be able to point out to those who may look up to him for guidance, the rocks and the quick-sands upon which they must be wrecked, if the counsel of the unprincipled demagogue were to be adopted. Sedition would lose her best drill segreants; and a sound conservative policy would gain an accession of invaluable adherents, by whose aid, humanly speaking, the wicked devices of the adversary would be counteracted, and all things would be made "to work together for good." Is not this an end which a wise and righteous government should hold in view? and is not the mode of accomplishing it which we have pointed out, once, cheap, and simple, and efficacious?

at

If we could once impress upon our governors, with respect to national education, that their duty consists, simply, in supplying its deficiencies and correcting its defects, almost every thing else might be safely left to the voluntary exertions of individuals, or of bodies of men, who have engaged in the cause from motives of Christian benevolence. They would, abundantly, supply, all that was necessary in the way of elementary, if the government only took care to furnish what might be wanting in the way of complete and thorough education. But, in this respect, even our Universities do not do their duty. We hold, that these seminaries for the education of the upper classes, ought to have the course of study so regulated, as that no one could arrive at the honors of a degree, who was not to a certain extent imbued with the philosophy of legislation; at least, upon the important subjects which, in our day, so intimately concern the wellbeing of society, and so frequently challenge the attention of the statesman. Were this the case, our public men would not so often be disqualified, by gross ignorance, from tampering with matters of such high concern, or, only tampering with them to the serious, and in some instances, irreparable detriment of the public weal. What gross ignorance prevails, for instance, respecting the nature, the grounds, the claims, the privileges, and the duties of an established church? By how many is it regarded as a mere circumstance of state, only not to be got rid of, because other more valuable interests may be involved in its destruction? By how many is it viewed with aversion and contempt, as being in itself so unreasonble and so odious, that they cannot too earnestly endea

vour to accomplish its extinction? By how many is it passively endured, from habit; or coldly approved from some low calculation of its merely political advantages? We are very sure that the case does not differ now very widely from what it was in the days of unhappy Charles. Lord Faulkland, we think it was, who observed, when he saw the enemies of the Church impatient and unremitting and clamorous in their hostility, while its friends were timid and backward and negligent in their defence of it, that "those who hated the clergy, hated them worse than the devil, while those who loved them did not love them so well as their dinner." The very same would be the case with any similar contest at the present day. Dissent, and irreligion, and infidelity, and sedition, and republicanism, and ignorance, and the love of change, and that spirit which prompts men to speak evil of dignities, would contend, with fearful odds, against those by whom our national establishment would be defended. The former would be united by a spirit by which their differences would be merged in one combined effort for the accomplishment of their common object. latter, even if they were not distracted by division, by which their co-operation would be marred, would yet be so weak from want of thorough knowledge and grounded principle, as to render their opposition unavailing. God grant that we may not be called upon to fight the battle, until we can fight it to more advantage!

The

And yet, the late discussion on the Church Rates Bill, gives one a hope, that our venerable Church has a hold in the affections of the people. In the House, indeed, its friends were outnumbered; but, by a very small majority -a majority so small that it was felt as a defeat ; while, out of doors, such a feeling was exhibited, as renders it very probable that many who then arrayed themselves on the side of ministers, may not, in the event of a new election, find their way back to parliament again. We, therefore, cherish a hope, that the Church of England will outride the present storm, as even treacherous pilotage has not been able as yet, to wreck it, under circumstances which would seem almost to ensure its destruction. And if only our Universities did their duty in making its excellencies known to the upper classes, as they are felt by the middle and the humbler classes, it would not long be without those who might "meet its

enemies in the gate," by whom their "knavish tricks" would be promptly exposed, and their malicious devices effectually counteracted.

It is not by penal laws, or by exclusive privileges, that we would seek to fortify our Church. A thorough acquaintance with its character and principles, on the part of those to whom the destinies of the nation are entrusted, is all that would be necessary for its preservation. We will here express no opinion respecting the admission of dissenters to degrees in the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge. Constituted, indeed, as these venerable institutions are, it might more properly be called the admission of dissent, as an element of collegiate government. But if the course of education to which all students, without exception, should necessarily submit, and in which they were required to make a suitable proficiency, was such as to embrace an acquaintance with the doctrine and the discipline of our Church, its correspondence with ecclesiastical antiquity, and its substantial conformity with the judgment of the apostles themselves, as we may collect it from the holy Scriptures, we are very well persuaded, that if a knowledge of our creeds and formularies, for the promotion of piety, our rules and regulations for the maintenance of discipline, and our laws and ordinances for the perpetuation, in its integrity, of the faith once delivered to the saints, were uncompromisingly insisted on, and efficaciously communicated, more would be done by it to dissipate dissent, than dissenters could accomplish to overthrow the establishment, by any abuse of collegiate advantages.

And, if such a regulation were enforced, what grievance could be pretended? Dissenters might still, if they pleased, dissent. All that would be required is this. that they should dissent upon knowledge, and not from ignorance. Would that, indeed, be a great hardship? Surely, if their dissent is well founded, they have nothing to fear from the most thorough and searching examination. And if it be ill founded, they cannot desire that it should be maintained. It cannot, surely, be a ground of serious complaint, that they are required at most to know that from which they profess to dissent. Indeed

it would be very difficult to say, how they could dissent from that which they do not know. And, if the grievance be that they are permitted to dissent from their own dissent, when a profounder acquaintance with the subject has convinced them that they were in error; that is a grievance which it is in their own power either to endure or to remedy, according as they are heedful of, or inattentive to, the dictates of conscience.

It is our belief that nothing but a candid and thorough examination of the subject would be necessary to convince all competent minds of the necessity for a church establishment; and, this truth being once admitted, the Church-of-England Christian has no reason to fear that the system to which he has attached himself will suffer by a comparison with any other. It is the privilege of that system that it is open to the improvement of the age, and that our rulers are free to recommend and to introduce such changes, the integrity of the faith being guarded, as may conduce to the more complete accomplishment of the end for which it was established. Of course, changes will not be made merely from a changeful spirit. The heady and the intemperate, the fantastical and the extravagant, will not be encouraged to denude or to disfigure it, although the grave and the learned may not be forbidden to suggest such modifications as, without departing from its spirit, or compromising its principles, may increase its utility and extend its borders. But of this we are well persuaded, that the wisest men will ever be the slowest to tamper with the ordinances or to encourage any innovation upon the practice of an institution, which is not more remarkable for its correspondence with ecclesiastical antiquity, than for its accommodation to full-grown human

nature.

"To attain the temperate medium between superstition and enthusiasm-to provide for all religious wants, without ministering to any fanatical extravagance

to secure the alliance between what is rational and what is spiritual, that sound doctrine may be subservient to calm and exalted piety, and religion be fixed upon a sustained and unprecarious elevationthese seem to be the great desiderata in any system of national Christianity which

aims at so embodying scriptural truths in its devotional observances, as that they may become deeply and extensively and permanently influential upon the hearts aud minds of those to whom they are

or

conveyed; and it is to the profoundest thinkers we would most confidently appeal for the truth of this position, that a system of liturgical piety is scarcely conceivable, in which these advantages could be more fully attained, than they are, at present, by the forms of sound words which constitute the services of our establishment. In almost every other system, either the affections are sacrificed to the cold unenlightened abstract reason, the reason is sacrificed to passion and enthusiasm; or the incubus of superstition broods in gloomy predominance over the moral and intellectual nature of its votary. But, in the services of the established church, cordial piety is so made to conspire with wholesome doctrine, that the most exalted devotion and the most sublime philosophy may be truly said to meet and kiss each other.' It is no small tribute to its unrivalled excellence, that, in many cases, those sects which at their outset were readiest to disparage them, have, when the fever of fanaticism had subsided, returned to them as from husks

which might fill but could not satisfy, practically acknowledging that they contained wholesome spiritual food, and that, in departing from them, they were but hewing out unto themselves cisterns which held no water."

Now, what is our object in thus enlarging upon these things? Simply this; to show that the clergy of such an institute as our establishment, are just the very body that ought to be entrusted with the superintendence of national education; and that, even if it were not provided, by express enactment, that, as the guardians of public morals, they should be clothed with that responsibility, there would be a moral fitness in selecting them for such a purpose, that could not be pleaded, in the same degree, on the part of any other class of professing Christians. If our ministers only do their duty, the distinction between dissent and establishment, as they both exist in the British empire, will be so clear, that those who run may read it; and it would lay the foundation of that preference to which the one is entitled above the other, in such a work as the conduct of national education, upon grounds so convincing, that no one could fail to see their force, and by

VOL. X.

no one could their reasonableness be resisted.

*Systems of dissent may be tolerated as long as they do not interfere with the ends of good government, and when they cerity, which manifests itself by the clearly arise out of a pure religious sinsacrifices and privations which are necessary for their support and adoption. But no further encouragement should be given to them. The legislature should act upon the principle, that these eccentric movements in the religious world have all a tendency to rectify themselves; and, satisfied with having adopted and established that which is best, and which alone is nection with our national institutions, he calculated to subsist in permanent conshould patiently await the mellowing influence of time in allaying the bitterness of hostility, and rest satisfied that long after the disappearance of those meteors, which, to the inexperienced, portended its overthrow, its mild and steady effulgence will still beam from on high, and be as the shining light, that shineth more and more unto the perfect day.' In truth, the one depends upon its intrinsic excellency, its deeply seated accommodation to the nature of man, and its subserviency degree, his moral powers and capacities. to the purpose of educating, in the highest

The others arise out of individual character, and derive their principal support from the prevalence of some erroneous notion or fantastical prejudice, which happens to be epidemic for a season.

Opinionum commenta delet dies, nature judicia confirmat.' And every degree of encouragement, beyond the limits of a liberal toleration, which the opinionum commenta' in religious matters, receive, has a tendency only to confirm and render fixed, an evil that would otherwise have been but temporary. In other words, it has a tendency to convert

an acute into a chronic disease. If we leave dissenting congregations to themselves, they will naturally expire, and those who belonged to them will again become connected with the establishment. In whatever degree we give them encouragement, we furnish them with both the motive and the means for continuing in existence long after the causes to which they have owed their origin have ceased

to be influential."

have not taken sufficient pains to imbue the minds of those entrusted to their care, with right notions upon this important subject. Had they done so, it would not be the only subject upon which a degree of ignorance has been exhibited, of which we are at a loss to say whether it is more dangerous or disgraceful. The causes of this great defect in college education, lie, we might almost say, upon the surface. They consist in the great ascendancy which the physical and mathematical, have obtained above the moral sciences, in the estimation of the heads of our universities. To be a great mathematician or astronomer, is now a surer passport to the highest station in the profession of a divine, than almost any eminence which he could attain, either for practical excellence as a clergyman, or professional learning as a theologian. But no attainments in theology would serve to put him in the professor's chair, either of geology, botany, or natural philosophy. Why? Because the latter are duly cherished, and the former is most unwisely neglected; and this is the reason why those who are to be our future legislators, are suffered to enter the senate house, with minds that may be said to be, by what has been done for them, only "swept and garnished," for the entrance and possession of every crude notion and fantastical prejudice, upon moral sub jects, by which their fancies may be caught, and which may actuate them in the support of measures by which the church and the monarchy may be endangered.

And the real question at present is, into what hands is education to be entrusted? Sectarians naturally desire to have it conducted in such a way as may best answer their ends; Roman Catholics, as it best may answer their ends; and the clergy of the established church, as it may best harmonise with the ends of its institution, which are the moral and political well being of society, and the best interests, temporal and eternal, of intellectual and cultivated man. In Ireland, we believe, the community may, in this respect, be divided into Protestants and Roman Catholics; and the practical question really is whether education is to be, to all intents and purposes, taken out of the hands of the one, and put into the hands of the other; whether the policy which dictated the enactment of Henry the Eighth is or is not, to be directly reversed, and the power of a

British government is, or is not, to be employed in the maintenance of a systemi which can only serve to cherish national antipathies and to perpetuate Romish superstition. This is, in reality, the simple question which our legislators have to decide; and, as far as the constitution of the present board may be approved of, they must, in our judgment, be considered as having decided it against that view of the subject which alone is politic, and which alone is enlightened.

Napoleon, whose moral and political intuitions were sometimes as extraordinary as his military genius was transcendant, has strongly expressed his opinion, that no system of education is worthy of being called national, or of receiving the patronage of the state, which is not so conducted as to generate a love for the national institutions. Assuredly none would be by him deemed wise, the necessary effect of which was to cherish a prejudice against them. It may, obviously, be so conducted as to propagate infidelity or become an ally to treason. There never was a greater error than that which supposes that education, as such, implies moralization. It may imply the very contrary. We are far from admitting, that, before the establishment of the various institutions to which we have already alluded, there was no such thing as education in Ireland. Elementary instruction was, even then, very extensively conveyed, by means of what were called the "hedge schools," but in such a way as almost always to cause a depravation of morals on the part of those by whom it was received, which rarely suffered them to become good citizens or good subjects. And so it must be in all cases where proper precautions are not taken, that the moral shall bear a certain relation to the intellectual light, and where due correctives are not supplied, to obviate the pernicious effects which might arise from a surfeit of the unripe fruits of the tree of knowledge.

"Education is, to the lower orders, very like the boon which Eolus conferred upon Ulysses, viz.: a bag containing the elements of storms. As long as it remained in the safe keeping of its wise and discreet master, it enabled him to proceed in his course rejoicing; but, when he fell asleep, and the sailors in their folly, untied the silver bands that bound it, it disclosed, from its pregnant womb, tempests and hurricanes which well nigh buried them in the deep. Even so it will

be with the education of the lower orders of the Irish, if it be not safely managed and properly superintended. It is not so much the expansive power by which they might dilate their energies that is wanting, as the controlling and regulating power by which these energies might be compressed and directed. At present they are exposed to the influence of excessive and preternatural excitation. Every thing is done to stimulate, and but little to steady them. The stranger, to use a homely phrase, has been suffered to get into their heads; and, if the overruling providence of God do not, in some extraordinary way, interfere to prevent it, everything seems quietly preparing for a moral earthquake, by which society will be shaken to its centre, but which is, perhaps, the only thing that could disturb the complacency of modern education-mongers, or scatter their hallucination."

Nor is it the wisdom to foresee these consequences, that is altogether wanting, so much as the honesty to take proper precautions against them. The education question, which was mooted by Protestants from motives of benevolence, has been taken up by papists and liberals for purposes of faction, and is now resorted to, by an unprincipled government, more with a view to the support which they may receive from others, by whom their existence as a ministry may be prolonged, than with any serious reference to those more enlarged and more important considerations that are so closely connected with it.

Therefore it is, that the Irish Protestants are likely to witness a practical reversal of the judgment of Solomon. The child of their tears and love, for whom they would have so anxiously provided, according to the measure of their ability, is to be wrested from them, and entrusted to the safe keeping of the fiendly impostor, who, if she does not manifest her jealous hatred in depriving it of life, it will only be because that hatred may be more completely gratified by the lingering misery of a more protracted vengeance. She will take very good care, that education, which was intended to be a blessing, shall prove a curse; and, that the in

strumentality which was provided, by Protestant benevolence, for the purpose of increasing knowledge and diffusing moral and religious light, shall, when it may not be made subservient to the promotion of popery, at least be instrumental in the propagation of sedition.

We have adverted to the good done by the Kildare-place Society in banishing from circulation the pestilent publications, which, before the existence of that body, were so abundant in Ireland. They also did good service, in supplanting, to a certain degree, the race of schoolmasters who, at that time, wielded the ferule in the "hedge schools," and contributed not a little to the disorders of the country, both by precept and example. Now, it is our conviction, that the system of the Education Board has a tendency to cause a re-absorption into the Irish body politic of the poisonous or peccant humours which have been thus expelled. The priests, it will not be denied, will, in the great majority of cases, have the patronage of the schools, and they will employ that patronage so as to promote their own creatures. Instances of this gross abuse of power, on their parts, have already been authenticated before the public, and we wait with some impatience for the publication of the evidence taken before the parliamentary committees at present sitting,, for a detail of facts connected with the subject, by which the thorough-going partizans of the board, have been confounded, and its friends, who are entitled to the character of candid and moderate, compelled to acknowledge that the experiment has been unsuccessful. But, if we are right in affirming that its tendency has been, and must be, to reintroduce into profitable employment in the business of Irish school teaching, "the pestilent fellows and the movers of sedition," which the Kildare-place Society and the Association for Discountenancing Vice receive credit, from the parliamentary commissioners, for causing to disappear from the land,the experiment will not only not have succeeded, but will have realised, to a deplorable extent, the very evil which it was intended to remedy, and for the