OUR IRISH LETTER.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXIII, Issue 4, 26 January 1905, Page 9

OUR IRISH LETTER.

(From our own correspondent.)

Dublin, December, 1904

If someone had kept a note of and would write a good book of Irish humor on the many panaceas; for the happiness, the pacification, the conciliation, the killing-by-kindness, the prosperity, the improvement of the Irish that have been started within the last twenty years, we should have a most amusing, if not a very coherent, sUory. The last-named scheme, the ' improvement,' is proposed so often and in such varied forms, is so harped upon, that it really seems to me that those who live in other parts of the world and who read Irish newspapers must naturally picture to themselves a little island, green, and capable of being made fertile, did its inhabitants but know how to do anything sensible. Bin were I, Say a New Zealander, to read nine-tenths of the wonderlul things written and spoken in public by our would-be patrons I should imagine Ireland to be inhabited by a lot of children, young and old, who knew nothing, were too fractious and immature in mind to have been taiugbt anything hitherto and who only played at life, like children, sometimes good children, but still requiring to be watched over strictly, sometimes too naughty for anything but to be whipped and sent smjdperless to bed. There really are times when it seems ridiculous to recollect that there actually are in Miis country towns and cities and rural communities in which things go ofi quite as rationally and smoothly a s I have seen them earned on in England, France, or Belgium, tihe only other countries in which I have lived fong enough to judge how life goes on there ; and there arc tiniea when it seems something else than ridiculous to think that this nation of ours — so uUerly needing ' improvement,' so thriftless, so thoughtless, so know-no-thing-rightly—should be, this year of our Lord (to say nothing of all the years gone before) paying £4,500,000 nioro taxes thran her proportionate share into the British Treasury. In view of the talk of these great minds who propose plans for the improvement, the education of the Irisfti Celt, this fact would be very funny were it not suggestive of thoughts as to all the sweets these childlike Irish could buy for themselves this cold, hungry winter, with £4,300,000 ! Improvement. iln my opinion, almost every new scheme proposed for our development covers a new plan for trymg'ljo improve us off the face of the earth. Two of thebe aie noteworthy in their way. One is the descendant of that old educational scheme for making sound Protestants of all the Papist children in Ireland, the (In-) National school system of sixty years ago. One cf the clearest expositßons of that system is to be found, strange "to say, in the writings of the Rev. Father (now Cardinal) Perraud, who visited Ireland many years ago and informed himself thoroughly on this education question, which, in a few words, was invented with the plainly expressed intention of weaninc tmo youth of Ireland from the Catholic religion and from nationality. Such a poem even as (JeraldCfriffin's ' Sister of Charity ' was expunged from the reading books of the soliools at the request of a Presbyterian minister, while it is a wellknown tact that those reading books were compiled by Carlisle, a Scotch Presbyterian minister, by Dr. WhiateIy, Protestant Arohbis>hop of Dublin, and a most bigoted di\ine, and by one or two others, who were either Scotch Presbyterian or English Protestant clergymen. The result of the system adopted in tlhese National schools was sio unsatisfactory to the guardians of Catholic youth that the Catholic hierarchy found it necessary to discountenance them. The model schools were handsome and costly buildings, equipped and maintained principally at the expense of the Catholics themselves, who are by far the largest taxpayers in the country. One would suppiose in such a case that these Catholic taxpayers should have the light to exact a change in the conduct of what were practically their own schools, but no such rights are recognised in Ireland and no change would be conceded, so that the Catholics had no choice but to withdraw their children. The model schools were established altogether for the use of the children belonging to the classes who cannot afford and do not need high school and university teaching ; they were amd 'are still maintained at a cost to the nation of £30,000 a year, yet for years they have been frequented almost entirely by Protestants, very many of these the children of comparatively rich men. Thus, the Catholics of Ireland are forced to-day, as in okl times, to pay far the education of their own and of their Protes-

tant neighbors' children, for, be it remembered, the endowments of Trinity College, Dublin, and most other endowed Protestant colleges, are paid principally fr,om the escheated lands of, an-d taxes levied upon Irish Catholics. Still we had all through the country, thanks to tne eftorts and unremitting watchfulness of the Catholic clergy, parochial national schools which, given certain conditions, received payment from C4overnment (i c , Peter was robbed to pay Paul), and which were under the management of the clergy : Catholic schools for Catholics, Protestant schools for Protestants, subsidised by the Catholic taxpayer, be it always borne in mind. These were for the humbler classes ; the wealthier classes paid for their own education as they chose, while always agitating the Catholic University question. Now A New Primary and Intermediate School Scheme has bean sprung upon the guardians of our faith and nationality, and these guardians find themselves face to face witih a tough struggle against the most 'dangerous pit-fall of the present day, an attempt on the part of those in power to seize upon the whole direction of the public schools and to force the secularisation of our primary a-nd intermediate sohools and the amalgamation therein of male and female pupils, a system which those who have themselves gone through it in America know in their hearts and to tneir biUci cost has done more than perhaps any other cause towards bringing about muoh of the present miseries of domestic life in thiat country. The system has not worked well for either the spiritual or temporal happiness of Americans, and it certainly would be a sorrowful day that saw it intro-duce-d into Ireland. Rather than yieFd to this, let ns have back the old hedge. schools. Indeed, the clergy and teachera seem unanimous in their determination to oppose the scheme at any cost. It is a hard thing, hard, to be obliged to rind the money for oostly, yet absolutely unacceptable s-chemes of education, and still be obliged in conscience to support yet another, or else see all that Irish Catholics love sio dearly lost to their children. But a nation that has borne so many centuries of smfienng for the faith will not yield it up so easily, anjd il there be'iruth in the words of Tertullian, 1 The blood of martyrs is the seed of Christians,' the children of Ireland cannot lose the faith, cannot lose that purity for which they have ever been famous. The Irish Exhibit at the World's Pair. Though the great Exhibition in St. Louis 'has not been tihe success that was anticipated, the Irish lbyi section, containing specimens of native crafts and arts, antiquities and historic objects, has bean eminently successful, and the whole collection is now on exhibit in New York, pre\ious to being shipped back again to Ireland. That the gloat exhibitions of recojifc years have all been financial failures does not augur well for the Ijnternation Exhibition in Dublin, projected Tor 1906. Nothing in t/he way of great fairs seems to pay like anything got up in Ireland for charity. That wotfd works wonders, and no mat,tei how many the bazaars— and they are endless here— let the cause but be a good one, and the money flows in. It was only lately I learned exactly how much was realised by a large fancy fair held in Dublin last year in .support of those good friends of education and of the poor, the Christian Brothers. The expenses of the ' Juverna ' Bazaar amounted to some thousands of pounds, but when all demands were paid, a sum of £17,000 was actually cleared ! Of course the ' old boys ' and friends of our Irish Brothers are now in every land, and wherever they are good help comes from, but still, this sum for one alone of our many good works shows what hearts Irish Catholics have, £or of course the mjoney that was contributed from other countries was given by exiles. M.B.