Appendix L.

Additions by Rev. Dr. Bryce, Belfast.

The historical portion of this pamphlet, having been read at Educational meetings, has attracted the attention of the Rev. Dr. R. J. Bryce of Belfast. In a letter which appeared in the Educational News of the 24th March, he gives some most interesting notes of his share in the early attempts to found Chairs of Education in the Scottish and Irish Universities. With his kind permission, the greater portion of the letter is here reproduced.

"In 1828," he says, "I published a pamphlet,¹ in one section of which I advocated at length the view, so eloquently set forth by Dugald Stewart and his successor, that education ought to be reduced to a science founded on the philosophy of the mind, and urged that Chairs should be established in the Universities to teach it. The work of my friend, Professor Pillans, to which Mr. Ross referred, and which advocates the same view more briefly, was published at the same time, neither of us being aware that the other was writing on the subject. This coincidence of view led to more frequent communication between us personally and by letter, which ripened our acquaintance into intimacy. My pamphlet was sent by a common friend to the late Lord Brougham (then Mr. Brougham), whose warm and generous praise of it induced me to call on him the next time I was in London (1830). I found that he had been thinking long and page 61 earnestly on the subject, and had gone into it far more profoundly than any man I had ever spoken to. In fact, he was the only statesman I ever conversed with, except one (to be mentioned immediately), who really understood what education is.

"About the same time another friend, Mr. James Emerson (afterwards Sir J. Emerson Tennant), to whom I had given a copy of my pamphlet when published, wrote me that he had shown it to Mr. Wyse, M.P. for Tipperary, who was preparing a bill to establish a system of national education for Ireland, and who earnestly desired my remarks, and would send me the bill when printed. He did so; I criticised it freely; and the correspondence soon led to an intimate friendship. Before Mr. Wyse could get his bill through the House of Commons, Mr. Stanley (afterwards Earl of Derby), then Chief Secretary for Ireland, established, by an Act of the Executive, without waiting or asking for the consent of Parliament, the so-called ' Irish National System of Education,' and Mr. Wyse dropped his bill.

"An essential part of my scheme was the establishment of two or three new Universities in Ireland, each of which should have a Chair of Education. (In that portion of the pamphlet which dealt with education in Scotland, I proposed the establishment of Education Chairs in all the Scotch Universities, and that a ticket for that class should be required for the degree of M.A.) Mr. Wyse cordially and enthusiastically adopted this idea, and persistently advocated it in Parliament for more than twelve years; and in every speech he made on the subject, honourably acknowledged the source from which he derived his ideas—a rare thing for statesmen to do. During all this time he and I were in constant communication, and working together for our common object. At length the late Sir Robert Peel, to escape out of a political difficulty in which he was placed by the pressure brought to bear on him by two hostile sects (each of which wanted money for a college to suit its own views), established, not the three Universities we wanted, but three provincial colleges, without the power of granting degrees, and without Professorships of Education. The fact is, Peel was not looking to the interests of education at all. His one object was to satisfy, as cheaply as he could, the Presbyterian and Roman Catholic clergy. The whole scheme of education in the colleges was arranged with all the absurdity that might have been expected from the ' meddling and muddling' of people who undertook a business which they did not understand. Afterwards the three colleges were bound together by an examining board (absurdly called a University), and thus their students were enabled to obtain degrees.

"Had Mr. Wyse remained in Parliament, something might probably have been done for Education Chairs; but soon afterwards he was sent out to Greece as British Ambassador, and there was no one to take up his mantle."

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