State, and teaching nearly 800,000 pupils; they are supported by model and training schools, and have a large staff of competent teachers; the instruction they afford, if not remarkable, is, on the whole, sufficiently good. It may fairly be said that the National system has been a beneficent influence of the greatest value; light has shone on a people that once sate in darkness. The system, however, has become, insensibly, but greatly, changed; the National Schools have long been, for the most part, sectarian, that is, composed of Protestant or of Catholic children; the 'mixed' schools, as they are called, are comparatively few. But the main principle of the system still is in force; the instruction given in the schools, when the pupils sit together, is strictly secular; and this is secured by a conscience clause; the Bible cannot be read, in school hours, even in a Protestant school; no Catholic school can have a Catholic emblem. The religious instruction given in the schools is hardly what it ought to be, especially in the case of the Protestant schools; it must be added that the hope of their founders that they would bridge over the gulf of discords in Ireland has not been, in the slightest degree, realised. The Irish are, naturally, a religious people; their history, a long conflict of races and faiths, has, necessarily, made them intensely sectarian. The system of education, of which I have traced the outlines, was certainly not well designed for them; it would have been severely condemned by Burke, the deepest of thinkers on the affairs of Ireland. And though the National system has had a real measure of success, it owes this, in the main, to the immense subvention it receives from the State; it has little or no support from voluntary aid; an attempt to impose an education rate on Ireland would be a failure, would not improbably wreck the system. Nor is this in harmony with genuine Irish sentiment; one of the most conclusive proofs is that National education has become, to a great extent, sectarian; the 'Christian Brothers' and the 'Church Education Society' schools, sustained by voluntary effort alone, and overweighted in the race by the endowed schools of the State, show how strong is Irish sectarian feeling. The clergy, too, of the late Established Church, and a considerable body of their communion, remain hostile to the National Schools; and though the Catholic priesthood have made them, to a great extent, their own, and avail themselves of the advantages they afford, they are hardly in heartfelt sympathy with them. Nor can it be denied that the conscientious objections to the National system have real weight; the system, if not irreligious, is, we may say, neutral; it does not make religion an essential part of school life. It would, nevertheless, I believe, be exceedingly unwise to disturb a system which, on the whole, has for many years had excellent results in Ireland.