THE QUESTIONS OF IRISH LOCAL GOVERNMENT AND EDUCATION—OTHER QUESTIONS—CONCLUSION
Irish county government—The grand jury system in the eighteenth century—Its merits and defects—The grand jury system in the nineteenth century, and especially since 1836—The Irish poor law system—Elected andex-officioguardians—The local government of cities and towns in Ireland—Municipal institutions founded in Ireland by the Norman kings—Why they did not prosper—Boroughs and municipalities founded by James I. and the Stuarts—Their condition in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries—The Municipal Reform Act of 1840—The Towns Commissioners Acts—Attempts to reform the municipal system of local government in Ireland—The Local Government of Ireland Act, 1898—Complete change in Irish local government—The County Councils—The County Borough Councils—The District, Rural, and the Urban District Councils—Their functions, rights, and duties—All these bodies placed on a democratic basis—Attitude of the County Councils in the southern provinces—Education in Ireland—History of primary education—The national system of education—The principles on which it is founded—How it has worked, and what its results have been—Secondary education in Ireland—Its history—Its present condition very imperfect—The Intermediate Education Act—University education in Ireland—Its history—Trinity College—The Queen’s Colleges and the Queen’s University founded by Peel—Their comparative failure—Mr. Gladstone’s Bill to reform University education in Ireland—Its glaring errors and failure—Trinity College thrown open in 1873—The Royal University founded in 1879—Present state of University education in Ireland—The true principles of reform—Other Irish questions—Conclusion.
Irish county government—The grand jury system in the eighteenth century—Its merits and defects—The grand jury system in the nineteenth century, and especially since 1836—The Irish poor law system—Elected andex-officioguardians—The local government of cities and towns in Ireland—Municipal institutions founded in Ireland by the Norman kings—Why they did not prosper—Boroughs and municipalities founded by James I. and the Stuarts—Their condition in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries—The Municipal Reform Act of 1840—The Towns Commissioners Acts—Attempts to reform the municipal system of local government in Ireland—The Local Government of Ireland Act, 1898—Complete change in Irish local government—The County Councils—The County Borough Councils—The District, Rural, and the Urban District Councils—Their functions, rights, and duties—All these bodies placed on a democratic basis—Attitude of the County Councils in the southern provinces—Education in Ireland—History of primary education—The national system of education—The principles on which it is founded—How it has worked, and what its results have been—Secondary education in Ireland—Its history—Its present condition very imperfect—The Intermediate Education Act—University education in Ireland—Its history—Trinity College—The Queen’s Colleges and the Queen’s University founded by Peel—Their comparative failure—Mr. Gladstone’s Bill to reform University education in Ireland—Its glaring errors and failure—Trinity College thrown open in 1873—The Royal University founded in 1879—Present state of University education in Ireland—The true principles of reform—Other Irish questions—Conclusion.
That local government in Ireland should still be a ‘Present Irish Question,’ may appear strange to personsonly versed in the mere routine of politics. The subject has been before Parliament for nearly thirty years; it has engaged the attention of more than one of its Committees; Butt endeavoured, to no purpose, to legislate on it. In 1892 Lord Salisbury’s Government brought in a measure which aimed at transforming the whole system of administering local affairs in Ireland; but it had unquestionable defects and was vehemently opposed; unfortunately, as I believe, it was permitted to drop. Six years afterwards, that is, in 1898, the greater part of a parliamentary session was employed in dealing with the question again; a Bill became law which placed Irish local government, in all its departments, upon a new basis, and completely changed the characteristics it had had for centuries. The measure was to be ane plus ultra; it was extolled by applauding partisans as a magnificent scheme of popular reform; these have since, over and over again, declared that its success has been more than manifest. It is too soon to pronounce, with anything like confidence, on what its ultimate results may be, or even to say, with certainty, how it will practically work; but enough has already been made apparent to cause thoughtful and fair-minded Irishmen to regard the changes it has effected with grave misgivings; to question the principles on which it rests, or at least the wisdom of applying them to Ireland as she now is; and to ask whether it must not be amended if the social structure of Ireland is not to be still more violently disturbed, than it has been by the experiments that have been made on it. Besides, the local government and administration of every community, especially if formed on a popular type, affect its existence in many ways; strongly indicate what its opinions are, what its qualities, what its evident tendencies; in a word, largely represent its essential nature. It was not for nothing that in his survey of the Revolution in France, Burke did not confine himself to the sovereign assembly at Versailles, but turned his penetrating glanceon the petty assemblies which had been set up in the new-made departments, for the conduct of their local affairs; these, he insisted, formed the truest expression of the mind of the people and of the leaders at its head. For these reasons, therefore, if we would understand Ireland, her local government is a ‘Present Irish Question;’ it is a question, moreover, which, whatever may be said, in all probability has not been finally settled.
In order to understand the subject, I must glance at the system of Irish local government, as this existed until, as it were, yesterday; I turn, in the first instance, to Irish county government. The beginnings of this scheme have been traced back to the time of Strafford; but it was not finally established until the reign of William III., when the subjugation of Ireland had been made complete. The Irish grand juries always had criminal jurisdiction in their countries like their English fellows; but unlike these they were now entrusted with almost absolute control over Irish county government. This was partly because they were representatives of the conquering race, by this time the owners of nine-tenths of the lands of the country; and partly because there was no local organisation in Ireland, like the English parish, which could give local influence to the conquered race. The grand juries were always composed of the leading landed gentry of their respective counties; they were nominated by the sheriffs, that is, by officials of the Central Government; they were wholly devoid of a popular element; and as no Catholic could have a share in their councils, until nearly the end of the eighteenth century, they embodied, in the fullest sense, the Protestant ascendency of the day, supreme in every sphere of authority in the State. The grand juries had almost the exclusive power of administering the local affairs of their counties, of managing their roads, public buildings, and police; and they levied the charges for these by a local rate, known as the county cess to thishour, and imposed almost wholly on the occupiers of the soil, that is, in five cases out of six on the Catholic peasantry, a striking instance of taxation without representation to check it. These assemblies of local magnates met twice a year at the assizes which were held in their counties. Miss Edgeworth has given us graphic accounts of them: how a seat on a grand jury was deemed a prize to be sometimes fought for; how the grand juries entertained the judges in state, and vied with these sages in their mighty potations; and how, while wretches were hanged and jurymen dined, the assize towns were scenes of not fastidious revelry. There was much jobbing, corruption, and waste in the administration of the counties in those days; much of the ‘scratch me, and I will scratch you;’ much ‘give and take’ at the cost of the ratepayers. But there was another and better side to the picture: the Irish gentry of the time had the faculty of command; they ruled their districts efficiently with their police; the public works for which they were responsible were usually good. Arthur Young has especially noticed that the roads they constructed were almost always well laid out and kept up.
Catholics were not admitted on grand juries until the great Relief Act of 1793, the first general relaxation of the execrable penal code. But the Catholic members of these bodies have always been few; the large majority of the Irish landlords remains still Protestant. The bureaucracy of the Castle, after the Union, began to encroach on the domain of the grand juries; at the same time the growing needs of the country made the expenditure on local affairs much larger. The grand juries lost much of their authority by degrees; they were more and more controlled by the Central Government, which supplanted them in a variety of ways; and they were ere long compelled to vote sums for public works of different kinds for the behoof of their counties. This change effectually checked corruption and jobbing; but as the requirementsof the counties increased, and the ‘imperative presentments,’ as they were called, were augmented, the charge of the local rate or county cess became more onerous—it has advanced enormously in the last sixty years; and this was still mainly imposed on the Catholic peasantry. The civil or fiscal administration, which the grand juries possessed until 1898, was finally arranged by an Act of Parliament passed in 1836,[179]supplemented, from time to time, by subsequent statutes. These bodies were composed of the same elements, and nominated by the sheriffs as before; and they had a general supervision over all the public works, roads, bridges, and buildings for public purposes, comprised within their different counties, including within these areas nearly all villages, and the large majority of the lesser towns. But they were made strictly dependent on the Central Government; this had the appointment of their chief officers; their accounts were subjected to a regular audit; and their ‘imperative presentments’ were largely extended. They acquired, too, an additional jurisdiction in some respects, especially as regards inquiries into criminal injuries and compensating persons who had been sufferers, and as regards voting an extra police force in disturbed districts; but their old local police had disappeared, and had been replaced by the great central constabulary force. A change, too, was effected in the modes through which local rates were voted in the counties for public purposes. These sums were ‘presented’ in the first instance at ‘baronial’ and ‘county at large’ sessions, held by county justices and ratepayers of substance; but these bodies were subordinate to the grand juries, and to a considerable extent drawn from the same classes; no popular element was infused in county government, and the grand juries were, in the last resort, supreme, within the limits which hadbeen assigned to them. The local expenditure voted and assessed in this way was subject to examination by a judge of assize, who ‘fiated’ it, as a general rule; and ratepayers had a right to challenge it, by a procedure called ‘a traverse,’ which, however, was seldom turned to account.
The Irish grand juries were thus oligarchic bodies, survivals of the Protestant ascendency of a bygone age, and with a tendency, in their later history, to become subordinate boards of the Castle. I pass on to the Irish poor law system, another considerable department of Irish local government. As we have seen, unlike what had been the case in England, no poor law existed in Ireland until 1838; the want of such a measure was one of the causes of the pressure of a huge mass of indigence on the soil before the catastrophe of 1845-47. The Irish poor law, with some marked distinctions, was analogous to the new English poor law, as it has long been called; it has now been in operation for about sixty years. The country was divided into a series of unions, which have varied from 130 to 163 in number; at present there are 159 of these; these were the principal units for carrying the poor law system into effect. The unions were again subdivided into lesser districts, electoral divisions for the county, wards for the larger towns; the persons chosen to administer the poor law were taken from these areas; and the unions and all that pertained to them were placed under the control of the Central Government, represented by the Local Government Board of Ireland. The persons returned from the electoral divisions and the wards were selected by the votes of the ratepayers, and were known as the elected guardians; a popular element was thus introduced into the administration of the law, which had never been introduced into Irish county government. The vote of the ratepayers, however, was cumulative, not single; the largest ratepayers had the mostvotes, a safeguard, it has been assumed, for property; and the elected guardians, in theory at least, were balanced by an equal number ofex-officioguardians, composed of magistrates within the unions. The chief duties of the elected and theex-officioguardians, collectively known as Boards of Guardians, were to provide for the wants of the poor, and to assess and levy poor rates for that purpose; but many other duties were gradually imposed on them, the principal of these being the care of the sanitary state of the lesser towns within their districts. There was a marked difference between the incidence of the poor rate and of the county rate, or cess, of the grand juries. The county cess, we have seen, was mainly a charge on the Catholic occupiers of the soil, the poor rate was, to a very considerable extent, a charge on the owners, for the most part Protestants; for the landlord was bound to pay the whole poor rate in the case of the pettiest holdings, and to allow his tenants half the poor rate in the case of other holdings; by these means the burden of at least half the poor rate, it is believed, was borne by the Irish landed gentry. It should be added that the elected guardians have practically had the administration of the poor law in their hands; theex-officioguardians, especially of late years, took little part in it.[180]
I turn from the administration of local rural affairs in Ireland to that of its chief cities and its towns. The Irish towns, conquered and settled by the Danes, had, perhaps, a kind of municipal government; the Plantagenet kings conferred municipal rights as freely in Ireland as they did in England. Thus Dublin received a charter from John, modelled on that of his ‘liegemen of Bristol;’ Limerick, Waterford, Kilkenny, and several other towns were incorporated and given powers of self-government at different periods of the Middle Ages. But the municipal life andthe municipal spirit which grew up and gained strength in the thriving towns of England, and secured for them a large measure of local liberty, had hardly any existence in a land like Ireland, distracted by feudal and tribal anarchy; the corporate cities and towns of Ireland fell into the hands of great Anglo-Norman nobles and Celtic chiefs, and seem to have all but lost their local franchises. During the long agony of the sixteenth century, when Ireland was devastated by a horrible strife of race and faith, these privileges were still further effaced; at the death of Elizabeth the Irish municipal centres, with the exception of the capital, were mere names and shadows. A great change took place when the subjugated land passed under the domination of the first Stuarts. English law was now extended over the whole of Ireland; a colonial caste of settlers was becoming lords of the soil; the Government was conducted by the men at the Castle, ruling through a Parliament largely composed of the new settlers. James I. created forty-six Irish boroughs with a stroke of the pen, and gave them a representation in the Parliament and municipal rights; but these, for the most part, were mere villages; they obtained their large privileges solely in order to support ‘the English interest,’ as it was called, in the Irish House of Commons. This system was continued by the later Stuarts; besides Dublin and the larger towns of Ireland, there were about a hundred of these petty municipalities and parliamentary boroughs in the eighteenth century. These places, however, could have no municipal freedom, and were wholly devoid of municipal feeling; they became nearly all the mere appanages of the neighbouring leading families; and, with hardly an exception, they were extreme types of the Protestant ascendency which prevailed everywhere. Something of the same kind was witnessed in England, under the aristocratic rule of that age, but there was the difference between a sorry caricature and a picture; the great citiesand the better towns of England still retained an ample measure of municipal liberty, and, especially, did not lose the municipal spirit; the exact contrary was the case in Ireland.
A large majority of the little Irish boroughs were deprived of their parliamentary representation at the Union, but they retained their nominal municipal rights. They still remained under the control of the chief landed gentry; and they became, as indeed they had always been, centres of maladministration, corruption, and peculation of all kinds. When, after the passing of the great Reform Act of 1832, statesmen directed their minds to the questions of corporate and municipal reform in England, they naturally turned their minds to Ireland also, where this reform was notoriously still more imperative. After the publication of a masterly report in 1834-35, which thoroughly illustrated the whole subject, the abuses in the Irish corporations were shown to be such—they were enormous even in the cities and larger towns—that Peel, the leader of the Opposition, actually gave them up; he proposed to deprive the corporate towns of all municipal rights and franchises, and to place them under the authority of Commissioners appointed by the Crown. This plan, however, was rejected by the Melbourne Government, and was not sanctioned by the House of Commons; after a long and angry controversy, which continued for years, a measure became law as late as 1840; and by this, with the exception of ten, all the corporate towns of Ireland lost their municipal rights, and were thus left without any power of self-government. With respect even to the ten still enfranchised towns, their old privileges were greatly curtailed and were transferred to the Central Government; and their municipal liberties were restricted and narrowed. They retained, indeed, many rights of self-government; but the municipal franchise was placed at a high level; the great body of the townsmen did notpossess it; and they were subject to the supervision of the Local Government Board, that is, of the Central Government, to a considerable extent at least. True municipal life, and the municipal sentiment, could not, therefore, become well developed, in the case of towns under such conditions; they showed but few symptoms of the wonderful growth of prosperity and power which has been such a marked feature in the history of the great corporate towns of England, in what may be called the Victorian age, though, no doubt, the cases were widely different—poor Ireland could not, in this respect, compete with wealthy and progressive England. The deficiency of corporate towns in Ireland was felt ere long to be such, that, in 1854, and subsequent years, municipal rights were, in some measure, extended to nearly a hundred of these towns. These places were governed by bodies called Town Commissioners elected by a kind of popular vote; but the authority of these bodies has never been large; the municipal franchise was very high; and these towns were also under the Irish Local Government Board.
Municipal institutions, like others of English origin, had thus, from a variety of causes, when transferred to Ireland, only a stunted, imperfect, and maimed existence. We may briefly glance at the operation of the system of rural and urban local government, of which we have endeavoured to sketch the outlines. Except, perhaps, in the instance of criminal injuries, and of the compensation to be adjudged by them, where they did not always give proof of a judicial spirit, the grand juries, for upwards of two generations, administered county affairs very well; they were economical, prudent, and jealous of expense, if the public buildings they sanctioned were, occasionally, too costly; but the system was an anachronism, and had had its day. In ordinary times the Irish poor law was reasonably well administered by the Boards of Guardians, as well, probably, as was the case in England; they wererather parsimonious in assessing rates, and gave little attention to the sanitary state of their towns, but, on the whole, there was not much cause to complain of them; and the Irish people, it must be recollected, have never liked the poor law. The local administration of the cities and the larger towns of Ireland was worse—a notable exception was seen in Belfast; but these, as a rule, gave proof of the restricted system on which their government had been formed; the results appeared in a high death rate, in bad supplies of water, in crowds of squalid and deserted dwellings—in a word, in stagnation and a want of progress, if other and powerful causes concurred. When the movement conducted by Parnell acquired strength, almost a revolution passed over the seats of Irish local government, where these, except in Ulster, possessed a popular element. Parnell called on the Boards of Guardians, the Corporations, and the Town Commissioners, in places where the ‘people’ had any effective voice, to rally round the Land and the National Leagues; he achieved remarkable success in the three provinces of the south. This was especially made manifest in the Boards of Guardians, composed largely of farmers of substance, and in which theex-officioguardians had little real power; these bodies set a crusade against the landed gentry on foot; marked them out for plunder in many ways; encouraged ‘boycotting’ and defiance of the law; gave a free rein to rebellious utterances of many kinds; and denounced Irish ‘landlordism’ and British rule in Ireland, as fiercely as they had been denounced at Land and National League gatherings.[181]The same phenomena appeared in many of the corporate and inferior towns: the Corporation of Dublin indulged in anti-British threats and speeches; the Corporation of Limerick refused to pay a lawful tax;the Corporation of Cork proclaimed itself supreme in a ‘rebel’ city; the example was generally followed in the lesser towns of the south; in short, these bodies became centres of sedition, socialism, and resistance to the law, and widely disseminated their pernicious teaching. In fact, they made themselves agencies of the Land and the National Leagues; at the same time, in numerous instances, they set the authority of the Local Government Board at naught.[182]
The system of Irish local government was obviously so defective, so antiquated, so contrary to the spirit of the age, that several attempts, we have seen, were made, long ago, to reform it. It has now been completely transformed on the principles applied to England and Scotland; the occasion of this transformation was somewhat singular. In 1896 considerable relief was given, in England and Scotland, to the landed interest by a subvention made by the State, which defrayed half the charge of the local county rates, the depression of agriculture being so grievous; the justice of this measure was hardly disputed. But the Report of the Childers Commission, declaring that Ireland was greatly overtaxed, and had been for a long series of years, was published about the same time; the Government, probably because it had made up its mind not to countenance the report in any way, refused to extend the same relief to Ireland, although it was as much required—a decision that simply nothing could warrant.The indignation, however, expressed in Ireland, and the remonstrances even of the Ministerial Press, angrily as it had challenged the findings of the report, before long changed the Government’s purpose; it was formally announced, in 1897, that Ireland would obtain the same boon as Great Britain, and, apparently, as a condition of this, that Irish local government was to be reformed. The measure of 1898 was the result of this compromise; the interdependence of two subjects, which have nothing in common, has made it not easy to interpret; but, as we shall see, its authors have provided, with skill, against one of the dangers the change involved, that is, the probability that it might expose the Irish landed gentry to predatory attacks. Before examining the recent law, I venture to make a single remark. The question of the alleviation of the charge of rates, a concession made to Ireland with bad grace, and made to England and Scotland as a matter of course, has nothing to do with the infinitely larger question of the excessive taxation imposed on Ireland; relief in the one case does not imply relief in the other; the two subjects are altogether distinct. It is essential carefully to keep this in mind, for attempts are being made to confuse the two questions, and characteristically to argue that Ireland ought to rest and be thankful, and not to say a word about her overtaxation, because, forsooth, in common with England and Scotland, she has received assistance as regards her local rates.
The transformation which has been effected in Irish local government has completely changed the old order of things, and is of an extremely democratic character. County government has been taken from the grand juries, and has been extended to bodies known by the name of County Councils, recently formed in Great Britain. The County Councils proper are thirty-two in number, corresponding to the number of the Irish counties; they arepopular assemblies in the fullest sense of the word. They are elected by the ratepayers of their districts, who possess the present extravagantly low suffrage; the right of election is also bestowed on women; and the protection of the cumulative vote has been removed; a cottar has the same voting power as a man of forty thousand a year. Any of these voters may have a seat in a County Council; the body, therefore, may be crowded with petty ratepayers; and women also may have seats. Three members of the grand jury, in each county, are entitled to sit in a County Council, but for a short time only—a provision intended to reconcile the old with the new; the County Councils are given a right to ‘co-opt’ a few members; and the heads of bodies subordinate to them have the privilege of taking part in their counsels. The rights and the responsibilities of the grand juries have, as a rule, been transferred to the County Councils, except in the instance of criminal injuries, and of determining compensation for these; this jurisdiction, subject to an appeal to a judge of assize, has been properly conferred on the County Court judges, for it is essentially of a judicial nature. The powers of the County Councils thus extend to the management and the supervision of the roads, bridges, and buildings for public purposes comprised within their counties, and also to the regulation of villages and petty towns; but, like the grand juries, they are subject to the same control of the Central Government; they must make ‘imperative presentments’ like the grand juries; and, as in the instance of the grand juries, subordinate bodies have the initiative in part of their duties. Their powers, however, have been made larger and wider than those of the grand juries; they have been given the right to assess and levy the poor rate in rural districts, the management of the asylums of the lunatic poor, an authority, in cases of exceptional distress, subject to the permission of the Local Government Board, to sanction relief to poor people out-of-doors, and severalother powers of not much importance. It should be added that the County Councils are not restricted in any way by judge’s ‘fiats’ and by ‘traverses’ as the grand juries were; these securities, such as they were, have disappeared; but their conduct may be controlled to a certain extent by the Superior Courts of Ireland, as that of most public bodies may be, if only through a tedious and costly procedure, and they are more or less under the authority of the Local Government Board.
Six of the principal cities and towns of Ireland, Dublin, Belfast, Cork, Limerick, Londonderry, and Waterford, have been made distinct counties, with the appellation of County Boroughs. The scheme of County Councils has been applied to these also; the townsmen and townswomen have the same power of voting, and the same democratic suffrage as the counties proper; the borough assemblies may have the same kinds of members; but the titles of mayors, aldermen, and burgesses have been preserved, in recognition, so to speak, of strictly urban government. These bodies, which, it will be observed, are popular in the widest sense of the word, have the powers of grand juries within their respective spheres; but they retain besides their former administrative powers subject to the control of the Local Government Board; they have thus been changed from narrow and close oligarchies into democracies on the very broadest basis. The County Councils have under them two minor bodies, the Rural District Councils and the Urban District Councils, the characteristics of which may be briefly noticed. The sphere of the authority of the Rural District Council corresponds, for the most part, to the Poor Law Union; these councils are elected and constituted under the same conditions as the larger councils already described; they are, therefore, mere democracies in considerable numbers. The Rural District Councils are given the powers of the Baronial Presentment Sessions of the Grand Juries, that is, they may initiateproceedings as their predecessors did; they are made the sole guardians of the poor within their districts, theex-officioguardians having been abolished; their chairmen are members of the County Councils; it may be added here that rating for the poor has been extended generally over the union, not as hitherto confined to the electoral division and the ward, a questionable provision which will certainly increase the expenditure for the relief of poverty. The sphere of the authority of the Urban District Councils has been made that of the larger towns of Ireland, being sanitary areas within themselves; but power has been taken to increase the number of these towns, and this increase will be probably witnessed. The Urban District Councils resemble, in their mode of election and their constitution, the other assemblies, that is, they are democracies to the fullest extent; but they retain the names of Corporate or Town Commissioners towns, and of mayors, aldermen, and burgesses where they possessed these before. The powers of the Urban District Councils are those of the grand juries within the towns, except as respects the larger public buildings, which were formerly charged on ‘the county at large;’ these councils levy and assess the poor rate within their districts; and they retain the powers of urban government they formerly possessed. The Local Government Board has authority, also, over the Rural District and the Urban District Councils.
The entire system of Irish local government has thus been placed on an extremely democratic basis, subject, however, to partial control by the Central Government. This revolution, for it has been nothing less, was obviously liable to be attended by the many mischiefs inseparable from a sudden transfer of enormous powers to local assemblies of the most popular type, to maladministration, waste, and extravagance, and, as especially would be the case in Ireland, to violent or insidious attacks on thelanded gentry. The late measure has provided against these evils, if not completely or adequately, with ingenuity and skill. The relief of Irish agriculture was its first financial object; to effect this the county cess and the poor rate have been consolidated into a single charge; and half of this is to be defrayed by the State and appropriated to the relief of agricultural lands, towns and lands, within municipal limits, being excepted. The subvention is not to extend to sums payable in respect of criminal injuries, nor to sums payable in respect of extra police in disturbed districts; these charges are properly to be borne by local areas as before. The relief afforded is an annual sum of about £700,000; it is divided in tolerably equal shares between the owners and the occupiers of the soil, that is, between the landlords and tenants of Ireland; it is characteristic of Radical clamour, that a boon, the justice of which could not be disputed, was denounced as an ‘infamous job’ for the behoof of the Irish landed gentry. A powerful check has been placed on extravagance and waste, and on attempts to injure property in land, exposed, we have seen, to undoubted dangers. The relief afforded was calculated on the local expenditure for 1897, in the words of the law, ‘the standard year;’ it was regularly to be one-half of this sum. Should the local expenditure, therefore, in subsequent years, be in excess of that of the standard year, the proportionate value of the relief would fall; should it be a lesser amount, the value would rise. A strong restraint was thus imposed on attempts recklessly to job and waste local funds, and notably to plunder Irish landlords; but this restriction only applies to agricultural lands; it does not extend to property in towns; and it is difficult to say that it will always prove effective against democratic sentiment, passion, and greed. The extent of the relief afforded to Irish landlords differs widely as between landlords of different classes of tenants; landlords of mere cottars will get very little; landlords of farmers ofsubstance will get much more; but it is unnecessary here to enlarge on this special subject.[183]
This sweeping measure, in my judgment at least, might have been better framed to carry out its policy. Like much of the legislation of the Imperial Parliament, it has been fashioned too closely on the English model; it gives to a poor and backward country, not trained in self-government, local institutions naturally adapted only to an opulent and well-ordered country accustomed for centuries to local liberties. Having regard to the peculiar state of Ireland, it might have made the powers of local government it conferred larger, but it ought not to have been as purely democratic as it is; and it ought to have been accompanied by safeguards it does not possess. I would have been disposed to give the Irish County Councils a right to take evidence for private Bills on the spot; this, if transmitted to the Irish Privy Council, and considered by it, might be made the basis of reports by that body, which could be turned into Acts of Parliament, by a summary process, thus getting rid of great and useless expense, and silencing one of the few real arguments in favour of Home Rule. I would also have allowed the County Councils of different counties, in matters in which they had a common interest, say, in the drainage of some of the great Irish rivers, to carry out together public works of this kind, and to assess and levy rates for the purpose if, on consideration, this was deemed expedient; at present they have no authority like this; and such a power would, I think, be for the general good of Ireland. The County Councils, too, I believe, might be given a deliberative voice, in cases they have not at present; for example, should the rate-payers of any county make a demand for sectarian education, within its area, and declare themselves ready to paya rate for it, the County Council should have a right to entertain the project, and to report on it to the Central Government. And I am convinced that members of the County Councils ought to have some seats on the Local Government Board, and on other boards now filled by the Castle bureaucracy; this would introduce a popular element into these bodies, and, in many ways, would be of real advantage. On the other hand, in the election and the constitution of the County and other Councils, democracy has simply been let run riot; and the resulting evils have already been made manifest. Illiterate persons ought not to have been qualified to be electors; the single should not have replaced the cumulative vote, property being thus deprived of its legitimate weight; above all, as is evident, security should have been taken that the landed gentry should have a proper representation on the County Councils. The authority, too, of the Superior Courts over all these assemblies should have been made more effective and less costly than it is at present; and that of the Local Government Board should have been better defined and increased. In all this province the checks possessed by the Central Government over these local democracies are not, I think, sufficient.
It is impossible, I have remarked, to say with certainty what the end of this social revolution will be; but some of the results are, even now, apparent. There has, as yet, been little tendency in the local boards to waste, or to attempts to despoil the landed gentry; the check in this respect is of great force; but no one, I repeat, can predict what may be done under the influence of democratic sympathies, especially should the existing agitation acquire increased strength in Ireland. Some of the councils have been very fairly managed; a few others have been badly administered; as a rule, much time has been misspent in irrelevant talk; there has been a good deal of squabbling with the Local Government Board; but, on the whole, thelocal business of the counties and towns has been conducted as reasonably well as could be expected in the case of a new and immense experiment. But the consequences of giving raw democracies great and sudden power have already been made but too manifest, as persons, who knew Ireland, foresaw would happen. In parts of Ulster representatives of the landed gentry have been elected to the County Councils; property in these has still legitimate influence. But in Leinster, Munster, and Connaught, this order of men has been all but completely shut out from these boards; the land is not represented at all; this is an absolutely unnatural position of affairs, pregnant with many ills to the community as a whole. It is not only that the landed gentry have been deprived of an influence they ought to possess, in a society in any degree well ordered; this change has a tendency to make them more and more, what they have largely been made already, a privileged class without duties, akin to the old seigneurie of France, a state of things of which Tocqueville has powerfully described the evils. In the southern provinces, too, the new democracies, composed of Catholic ‘Nationalists,’ by large majorities, have driven loyal, and especially Protestant, men and women from local offices they had filled with credit, and this too at a considerable charge on the rates, a clear proof how no restraints can be wholly effective. But the main feature in the conduct of the County and other Councils is that in most parts of Ireland they have followed the advice given by Parnell to their weaker forerunners; they have made themselves agencies of the United Irish League, as boards before them were agencies of the Land and the National Leagues, and they have given but too ample proof of disaffection, disloyalty, and hatred of British rule. In some counties, the councils seized the court houses, and refused light and fire to the Superior and the County Court judges. Throughout the South of Ireland most of the boards vied with each otherin wild expressions of sympathy with the Boers, and of hopes that disaster would befall the British army; many gave free voice to frankly rebellious language; many denounced Irishmen being recruited for the British army. Nor did these sinister exhibitions end here; some of these bodies went out of their way to sneer at their aged sovereign, when she paid last year her last visit to the Irish shores, to question her motives, to speak all kinds of evil; a few even refused to say a word of regret for her death, nay, indulged in language of scarcely veiled insult. These councils, in a word, in a number of instances, have shown a marked resemblance to the Assemblies of the Communes of Jacobin France, indignantly held up to execration by Burke; they have been petty nests of seditious agitation and clamour. It is at least well that this manner of men has not succeeded, in the great statesman’s language, in ‘ascending from parochial tyranny to federal anarchy’ and have warned us what would be the nature of a Home Rule Parliament.
This scheme of local government must be given a trial; but ultimately it will have to be reformed, in a Conservative sense, if things in Ireland are not to be left upside down.[184]I turn to the subject of Irish education, which has been lately attracting much public attention. University education is the most prominent part of this question; but, in order to understand it, we must briefly consider the history of Irish education in all its branches. The first scheme of primary education in Ireland, of which we have a record—I pass over the traditions of the Middle Ages—was due tothe policy of Henry VIII.; he procured an Act from the Irish Parliament, to the effect that elementary schools should be set up in different Irish parishes; but, true to the ideal of Tudor statesmen—an ideal, however, which he did not always pursue—he required that these should be ‘English schools,’ to teach the Irish poor ‘the English language.’ Many years passed before these schools were found beyond the borders of the Pale; but, as the march of conquest advanced, they existed in many Irish parishes; there were more than five hundred of them in 1810, the largest number probably they ever attained. These schools were originally intended to be open without distinction of creed; but, under the conditions of Irish history, they necessarily became confined to the lower Protestant classes; they were under the control of the clergy of the Established Church, and Catholic children were kept away from them. Elizabeth founded another class of schools, in part elementary, in part of a higher type; these were known as the Diocesan Irish Schools; but there seem never to have been more than sixteen of these; and they, too, became exclusively Protestant. To these schools should be added ‘the English Erasmus Smith Schools,’ as they were called, foundations grafted, so to speak, on grammar schools established by a wealthy Cromwellian settler; at one time they were more than one hundred in number; and if not wholly, they were nearly confined to Protestant children. A series of Reports of Commissions and other records show that the education afforded in all these schools was not what it ought to have been; but this was to be expected in the case of a country where Protestant ascendency was supreme, where all administration was selfish and corrupt, and where the schools were the monopoly of a fraction of the people only. As to the education of the Irish Catholic poor in these centuries, it was discouraged, and ultimately prohibited by the penal code; the Catholic child could not learn the rudiments in hisown land; but in spite of this, ‘hedge schools,’ a significant name, grew up, in hundreds, throughout the country, in which, to adopt the words of Davis, a man of genius—
‘Still crouching ’neath the sheltering hedge, or stretched on mountain fern,The teacher and his pupils met feloniously to learn.’
As may, however, be supposed the instruction afforded in these schools was usually bad; throughout the eighteenth century and a part of the nineteenth, the young of Catholic Ireland were brought up in ignorance. In 1733 an odious experiment was made, and continued for a long period, to cause education to wean the Catholic child from his faith. An institution, called the Charter School, was established; the object of its founders was to make ‘the young of the Papists’ Protestant, by attracting them to seminaries where they were kept apart from their parents and priests, boarded, lodged, and handed over to Protestant tradesmen; millions were spent in furthering a detestable policy, which literally set up Mammon against God. The Charter Schools, however, completely failed; they never had more than fourteen hundred pupils, and they became wretched Dotheboys Halls where cruel and pampered Squeerses, eating up funds set apart for education such as it was, starved and ill-treated children victims of every kind of disease.
When the partial relaxation of the penal laws allowed the children of the Irish Catholics to be taught the rudiments, the ‘Christian Brothers’ began to found their schools, under the sanction of a Bull of Pius VI.; these schools, sectarian, like the genius of the Irish people, have, though receiving no endowment from the State, grown from small beginnings into a number of excellent Catholic schools. The Quakers in Ireland had established a few elementary schools before the Union; and so had the Presbyterians of Ulster. The Charter Schools lingereddown to the year 1832; they disappeared when their subsidies ceased; but the ‘Incorporated Irish Society’ is in possession of the lands they once held, and it supports a number of good Protestant schools. Primary education, however, in Ireland remained very backward; the Protestant schools did not flourish; the Catholic ‘hedge schools’ continued until the nineteenth century had far advanced. Attempts were made to promote Irish primary education, in different ways, after the Union; a Board of Commissioners of Education was appointed, and made valuable reports; but these efforts were of little avail for the benefit at least of the Catholic young; the schools thus established were all Protestant; and the evangelical movement, which was then powerful, made them proselytising with scarcely a single exception, a danger which the example of the Charter Schools had especially made the Catholic Irish priesthood dread. An institution, however, called the ‘Kildare Place Schools’ had, for a time, considerable success; these schools were thrown open to children of all creeds, and had the high approval of O’Connell himself; but it was one of the rules that the Bible should be read in the schools; they became proselytising in no doubtful sense, and ultimately they were tabooed by the Catholic priesthood. Primary education in Ireland was in this state, when the subject was taken up by Mr. Stanley, the Chief Secretary for Ireland of Lord Grey, and, in after years, the ‘Rupert of Debate.’ He founded in 1831-34 what has ever since been known as the ‘National System of Education’ of an elementary kind in Ireland. The principles on which he proceeded were in accord with the somewhat shallow Liberalism of the day, but, it must be added, with the ideas of many enlightened Irishmen. Primary education was to be endowed by the State, but it was to be divided into two parts: secular instruction was to be given in the new schools to children assembled together to learn, and that without distinction of creed;but religious instruction was to be given to children kept apart, Protestants and Catholics being completely separate, by the pastors of their respective communions. By these means it was hoped that a sound system of primary education would be formed; that proselytising would be made impossible; and that the youth of the warring races and faiths of Ireland, under the influence of a common teaching, would be made gradually to forget the animosities of the past. The National Schools were to be the Lethe of Irish discords.
I can barely glance at the chequered history of the institution which was thus established. The ‘National System,’ the name long in common use, was angrily condemned by the clergy of the Established Church of Ireland, and by a majority, perhaps, of the laity; this opposition was partly due to the spirit of an ascendency that would not brook equality; but it was largely to be ascribed to a higher motive. The new system, it was argued, cut education in two; the separation of what is secular from what is religious practically postpones what is divine to the human; and this is especially the case under the arrangements in force, for religious instruction in the schools may be a mere accident. The Irish Protestant clergy, and many other Protestants, have never taken to the National Schools; their sincerity is proved by the fact that a ‘Church Education Society’ exists, which, though depending on voluntary subscriptions alone, supports nearly two hundred exclusively Protestant schools. As for the Presbyterians of Ireland, the National system of education fell in with their views; its ‘Liberalism’ was congenial to them; but though schools of this type have flourished in Ulster, the Presbyterians have given a great deal of trouble to the Commissioners charged to carry out the law, and have shown much animosity to the Catholic Irish. The Irish Catholic priesthood at first accepted the National system almost with gratitude; it gave their flocksa rudimentary instruction they were much in need of; it seemed to provide against the proselytising they feared above all things; and during some years the heads of their Church in Ireland, for the most part not of the Ultramontane faith, were not indisposed to welcome a compromise. By degrees, however, opposition grew up in Catholic Ireland against the system; and, it must be allowed, not without reason. The Catholic element on the Commission was much too weak; the purely secular instruction in the schools was made partly religious, for books of a Protestant complexion found their way into them; a cry of Protestant proselytising was raised; and the National system was solemnly condemned in 1850, at the great Catholic Synod of Thurles, a sentence, however, which had no effect on the Government. But the real grievances of the Irish Catholics, in this matter, have nearly all been removed; the Catholic Commissioners have been made equal in number with the Presbyterian and Protestant; secular instruction in the schools has again been made strictly secular; attempts at proselytising have long been rendered impossible; it should be added—and this is very important—the Catholic priesthood have become the managers of a large majority of the schools. The system has certainly struck deep roots in Ireland; there are now nearly 9000 National Schools, endowed with about £1,300,000 by the State, and teaching nearly 800,000 pupils; they are supported by model and training schools, and have a large staff of competent teachers; the instruction they afford, if not remarkable, is, on the whole, sufficiently good. It may fairly be said that the National system has been a beneficent influence of the greatest value; light has shone on a people that once sate in darkness. The system, however, has become, insensibly, but greatly, changed; the National Schools have long been, for the most part, sectarian, that is, composed of Protestant or of Catholic children; the ‘mixed’ schools,as they are called, are comparatively few. But the main principle of the system still is in force; the instruction given in the schools, when the pupils sit together, is strictly secular; and this is secured by a conscience clause; the Bible cannot be read, in school hours, even in a Protestant school; no Catholic school can have a Catholic emblem. The religious instruction given in the schools is hardly what it ought to be, especially in the case of the Protestant schools; it must be added that the hope of their founders that they would bridge over the gulf of discords in Ireland has not been, in the slightest degree, realised.
The Irish are, naturally, a religious people; their history, a long conflict of races and faiths, has, necessarily, made them intensely sectarian. The system of education, of which I have traced the outlines, was certainly not well designed for them; it would have been severely condemned by Burke, the deepest of thinkers on the affairs of Ireland. And though the National system has had a real measure of success, it owes this, in the main, to the immense subvention it receives from the State; it has little or no support from voluntary aid; an attempt to impose an education rate on Ireland would be a failure, would not improbably wreck the system. Nor is this in harmony with genuine Irish sentiment; one of the most conclusive proofs is that National education has become, to a great extent, sectarian; the ‘Christian Brothers’ and the ‘Church Education Society’ schools, sustained by voluntary effort alone, and overweighted in the race by the endowed schools of the State, show how strong is Irish sectarian feeling. The clergy, too, of the late Established Church, and a considerable body of their communion, remain hostile to the National Schools; and though the Catholic priesthood have made them, to a great extent, their own, and avail themselves of the advantages they afford, they are hardly in heartfelt sympathy with them. Nor can it bedenied that the conscientious objections to the National system have real weight; the system, if not irreligious, is, we may say, neutral; it does not make religion an essential part of school life. It would, nevertheless, I believe, be exceedingly unwise to disturb a system which, on the whole, has for many years had excellent results in Ireland. The opposition to it is not strong; the children of the humbler classes freely avail themselves of it, and that with the full consent of their parents. Nor is the conscientious objection of much force in the case of schools which are only day schools, and in which the rudiments alone are taught; this is not the case of education of the higher kind, in which this objection is perhaps decisive; and it cannot be said that the National Schools have, in any sense, impaired the religion of the Irish people.[185]
I pass from elementary to schools of a secondary kind in Ireland. The Diocesan Schools of Elizabeth were nearly all secondary schools; but they were never numerous, and have all but disappeared. The two first Stuarts made an attempt to establish secondary education in Ireland on a larger scale. They founded the ‘Free Royal Schools,’ as they have been called, now seen at Armagh, Cavan, Dungannon, Portora, and Raphoe; they endowed them with lands perhaps worth in our day, £6000 a year; they looked forward to a time when they might rival Eton, Winchester, and the great public schools of England.Erasmus Smith established three considerable ‘grammar schools,’ and granted valuable estates for their support; a tolerably large number of secondary schools was also founded, from time to time, by benefactors of the dominant race in Ireland: of these Kilkenny College, a seminary created by the House of Ormond, which reared Swift and Berkeley, was the most conspicuous. These schools, though often nominally open to different creeds, became, nevertheless, in the eighteenth century, under the Protestant ascendency, supreme in the land, restricted to the young of the Protestant caste; they felt the effects of monopoly, and of the corruption prevailing in the State; the education they afforded was, for the most part, bad; their governing bodies and masters were often grasping and selfish. After the relaxation of the penal code, the Irish Catholics began to found secondary schools; their exertions were, in a high degree, praiseworthy; and though these schools received no support from the State, some of them have done really excellent work. A number, too, of secondary schools were established in Ulster, for the most part for Presbyterian uses; some of these are sectarian, some open to all faiths; some have, others have not, received assistance from the State; in several the education given has been, on the whole, good. A few secondary schools—St. Columba is much the best—have also been founded within the last century, usually for the benefit of the late Established Church of Ireland.
The progress made by secondary schools in Ireland, even in the nineteenth century, has not been rapid. It is not to be named with the immense development of public schools in England, within the same period, caused, in some measure, by the genius of Arnold; secondary Irish schools, in fact, have been largely a failure, like other institutions of British origin. This is mainly to be attributed to three reasons: the higher upper classes in Ireland usually send their sons to be educated in the great English publicschools; the Irish secondary schools are seldom well endowed; above all, the upper middle class in Ireland is small and has little influence. Two Commissions, appointed in 1854 and in 1878, examined secondary education in Ireland as it then existed; their reports give a far from favourable account of the system. The secondary Irish schools have not been much affected by an Act of Parliament passed in 1885, which provided for making better schemes for their management; but certainly they have derived very great benefit from the Intermediate Education Act of Lord Cairns, which established a system of competition between them, and secured prizes for successful competitors. In these honourable trials the Catholic schools have done well; but even now the secondary schools are decidedly inferior to what they ought to be, and do not exhibit many signs of improvement. An impartial inquirer thus described them in 1871:[186]‘Upon the whole, secondary instruction, throughout the country, was as some one—I believe Lord Cairns—said, “bad in quality and deficient in quantity.” The fact seems incredible, but there can be no doubt of its authenticity, viz. that out of a total population of 5,500,000, there were only 10,814 boys in Ireland learning Latin, Greek, or modern languages in 1871. Or, to put the matter in another way, while in England about ten or fifteen in every 1000 were instructed in these languages, only two in every 1000 were instructed in them in Ireland.’[187]
I pass on to University life in Ireland, the question, I have said, most prominent at this time. Ireland had noOxford or Cambridge in the Middle Ages; an attempt to establish a University in Dublin failed; science and literature could not grow up in a land distracted by feudal and tribal strife, and in which two Churches were continually at war with each other. Elizabeth founded Trinity College towards the close of her reign, on the site of a monastery that had been suppressed; it was the intention of the queen, and of her two first successors, that this seminary should expand into a University in the true sense, containing a number of colleges within its sphere, and probably open to all students whatever their race or their faith. This happy consummation, however, was made impossible during the long period of civil war and trouble, which only came to an end with that of the seventeenth century. Trinity College remained a single foundation; and, in the era of Protestant ascendency that ensued, when Catholic Ireland lay under the ban of the penal code, it necessarily became an exclusively Protestant place of learning, its dignities, its honours, nay, admission to it, being reserved to members of the Established Church. It had, however, been amply endowed; and, from an early period, it possessed many distinguished worthies, the names of Ussher, of King, of Browne, and of others, being still remembered. Trinity College, strange to say, was very High Church during the reigns of the two last Stuarts and of Anne; its leading divines preached the creed of passive obedience; and it was remarkable for its aversion to Presbyterian Ireland, as was clearly shown in the diatribes of Swift. The college, however, became Whiggish and Low Church during the reign of Walpole—its Provost was appointed by the Crown; and until nearly the close of the eighteenth century, its professorships, its fellowships, its scholarships, its degrees, even entrance to its walls, were strictly confined to the dominant communion of the Anglican Church. But a liberal spirit grew up, and gained strength within it; this appears in many of the admirable writingsof Berkeley, breathing the ideas that afterwards inspired Grattan, and in the histories of Leland and Warner, on the whole just to the vanquished Catholic people; and after the almost National movement which produced the Revolution of 1782, Trinity College took a remarkable step, which proved that it was in advance of the politics of that age. In 1793, when the Irish Parliament passed a great measure of Catholic relief, the college made Catholics eligible for its degrees and its minor prizes; and, but that its statutes made this impossible, it would, perhaps, have allowed Catholics to become professors, fellows, and scholars—in short, to have a share in its dignities and its government. Nothing like this was done at Oxford and Cambridge until the nineteenth century had run far its course.
From this time onwards Trinity College, accessible to Presbyterians some years before, received Catholics honourably within its precincts. A few distinguished Catholic Irishmen have obtained the excellent education it has always afforded; and these have been treated with scrupulous fairness; no attempt at proselytising has ever been made or thought of. Their numbers, however, have never been large; and they were necessarily placed in an inferior position, for they could not become professors, fellows, or scholars; the college remained an institution essentially Protestant, even anti-Catholic, in much of its teaching, for example, in the predilection it long showed for Locke. The college continued to thrive and to make progress; the reproach cast on it that she was the ‘silent sister,’ was rather due to the want of publishing enterprise in the Irish capital, than to any deficiency in literary power; at all events, it has long ago been removed; Trinity College has stood for a century in the foremost rank of places of learning famed for scientific eminence. In 1843-44 an attempt was made to introduce Catholics on the foundation, as scholars; but this was prohibited bythe statutes; some ‘non-foundation’ scholarships were then endowed; and Catholics were enabled to compete for them. This was the position of the college, when, in 1844-45, after the agitation for Repeal had shown how disaffected Catholic Ireland still was, Peel turned his mind to Irish remedial measures, and among these to a reform of high education in Ireland. His policy was to maintain the Union intact, and all the institutions closely connected with it, but to create institutions, so to speak, alongside of these, to which Irish Presbyterians, and Catholics especially, might freely resort, in complete equality with all Irishmen; he therefore left Trinity College exactly as it was, but resolved to establish and endow places of learning, which he hoped would be popular supplements to it, and would give a University training to students who, as affairs stood, were not on the same level as the favoured Protestants in it. He founded the Queen’s Colleges of Belfast, of Cork, and of Galway; these were supplied with an ample staff of professors, endowed, and given the means to bestow many prizes; and they were affiliated to the Queen’s University, empowered to confer degrees. The principle on which these institutions were formed was, following the so-called liberalism of the time, almost exactly the same as that on which the Irish National Schools had been based. Secular education in them was to be united, religious education was to be kept apart; their students were to learn the things that belonged to this world together; but as to what belonged to another world, this teaching was to be provided by their pastors outside their colleges, and they were not to have it in common. The colleges, and the University, therefore, were essentially seats of non-religious knowledge; religious equality, it was said, could be only thus secured; and residence in the colleges was not required.
The principle pervading the Irish National education system was certainly open to grave objections; thesebecame infinitely stronger, when it was applied to a system of high education in Ireland. Secular instruction could be really combined, and given to children together, when limited to the first rudiments: how could it be combined when it should embrace such subjects as moral philosophy, metaphysics, modern history, nay, physical science, and when taught to young men of the University age? Besides, religious instruction, without a great shock to conscience, could be made a subordinate consideration in mere day schools: how could it, consistently with Christian duty, be practically excluded from a University course, and left to undergraduates to be dealt with as they might think fit, and that at the most critical time of their life? Indifference to the Divine, masked in specious ‘liberal’ phrases, was, in truth, the cardinal feature of this scheme; it would have been severely reprobated by Burke; it was repugnant to the ideas of five-sixths of Irishmen; its tendency was to form minds in superior men, like those of Hume and Gibbon, in inferior men, to produce infidel, even atheistic, sentiments. It was denounced as ‘godless’ in the House of Commons by the High Church party; it was condemned by O’Connell, from the outset, though the men of ‘Young Ireland’ were not adverse; after some hesitation, it was rejected unequivocally by the Irish Catholic bishops,[188]and finally was held up to anathema at the Synod of Thurles. That the bishops were sincere is proved by the fact, that they established the Irish Catholic University a few years afterwards—the first head of this creation was Newman; and the foundation has been maintained ever since, though it could not give a degree, and it received nothing from the State, and its only funds were the contributions of a poor communion, a noble example of self-sacrifice and of a true sense of duty. Meanwhile, the Queen’s Colleges and University were kept up and endowed, at the rate of about£30,000 a year; the College of Belfast has done well, for it falls in with Presbyterian ideas; but the Colleges of Cork and of Galway, notably the last, have been sorry, nay, almost useless, failures; and Peel’s hope that his project would secure a good University training to Irish Catholics of the better class has not been, to any real extent, fulfilled. Trinity College remained for many years unchanged, that is, it gave an admirable education to a very few Catholics; but it continued to be a Protestant institution in its essential nature; its governing body and its hierarchy were all Protestant; its teaching was Protestant in some of its parts; its higher honours were a monopoly of the favoured communion.
The extreme unfairness of this University system, the ascendency secured to Trinity College, which, admirable institution as it was, was practically nearly confined to Protestants of the upper class; the failure, with respect to Catholic Ireland, of the Queen’s Colleges and the Queen’s University, and the large and useless expenditure this involved; above all, the denial to the Catholic University of any share in the bounty of the State, though its claim to it could be hardly doubtful,—attracted the attention of several statesmen, from 1850 to 1870; but nothing was done, or even attempted. The subject was taken up by Mr. Gladstone, with characteristic earnestness, during his first Ministry; he declared that University education in Ireland was ‘a scandal;’ indeed, Irish education of the higher kind was the third branch of the upas tree which threw its baleful shade over the land. He brought in a measure of reform in the session of 1873; it was an ambitious and a comprehensive scheme; but it was much the worst of his Irish reforms of this period; and it ended in complete and disastrous failure. With the historical instinct occasionally seen in his legislation, Mr. Gladstone proposed to revive the idea of Elizabeth and the first Stuarts, and to found a great National University, whichwas to have the management and control of the higher education throughout Ireland. The governing body of this new institution was to be composed partly of men chosen by the Lord-Lieutenant, and partly of the heads of the colleges to be connected with it; and it was to have the sole power of conferring degrees in Ireland. Trinity College was to hand over to the National University a sum of £12,000 a year, that is, more than a fourth of its endowments from the State; its professorships, its fellowships, its scholarships, in a word, all its prizes, were to be thrown open to all its students whatever their faith; but in most other respects it was not to be essentially changed, except as to the power of granting degrees. Trinity College was to be affiliated to the National University as a dependent college, and so were a number of minor colleges; but this remarkable distinction was made in homage to the ‘liberalism’ of the day: the Queen’s Colleges, that of Galway being suppressed as useless, were to retain the endowments they received from the State, on the ground that they were free to all comers; but the Catholic University was not to obtain a shilling, nor yet other colleges of a sectarian type, on the ground that they were ‘close and exclusive,’ this being the case of all the Catholic colleges that could be affiliated to the new foundation. The Queen’s University was to be abolished, for the National University was to be sole and supreme; and then came provisions, which, strange as they may appear at first sight, were perhaps inevitable under the conditions on which the project was formed. Moral philosophy, metaphysics, and modern history were shut out from the National University course; they might be taught in the colleges, but were to be no part of University learning. And the National University, like the Queen’s Colleges, was to be ‘non-religious;’ its system of education was to be secular and united, that is its students were to be examined together in secular learning, but in religiousmatters they were to stand apart; religion, indeed, might be a subject of college teaching, but it was not to be heard of within the University walls; in fact, it was probably to be left to the students and their clergy.
This complicated measure, not easy thoroughly to understand, was sustained, for a few days, by the glamour of Mr. Gladstone’s rhetoric. But ere long it arrayed against it an immense preponderance of opinion in Ireland, and was assailed with fatal effect in the House of Commons. The Heads of Trinity College took the initiative in declaring against it; in debates, wise, patriotic, and just alike, they recognised the claims of Catholic Ireland; but they protested against the wrong being done to the great and ancient foundation they represented, and especially against the degradation to which it was subjected by the Bill. Trinity College was to be deprived for no reason of a large part of its revenue; it was to be placed under a governing body, in which nominees of the Castle would be all-powerful—an influence pernicious to its independence and self-government; above all, the National University was to supplant it, and was to exclude from its teaching the noblest studies of the intellect of man. The Platonism which had inspired Berkeley, the records which had animated the genius of Burke, and had been fostered in the Alma mater of these great worthies, were to be banished from a foundation which was to be made the head of University life in Ireland. These sentiments were fully shared by enlightened Irishmen: that moral and metaphysical science and modern history should be virtually proscribed in the University about to be set up, was, as it were, putting out one of the eyes of the intellect, effacing what was best in the map of knowledge. But the most decisive condemnation of the scheme was that pronounced by the Irish Catholic bishops. Like their predecessors of nearly thirty years before, and the Anglican High Church party of that day, they asserted that theproject was really ‘godless;’ it was irreligion in the mask of non-religion; its liberalism was in the highest degree illiberal, for it offered their flocks a system of education it was known they would reject; and it was flagrantly, nay, basely, unjust, for while Trinity College, and the Queen’s Colleges, and the Queen’s University, were to remain endowed, the Catholic University and all Catholic colleges were to get nothing from the State. These arguments made their way into the House of Commons, and were vindicated in speeches of great ability. Disraeli dwelt especially on the poverty and the imperfection of a University scheme, in which the finest branches of knowledge were not to enter; he frankly denounced the Bill as ‘atheistic,’ an epithet which Burke assuredly would have fastened on it. Other speakers, notably Ball, a very brilliant Irishman, enlarged on the wrong done to Trinity College, and earnestly advocated the Catholic claims; not only was the minister offering a stone for bread, he was virtually trying to bribe the Irish Catholic into accepting institutions he disliked, and in the attempt was deeply offending his conscience. Notwithstanding the efforts of a powerful Government, the Bill was rejected by the House of Commons; nearly all the Irish members voted against it, and so did the best men of the Liberal party.
The year that witnessed the collapse of Mr. Gladstone’s measure, witnessed, also, a reform of Trinity College conceived in the spirit of the ‘liberalism’ of the hour, and hailed as an illustration of what is called progress. The government, the dignities, and the prizes of the college were thrown open to all without regard to their creed; this was welcomed as ‘University equality’ in the most perfect sense. It is a mistake to suppose that a corresponding change was ever made at Oxford and Cambridge; the extension of their privileges to persons whatever their faith, has, thanks to the exertions of the late Lord Selborne, been strictly confined to lay offices; thereligious character and teaching of the Universities have been carefully preserved.[189]Though Trinity College has been made ‘non-religious’ by this measure, and that to such a degree that its governing body might conceivably be composed of avowed atheists, it has, nevertheless, to this day remained a Protestant institution in all essential respects. Its professors, fellows, and scholars have, since 1873, been nearly all Protestants; its Catholic students are not eight in a hundred of the number as a whole; and the chief practical result of the late reform has been to make the heads of the Irish Catholic Church more opposed than before to seeing Catholics enter its precincts. In 1879, Lord Beaconsfield’s Ministry made an attempt to diminish the injustice done to Irish Catholics by the system of University education still in force in Ireland. The Queen’s University was abolished; a Royal University was established, which was enabled to confer degrees on, and to give prizes to, the students of the Catholic University and other colleges; but the Royal University is a mere Examining Board; it is not a University properly so called. One incident connected with this institution deserves attention; the success of the students of Catholic colleges at the Royal University examinations has been so great, that it ought to silence jeers at the ‘superstition’ which keeps them back, the vulgar cant of ignorant prejudice or worse.[190]Meanwhile the iniquities and anomalies of the Irish University system have continued but very little changed.[191]Trinity College remains a Protestant institutionwell endowed, almost a monopoly of the Protestant upper class in Ireland, practically little resorted to by Irish Catholics; the Queen’s Colleges are avoided by the Irish Catholics, as being ‘irreligious’ if called ‘non-religious,’ though the College of Belfast suits Presbyterian views; they, too, receive a large bounty from the State; but the Catholic University, the true seminary for the upper middle Catholic classes, and now divided into different colleges, is still, as such, left out in the cold. Its students, no doubt, can obtain Royal University degrees, and some of its professors have been placed as examiners on that foundation; but it is the veriest mockery to call this justice when we look at Trinity College and the Queen’s Colleges. ‘The words of scripture are reversed,’ in Macaulay’s language; ‘the rich are filled with good things and the hungry are sent empty away.’