AN ENGLISH ESSAYIST ON IRISH EDUCATION.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume III, Issue 116, 16 July 1875, Page 9

AN ENGLISH ESSAYIST ON IRISH EDUCATION.

Matthew Arnold on leish Catholic Claims. Mr. Matthew Arnold writes as follows to the editor of the ' Pall Mall Gazette ' :— Sir : An assertion made in the preface to my account of German higher schools, that, "before Prussia compelled Roman Catholic students to attend university instruction she gave them Roman Catholic universities to go to," has met and still meets with so much denial, and the matter at issue is so important, that I will ask you to afford me space for an explanation. In my preface I was contrasting the position of the university student in Ireland, if he is a Roman Catholic, with the position of university students inPrussia and Great Britain. I remark that, whereas in England and Scotland Protestants had public universities where religion and philosophy and history were taught by Protestants, and in Prussia both Catholics and Protestants had public universities where these matters were taught by professors of the student's own confession, in Ireland Catholics had no such, university, and we would not let them have one. Writing for the general reader, I applied the term Catholic or Protestant to universities as he himself, I thought, would be likely to apply it ; meaning by a Roman Catholic university not a university where no Protestant might enter; and where even botany and mineralogy must be taught by Catholics, but a university where the Catholic students would find religion taught by Catholics, and matters where relio-ion is interested, such as philosophy and history taught by Catholics too. In speaking of a university as Protestant I mean the same limitation to be understood. **#*#= I had also a right, I think, to say that while we would not give the Irish a public university where religion, philosophy, and history were taught by Catholics, we English and Scotch, had for urselves public univer sitios where religion, philosophy, and" history are taught by Protestants. This is indisputably so as to religion • the only question can be whether it is true as to philosophy and history. Can anyone think that a Catholic could be appointed to a chair of history or philosophy at Oxford or Cambridge ? No one. But a distinguished Scotch Liberal— eminent alike by rank, office', talents, and character— assured me that as to all chairs of philosophy and history the Scotch universities were now perfectly un-Protestanized. In law, no doubt ; but in fact ? In fact, they remain exclusively Protestant. My Scotch informant himself supplied me with the best possible proof of it — for when I went on to ask him, " Would it be possible, then, for the government to appoint an eminent Catholic metaphysician— Father Dalo-airns, for instance — to a chair of metaphysics in Scotland ?" my informant apswered instantly "Of course not ; it would be a national outrage." But really the Irish Catholics could haWlly d-siio for themselves anything more agreeable thau a national" Irish university where it should be a national outrage for the government to appoint Mr. Bain, or any except a Catholic, to a chair of mental philosophy. ****** # Irish Catholicism is a natural, existing fact, and certain to exist for a great, while to come. It is not going to disappear because it is not so enlightened as the religion of the " Fortnio-htlv Review ' " or so pure as the religion of Messrs. Moody and Sankev For a very long while yet our only course will bo to take Irish Catholicism as a fact and to do the best we can with it— now the worst we can do with it is to shut it up in itself. True, Catholicism has political inconveniences in its TJltramontanism, social incon yeniencesm its confessional, intellectual and moral inconveniences in its denial of the necessity and duty of private judgment All these incidents of the religion of Catholics, however, Catholics have accepted because their religion itself was so attractive to then They will not drop these things because we dislike them • and most certainly they will not drop their religion to get rid of those things. They will get rid of them, or of what is bad in them not by a sudden change, not by a wholesome conversion, not by ceasinoto profess themselves Catholics, but only by the slow advance o°f culture m the body of the Catholic community itself, only by the general widening aud clearing of European thought beino- felt through this community. This is a truth which statesmen cannot lay too much to heart; and it is the gravest possible condemnation of our policy towards Catholicism in Ireland. For what are we doing in Ireland ? Forcing Catholicism to remain shut up m itself because we will not treat it as a national religion. And why will we not? In defence to two fanaticisms • a secularist fanaticism which holds religion in general to be" noxious, and, above all, a Protestant fanaticism which holds Catholicism to be idolatry. But Catholicism wiU not disappear, and at this rate it can never improve. Dr. Lyon Playfair made an excellent speech the other day on the defects of the Irish schools Ihe limes had an excellent article remonstrating against these schools being treated with a slack indulgence unknown in England against grants without examination and teachers without certificates. But Mr. O'Reilly says that what the Irish ask for is training schools as m England and Scotland, Catholic.training schools there, as there are Protestant training schools here, and aided on just the same terms as the English and Scotch training schools • then we shall be quite ready, says Mr. O'Reilly, to forlgo grants without examination and teachers without certificates And really there is no answering Mr. O'Reilly, supposing the facts to be as they are stated; the Irish have a right to training schools like those m England and Scotland, and it is but fanaticism which retards education in Ireland by refusing them. It is the same thing as to universities for Irish Catholics. Mr Gladstone's Irish University Bill is spoken of as the extremeof concession ever to be offered by England to Irish Catholicism Yet that famous bill was in truth— if one may say so without disrespect to Mr. Gladstone, who had to propound his University Bill Ser the eyes of his Secularist and Nonconformist supporters— simply

ridiculous. Religion, moral philosophy, -and modern history are probably the three matters of instruction in which the bulk of mankind, take most interest, and this precious university was to give no instruction in any one of them ! The Irish have a right to a university with a Catholic faculty of theology, and with Catholic professors of philosophy and history. By refusing them to Ireland our fanaticism does not tend to make one Catholic the less — it only tends to make Irish Catholicism unprogressive. So long as we refuse them, sir, I persist, instead of congratulating myself with the ' Times ' on our admirably fair and wise treatment of Catholicism — I persist in thinking that, where we are put to the test, our treatment of Catholicism is dictated solely by that old friend of ours — strong, steady, honest, well-disposed but withal somewhat narrow-minded and hard-natured — the British Philistine.