act of the Government, in the present delicate and momentous state of the empire. Taught by that Bible, which is their dearest and most valued possession on earth, to submit themselves to every ordinance of man for the Lord's sake, whether it be unto the King as supreme, or unto Governors, as unto those who are sent by him,' and gratefully attached to the illustrious House of Hanover, to which they and their ancestors are so greatly indebted, Petitioners would much rather contribute their humble might to strengthen the hands of his present most gracious Majesty's Administration, by dutiful and loyal professions of support, than attempt to weaken them by complaint and remonstrance, did they not feel that the truth of God, the rights of conscience, and the privileges of their children, were all about to be compromised by the present proposed plan of national education for Ireland.

"Petitioners respectfully submit to your Hon. House the following serious objections to the proposed plan :

"They object, in the first place, that a Board of fallible and erring men, of the most opposing and discordant religious opinions, is placed over the infallible Word of God, and invested with authority to say what portions of it are fit to be read, in the common school education of children; thus inverting the order of things, and taking for granted, that Man, whom the Bible promises to make wise, is himself wiser than the Bible. "Petitioners, in the second place, object to the proposed plan of national education, because it authoritatively interferes between Roman Catholics and the Bible, and forbids their children to read it at school. It is a fact well known in every part of Ireland, that Roman Catholic children attended the Kildare-place schools, and read the Scriptures, in all cases, till forbidden by their Priests; and in many places they continued so to do, even in defiance of them.-Petitioners, therefore, think it strange, that a Protestant Government should so far disavow the principles of the glorious Reformation, as to throw the weight of its authority into the scale, with a bigoted and interested Priesthood, against the Word of God, and the religious education of its subjects.

"Petitioners object, in the third place, that while the proposed plan of a national education professes to do equal-handed justice to all classes of his Majesty's subjects in Ireland, it is most unjust to Protestants, and partial to Roman Catholics. The Bible is the religion of the Protestants, and the Church-that is the dictation or teaching of the Clergy, is the religion of Roman Catholics. Now, in the proposed plan of education, the Bible is entirely turned out of the schools, and selections from it, made by man, substituted in its place-that is, the Protestant loses all that he values or has confidence in, and the Romish Priest gets all that he wishes.

"In the fourth place, Protestants object, that while the proposed plan of education unites with the Romish Priests in forbidding the R. Catholic children to read the Scriptures, it provides, by authority, that those Priests shall, during one or more days of the week, have facilities for inculcating on those children the adoration of a wafer, the worship of the Virgin Mary, veneration of relics and images, and dependence on purgatory; and Petitioners submit to your Honourable House, that God has said in his word, whatsoever biddeth the false worshipper' God speed,' is partaker of his evil deed.

"Petitioners object, in the fifth place, that the proposed plan of education, where it holds out to Protestants as a substitute for the daily reading of the Scriptures in schools, the one or two days' separate religious

instruction, by the Minister, is disingenous, delusive, and nugatory. It is disingenous, for it substitutes what is not an equivalent-the teaching by a Minister of the word for the word itself. This, indeed, is mere Popery. It is delusive, because children, at the usual school age, can treasure up Scripture in memory, and therefore they ought daily to read it; but they cannot be much benefitted by the theological addresses of a Clergyman, because the state of their minds and education is not such as to enable them sufficiently to understand it.-And it is nugatory, because the Minister who is in the charge of a large congregation cannot possibly find time to attend a day in the week at each school-house in his congregation.

"Petitioners, in the sixth place, object to the proposed plan of education as a dangerous innovation on the constitution and liberties of the country. For parents and guardians to surrender the appointment, control over, and management of teachers, the time and mode of teaching, together with the choice of all school-books, into the hand of a Board appointed by Government, and holding their places during pleasure under it, is, in the judgment of Petitioners, what the citizens of a free state cannot possibly do with safety. This would be to place in the hands of Government a power indeed truly gigantic. Petitioners are satisfied that, under the present Government, all in this respect may be safe; but they submit to your Hon. House, that should at any future period Jesuitism guide the counsels of Government, the dark and despotic fate of Spain, Portugal, Italy, &c. might again become that of Ireland, and the blood of our ancestors in the cause of liberty come to have been shed in vain.

"Petitioners, in the seventh place, object as Presbyterians, to the proposed plan of national education, because it elevates one of their Ministers to a supremacy over his brethren in the business of education, contrary to the fundamental principles and constitution of the Presbyterian Church, and, as Petitioners believe, to the discipline established and exhibited in the New Testament.

"Petitioners, in the eighth place, object to the proposed plan of education, because, as they believe, it will be calculated to originate and perpetuate religious feuds and animosities amongst the children of the various church communities in Ireland. The attendance of the different Clergymen on the same day, or even on different days in the week, at the school-house, and each Clergyman summoning the children of his own flock to separate religious instruction, will naturally and unavoidably point out the different sects to each other, and consequently excite rivalries, jealousies, and invidious comparisons of churches and systems of doctrine, and will, in all likelihood, require the attendance of a special police to assist the teacher in the management of the school.

"Petitioners, in the ninth and last place, object to the proposed plan of national education, because they are convinced that it will be inefficient, if not impracticable. They are confident that a Board in the metropolis will be eminently deficient in the local knowledge requisite for the choice, appointment, and management of teachers in the provinces.

"In reluctantly approaching your Hon. House with these objections, Petitioners wish it to be distinctly understood that they are actuated by no hostility against their Roman Catholic fellow-countrymen. They can say, with the greatest sincerity, that they love them as fellow-men, live peaceably with them as fellow-subjects, and respect many of them as industrious and useful members of the community. They do not ask that

Roman Catholics should be forced to become Protestants, or compelled even to read the Bible; though, when they admit that it is God's word, Petitioners cannot see how they can consistently fear or refuse to let it be read by all classes.

"In giving up all catechetical instruction in the Kildare-place schools, Petitioners testified their willingness to go every lawful length to meet and accommodate Roman Catholic prejudices, but farther they cannot in conscience go. They believe the Bible to be essentially necessary in the formation of youth as well as the direction of manhood and consolation of age. They are commanded by God himself, Deut. vi. 7, to teach it diligently to their children, and to talk of it when they sit in the house, lie down, and rise up; and whether they ought to obey God or man, they submit to your Hon. House.

"They feel such an unlimited power over the education of their children, as is lodged with the proposed Board, to be an unjust usurpation of that authority which God has given to parents, and for which they only are responsible. Petitioners, therefore, entreat your Hon. House to take these their objections under your most serious consideration, and to refuse a grant of the public money for any such anti-Bible and unwarranted purposes; and that you may be blessed in your persons and spirits, and counselled in all your deliberations by the King of kings and Lord of lords, Petitioners, as in duty bound, will ever pray."

In our xxvi. Number we expressed our expectation, that the clergy of the Established Church would make a deci ded stand in favour of complete scriptural education. We have not been deceived. We subjoin with satisfaction, the following important document, expressive of their opposition to the Government system.

"The Undersigned Archbishops and Bishops of the United Church of England and Ireland, having taken into their consideration, with a solicitude due to the importance of the subject, the system of National Education recently proposed by his Majesty's Government for adoption in Ireland, submit to the clergy of their respective diocesses the following observations with regard to it.

"They trust that in withholding their concurrence from this system, they will not be suspected of perverse opposition to the Government in its endeavours to promote general instruction, and to heal the wounds occasioned by party and religious distinctions.

"They are deeply sensible that the present demoralized state of a great portion of the Irish poor, and the disorders and outrages consequent upon it, are to be mainly attributed to the want of a suitable training of youth, and to ignorance of the pure principles of God's Holy Word, which prescribes the only just rule of duty towards God and towards man, and imposes the only effectual restraint upon those wild passions which lead to the violation of it. They are, moreover, fully aware of the advantages attendant upon the instruction of children of different religious persuasions in one common school, since it may be expected that the kindly feelings generated by means of such an association in childhood and youth will spread their influence over the subsequent periods of hu man life.

"It is therefore with unfeigned regret that they are constrained to ex

press their deliberate and conscientious persuasion, that the proposed plan of National Education, instead of producing these salutary and much to be desired effects, would tend rather to embitter existing animosities, by marking more distinctly the difference of creed in the public school, and by pointedly excluding, as a common source of instruction, that Volume which authoritatively inculcates, under the most awful sanctions, universal charity, mutual forbearance, and the cultivation of order and peace.

166

They do not deny that selections from the Scriptures-NOT TO THE EXCLUSION, BUT BY WAY OF FACILITATING THE KNOWLEDGE OF THE BIBLE ITSELF-may be usefully employed in the instruction of youth; such selections have been constantly made use of in the schools under their superintendence. But dispassionately viewing the wide and essential difference between the United Church and that of Rome, and bearing in mind the pretensions to exclusive sovereignty put forth by the latter! taught moreover by the failure of a former attempt at instruction in com. mon, in which concession on the part of the United Church proceeded to the very verge of what was allowable, and, as some thought, even! beyond what prudence suggested; where, at any rate, the concessions made could be justified only by the ardent desire of concord; and when, instead of promoting this end, they served but to encourage increasing demands, and to call forth unreasonable objections; when, instead of Scriptural selections, professing to form part of the Word of God, a treatise was put forth which might have been used by the scholars without any knowledge of the existence of such a book as the Bible, or without the suspicion that revealed Truth was to be derived through any

other channel than that of the Roman Catholic Priesthood: these things considered, the undersigned Prelates cannot too strongly express their conviction that no selection of Scripture will be agreed to by the Roman Catholic Hierarchy, which will exhibit to the youthful mind a correct standard of faith and practice, and set forth the right of every man to possess, and inculcate the duty of every man devoutly to read and examine the Scriptures-not, indeed, to the superseding of pastoral instruction, but in despite of the usurped authority of ecclesiastical rulers.

66 They further state, that they do not affect to conceal their grief at beholding the Clergy of the Established Church deprived of the trust committed to their hands by the Legislature, of superintending National Education-a trust which they have not failed to execute with a fidelity and zeal, pronounced to be most exemplary on every inquiry made into the discharge of their duty, and, at the same time, with a prudence and moderation most particularly required in the divided state of religious opinion in Ireland. Nor are they at all consoled in seeing the superintendence in matters of National Education taken from themselves, for the purpose of being vested in a Board composed of persons of such conflicting religious opinions, that it is impossible to conceive an unity of operation, without some surrender or suppression of important points of Revealed Truth..

66

They by no means undervalue the patronage and aid of Government in carrying on the work of public instruction; but they are content to forego the advantage, rather than to give their sanction to a system, which, in rigidly excluding the Scriptures from the common schools, would introduce in their place, books of religious and literary instruction, in the choice

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of which they are permitted to exercise neither judgment nor control. They cannot conceal from themselves, that such a measure, in the same proportion that it tends to remove the Clergy of the Established Church from the high position in which they now stand, virtually transfers to the Roman Catholic Priesthood that preference and that preponderating influence, which have been hitherto assigned to the purity and authority of religious truth, rather than to the numerical superiority of the members of any communion in a single part of the United Empire.

"With these views, the undersigned Archbishops and Bishops, whilst they give just credit to the intentions of his Majesty's Government, in bringing forward a plan of National Education, cannot but regard that which has been proposed as most inapplicable to the present state of Ireland as subversive of those institutions for the education of the poor, which, without giving just cause of offence to Roman Catholic prejudices, have produced great good, and which, if duly supported, would have unostentatiously gone on producing much more-as separating religious from literary instruction, which ought to proceed hand in hand togetheras depriving Roman Catholics of the Scriptures, which it appears, from undoubted documents, they are every day becoming more anxious of obtaining, and as transferring from the National Clergy all superintendence over the National Education, of which they are appointed guardians.

"In conclusion, therefore, they recommend to the Clergy of their respective diocesses, to endeavour to support the schools now under their management by such means as they may themselves possess, and with such assistance as they may be able to procure, trusting in the blessing of Divine Providence on their humble endeavours to work unmixed good, even if it should be within a more confined circle, rather than to engage in the support of a system which is exposed to many just objections, and which, as it should seem, cannot be carried into effect so as to secure the co-operation of the Roman Catholic clergy without a compromise of Protestant principles, and without retarding the progress of scriptural knowledge, which is now making large advances in Ireland.

("Signed by two Archbishops and fifteen Bishops.)

'February 22, 1832.

A word to Scotland and England. Sleep!-Sleep, if you will, till this experiment is completed in Ireland, and, at the risk of being laughed at for our fears or credulity, we tell you not many years will go by until you have similar systems imposed upon yourselves. Could the

Church of Scotland bend to one man elevated to complete supremacy over her entire education? Could the Church of England submit her education to a Board headed by the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Legate of the Pope? We think neither would. And if they would not submit, why should we? But if we must,-they will.