ascendancy, the result that
they--the immense majority of the Irish people--have no
University, while the Protestants in Ireland, the small
minority, have one. For this plain hardship they propose a
plain remedy, and to their proposal they want a plain,
straightforward answer."--MATTHEW ARNOLD, _Mixed Essays_,
1880.

The fact that the recurrent educational problem in England is that of
the Elementary Schools, while as to Ireland the only question which is
ever to any extent ventilated is that of University Education, has led
to the totally wrong impression that everything in this sphere in
Ireland, with the exception of Higher Education, is in a satisfactory
condition. Nothing, in point of fact, could be further from the truth,
and perhaps the strongest indictment against the present Executive
system in the country is to be found in the chaos which exists in
educational matters.

The National system of Education in Ireland was started by Lord Stanley
in 1833. Up to that date there had been no organised education in the
country, and in fact there were still many living who could recall the
time when for a Catholic to receive education from his co-religionists
was a penal offence, involving legal and equitable disabilities.

The main vehicles of elementary education up to this date were the
Charter Schools and the Kildare Street Schools. The former, which were
founded about 1730 by Primate Boulter, and lasted a hundred years, were
frankly proselytising agencies--the address for the charter to the Crown
specifically setting out that it was a society for teaching the
Protestant religion to Papist children. John Howard, the philanthropist,
condemned them as a disgrace to Protestantism and a disgrace to all
society, but for all that, in the course of their career, they cost the
public nearly two millions of money. The Kildare Street Schools, which
were founded in 1811, and which secured a Government grant for the first
time in 1814, professed to be non-sectarian, and so long as they kept to
their professions were successful, but their subsequent association with
proselytising agencies, such as the Hibernian Society, was their ruin,
and in 1831 the public grant was withdrawn from them by the Chief
Secretary, who two years later introduced the National System.

On the establishment of the National Board all creeds and parties in
Ireland were anxious that the basis of the system should be
de