The Irish Precedent for English Church Reform: the Church Temporalities Act of 1833

Abstract

‘Ireland would ever seem to be the place of experiment, both of politics and of education, and a cloud of never-ending failures has encompassed her in both.’ This illuminating comment provides a perspective in which the whole peculiar and rather complex relationship between the two countries, so unnaturally yoked together, may be considered afresh. The role of Ireland as experiment and precedent for English legislation—since in many respects Ireland's condition was that of England ‘writ large’—made possible the breaking of new ground and ventures into new spheres of governmental action. In Education, the Irish situation led government into an admission of its responsibility for the education of the people by grants to the Kildare Place Society in 1815. Three decades of agitation and debate were needed in England before the same admission was made by the grant-in-aid of 1833, and the same relationship existed between Irish education experiments of the early 1830's and their later English equivalents.