Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: Part ra THE COMMUNITIES OF IRELAND, BELGIUM AND HOLLAND. CHRISTIAN BROTHERS OF IRELAND (1802) The history of the education of the Catholic people of Ireland during the century preceding their emancipation, is a record of a mighty and incessant struggle to throw off the shackles of repression and bigotry that thwarted their educational progress. To the iniquitous penal laws may be ascribed the almost general illiteracy and misery which prevailed among the great bulk of the Irish people during the two centuries in which this code of restriction was enforced. Its direct object, according to Lecky, was " to reduce the Catholics to a condition of the most extreme and brutal ignorance." And again: "The legislation on the subject of Catholic education may be briefly described, for it amounted simply to universal, unqualified and unlimited proscription."221 "Education —at least the elementary— was in consequence mostly confined to two sources, that of the priest, and the "hedge" schoolmaster, both of whom, too, were in constant danger of forfeiting their life while in the exercise of this function.222 Toward the latter part of the eighteenth century the enforcement of the penal code somewhat abated, and Catholics could breathe more freely. Gradually new laws were enacted allowing more and more liberty in educational matters.223 Schools were opened, and multiplied rapidly. However, nearly all of them were pay-schools, and only the well-to-do or middle-class could avail themselves of the opportunity. By far the greater mass of the people, the poor, were left pretty much to shift for themselves and to obtain knowledge as best they could.224 mLecky (as quoted in the Catholic Encyclopedia, Vol. XIII, 576). ™Ct. Thebaud, Rev. Aug. J., S. J., The Irish Race in the Past and Pre...