Education Board to be, on the demand of any Commissioner, laid before Parliament, and the operation of any rule arrested, if either House of Parliament carried a resolution disapproving it. This was really a Bill with a double object,—one of its objects being to keep a Parlia- mentary check on the National Board of Education in respect -to rules which might endanger the full protection of Pro- testant children by the conscience-clause in Catholic schools, and the other object being to prevent educational Home-rule from growing up in Ireland. The point most in dispute was the desire of the Catholic party to include in the central grant the schools of the Christian Brothers,—very excel- lent schools, but schools whose Catholic managers refuse to suppress the exhibition of Catholic symbols on the walls, to which Protestant parents object on behalf of their chil- Zren,—and not unnaturally, since Protestant children who -do not bow or curtsey to those symbols are maltreated by the Catholic children who do. Mr. Carson, who made a very moderate speech (and not at all a bitter speech, as has been most unfairly alleged), praised the Christian Brothers' schools very highly, and said he did not at all mean to declare 'against a denominational system of education, but while the system is, as it now is, undenominational, he thought central grants of money should be checked and regulated by central Parliamentary authority. Lord Randolph Churchill made a speech in favour of including the Christian Brothers' schools in the grant without conditioning for the suppression of Catholic symbols ; and Mr. Morley praised Lord Randolph 'Churchill, and resisted the Bill as an anti-Home-rule measure. The Bill was rejected by a majority of 81 (247 against 166).
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