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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 June 2018
In 1845, parliament passed an act establishing the three Queen’s Colleges in Ireland – Belfast, Galway and Cork – with the stipulation that ‘religious’ instruction in the colleges would have to be sponsored by voluntary organisations, not the state. Prior to 1845, parliament’s approach to providing spiritual guidance in state-run institutions had been one of ‘parallel patronage’, assuring that wherever there were individuals representing different denominational backgrounds, religious specialists from each denomination would be appointed to work in the institution. For example, the Prisons (Ireland) Act, 1826 required that Catholic, Presbyterian and Anglican chaplains serve their respective portions of the prison population in each gaol that housed any of their co-denominationalists. But in 1845, parliament took an ostensibly different tack, implying that denominations would have to sponsor their young men’s study of theology or any other ‘religious’ subject at university level. However, this article argues that the Irish colleges bill gained assent from the liberal wing of parliamentary opinion precisely because it seemed, to early Victorian liberals, to instantiate the logic of parallel patronage. Using Thomas Wyse, Charles Buller, and T. B. Macaulay as cases in point, this article reveals that the logic behind this vision of state ‘neutrality’ as simultaneous support for each denominational interest was steeped in a working knowledge of colonialism.
1 Thomas Arnold was responsible for the epithet, though ‘that godless institution in Gower Street’ may have been as much a reference to its utilitarian inspiration as to its secularism. See Lawson, John and Silver, Harold, A social history of education in England (London, 1973), p. 258 Google Scholar;
see also Thomas Arnold to Chevalier Bunsen, 6 May 1833 in Arthur Penhryn Stanley (ed.), The life and correspondence of Thomas Arnold (2 vols, London, 1844), i, 351.
2 Hansard 3, lxxx, 345–410 (9 May 1845), 1133–59 (30 May 1845), 1235–98 (2 June 1845); lxxxi, 1037–1103 (23 June 1845).
3 Hansard 3, lxxx, 1244 (2 June 1845).
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6 8 & 9 Vict., c. 66.
7 T. W. Moody, ‘The Irish university question of the nineteenth century’ in History, xliii, no. 148 (June 1958), p. 108.
8 Parkes, Susan M., ‘Higher education, 1793–1908’ in W. E. Vaughan (ed.), A new history of Ireland, vi: Ireland under the Union, II: 1870–1921 (Oxford, 1996), p. 546 Google Scholar.
9 The expression ‘parallel patronage’ comes from Chatterjee, Nandini, The making of Indian secularism: empire, law, and Christianity, 1830–1960 (Cambridge, 2011), p. 10 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
10 The concept of an ‘imperial social formation’ comes from Sinha, Mrinalini, Colonial masculinity: the ‘manly Englishman’ and the ‘effeminate Bengali’ in the late nineteenth century (Manchester, 1995)Google Scholar.
11 See Kerr, Donal, Peel, priests and politics: Sir Robert Peel’s administration and the Roman Catholic church in Ireland, 1841–1846 (Oxford, 1982), pp 110–22, 298–302 Google Scholar; Ward, John Towers, Sir James Graham (London, 1967), pp 175–177, 194 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Clifford, Angela, ‘Godless colleges’ and mixed education in Ireland: extracts from speeches and writings of Thomas Wyse, Daniel O’Connell, Thomas Davis, Charles Gavan Duffy, Frank Hugh O’Donnell and others (Belfast, 1992), p. 8 Google Scholar.
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14 Peel, cabinet memorandum, 11 Feb. 1844, quoted in Kerr, , Peel, priests and politics, p. 117 Google Scholar.
15 William Gladstone, cabinet memorandum, 27 Feb. 1844, quoted in Kerr, , Peel, priests and politics, p. 119 Google Scholar.
16 Peel to Lord Lieutenant [William à Court] Heytesbury, 8 August 1844, quoted in Kerr, Peel, priests and politics, p. 120, emphasis in original; and see additional discussion by Kerr in ibid., p. 301.
17 Peel went on to say that disuniting the ‘formidable confederacy’ among those who were ill-disposed to ‘the British connexion’ could only be done by ‘acting in a spirit of kindness, forebearance [sic], and generosity’ (Hansard 3, lxxix, 1026–7, 1040 (18 Apr. 1845)).
18 Hansard 3, lxxx, 1247–8 (2 June 1845); lxxxi, 1359 (30 June 1845).
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21 On irreverence as the germ of ‘the Enlightenment’ and, by extension, of political liberalism, one should refer to Peter Gay’s highly reverent The Enlightenment: an interpretation: the rise of modern paganism (New York, 1966), esp. pp 130, 171–2.
22 See Michael E. Vance, ‘Scottish Chartism in Canada West?: an examination of the “Clear Grit” reformers’ in Scottish Tradition, xxii (1997), pp 56–104. See also, with appropriate inferences regarding Buller’s mention of the ‘rectories’ controversy in Upper Canada, ‘Sketch of Lord Durham’s mission to Canada in 1838, written by Mr. Charles Buller, in 1840’ in Doughty, Arthur (ed.), Report of the public archives for the year 1923, appendix B: the Durham papers (Ottawa, 1924), p. 354 Google Scholar (hereafter cited as Durham papers).
23 Koditschek, Theodore, Liberalism, imperialism, and the historical imagination: nineteenth-century visions of a greater Britain (Cambridge, 2011), esp. p. 4 Google Scholar.
24 Among the many treatments of this disaster, two that attend particularly thoroughly to the issue of laissez-faire economic thinking on the part of M.P.s and British government functionaries are Gray, Peter, Famine, land, and politics: British government and Irish society, 1843–50 (Dublin, 1999)Google Scholar and Kineally, Christine, A death-dealing famine: the Great Hunger in Ireland (London, 1997)Google Scholar.
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27 The standard scholarly treatment of this episode in liberal reform is Viswanathan, Gauri, Masks of conquest: literary study and British rule in India (New York, 1989)Google Scholar.
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30 On the convergence of evangelical and utilitarian ideas as the key factor underwriting colonial reforms in the 1830s, see Stokes, Eric, The English utilitarians and India (Oxford, 1959)Google Scholar. On the convergence of evangelical ethics and laissez-faire economic liberalism, see Hilton, Boyd, The age of atonement: the influence of evangelicalism on social and economic thought, 1785–1865 (Oxford, 1988), esp. pp 36–70, 203–251 Google Scholar. On the integrality of evangelical religion to maintaining a middle-class lifestyle and identity, see Davidoff, Leonore and Hall, Catherine, Family fortunes: men and women of the English middle class, 1780–1850 (Chicago, 1987), esp. pp 71–192, 207–315 Google Scholar; see also Thorne, Susan, Congregational missions and the making of an imperial culture in nineteenth-century England (Stanford, CA, 1999)Google Scholar.
31 See Auchmuty, J. J., Sir Thomas Wyse, 1791–1862: the life and career of an educator and diplomat (London, 1939), pp 166–174 Google Scholar; Clifford, , ‘Godless colleges’, pp 3–8 Google Scholar; Gwynn, Denis, O’Connell, Davis, and the colleges bill (Cork, 1948), pp 5–6 Google Scholar.
32 D. G. Paz, ‘Wyse, Sir Thomas, (1791–1862),’ in Oxford D.N.B.
33 Parkes, , ‘Higher education’, pp 544–545 Google Scholar; Kerr, , Peel, priests and politics, p. 291 Google Scholar.
34 Hansard 3, lxxii, 748 (13 Feb. 1844).
35 See Gray, ‘“Hints and hits”’, pp 47–8.
36 Hansard 3, lxxvi, 1961–3 (9 Aug. 1844).
37 Ibid., 1121, 1128 (19 July 1844).
38 Ibid., 1121–2 (19 July 1844).
39 Paz, ‘Wyse’; Clifford, , ‘Godless Colleges’, pp 2–8 Google Scholar; Barr, Colin, Paul Cullen, John Henry Newman, and the Catholic University of Ireland, 1845–1865 (Notre Dame, Ind., 2003), pp 12–21 Google Scholar.
40 Hansard 3, lxxx, 367–8 (9 May 1845).
41 Ibid., 1270 (2 June 1845).
42 Thomas Wyse to Provincial College Committee of Munster, August 1845 in Wyse, Winifrede M. (ed.), Notes on educational reform in Ireland during the first half of the 19 th century: compiled from speeches, letters, &.c., contained in the unpublished memoirs of the Rt. Hon. Sir Thomas Wyse (Dublin, 1901), pp 86–87 Google Scholar, emphases mine.
43 Hansard 3, lxxx, 1270 (2 June 1845).
44 Kerr, , Peel, priests and politics, pp 114–115 Google Scholar; Haury, David A., The origins of the Liberal Party and liberal imperialism: the career of Charles Buller, 1806–1848 (New York, 1987), pp 223–224 Google Scholar; O’Connell to Buller, 9 Jan. 1844 (T.N.A., Russell papers, MS 30/22/4c, ff 132–7).
45 Buller to O’Connell, 16 Jan. 1844, quoted in Kerr, Peel, priests and politics, p. 115.
46 Hansard 3, lxxx, 579–80 (19 May 1845).
47 [Charles Buller], ‘Payment of the Irish Catholic clergy’ in Edinburgh Review, no. 150 (Jan. 1842), p. 486.
48 Hansard 3, lxxx, 579–80 (19 May 1845).
49 Ibid., 578 (19 May 1845).
50 For interpretation of the 1837 rebellions, see Senior, Elinor, Redcoats and Patriotes: the rebellions in Lower Canada, 1837–38 (Stittsville, Ont., 1985)Google Scholar; Donald Creighton, ‘The economic background of the Rebellions of 1837’ in Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science, iii, no. 3 (Aug. 1937), pp 322–34; Ryerson, Stanley Bréhaut, Unequal union: roots of crisis in the Canadas, 1815–1873 (2nd ed., Toronto, 1983), pp 36–154 Google Scholar; Ouellet, Fernand, Economic and social history of Quebec, 1760–1850 , trans. Institute of Canadian Studies (Ottawa, 1980), pp 332-447 Google Scholar; Allan Greer, ‘1837–1838: rebellion reconsidered’ in Canadian Historical Review, lxxvi, no. 1 (Mar. 1995), pp 1–18; idem., ‘Historical roots of Canadian democracy’ in Journal of Canadian Studies, xxxiv, no. 1 (Spring 1999): pp 7–26; idem., The Patriots and the people: the Rebellion of 1837 in rural Lower Canada (Toronto, 1996)Google Scholar; Ducharme, Michel, The idea of liberty in Canada during the age of Atlantic revolutions, 1776–1838 , trans. Peter Feldstein (Montreal, 2014), pp 160–184 Google Scholar; Jones, Benjamin T., Republicanism and responsible government: the shaping of democracy in Australia and Canada (Montreal, 2014), pp 39–100 Google Scholar.
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52 For the idea that the Durham report contained the seed of what became the Commonwealth, see Coupland, Reginald, The Durham report, an abridged version (Oxford, 1945), pp vii–viii Google Scholar. But see also Martin, Ged, The Durham report and British policy (Cambridge, 1972)Google Scholar, for a rebuttal. For the concept of the ‘garrison state’, see Peers, Douglas, Between Mars and Mammon: colonial armies and the garrison state in India, 1819–1835 (London, 1995)Google Scholar.
53 Report of the earl of Durham, her majesty’s high commissioner and governor-general of British North America (Methuen ed., London, 1902), p. 205 (hereafter cited as Durham report). An English Historical Review article that was published contemporaneously with the 1902 Methuen edition attributes the first 94 pages and most of the section between page 190 and the end of the Durham report to Lord Durham himself, making Buller the author of the middle 95 pages (R. Garnett, ‘The authorship of Lord Durham’s Canada report’ in E.H.R. xvii, no. 66 (Apr. 1902), pp 268–75).
54 [Charles Buller], Responsible government for colonies (2nd ed., London, 1840), pp 3–4. See also Edward Gibbon Wakefield, ‘Sir Charles Metcalfe in Canada’ in Fisher’s Colonial Magazine and Journal of Trade, Commerce, and Banking, new series, i (1844), pp 385–438.
55 Buller, Responsible government, p. 30: ‘We are not now speaking of our Indian empire, … But looking at our Colonies properly so called – at the Colonies in most part inhabited by British settlers or their descendants, and retained for pacific purposes alone – it seems that the British interests which require to be protected by the Imperial Legislature are very simple.’
56 See Colley, Linda, Britons: forging the nation, 1707–1837 (New Haven, Conn., 1992)Google Scholar.
57 Durham report, pp 16–18, 79.
58 Memo from Buller to Durham, Feb. 1839 in Durham papers, p. 201. See also Ajzenstat, Janet, The political thought of Lord Durham (Montreal, 1988), pp 17, 30, 77–87 Google Scholar; Jones, , Republicanism and responsible government, pp 78–79 Google Scholar. Historians of Ireland will recognise a basic principle from the 1800 Act of Union here, too.
59 Buller, , ‘Payment’, p. 488 Google Scholar.
60 Joseph-Vincent Quiblier, ‘Notice sur le séminaire de Montréal’, 1846, quoted in Young, Brian, In its corporate capacity: the seminary of Montreal as a business institution, 1816–1876 (Montreal, 1986), p. 59 Google Scholar.
61 The Duke of Wellington, meanwhile, jeered the ordinance as a ‘first blow struck at the principle of the Reformation’ (Hansard 3, lvi, 1335 (4 Mar. 1841)).
62 Appendices (D.) & (E.) to report on the affairs of British North America, from the earl of Durham, her majesty’s high commissioner, p. 185, H.C. 1839 (303) xvii, 661.
63 See Stepan, Nancy Leys, The idea of race in science: Great Britain, 1800–1960 (Hamden, Conn., 1982), pp xvii, 1–19 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Wheeler, Roxann, The complexion of race: categories of race in eighteenth-century British culture (Philadelphia, 2000), p. 193 Google Scholar; Stocking, George , Jr., Victorian anthropology (New York, 1987), pp 47–52 Google Scholar.
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65 Hansard 3, lxxx, 578–79 (19 May 1845).
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72 T. B. Macaulay to Macvey Napier, 25 Nov. 1843 in Trevelyan, G. O. (ed.), Life and letters of Lord Macaulay (2 vols, New York, 1876), ii, 148 Google Scholar.
73 On the discourse of ‘priestcraft’, see Champion, J. A. I., The pillars of priestcraft shaken: the Church of England and its enemies, 1660–1730 (Cambridge, 1992)Google Scholar.
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75 The idea originated with Campbell, who took inspiration from a visit to Bonn in West Prussia, where the university allotted places to Catholics and Jews as well as the adherents to the state religion: Lutheran Protestantism. See: Harte, Negley, The University of London, 1836–1986: an illustrated history (London, 1986), p. 61 Google Scholar.
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80 T. B. Macaulay, Minute on Indian education, 2 Feb. 1835 in Macaulay’s minutes on education in India, written in the years 1835, 1836, and 1837, and now first collected from records in the Department of Public Instruction (Calcutta, 1862), pp 113–14.
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82 Macaulay, Minute on Indian education, 2 Feb. 1835 in Macaulay’s minutes, p. 112.
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84 Hansard 3, lxxix, 650 (14 Apr. 1845).
85 Ibid., 651 (14 Apr. 1845).
86 Ibid., 652 (14 Apr. 1845).
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88 As Chatterjee points out, too, ‘this perspective’ afforded him liberal ground on which to ridicule the established (Anglican) Church of Ireland for its inutility later in his career (Chatterjee, Making of Indian secularism, p. 30).
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Koditschek’s emphases.
92 Ibid., pp 106–18, quotations at pp 115, 117, Koditschek’s emphases.
93 This line of analysis also agrees strongly with Catherine Hall’s appraisal of Macaulay’s perspective on Ireland in Macaulay and son, pp 175–89, esp. pp 177–85.
94 In a way, this contention revives an older argument: Joseph Hamburger, Macaulay and the Whig tradition (Chicago, 1976).
95 Hansard 3, lxxxii, 230 (9 July 1845).
96 Ibid., lxxix, 646–58 (14 Apr. 1845).
97 Macaulay to Andrew Rutherfurd, 10 July 1845 in The letters of Thomas Babington Macaulay, ed. Thomas Pinney (6 vols, Cambridge, 1974), iv, 262.
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100 Macaulay to Andrew Rutherfurd, 10 July 1845 in Letters of Macaulay, ed. Pinney, iv, 261.
101 Hansard 3, lxxxii, 230 (9 July 1845).
102 Ibid., lxxix, 654 (14 Apr. 1845): ‘I do not conceive that it is open to me, however strong my feeling might be on the voluntary principle, to meet the Irish, who ask for 17,000l. more for the education of their priests, and say to them, I am on principle opposed to such a grant.’
103 Hansard 3, lxxxii, 236 (9 July 1845).
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110 Hansard 3, lxxx, 1261 (2 June 1845).
