Introduction.

Statecraft, old and new,

in relation to Education.

Direct provision for Education, and comprehensive control of its aims and processes, became a well-defined branch of State policy in Continental Europe between 1770 and 1800. In many of the countries concerned, this function was brought into prominence by the consequences of the suppression of the Jesuit Order, gradually achieved between 1759 and 1773. The Prussian Royal Decrees of 1788 and 1794, and the various legislative acts in France from 1791 to 1798, marked the assumption of comprehensive control. In these decisions there was implicit the duty of making adequate financial provision for all grades of Education. The duty was fulfilled betimes as regards University and General Secondary Education, and (in many Continental States) in certain branches of Industrial and Technical Training. But it was not till 1870 that the greater Powers could be said to have provided even substantial help, in money, for primary education—a partial, not a complete provision. They were far more ready to promote or repress policies in Education, than to face the financial burden of the task they claimed as their

own.

Indeed it may be said that the use of Education as an instrumentum regni can be traced in the expressed views of statesmen in various countries long before 1770, though it was seldom reduced to act. M. Hanotaux has pointed out that it is found in more than one passage of the "political testament "political testament" of Richelieu; and Richelieu, Bacon, and Bismarck were at one in recognising the danger to the State from what the last-named called the Abiturienten-proletariat, the over-production of an educated class for which appropriate employment is not provided within a State. The claims which are latent in such observations were stated in a masterful and drastic way by Plato, who represents the Visitor to Athens, in the Statesman (308 ff.), as maintaining that "Statecraft, in its natural and genuine form, will first examine the characters of children in play, and then hand them over to those who can educate

them, and who are Servitors of the State in achieving her aims; the State herself will give directions, and supervise their execution. Statecraft is supreme over all lawful educators and tutors. Having this royal authority, she will not permit them to give such training as will yield characters unfitted to the political model she desires to produce, but will urge them to mould only such as will suit it.... Those who are perverse in nature, she will get rid of by death, exile, and utter degradation; those who are ignorant and base she will reduce to slavery; those out of whom (if they are educated) something of distinction can be made, this royal art moulds and fashions. ...This we hold to be the finished state of the web of political activity."

Unification through Education, applied in Ireland.

The policy here outlined by Plato, and summarised later on by Aristotle in the distinction drawn between politics as a 'mastercraft,' and economics with education as 'subordinate arts,' has been fully exemplified in the history of Education in Ireland down to the present day. To no small extent, however, this policy has resulted in the conferring of educational means for one end, and their use, by those who received them, for other ends; even though a philosopher may hold that a given constitution demands an education in conformity with it.' Where and when this was the case, the State came to recognise that its coercive policy in education had proved on the whole a failure, a conviction that can be read in parts of the Report of 1791, more explicitly in the proceedings of 1808-12, and almost fully in the programme laid down for itself by the 'Kildare Place Society,' which, founded in 1811-13, began to receive State Grants, on its own terms, in 1816.

Numberless expressions of that governmental purpose might be cited from incidental phrases used by leading persons engaged in the management of Ireland; it received full and final form in the Review of the first ten years of the Working of the Charter Schools, 1744 (Documents II. A). It was nowhere more neatly formulated than in the "Book set down by the Archbishop of Cashel (Miler McGrath) by her Majesty's express command, declaring the state of Ireland" (May 30, 1592). That crafty personage, who knew well what Queen Elizabeth desired, proposed "to inquire of all

schoolmasters and public teachers, and their manner of teaching and religion, and to place and displace them for the good of the present State": even Plato's Visitor to Athens could not have devised apter words. More than a century later, a Parliamentary letter from Dublin to Sir John Percival, M.P., later first Earl of Egmont, expresses the same design (October 16, 1703): "The statutes of 28 Henry VIII. and in Queen Elizabeth's reign are enacted to be put in execution...By this means it was hoped that Popish children might, by resorting to English schools and learning the English tongue, be brought to see the errors and blindness of their predecessors. From my observation I can say that many dioceses in Ireland have not the schools intended by the Acts; that Popish schoolmasters have been suppressed, and none to instruct the youth in their room...I should humbly hope that the Irish youth may soon have English habit, and in one or two generations be true sticklers for the Protestant Church and Interest" (Egmont MSS., Hist. MSS. Comm. II. 213-14). The writer, it may be noted, unites in his expression of hope the phraseology of Tudor legislation and the party cry of the English Colony in Ireland in the eighteenth century.

Even at the close of the whole period, the language of commendation of the State policy is still clear and emphatic. To Mr. Secretary Orde, addressing the Colonial House of Commons (1787), "there was something of policy as well as of charity in the institution of parish schools; a policy, however, of most excellent tendency, and worthy of being perpetuated"; and again, "the great schools in England, and her universities, will, I trust, still be frequented by very many of the first families of this kingdom...thereby to draw the two countries still closer...in assimilating their manners and habits," while "every endeavour should be used to bring instructors from some of the great schools in England." To the Commissioners of 1788-91, The Protestant Charter Schools were a "public institution,...long and justly the favourite of the public, and the object of great national encouragement." The Commission which dealt with Schools in the years 1808-12 declared it “of essential importance to exclude, in any "new Establishments for the education of the lower classes in Ireland," the fundamental principle on which the Charter Schools were based but yet warmly and sincerely applauded" the pious and patriotic efforts " of those who established them, and could not "but recommend the Institution as deserving the continuance of that Legislative patronage and support which

it has so long enjoyed." And one of its members, Richard Lovell Edgeworth, added a special expression of his opinion that the education of children in these schools is efficacious, practical, free from bigotry, and in every respect such as to put it beyond the reach of private defamation and public censure.' Even to Grattan (1811) "schools which teach the English language, should not attempt to teach the English religion, because the Catholics who would resort to our schools to learn the one, will keep aloof if we attempt to make them proselytes to the other; and we should, by that attempt, lose one great means of uniting our people."

These quotations will be sufficient to show that in the closing years of the Colonial Parliament in Dublin, and in the early years of the Union Parliament, leading administrators summed up and defined the whole policy of the State in the past, gave it a final and decisive approval, and regretfully put it aside. The documents in which these judgments find expression are deserving of thorough examination, as is also the extent, unparalleled at the time in Europe or America, to which the Governors of Ireland gave monetary support to that policy.

Value of the Report of 1791. (Documents, II. B).

The Commission of Inquiry which worked from 1788 to 1791, resulted in no definite educational enactment: indeed its only outcome seems to have been the resolutions of good intention which passed the Colonial House of Commons in 1799. But the Report drawn up by John Hely Hutchinson, who was at once Chief Secretary of State, and Provost of Trinity College, gives with its Appendices a valuable summary and criticism of the whole policy of the State in Education since 1536. It has therefore been reprinted almost in full, with the projected new types of schools, sketched on lines. much the same as those urged by Thomas Orde in 1787, and then voted unanimously, save for one dissentient on the proposed second University in Ireland. The use made by the Commission of John Howard's investigations, and their severe comments on the Diocesan and Royal Schools as well as on the Charter Schools, make this lengthy document a record of exceptional importance. No such complete survey of an educational system, at the date of the report, can be pointed to either in English-speaking countries or even on the

Continent. It has never appeared in print, except in the documents appended to the evidence taken by the Commission of 1856-1858: the volume which contains it is, of course, out of the reach of even special students of the History of Education.

The financial sections of the Report are exceptionally useful and thorough but they are chiefly confined to a statement of the revenues of the various types of schools at the time when Provost Hely Hutchinson made out the Report. They can be supplemented by the official record of Imperial expenditure on Education in Ireland (1806-10). But it will also be advisable to attempt to state, in a summary way, the relation of the State to the financial side of Education, since the initiating Acts of 1536 and 1570: the issues so raised throw valuable light on the history of educational finance in Europe, and on the general history of Ireland.

Financial provision for Education, by the State in Ireland.

The stages of organisation, which the educational policy of the State in Ireland exhibits, are in the main as follows: (1) English parish schools, 1537; (2) Diocesan Grammar Free Schools, 1570, with the Royal Free Schools, 1608-1629, and urban Grammar Schools ; (3) The 'English College near Dublin' (Trinity College), 1592 ; (4) The English Protestant Schools' (Charter Schools), beginning as a non-official system, but promoted by official personages, then chartered by the Crown, and financed from the revenues of the State (1733-1744); (5) the expansion of State aid to educational organisations (1791-1816).

The provision for the support of these various types of schools, and for the University near Dublin, was very varied. (1) The earliest English Parish Schools were provided for by a special tax on beneficed clergy of the Established Church, and by a school-fee system which the text of the Act of 1537 shows to have been already in existence. (2) The Diocesan Grammar Schools were similarly maintained, under the Act of 1570, by a levy on the higher and inferior clergy of each diocese in the State Church and it is significant that the first 'Schools Bill' was rejected, under Poyning's Act, by the English Privy Council, on March 18, 1569, apparently because the proposed source of financial support was by it to be the whole shire,' and not the Church revenues. It is obvious that Queen Elizabeth, being