Lord Curzon clearly sees no harm in endowing Maynooth. In
a speech delivered to an Educational Conference at Simla on Monday he declared that while he believed religion the essential foundation of education, he thought the members of each creed must teach their own religion in private insfitu. tions which Government Would assist by grants-in-aid. It was of no use to adopt a general primer of ethics, as had been suggested, for the pupils would cram the ethics as they now cram Euclid. As to morals, good teachers would make boys moral sooner than good books. Most of that is sound, but is Lord Curzon going to give pecuniary aid to College Hindoo, Mussulman, and Christian — specially devoted to religious instruction ? • If he is, he will find that be has trodden into a hornets' nest, not to say a nest of scorpions, each creed perpetually comparing the amount its doctors get. The old Indian idea was wiser than that, to give secular knowledge to everybody who would acquire it, but to regard ell religions as Gallio is said to have done— namely, as ideas neither to be repressed nor encouraged. If the creeds are good, secular learning will not hurt.them ; and if they are bad, it will help to undermine them. It is possible that Lord Curzon did not mean that he would pay for any distinctively religious teaching, but only for secular teaching in religious establishments ; but the reporter clearly though that he announced a new departure.
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