(in 1909-10) from voluntary and local sources, as
compared with L1,688,547 from State grants. The Treasury has no
guarantee that this money is well spent; on the contrary, it knows from
the Reports of the Commissioners themselves that a great deal of it is
very badly spent. The business is a comic opera, but it has a tragic
significance for Ireland. Primary education is so bad that a great
number of the pupils are absolutely unfit to receive the expensive and
excellent technical instruction organized by the Department of
Agriculture and Technical Instruction, and contributed to by the
ratepayers. The Belfast Technical Institute, for example, has to go
outside its proper functions, and spend from its too small stock in
providing introductory courses in elementary subjects, so as to equip
children for the reception of higher knowledge.[61] All over the country
the complaint is the same. No machinery whatever exists for
co-ordinating primary, secondary, technical, and University education,
and opportioning funds in an economical and profitable manner.

Religion is the immediate cause of the trouble; absence of popular
control the fundamental cause. The national system of primary education,
designed originally in 1831 to be undenominational, has become rigidly
denominational. Out of 8,401 primary schools, 2,461 only are attended by
both Protestants and Roman Catholics. The rest are of an exclusively
sectarian character. Even the Protestants do not combine. The Church of
Ireland, the Presbyterians, the Methodists, and other smaller
denominations, frequently have small separate schools in the same
parish. The management (save in the model schools, which are attended
only by Protestants) is exclusively sectarian, the local clergyman,
Roman Catholic, Church of Ireland, or Nonconformist having almost
autocratic control over the school.

This education question has got to be thrashed out by a Home Ruled
Ireland, and the sooner the better. After Home Rule the Treasury grant
will stop, and Ireland will have to raise and apportion the funds
herself, and set her house in order. At whatever sacrifice of religious
scruples, and, it is needless to add that to the Roman Catholic
hierarchy the sacrifice will be the greatest, the Irish people must
control and finance its schools, whether through a central department
alone, or through local authorities as well. There is no reason in the
world why a compromise should not be arrived at whic