"In no country ought such a system to be tolerated—least of all in Ireland, where—it ought not, it cannot be disguised—there still exists the antagonism between the English government and the thoughts and feelings and sentiments of the nation. I would not write the truth if I did not say, that any one who knows Irish affairs must expect the administration of such a system to be anti-national. He would be informed, without surprise, that from the lessons of history there was carefully excluded all that would remind Irishmen of their distinctive nationality—that the whole tone and tendency of the literature were English—and that, in drawing up the lesson-books in which Irish children are to be taught, Englishmen and Scotchmen were the only persons worthy of the confidence of the Irish National Board.
"I am content to be accounted of narrow and provincial feelings when I thus point to the anti-national character of the system. From the invasion of Henry II. to the present time, English rulers have been engaged in one device or another to destroy the distinctive nationality of Irishmen. The attempt is as unwise as it is unjust. It can only be effected by the destruction of public spirit and the demoralization of the country. The empire in which we are associated gains no more by the destruction of the individual nationality of its component parts, than society would gain by the destruction of all distinctive character in those who compose it. If even the Irish people are to be taught to love England, they must be taught to love Ireland first, and to feel that there is no inconsistency between the most intense Irish feeling and attachment to the empire of which Ireland forms a part. There is a waste of energy in every attempt to extirpate national prejudices and feelings, which makes the attempt a blunder as well as a crime. Russia has not yet Russianized Poland, and the Irish are as far from being West Britons as they were in the days of James I.
"It must be remembered that the effect of such a proposal was to substitute for the varying forms of individual energy and local exertion one great uniform system. While the education of the people was eked out by the sacrifices of the people themselves, or supplied by the desultory efforts of individuals, there was always room for the play of national and local feelings. So far as a plan like that propounded in this report was successful, it destroyed all other industrial energies among the lower orders. The old hedge schoolmaster could no longer make out his bread. The poor scholar could no longer wander from house to house, teaching the old history of Ireland in return for the food and lodging he received. All the lower orders of the people were to be taught by masters trained in a government college, and drilled in a system from which all national feeling was excluded—masters, of whom it was put forward as their chief merit that they would be political and moral agents of the government, inculcating order on a lawless, and teaching civilization to a barbarous, people.
"The report of 1835 suggested, of necessity, the question of religion. The masters, according to its proposal, were plainly to be indoctrinated in matters from which religion could not be separated. They were to be instructed in mental philosophy by a professor, specially appointed for that purpose. This training must be given them that they may be qualified to direct 'the thoughts and inclinations of Irish children in a right direction'. Would it have been unreasonable, is it unreasonable now, that the guardians of the faith of any portion of the Irish people should feel anxious to have some security for the character of the 'mental philosophy' in which the teachers of the people were trained?
"Comparing the plan announced in Lord Stanley's published letter with that which was carried into effect, under the joint operation of the interpolated passage and the report of 1835, it is obvious that those who might be perfectly satisfied with the arrangements of the first, either as to religious or national feeling, might yet be wholly dissatisfied upon the very same points with the second.
"Under the covert and guarded language of the report of 1835, we can clearly trace the inauguration of a new system—a system wholly unlike anything that had preceded it or had ever been recommended—a system which was to establish in every parish a government agent, under the name of a national schoolmaster, and which was also to become a great government university for the teaching of the middle classes.
"This last was to be accomplished by the medium of the model schools. One of these was to be established in each county. The master was to be a person of superior attainments, with a salary very far above that of any curate of the Established Church, and in these schools a superior education was to be conveyed. We shall see how steadily the plan, first broached in the annual report of 1835, has been carried out.
"In 1837, the report tells us that 'they had added to their normal establishment in Dublin a scientific department and a school of industry, in the immediate neighbourhood of Dublin, with work-rooms and a farm of from forty to fifty acres attached to it'. In the same report they propose to appoint a superintendent for each of twenty-five districts—residing at the model school, and having £125 a-year, with apartments and allowances. The head master of each model school was 'to be authorised to receive a limited number of boarders at such charge to their parents and friends as the commissioners might think proper, having regard to local circumstances'.
"At the same time, they stated their intention to establish, generally, schools termed secondary, in which 'scientific instruction' and 'instruction in manual occupation' should be given;—a portion of land for garden husbandry to be an indispensable adjunct to each secondary school.
"In 1839 they modestly announce a model farm, near Dublin, as only in its infancy, with twelve agricultural pupils, 'deriving much benefit from the judicious system of farming which they see practised there'.