“His Majesty’s present government are of opinion that no private society deriving a part, however small, of their annual income from private sources, and only made the channel of the munificence of the legislature, without being subject to any direct responsibility, could adequately and satisfactorily accomplish the end proposed; and while they do full justice to the liberal views with which that society was originally instituted, they cannot but be sensible that one of its leading principles was calculated to defeat its avowed objects, as experience has subsequently proved that it has. The determination to enforce in all their schools the reading of the Holy Scriptures without note or comment, was undoubtedly taken with the purest motives; with the wish at once to connect religious with moral and literary education, and at the same time not to run the risk of wounding the peculiar feelings of any sect, by catechetical instruction, or comments which might tend to subjects of polemical controversy. But it seems to have been overlooked, that the principles of the Roman catholic church (to which, in any system intended for general diffusion throughout Ireland, the bulk of the pupils must necessarily belong) were totally at variance with this principle; and that the indiscriminate reading of the Holy Scriptures without note or comment, by children, must be peculiarly obnoxious to a church which denies, even to adults, the right of unaided private interpretation of the sacred volume, with respect to articles of religious belief.” “Shortly after its institution, although the society prospered and extended its operations under the fostering care of the legislature, this vital defect began to be noticed; and the Roman catholic clergy began to exert themselves with energy and success against a system to which they were on principle opposed, and which they feared might lead in its results to proselytism, even although no such object were contemplated by its promoters. When this opposition arose, founded on such grounds, it soon became manifest that the system could not become one of national education.”