While 400,000 of the poor find instruction in the National Schools, the means of education for the middle and upper classes are as bad now as they were ten or fifty years ago. A farmer or a shopkeeper in Ireland cannot, by any sacrifice, win for his son such an education as would be proffered to him in Germany. How can he afford to pay the expense of his son's living in the capital, in addition to Collegiate fees; and, if he could, why should he send his son where, unless he be an Episcopalian Protestant, those Collegiate offices which, though they could be held but by a few score, would influence hundreds, are denied him. Even to the gentry the distance and expense are oppressive; and to the Catholics and Presbyterians of them the monopoly is intolerable.
To bring Academical Education within the reach and means of the middle classes, to free it from the disease of ascendency, and to make it a means of union as well as of instruction, should be the objects of him who legislates on this subject; and we implore the gentry and middle classes, whom it concerns, to examine this plan calmly and closely, and to act on their convictions like firm and sensible men. If such a measure cannot be discussed in a reasonable and decent way, our progress to self-government is a progress to giddy convulsions and shameful ruin.
Let us look into the details of the plan.
It grants £100,000 and £18,000 a year for the foundation of three Provincial Colleges. The Colleges proposed are for the present numerous enough. It will be hard to get competent Professors for even these. Elementary Education has made great way; but the very ignorance for which these Institutions are meant as a remedy makes the class of Irishmen fit to fill Professors' chairs small indeed; and, small as it is, it yearly loses its best men by emigration to London, where they find rewards, fame, and excitement. The dismissal, hereafter, of incompetent men would be a painful, but—if pedants, dunces, and cheats were crammed into the chairs—an unavoidable task. A gradual increase of such Colleges will better suit the progress of Irish intelligence than a sudden and final endowment. But though the Colleges are enough, and the annual allowance sufficient, the building fund is inadequate—at least double the sum would be needed; but this brings us to another part of the plan—the residence of the students outside the College.
To the extern residence we are decidedly opposed. It works well in Germany, where the whole grown population are educated; but in Ireland, where the adult population are unhappily otherwise, 'tis a matter of consequence to keep the students together, to foster an academic spirit and character, and to preserve them from the stupefying influences of common society. However, this point is but secondary, so we pass from it, and come to the two great principles of the Bill.
They are—Mixed Education and Government Nomination; and we are as resolute for the first as we are against the second.
The objections to separate Education are immense; the reasons for it are reasons for separate life, for mutual animosity, for penal laws, for religious wars. 'Tis said that communication between students of different creeds will taint their faith and endanger their souls. They who say so should prohibit the students from associating out of the Colleges even more than in them. In the Colleges they will be joined in studying mathematics, natural philosophy, engineering, chemistry, the principles of reasoning, the constitution of man. Surely union in these studies would less peril their faith than free communication out of doors. Come, come, let those who insist on unqualified separate Education follow out their principles—let them prohibit Catholic and Protestant boys from playing, or talking, or walking together—let them mark out every frank or indiscreet man for a similar prohibition—let them establish a theological police—let them rail off each sect (as the Jews used to be cooped) into a separate quarter; or rather, to save preliminaries, let each of them proclaim war in the name of his creed on the men of all other creeds, and fight till death, triumph, or disgust shall leave him leisure to revise his principles.
These are the logical consequences of the doctrine of Separate Education, but we acquit the friends of it of that or any other such ferocious purpose. Their intentions are pious and sincere—their argument is dangerous, for they might find followers with less virtue and more dogged consistency.
We say "an unqualified separate Education," because it is said, with some plausibility, that the manner in which theology mixes up with history and moral philosophy renders common instruction in them almost impossible. The reasoning is pushed too far. Yet the objection should be well weighed; though we warn those who push it very far not to fall into the extravagance of a valued friend of ours, who protested against one person attempting to teach medicine to Catholics and Protestants, as one creed acknowledged miraculous cures and demoniacal possessions, and the other rejected both!
It should be noted, too, that this demand for separate Professors does not involve separate Colleges, does not assume that any evil would result from the friendship of the students, and does not lead to the desperate, though unforeseen, conclusions which follow from the other notion.