en some phases of religious influence, a mind
warped and diseased, deprived of good nutrition and fed on fancies or
fictions, out of which no genuine growth, industrial or other, was
possible. The one thing that might have strengthened and saved a people
with such a political, social, and religious history, and such racial
characteristics, was an educational system which would have had special
regard to that history, and which would have been a just expression of
the better mind of the people whom it was intended to serve.

Now this is exactly what was denied to Ireland. Not merely has all
educational legislation come from England, in the sense of being based
on English models and thought out by Englishmen largely out of touch and
sympathy with the peculiar needs of Ireland, but whenever there has been
genuine native thought on Irish educational problems, it has been either
ignored altogether or distorted till its value and significance were
lost. And in this matter we can claim for Ireland that there was in the
country during the first half of the nineteenth century, when England
was trying her best to provide us with a sound English education, a
comparatively advanced stage of home-grown Irish thought upon the
educational needs of the people. Take, for example, the Society for
Promoting Elementary Education among the Irish Poor, know as the Kildare
Street Society, which was founded as early as the year 1811. The first
resolution passed by this body, which was composed of prominent Dublin
citizens of all religious beliefs, was set out as follows:--

(1.) Resolved--That promoting the education of the poor of Ireland
is a grand object which every Irishman anxious for the welfare and
prosperity of his country ought to have in view as the basis upon
which the morals and true happiness of the country can be best
secured.

This Society, it is true, did not see or foresee that any system of
mixed religious education was doomed to failure in Ireland, but they
took a wide view of the place of education in a nation's development,
and the character of the education which their schools actually
dispensed was admirable. This hopeful and enterprising educational
movement is described by Mr. Lecky in a passage from which I take a few
extracts:--

The "Kildare Street Society" which received an endowment from
Government, and directed National education from 1812 to 1831, was
not proselytising