On April 14, 1788, Mr. Grattan said: In threefourths of this kingdom potatoes pay no tithe; in the south they not only pay, but pay most heavily. They pay frequently in proportion to the poverty and helplessness of the countrymen; for in the south it is the practice to crouch to the rich and to encroach upon the poor; hence, perhaps, in the south the mutability of the common people. What so galling, what so inflammatory as the comparative view of the condition of His Majesty's subjects in one part of the kingdom and the other! In one part their sustenance is free, and in the other tithed in the greatest degree; so that a grazier coming from the west to the south shall inform the latter that with him neither potatoes nor hay are tithed; and a weaver coming from the north shall inform the south that in his country neither potatoes nor flax are tithed; and thus are men, in the present unequal and unjust state of things, taught to repine, not only by their intercourse with the pastor, but with one another.

To redress this requires no speculation, no extraordinary exercise of the human faculties, no long fatiguing process of reason and calculation, but merely to extend to the poor of the south the benefits which are enjoyed by His Majesty's subjects in the other parts of Ireland; it is to put the people of the south on a level with their fellow-creatures. If it shall be said that such an exemption would cause a great loss to the

parson, what a terrible discovery does that objection disclose! that the clergy of the south are principally supported by the poor; by those whom they ought, as moral men, to relieve, and as Christian men, support, according to the strictest discipline of the Church.' This, I suppose, is what Mr. Froude calls glittering declamation!' I confess I do not perceive the glitter or the declamation.

It is true that equal rights given to the Catholics and reform of Parliament, obtained previously to the Act of Union with Ireland, might have raised to power such men as Lord Fitzwilliam, Mr. Grattan, and Sir Ralph Abercrombie, and might have prevented such a man as Lord Clare from taking his seat in the English House of Lords. Lord Clare was a man of splendid talents, and was successful in resisting the Irish Rebellion; but I confess I cannot see that in giving bribes to a majority of the Irish Parliament, Mr. Pitt and Lord Westmoreland used the necessary means of government. If such men as I have mentioned, Lord Fitzwilliam, Sir Ralph Abercrombie, Lord Cornwallis, and Mr. Grattan had been employed to govern the Irish people by honest means, who can convince me that such means must have failed? Who can prove that large salaries and prodigal pensions, unfit appointments to offices of trust and honour, the sale of peerages for money, and the support of the Roman

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Catholics extorted by promises, not afterwards kept, were the only means by which Ireland could be governed?

I must reject this apology for a system of intolerance and corruption; I hold it to have been cruel to Ireland to inflict it, and shameful to England to permit it.

Lord Edward Fitzgerald and other victims incurred, no doubt, the penalties of high treason, but however successful the attempt to blacken and to blast the memory of the men who at that time were driven by despair to appear in arms against the Government of their country, it will be impossible for history, if fairly written, to justify the broken promises of Pitt, and to sink in oblivion the iniquity of his colleagues, Castlereagh and Dundas.

CHAPTER XI.

NATIONAL EDUCATION.

DURING the reign of the House of Hanover till a period within my memory the faith of the Church of England was professed by all the graduates of the English Universities. About 1820 an agitation sprang up for the purpose of abolishing religious tests as a condition for admission to degrees. But this agitation was condemned by the authorities of the Universities, and the Whigs had recourse, in despair of a successful change in Oxford and Cambridge, to an address to the Crown to allow a separate University to be erected, where religious tests should not be required. This question came on for discussion during Sir Robert Peel's short administration of 1835, and the Minister was defeated by a majority of eighty votes. At a more recent time Mr. Heywood, brother of Sir Benjamin Heywood, brought forward a proposal for a Commission to enquire into the state of the English Universities. As the organ of the Government I supported Mr. Heywood, and notwithstanding the powerful and able opposition of Mr. Gladstone, I succeeded in procuring the enquiry.

Into the history of more recent events it is not necessary to enter.

The ancient Universities of Oxford and Cambridge required only amendments and reforms in conformity with the spirit of their institutions, and with a view to those liberal studies which must from time to time be made suitable to the spirit of the age.

But the education of the great mass of the people was so deficient as to require new measures, which became the subject of fierce party debate.

In 1808 the Duke of Sussex, the Duke of Bedford, Lord Somerville, and others, established a society for the purpose of teaching the poorer classes, and especially with the view of giving to the whole population of England Scriptural education. This society received from the first the cordial patronage of George III.

A bystander might have supposed that an object so simple and so benevolent as that of teaching the people to read and understand the Bible, if it had not met with warm support, would have encountered no opposition. But the party spirit of the Church was roused, and the clergy thought that it was superfluous, if not dangerous, to teach the poorer classes to read. However, the desire for instruction among all classes grew wider and deeper, and a resolute opposition to the general education of the people became unpopular and unpalatable.