 population of that coast had preeminent claims upon the attention of the Government for two reasons. In the first place they helped themselves, and therefore deserved assistance; and, secondly the fishing of the north-east coast amounted to 75 per cent. of the fishing of the whole coast of Scotland. Yet the north-east coast was worse off in regard to harbours; and was also the part of the coast that was most subjected to violent storms. What they wanted was what had been recommended from time to time; and was last recommended by the fishing report of 1893, namely, that a more substantial grant should be given to the Fishery Board, so that the Board should be able not to erect a harbour here and there, but to devise and carry out a large and definite scheme which would adequately meet the demands of the fishing population along the coast of Scotland. That was what they wanted, and that was what he still hoped they would get, notwithstanding the discouraging reply of the First Lord.
§ The House divided: Ayes, 113: Noes, 267.—(Division List, No, 5.)580
§
MAJOR JAMESON (Clare, W.) moved to add at the end of the Question:—
And we humbly represent to Your Majesty that the refusal of the Government to concede the demands made on behalf of the Christian Brothers and other denominational schools in Ireland has inflicted a great injustice on these schools, and disappointed the hopes of an overwhelming majority of the Irish people.
He said he believed and hoped that many hon. Members opposite who, like himself were connected with the Episcopal Church of Ireland, would vote for the Amendment, for he felt convinced they would concur with those who were desirous that an anomalous grievance should be done away with; and certainly all who were desirous that the Roman Catholics should receive full emancipation from all disabilities would vote with him. He would not say anything to raise party feeling; he would say nothing that could in any way raise rancorous feelings of religious hatred which he trusted were in Ireland buried for ever. The Christian Brothers had agreed that their schools, which were admitted by everybody to be among the best conducted, should be inspected by an officer of the State and that the pupils should be classified by those who examined them. They also agreed to separate secular from religious instruction and with regard to the books used in their schools they wove willing to submit them to the Board of National Education. They were willing to remove from their books any matter which might be considered to be controversial, and to make special regulations whenever Protestant children attended their schools. He thought most Members of the House would agree with him that no men could do more than the Christian Brothers had offered to do. They had always been ready to sacrifice their personal feelings to the cause of education and to the cause of Christianity; they had set a noble example of self-sacrifice and self-denial, and were entitled not only to equal treatment with other Voluntary Schools, but to the admiration and the gratitude of the country. He believed that a large majority of the Commissioners of National Education in Ireland were in favour of the grants being given to the Christian Brothers. He would ask the House to
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recollect that the Commissioners were composed half of Protestants and half of Roman Catholics, and yet in a Roman Catholic country like Ireland, notwithstanding the opinion of the Commissioners of National Education, the schools were still without the grant. There was a clause known as the "Time-table" conscience clause. Many Members of the House had heard of a praying wheel that was used by some of the native tribes of Northern India. But could they understand in this Nineteenth Century of civilization—in a country like England, boasting of its religion and civilization, Her Majesty's Government proposed to regulate the religion and the conscience of the Irish people by a time-table? What he asked was, that this time-table religion might cease, and that the religion taught by Protestant and Roman Catholic teachers alike might be the true real belief, that had come to each for countless generations, instead of this wretched automatic unreal "timetable," that was but a parody and an insult to the name of Religion. He would read the words of the present Prime Minister, and he failed to understand how Lord Salisbury could resist the appeal. In October, 1885, in one of his most celebrated speeches he said:—
As to religious education I am not speaking for my own alone. What I believe I would ex-tend equally to the Nonconformist of Wales and to the Roman Catholic of Ireland. But I do claim that whatever Church or form of Christianity they belong to, there should be given the opportunity to educate the people in the belief of the Christianity they profess, instead of giving them a lifeless boiled clown unreal religious teaching.
Believe me the essence of true religious teaching was that the teacher should believe that which he taught and should deliver it as he believes it—the whole measure, of truth. It was against this boiled-down, lifeless, unreal religion, this religion by time-table—this endeavouring to control conscience by the same method that they did a railway, that he was protesting against now. It was a religion that he regarded as "a stained window that obscures the light," as "a passage that leads to nothing." It may be urged by hon. Members opposite that when they, the representa-
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tives of Ireland, asked for Home Rule, for Local Self Government, for the Municipal Franchise, that they could grant these to Ireland because the unity of the Empire might be endangered. But would any Member opposite assert that the teaching to the children of Ireland of those great Christian truths, believed in by their forefathers, would in any way impair the peace, the prosperity and the happiness of Ireland, or that a lifeless boiled-down "time-table" religion could alone preserve the unity of the Empire. He asked them therefore to remove from the schools of the Christian Brothers, from these noble, simple teachers of Irish children, the stigma of inequality that reflected not on them but on the Government of the country, and to say to them, who had cried for years, "the shadow of the Cross shall be my refuge until this tyrrany be overpast,"
You are free to conduct your schools with the grants and privileges you desire. We will no longer place these false and unwarrantable restraints on your religion. The religion of the minority cannot be safeguarded by disabilities laid on the majority. We will do all that we can to atone for having in the past played on religious differences in Ireland and stirred up Party strife to suit our own political purposes. But we will found our policy on one of justice and right, on the laws laid down by the great founder of Christianity itself.
§ MR. SWIFT MACNEILL (Donegal, S.)
, in seconding the Amendment, remarked that he did so from reasons different, from those that had been so eloquently advanced by his hon. Friend. This was not merely a Roman Catholic question, but as an Irish Protestant Episcopalian question? The schools of the Church Education Society were under similar disabilities to those of the Christian Brothers. He appealed to hon. Members opposite whether they would not say that the first thing a child should have should be a Christian education. What Protestant Divines connected with the Church Education Society said—and they were supported by an enormous mass of lay opinion—was that religious instruction should never, in the schools over which they had control, be divorced from secular instruction. Rightly or wrongly the Christian Brothers said the same, and in consequence they were deprived of 583 pecuniary benefits to which they would otherwise be entitled under the Education Acts. The Protestant Education Society, rightly or wrongly, said that they would not, having regard to higher principles, be tongue-tied in their schools, and if a boy told a lie they would not refer him to Confucius or Plato but to Christian principles and doctrines. The Christian Brothers said the same thing, and for so saying had since 1836 been excluded from all the advantages conferred by the State for religious purposes. In citing the opinions of others on this matter he would give only the opinions of those who differed in politics from himself, but agreed with him (or rather he might say he agreed with them) in reference to Church matters. The Protestant Archbishop of Dublin (Lord Plunket) had—with great liberality of sentiment, which did credit to his head as well as his heart—advocated the claims of the Christian Brothers in this matter. The claims which Irishmen advanced were simply and solely the arrangements submitted to the Government by the Educational Commissioners of Ireland. Those Commissioners consisted of twenty gentlemen elected by the Government themselves, who were all gentlemen of the highest character, and possessing the greatest education and experience. Ten of them belonged to the Catholic Church, and ten to the various Protestant communities in Ireland. Of these twenty gentlemen, no fewer than fourteen were in favour of those rules, which now only required the sanction of the Lord-Lieutenant. Among the Protestant members of the body who approved of the rules were Lord Plunket, Professor Fitzgerald, and Dr. Stubbs, while the rules were also approved by Chief Baron Pallas, who, it was an open secret, might, if he had only been a Home Ruler, have been Lord Chancellor of Ireland. Lord Plunket, in the course of his address, said:—The object of the resolutions which had been passed by the Commissioners was to relax these rules, and so to give an opportunity for those who, in their own opinion, had a right to share in the State grants for education of bringing their schools under State control.First of all, he would point to the need that existed and to the way in which it had arisen. He would do so by referring to the fundamental principle of the 584 Board of National Education.