school, and still more out of school, are to form for
government a moral and intellectual police--against the
system of lavish bribery by which it is plainly proposed to
attract all talent in the humbler classes of Irishmen into
the service of an anti-Irish Board--against the institution
in our country of a great system of universal education,
subject to influences that are not Irish, and administered
in a spirit of distrust of the whole Irish people, their
national prejudices, and their religion"--(p. xii.)

In the course of the work, proofs are given of the way in which it was
sought to establish government influence. In the beginning, according to
the letter of Lord Stanley, only one model school was to be erected in
Ireland, and the minor schools through the country were to remain quite
independent. In 1835, the commissioners began to manifest more extensive
designs, and in a report to Lord Mulgrave, it was proposed to establish
a model school in each county, to take the training of all the teachers
of the kingdom into the hands of the Board, and, at the same time, the
plan was adopted to introduce books treating of common Christianity, and
compiled by Dr. Whateley, and, in fact, to make the authority of the
commissioners paramount in everything connected with the education of
the future generations in Ireland. On this Mr. Butt observes:--

"In no country ought such a system to be tolerated--least of
all in Ireland, where--it ought not, it cannot be
disguised--there still exists the antagonism between the
English government and the thoughts and feelings and
sentiments of the nation. I would not write the truth if I
did not say, that any one who knows Irish affairs must
expect the administration of such a system to be
anti-national. He would be informed, without surprise, that
from the lessons of history there was carefully excluded all
that would remind Irishmen of their distinctive
nationality--that the whole tone and tendency of the
literature were English--and that, in drawing up the
lesson-books in which Irish children are to be taught,
Englishmen and Scotchmen were the only persons worthy of the
confidence of the Irish National Board.

"I am content to be accounted of narrow and provincial
feelings when I thus point to the anti-national character of
the system. From the in