[183] I have only been able to sketch the outlines of the measure, the Local Government (Ireland) Act, 1898, p. 1, 62 Vict. cap. 37. A good commentary on it has been written by Mr. Brett of the Irish Bar.
[184] Mr. Lecky, ‘Democracy and Liberty,’ Cabinet Edition, Introduction, p. 13, has well described this vaunted reform: ‘It was a measure introduced in fulfilment of distinct pledges, and it contains very skilful provisions intended to protect existing interests. But, after all is said, it means a great transfer of power and influence from the loyal to the disloyal, and it goes in the direction of democracy far beyond anything that a few years ago would have been accepted by the Conservatives, or by the moderate Liberals.’
[185] For a description of elementary education in Ireland up to 1812, see passages in Wakefield’s ‘Account of Ireland;’ and for a description in earlier and later times, see Mr. Barry O’Brien’s ‘Fifty Years of Concessions to Ireland,’ book i. chs. i.-xiv.; Mr. Graham Balfour’s ‘Educational Systems of Great Britain and Ireland,’ pp. 80-128; the Report of the Commissioners of Irish Education, 1810-21; the important Report of the Powis Commission, 1870-71; and the Reports of the Commissioners of National Education in Ireland. Mr. Froude, in his ‘English in Ireland,’ vol. i. p. 514; vol. ii. p. 491, has characteristically eulogised the Charter Schools; but he stands alone; Mr. Lecky, ‘History of England in the Eighteenth Century,’ vol. ii. pp. 200-304, has commented on this odious system as it deserved.
[186] Barry O’Brien, ‘Fifty Years of Concessions to Ireland,’ vol. ii. p. 322.
[187] See Wakefield’s ‘Account of Ireland’ for the state of her secondary schools in 1812; Barry O’Brien’s ‘Fifty Years of Concessions to Ireland,’ book x. chs. i., ii., iii.; Graham Balfour’s ‘The Educational System of Great Britain and Ireland,’ pp. 203-218; and the Reports of the two Commissions of 1854-57 and of 1878-80, of which the heads were Lord Kildare and the Earl of Rosse.
[188] See the resolutions in Duffy’s ‘Young Ireland,’ pp. 713, 714. There has been much misrepresentation on this subject.
[189] See ‘The Problem of Irish Education,’ by Butt, a masterly and impartial tract.
[190] See for the figures ‘The Irish University Question,’ by Archbishop Walsh, passim.
[191] For further information on the history and the present state of the University system in Ireland, see ‘The History of the University of Dublin,’ by the Rev. J. W. Stubbs, and ‘The Constitutional History of the University of Dublin,’ by D. C. Heron; Howley on ‘Universities;’ ‘What is meant by Freedom of Education,’ by the O’Conor Don; ‘University Education,’ by an Irish Protestant Celt; and especially ‘The Problem of Irish Education,’ by Butt. See also the Irish University Debates in Hansard for 1873, and the very able debate in Trinity College. The reader, too, may be referred to Mr. Barry O’Brien’s ‘Fifty Years of Concessions to Ireland,’ book xi.; to Mr. Graham Balfour’s ‘Educational Systems of Great Britain and Ireland,’ pp. 273-288; to Mr. Godkin’s ‘Education in Ireland;’ and to Archbishop Walsh’s ‘The Irish University Question.’
[192] Too much is not to be made of ‘Nationalist’ clamour; but these remarks of Mr. Dillon, M.P., are significant (Freeman’s Journal, April 13, 1901): ‘I do not believe that these movements will ever succeed ... until that fortress of English domination and anti-Irish bigotry, Trinity College, is for ever swept away, or there is placed opposite to it a truly National University, where the most honoured classes will be the classes of Irish literature and Irish history.’ Archbishop Walsh, a much abler man, has written in the same sense in his work, ‘The Irish University Question.’ The question, he contends, in many passages, must be settled by levelling up or by levelling down, that is, by raising the Catholic University to the position of Trinity College, or by disestablishing and disendowing Trinity College. The evil precedent of the Act disestablishing the Anglican Church in Ireland, will, it is hoped, be eschewed.