vasion of Henry II. to the present
time, English rulers have been engaged in one device or
another to destroy the distinctive nationality of Irishmen.
The attempt is as unwise as it is unjust. It can only be
effected by the destruction of public spirit and the
demoralization of the country. The empire in which we are
associated gains no more by the destruction of the
individual nationality of its component parts, than society
would gain by the destruction of all distinctive character
in those who compose it. If even the Irish people are to be
taught to love England, they must be taught to love Ireland
first, and to feel that there is no inconsistency between
the most intense Irish feeling and attachment to the empire
of which Ireland forms a part. There is a waste of energy in
every attempt to extirpate national prejudices and feelings,
which makes the attempt a blunder as well as a crime. Russia
has not yet Russianized Poland, and the Irish are as far
from being West Britons as they were in the days of James I.

"It must be remembered that the effect of such a proposal
was to substitute for the varying forms of individual energy
and local exertion one great uniform system. While the
education of the people was eked out by the sacrifices of
the people themselves, or supplied by the desultory efforts
of individuals, there was always room for the play of
national and local feelings. So far as a plan like that
propounded in this report was successful, it destroyed all
other industrial energies among the lower orders. The old
hedge schoolmaster could no longer make out his bread. The
poor scholar could no longer wander from house to house,
teaching the old history of Ireland in return for the food
and lodging he received. All the lower orders of the people
were to be taught by masters trained in a government
college, and drilled in a system from which all national
feeling was excluded--masters, of whom it was put forward as
their chief merit that they would be political and moral
agents of the government, inculcating order on a lawless,
and teaching civilization to a barbarous, people.

"The report of 1835 suggested, of necessity, the question of
religion. The masters, according to its proposal, were
plainly to be indoctrinated