The Commissioners have given you such explanations as have satisfied her Majesty's ministers. You have not deemed it prudent to communicate those explanations to me, for the satisfaction of that most moderate portion of the clergy upon whose behalf I had made my application. If I had been made acquainted with their answer, I should have been happy to have corrected any error into which I might have fallen, or any misconstruction into which the ambiguity of their rules might have led me, or to have retracted any unjust accusations I might have drawn. I consider it, however, to be my duty to give them an opportunity of justifying their proceedings.

The introduction of the Rules of 1843 was involved in obscurity. We considered that the principle upon which the Commission had been established-their uniform practice-and the practice of succeeding administrations, as well as the words of the parliamentary grant-did make it necessary that their rules, or changes of rules, should be sanctioned by government, otherwise, we apprehend that the same uncontrolled authority which could make, could also rescind rules.

You remark that "the alterations which have been made in the School rules are consistent with the spirit of the original institution, and have been rendered necessary by defects which experience has disclosed." I am happy to hear the latter part of this your opinion, and I adopt it. You further state, that we have "admitted that these modifications are not such as justly to excite the jealousy of Protestants, whether Presbyterians or members of the Established Church."

We do admit this, and in my letter to you, I even stated that these rules afforded an opening for securing the co-operation of the Established Church; and I proposed to adopt them (with some slight amendments) as the basis of our agreement. But we found in the proceedings and reports of the Board, most cogent reasons for requiring security for the permanence and extension of those rules; for the Commissioners not only held in their hands the power of withdrawing those indulgences in a summary manner, at any moment, from any individual School, but they had also prepared machinery for superseding those rules altogether. I am not bringing charges-I am stating facts from their own printed documents. Those indulgent rules were confined to Schools not vested, which at present are three-fourths of their number; but in Schools towards the building of which they grant aid, and which are vested in them by deed, the old and obnoxious rules, (" alterations of which," you justly say, "were rendered necessary by defects which experience has disclosed,") are bound upon the patrons under heavy penalties, and the new rules superseded. The Commissioners in their printed documents state that it is their intention, whensoever they shall have sufficient funds, to build as many Schoolhouses as shall be sufficient for their system. Accordingly as these Schools shall be built, and when all shall have been built, and consequently all vested in them by deed, the other non-vested Schools, and the new rules, will be altogether superseded, and amongst others the Presbyterian Schools.

Therefore I required that the new rules which the Commissioners themselves established, and of which her Majesty's ministers now express their approval, should be extended to the Schools vested by deed, instead of the old rules which her Majesty's ministers so justly condemn. Their determination gradually and entirely to withdraw those modifications, is what "justly excites our jealousy," and not the modifications themselves.

These were the reasons which obliged us so closely to examine their proceedings, and so strongly to bring them under the attention of her Majesty's government.

We printed our statement for the convenience of procuring the requisite number of copies. I had received the Lord Lieutenant's letter, repudiating, on the part of ministers, any negociation, on the first of November last ; our statement was not printed until towards the close of that month, on the last day of which I sent copies to the Lord Lieutenant and to Lord Eliot, and immediately afterwards to the Archbishop of Dublin. It was marked "Not Published," and I stated to his Excellency that I did not intend to publish it, "unless failure (which I did not anticipate) should oblige me.”

One primary object of National Education is the union of children of different persuasions in the same school; I have had many years experience of the beneficial effects of employing Protestants and Roman Catholics indiscriminately together. I have employed both together in great numbers, as well in some parts of Ireland where Protestants were the majority, as in

others where Roman Catholics preponderated; I treated both in the same manner, and I have seen the blessed results of antipathies and prejudices being obliterated, and of mutual kindly feelings being substituted: I never knew of a quarrel taking place among them on religious grounds. If such harmony could be so easily produced among adults, simply by bringing them together, how much more easy would it be among children! This also I have had the pleasure of witnessing in schools established and managed by myself.

The National system has hitherto failed in producing such united education. In the schools of Roman Catholic priests there are scarely any Protestants, and in the Presbyterian schools very few Roman Catholics; the clergy and laity of the Established Church are the persons from whose exertions we have the best hope of seeing such united education extensively operating.

I am sorry to have so much occupied your time; I am not so presumptuous as to expect to make any change in the decision of government twice given, nor do I expect any answer to this letter; but, in my own justification, I was anxious to avail myself of probably this last occasion of my having the privilege of addressing you upon this subject, to state the reasons which obliged me and the Archdeacon of Meath to submit to you our views of the proceedings of the Board of National Education.

I lament that her Majesty's ministers have thought fit to reject the co-operation of the most moderate portion of the clergy, whose number, by the granting of

our most reasonable requests, would have been greatly increased. You have not only refused their cooperation, but you have refused to exercise any control over the Commissioners of National Education; you have established for the first time the principle of their making and altering their rules without the leave or consent of government; and you have given them absolute power over the management of the National funds for Education.

You once more refer me and my clergy to the Commissioners; but their former repulsive refusal to give any explanation, does not hold out much encouragement to me to renew the attempt, and I fear that the new position in which they are placed, will still more disincline the clergy from becoming suitors to the Board.

It now only remains for me to report your answer to those by whom I was commissioned to make the application-the clergy of the diocese of Meath, and to a number of others, who were anxiously awaiting the result.

I have the honour to be,

Sir,

Your very faithful and obliged Servant,

EDWARD MEATH.

The Rt. Hon. Sir James Graham, Bart., Secretary of State for the Home Department.

Printed by Thomas I. White, 45, Fleet Street.