On

Board, and not as a lover of education would desire. that point I will give no opinion; all I am sure of is that it will be arranged plausibly. That is what our middle-class public want, and the Government will certainly accomplish it.

No, the great English middle-class public is at present by no means bent seriously on making education efficient all round. It prefers its routine and its claptrap to even its own education. It is and must be free to do so, if it likes. We who lament its doing so, we who see what it loses by doing so, we can only resolve not to be dupes of its claptrap ourselves, and not to help in duping others with it, but to work with patience and perseverance for the evocation of that better spirit which will surely arise in this great class at last.

Meanwhile, however, the English middle-class sacrifices to its routine and claptrap not only its own education, but the education of the Irish middle class also. And this is certainly hard. It is hard, that is, if the Irish middle class is not of one mind with it in the matter, does not share in its routine and claptrap, and prefer them to its own education. I suppose no one will dispute that the type of secondary instruction in the Intermediate Board, the type of superior instruction in the new Irish University, is determined by that maxim regnant, as we are told, in the middle-class electorate of Great Britain: 'The Liberal party has emphatically condemned religious endowment.' And this when we have, in Great Britain, Oxford and Cambridge, and Eton and Winchester, and the Scotch universities! And one of the organs of the British Philistine expresses astonishment at my thinking it worth while at the present day to collect Burke's Irish writings, says that the state of things with which Burke had to deal is now utterly gone, that he had to deal with Protestant ascendency, and that 'the Catholics have now not a single cause of complaint.'

As if the Intermediate Board, as if the new Irish University, determined in the manner they are, and from the motives they are, were not in themselves evidences of the continued reign of Protestant ascendency!

But not only has Ireland a just claim not to have her education determined by the 'Protestant feelings' of Great Britain. She has a just claim not to have it determined by other feelings, also, of our British public, which go to determine it now. She has a just claim, in short, to have it determined as she herself likes. It is a plea, as I have elsewhere said, for Home Rule, if the way of dealing with education, and with other like things, which satisfies our Murdstones and Quinions, but does not satisfy people of quicker minds, is imposed on these people when they desire something better, because it is the way which our Murdstones and Quinions know and like. The Murdstones and Quinions of our middle class, with their strong individuality and their peculiar habits of life, do not want things instituted by the State, by the nation acting in its collective and corporate character. They do not want State schools, or State festivals, or State theatres. They prefer their Salem House, and their meeting, and their music-hall, and to be congratulated by Lord Frederick Cavendish upon their energy and self-reliance. And this is all very well for the Murdstones and Quinions, since they like to have it so. But it is hard that they should insist on the Irishman, too, acting as if he had the same peculiar taste, if he have not.

With other nations, the idea of the State, of the nation in its collective and corporate character, instituting means for developing and dignifying the national life, has great power. Such a disposition of mind is also more congenial, perhaps, to the Irish people likewise, than the disposition of mind of our middle class in Great Britain. The executive Government in Ireland is a very different thing from the

executive Government in England, and has a much more stringent operation. But it does little, nevertheless, in this sense of giving effect to aspirations of the national life for developing and raising itself. Dublin Castle is rather a bureau of management for governing the country in compliance, as far as possible, with English ideas.

If the Irish desire to make the State do otherwise and better in Ireland than it does in England, if they wish their middle-class education, for instance, to be a public service with the organisation and guarantees of a public service, they may fairly claim to have these wishes listened to. And listened to, if they are clearly formed, rationally conceived, and steadily persisted in, such wishes ultimately must be. It would be too monstrous that Ireland should be refused an advantage which she desires, and which all our civilised neighbours on the Continent find indispensable, because the middle class in England does not care to claim for itself the advantage in question. The great thing is for the Irish to make up their own minds clearly on the matter. Do they earnestly desire to make their middle-class education adequate and efficient ; to leave it no longer dependent on 'individual efforts, scattered efforts;' to rescue it from its dirt and dilapidation, and from such functionaries as the aged assistant who once pult the ear off a boy? Then let them make it a public service. Does Professor Mahaffy wish to relieve Irish boys from the unintelligent tyranny of endless examinations and competitions, and from being 'stupefied by a multiplicity of subjects'? Let him, then, get his countrymen to demand that their secondary instruction shall be made a public service, with the honest, singleminded, logically pursued aim of efficiency.

Then these questions as to studies, competitions, and examinations will come, ‚—as with us at present, whether in England or in Ireland, they never come,―under responsible

review by a competent mind; and this is what is wanted. The 'personages of high social standing,' the 'lords and bishops and judges,' the 'elderly amateur,' of whom Professor Mahaffy complains, will cease to potter; and we shall have, instead, the responsible review of a competent mind. Ireland will not only be doing good to herself by demanding this, by obtaining this; she will also be teaching England and the English middle class how to live.

ECCE, CONVERTIMUR AD GENTES.

I CANNOT help asking myself how I come to be standing here to-night. It not unfrequently happens to me, indeed, to be invited to make addresses and to take part in public meetings, above all in meetings where the matter of interest is education; probably because I was sent, in former days, to acquaint myself with the schools and education of the Continent, and have published reports and books about them. But I make it a general rule to decline the invitation. I am a school-inspector under the Committee of Council on Education, and the Department which I serve would object, and very properly object, to have its inspectors starring it about the country, making speeches on education. An inspector must naturally be prone to speak of that education of which he has particular cognisance, the education which is administered by his own Department, and he might be supposed to let out the views and policy of his Department. Whether the inspectors really knew and gave the Department's views or not, their speeches might equally be a cause of embarrassment to their official superiors.

However, I have no intention of compromising my official superiors by talking to you about that branch of education which they are concerned in administering,-elementary education. And if I express a desire that they should come to occupy themselves with other branches of education too, branches with which they have at present no concern, you

An Address delivered to the Ipswich Working Men's College.