children they are provided; and full power to enforce this provision should be given, not to the local school-boards, but to the Government Educational Department. We do not however at all see why the system urged by the "Tablet," which is reported as working well by Mr. Fraser in Canada, and which is also practically in force in Prussia, should not be introduced into this Bill. That principle is very simple, and goes as near as possible to securing the parental and religious rights of minorities. Mr. Fraser, in his Report on the Common School System, after saying that all denominations and coloured people enjoy the same rights, writes thus (p. 254) :—

A Roman Catholic separate school may be established whenever any number of persons, not less than five, being heads of families and freeholders or householders, resident within a day-school section, incorporated village or town, or within any ward of any city or town, and being Roman Catholics, choose to convene a public meeting of persons desiring to establish a separate school for Roman Catholics in such section or ward, for the election of trustees for the management of the same.

The trustees of the separate school have the same duties and responsibilities as the trustees of a common school. They can impose, levy, and collect school rates or subscriptions upon and from persons sending children to, or subscribing towards, the support of such separate school.

Every person who gives notice in writing to the clerk of the municipality that he is a Roman Catholic, and a supporter of a Catholic school, is exempted from the common school rates.

The separate school is entitled to a share in all grants for education, except that accruing from the local assessment for common school purposes.

By this means the Catholic trustees rate their fellow-Catholics in the district, who thereby become exempted from the common school rate, and are supporters of their own school. After sixteen years of legislation in Canada upon the subject of local rates and the "religious difficulty," this is the law which was finally enacted in 1863, and has been satisfactorily in force ever since. This system might be attended with some slight difficulty in villages where the numbers of the different denominations are small; and it would be reasonable that Government should fix a minimum number of scholars, as it does at present, below which no local or Government aid should be received. But even such a difficulty as this would have no existence whatever in a large town like Liverpool, where the proportions in which the hitherto uneducated children, divided between Anglicans, Catholics, Wesleyans, &c., are large and most easily ascertained. The children are crowded into a space so small that there will be no real difficulty in providing separate schools for each. And there can be no reason beyond that which may

be

furnished by religious bigotry why the management of such separate denominational schools should not be given to the respective denominations, the Board retaining a certain right to see that the rates, &c., are properly employed. If this is not done, where it can be done without needless cost or inconvenience, it will show that the real object of those who work the measure, is not merely to provide education for children who would otherwise have none, but, even more, to draw them away from the religion of their parents. Our experience of vestries and the like compel us to believe that, if they can, the proposed schoolboard will, most probably, work the Act for this last purpose. That a Government Department will do so we do not believe. It is therefore essential, however the boards are appointed, that the Act should distinctly require that the religion to be taught in every school provided by them shall be that of the parents of the children for whom the school is provided, as far as is possible under the circumstances; and that in case of their violating or evading this rule, it shall be incumbent on the Government Department, on appeal, to compel them to observe it.

We think it far more important to secure the religious rights of parents by the express words of the Act, and to give full powers to the Government Department to enforce it, than to make any conceivable regulations about the election of the school-boards. At the same time, it seems clear that great care should be taken to secure the representation of minorities on the boards. We incline to think that, if the boards are to be chosen by the ratepayers at large, each voter ought to have only one vote where the number to be elected is three, and two votes where six are to be elected. Whatever objection may be felt to the representation of minorities in Parliamentary elections, nothing of the sort can apply here; for, however inherent may be the right of the majority to make laws for the nation, the minority have a right still more incontestable to have their children educated as they, and not as the majority, think best.

Another concession indicated by Mr. Gladstone was, that in public schools in which the religious instruction preferred by the majority is given by the master, "it shall be made compulsory upon the local authorities to grant the use of the schoolroom to the representatives of other opinions, so that they may not be without the means of securing that instruction which the majority receives." There may, perhaps, be cases in which the benefit of this clause may be claimed by Catholics. But we think it will be of little value. Our opinion, that no such arrangement can make it safe or tolerable that Catholic children should attend Protestant schools, is as strong as ever. Be the pre

cautions and securities what they may, we shall feel that the Bill is most mischievous and unfair if it leads to the education of our Catholic children in Protestant schools.

But Mr. Gladstone's chief concession is with regard to the "Conscience Clause." As originally proposed, the Bill, as we have seen, provided that no child should be required to be present at any instruction or observance to which its parents have objected in writing on religious grounds. This left it free to the managers of the school to mix religion to any degree they might think desirable with the secular teaching. Prayers might be said, as in Catholic schools they commonly are, at the striking of the clock, although any child would be at liberty to withdraw if its parents so desired. Instead of this, Mr. Gladstone proposes to concede (what had been strongly urged by the League party) that "there should be a complete separation in time between the religious and what is called the secular instruction." This, if it means anything at all, must mean that during the hours in each day devoted to secular instruction, nothing is to be said or done which has any religious bearing. We can hardly express our sense of the evil this will necessarily cause. To say nothing of Catholic schools, Dr. Temple, the new Bishop of Exeter, whom no man ever suspects of any want of liberality, and who was for years connected with the training school at Kneller Hall, in advocating this very Bill a few days ago, pointed out at length the immense importance of the religious character of the master, and his conviction that that religious character would suffer if he were confined to secular teaching. He said:

I believe it makes an almost incalculable difference to children whether the atmosphere they breathe in the school is that which surrounds a religious man. Without a man saying anything directly about religion, if he makes it felt that he is really a worshipper of God, a servant of the Lord Jesus Christ, I am quite sure he makes a real impression on the children. I say this, without any reference to the difference between churchmen and dissenters, because I think that in this matter, if secular schools were to be established, Nonconformists would lose quite as much as churchmen would lose. I think they too would find that the schools, not having a really religious tone, would be by no means such as to make a good preparation for a religious education to be given by the minister afterwards.

We repeat here what Dr. Temple says. If this marked separation is made between religious and secular instruction, we are certain that the religious character of the school will suffer to a degree which Protestants themselves will feel.

That Catholic schools will lose very much more is certain. In fact, a school in which all reference to religion is prohibited during the greater part of the day, may be a school

taught by a Catholic, but can hardly be a Catholic school. The answer to this will of course be, that such is the system in the Irish National schools, which Protestants never fail to tell us have succeeded. In theory, such is the case. In practice, it is well-known that the Irish schools are, almost without exception, either Protestant or Catholic, and that their mixed character is W holly theoretical. So far as it has been real the influence of the schools has been anti-religious. It is a mockery to tell us that the Irish system may safely be imitated in England, after Dr. Whately's opinion has been published, that the mixed schools are "gradually undermining the vast fabric of the Irish Roman Catholic Church";-that "if we give up mixed education we give up the only hope of weaning the Irish from Popery "; and especially that what he most feared was, lest the Government grant should be extended to schools which came up to the required standard of secular teaching, leaving the managers to give what religious instruction they pleased. Such schools he declared would be "so many Maynooths." (Life, vol. ii. p. 246.) This proves that he did not mean (as the "Times" laboured to explain away his words) that, believing Protestantism to be true, he believed that education in itself would be favourable to it. On the contrary, he saw clearly that the highest education would only strengthen the Catholic Church, if it were religious education, and given by Catholics, and that it was by mixed education alone that he could "undermine" the religion of the people. To imitate therefore this system in England, would be to imitate what was expressly defended by its ablest advocate as tending to undermine the religion of Catholics; and what he admitted could not really be defended on any other ground; for, he added, that not being able to defend mixed schools "as an instrument of conversion," he had to "fight their battle with one hand, and that his best, tied behind him."

ART. VIII.-IS IRELAND IRRECONCILABLE?

A Correct Report of the Speech of the Right Hon. W. E. Gladstone, on proposing the Irish Land Bill, February 15, 1870. London: John Murray. Irish Land Bill. Second Reading. Speech of the Right Hon. Chichester Fortescue, M.P. London: Robert John Bush.

THE

HE state of Ireland throughout the autumn and winter which have passed may be likened to a day, such as often comes on its western coast, when the one season is passing into the other, and all the elements seem to be mingled in the weather. Overhead masses of cloud, gaunt and vast, career across a sky, at one moment muffled in gloomy vapour fringed with fire, at another so blue, so lofty, and so clear, that the pale light of the moon and the strong ray of the Northern Star aid in its atmosphere the labouring flame which strives almost in vain to assert the realm of day. He who hears the ocean break, when in those days the indefatigable sou'-wester hurls wave after wave against the mountain scarp of the coast of Clare, will not find much of melancholy in the music with which the Atlantic first hails the shores of Ireland but a sound like the cheering of many men in the stress of some great labour, with now and then an undertone of joyous melody, felt as it were through the sphere, when a tall billow, which has made its boisterous way from Labrador, sinks to sudden rest on velvet sand under the echoing dome of some stalactiteencrusted cave. But when the tide falls at the same hour that the sun is setting in this climacteric of the year, then the cloud-compelling wind pauses for a while, and the peace which falls upon land and sea is, in the variety of its beauty, the depth of its serenity, and the extent of its horizon, peculiar to the place and of its genius. The broad golden track that marks the line of the sunset on the waters, visibly connects earth and sky. Nowhere does the sun sink in such an aureole of light and such a canopy of colour, with such a glow of longing ardour, and such a lingering pomp of promise. Nowhere in our latitudes are clouds to be seen of such strange shapes and such vivid colours-violet, vermilion and purple, and crimson and azure and orange, and the white of the dove's down, and the tender green of young leaves. Weary ocean makes a truce with land, and seems to have changed its hue for that of the invincible verdure, which gleams through every