This scheme of local government must be given a trial; but ultimately it will have to be reformed, in a Conservative sense, if things in Ireland are not to be left upside down.[184] I turn to the subject of Irish education, which has been lately attracting much public attention. University education is the most prominent part of this question; but, in order to understand it, we must briefly consider the history of Irish education in all its branches. The first scheme of primary education in Ireland, of which we have a record--I pass over the traditions of the Middle Ages--was due to the policy of Henry VIII.; he procured an Act from the Irish Parliament, to the effect that elementary schools should be set up in different Irish parishes; but, true to the ideal of Tudor statesmen--an ideal, however, which he did not always pursue--he required that these should be 'English schools,' to teach the Irish poor 'the English language.' Many years passed before these schools were found beyond the borders of the Pale; but, as the march of conquest advanced, they existed in many Irish parishes; there were more than five hundred of them in 1810, the largest number probably they ever attained. These schools were originally intended to be open without distinction of creed; but, under the conditions of Irish history, they necessarily became confined to the lower Protestant classes; they were under the control of the clergy of the Established Church, and Catholic children were kept away from them. Elizabeth founded another class of schools, in part elementary, in part of a higher type; these were known as the Diocesan Irish Schools; but there seem never to have been more than sixteen of these; and they, too, became exclusively Protestant. To these schools should be added 'the English Erasmus Smith Schools,' as they were called, foundations grafted, so to speak, on grammar schools established by a wealthy Cromwellian settler; at one time they were more than one hundred in number; and if not wholly, they were nearly confined to Protestant children. A series of Reports of Commissions and other records show that the education afforded in all these schools was not what it ought to have been; but this was to be expected in the case of a country where Protestant ascendency was supreme, where all administration was selfish and corrupt, and where the schools were the monopoly of a fraction of the people only. As to the education of the Irish Catholic poor in these centuries, it was discouraged, and ultimately prohibited by the penal code; the Catholic child could not learn the rudiments in his own land; but in spite of this, 'hedge schools,' a significant name, grew up, in hundreds, throughout the country, in which, to adopt the words of Davis, a man of genius--