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Untitled Article
have not been either miserably neglected , or perverted to the mere purpose of keeping up a priestly domination over a superstitious and ignorant race . But be this as it may , surely it argues a most unaccountable supineness in the Protestants of all ranks and denominations , that this vast field has for so long a period been utterly abandoned by them , and that for centuries no attempt has been made t 6 diffuse among so large a portion of their
countrymen either more correct views of religion , or even the secular , instruction so necessary to increase their usefulness as members of a community professing to be enlightened and civilized . If" worthy successors had risen up to enter upon the labours of Mr . Boyle , and more especially of the excellent and venerable Bishop Bedell , things would not have been as they now are in either of these respects . But by studiously confining all education to the English tongue , in which alone books were printed , the instruction of schools conveyed , or religious worship conducted , the Protestant clergy have wilfully shut themselves out from all connexion with a large majority of the people .
They are the ministers of the higher and more educated classes , and of them alone . Until this state of things is altered , it is in vain to expect that any material impression will be made upon the poor and ignorant peasantry of Ireland , either in a moral or a political point of view . They will not till then take the place to which their numbers and the natural resources of their country would seem to entitle them , in adding to the power and prosperity of the British empire ; they will not till then feel themselves effectually united , not merely by constitutional forms , but in interest , and by the consciousness of reciprocal sympathy and good-will , with the great mass of their nominal countrymen .
We have entered upon these statements , not so much in order to propose or recommend any specific remedy for existing evils , as to call the attention of our readers to a subject of deep interest , whether we regard it as a national question , or as materially affecting the moral and religious welfare of a numerous body of our fellow-men . It is much more easy to point out a different course of policy which , if it had been steadily pursued during the last two centuries , would have placed us in a more desirable situation , than to say what is now to be done to correct the mischiefs of an erroneous system
so long and so pertinaciously acted upon . We are aware that great practical difficulties oppose the establishment of a really beneficial intercourse between the English Protestant clergyman or minister and the Irish Catholic labourer . It is perhaps not much more likely that the one class , taken as a body , will learn Irish , than that the other will learn English ;—in such a manner , we mean , as that either language shall be so spoken and understood by both parties as to fit it for becoming the medium of religious instruction , or of moral persuasion when addressed to the heart and the feelings . Still ,
however , we are persuaded that much might already be done—by the introduction of circulating , and where practicable , as it would be in most of the towns , of local Irish schools ;—by the preparation and extensive distribution of cheap Irish tracts , both of a religious nature , and on the various branches of useful knowledge peculiarly interesting to the poor ;—by the employment of missionaries competent to address the lower orders in their own
language ;—by the establishment of Irish chapels for Protestant religious worship ( not one of which , we believe , at present exists from one end of the island to the other );—by encouraging properly qualified persons , who might probably be found in the more fortunate Celtic districts of Wales and the Highlands of Scotland , to assume this character for the benefit of their brethren in Ireland . If in any of these ways a general thirst for improvement
Untitled Article
254 Anderson ? 's Historical Sketches ofthe Native Irish .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), April 2, 1831, page 254, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2596/page/38/
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