Irish National Education System Policy Excluding the Bible

The Irish National Education System Policy Excluding the Bible is criticized in the tract as a government-funded alternative to Bible-based education in Ireland. The author argues that public provision without Scripture interrupted a developing educational effort and particularly disadvantaged Roman Catholics, for whom the Bible was thereby less accessible. He places the policy within a wider warning against compromising religious principles for the sake of institutional convenience or apparent usefulness.

The Educational Alternative

The tract describes Bible education as already advancing through the efforts of the London Hibernian Society, supported by Christian commitment in Ireland and elsewhere. In the author’s view, without government interference this work could, within a short time, have brought Bible-based education to every part of the country. He contends that clerical opposition would not have kept people away from schools where the Bible was read and committed to memory.

Government funding, however, made it possible to provide education without the Bible. The criticism is therefore not simply that the state failed to support an existing religious project: its resources enabled a competing arrangement that, the author argues, displaced the Bible from schooling. The proposed alternative and the policy’s effect are presented as opposing educational paths, one joining instruction to Scripture and the other making instruction available without it.

Unequal Effects

The author distinguishes the policy’s consequences for Protestants and Roman Catholics. He says its chief harm was not to Protestants, who had the Bible in their homes, but to Roman Catholics, who were kept from the Bible by an educational system that excluded it. This distinction makes access to Scripture, rather than educational provision alone, the measure by which he evaluates the system.

The tract does not claim that the policy permanently closed the possibility of access. It presents the door as shut for a time, while maintaining that the eventual availability of education could prepare people to read the Scriptures when circumstances changed. The author compares this unintended preparation to a rebel learning a military exercise before returning to allegiance: instruction acquired for one immediate purpose might later be used in service of another.

Principle and Providence

The policy is also part of the tract’s broader argument that a beneficial outcome cannot make a prohibited or compromised means right. In discussing religious institutions, the author rejects the reasoning that departures from divine commands are justified whenever they appear to advance a useful cause. He treats the educational arrangement as an instance of this tension between institutional means and religious principle, rather than assuming that expanded schooling by itself proves the arrangement sound.

At the same time, he interprets the policy’s effects through providence: a door may be closed temporarily, but its opening remains within God's power, and even an educational system that excludes the Bible may unintentionally prepare the way for later reading of Scripture. This does not amount to approval of the policy. The tract keeps human responsibility and providential outcome distinct, criticizing the exclusion while allowing that circumstances produced under it may later serve a different purpose.