It raises a question of confiscation and plantation and troublous days, in which were rooted many of the problems which confront us to-day. At the time of the Cromwellian wars they were troubled in England as to how they were to pay the soldiers, and a plan was thought of that there should be adventurers or undertakers to put down or stake certain sums of money, for which they would be recouped by confiscated land in Ireland, if the reconquest of Ireland at the time was successful. One of those who adventured such sums was a London merchant named Erasmus Smith, who, I think, adventured about £300, for which he was granted 666 acres of rich land in Munster. He was a very extensive farmer, as we shall see. By 1684 his estate had expanded and extended to 47,000 acres. After the Cromwellian war, 1,000,000 acres of Irish land were allotted to those adventurers and undertakers, and one and a half million acres to the Cromwellian soldiers, because many of them were not paid in cash, but in debentures. Apparently, these soldiers did not like the look of things in large sections of Tipperary, Cork and other counties, and they sold or handed over their debentures very cheaply to some adventurers, and one who got hold of sheaves of debentures was Erasmus Smith, so that in a few years he had over 40,000 acres.
He founded certain schemes of education for the tenants on his estate with conditions attached to them, and in a few years he enlarged the amount of land he devoted to the purposes of education. The instruments of the foundation were three. The first was the Indenture dated December 1, 1657; the Letters Patent dated November 3rd, 1667, and the Charter dated 26th March, 1669. He is referred to in most of the subsequent documents as "the pious founder." The Indenture states: "This Indenture witnesseth that the said Erasmus Smith, for the great and ardent desire which he hath that the poor children inhabiting these presents, is expressed, should be brought up in the fear of God and good literature ...doth bargain and sell unto the said Henry Jones and seventeen other trustees the 2,876a. 3r." That Indenture does not exclude Christians, nor indeed members of the Jewish persuasion, and that passage gives ex professo his own private religious intention in founding his endowment, as distinct from the religious intentions of the Governments under which he lived. It is maintained in law that anything that Erasmus Smith was compelled to do by the laws of his day is not evidence of his intention. Three schools were founded under this endowment for the education of the tenants of the estates and certain others living within a few miles of the estates. The estates, I believe, are in ten counties and the income was at one time £10,000 a year. It is now somewhere about £7,000 a year. There has been much litigation and inquiry as to the administration of the trust and the purpose for which Erasmus Smith intended the money to be devoted or the purpose for which he made the endowment.
Certain conditions were laid down at the outset as regards religious instruction, and these were changed when Charles II. came and the question of forfeitures was re-opened and Erasmus Smith gave still more land for education. Whether it was charity or foresight that inspired him to enlarge the grant and give more endowments I do not know. He first seemed to be a Nonconformist, then an Episcopalian and at times an anti-Episcopalian, but I do not think that these things affected his endowment. The final schemes set aside 13,000 acres and as far as can be ascertained the present income is about £7,000.
There are many points on which the Trust has been evaded. I need not go into them all. Perhaps the most glaring breaches of the Trust were the founding of about 146 English schools all over the country—I believe the majority of them in Ulster, in which there were no confiscated estates or any Erasmus Smith estates. That involves an expenditure of something like £300,000. The High School in Harcourt Street not on the Erasmus Smith Estate has got between £40,000 and £50,000 as far as can be ascertained. Over £100,000 was given, in one way or another, for the education of about 20 boys at the Blue Coat Hospital, Dublin. These were all breaches of the Trust. The Commissioners of 1858 who went into the educational endowments repeatedly asked the Erasmus Smith Governors for the rules governing the endowment, but they did not get them until the inquiry was ended. I do not know why they could not get the rules, but they were published in the Report afterwards—they did not come before the inquiry.
In 1895, a representative deputation, headed by Mr. T.M. Healy, waited on the then Chief Secretary, Mr. Morley, representing Catholic tenants on the estate of Erasmus Smith, in Louth, Tipperary, Clare, Westmeath, Leix and Offaly, Limerick, Galway, and Sligo. Under the Endowment Act of 1885, two judges were appointed to act with certain other commissioners, the judges being Lord Justice Fitzgibbon and Mr. Justice O'Brien. The judges disagreed, but both said there should be a change, and though Lord Justice Fitzgibbon was of opinion that the Erasmus Smith Endowment was for Protestant schools, he still said that £2,000 annually should be given for the education of Catholics. It is difficult, of course, to prove what Erasmus Smith's intentions were in that respect. Certain people based opinions on a letter he wrote in 1682, thirteen years after the endowment. Of course, you cannot refer back an opinion expressed in 1682 to 1660. That is not law. Apart from that, it seems that he did in that respect whatever he was forced to do by the Government or laws of the day, and that is not legal. In many ways. too, that clause, if it were law, has been evaded. For instance, in accepting the Intermediate grant, which necessitated a conscience clause, the Education Endowments Act commands that free education be given to all the tenants' children on all the Erasmus Smith Estates in Ireland and to twenty other children from the neighbourhood of an Erasmus Smith School. The settlement concerns some 10,000 children. Mr. John Morley said that "the pious founder had gone to the wall" and "some way must be found by the Executive Government to do this act of justice to persons from whom it it is too long withheld"—that is, the children of the Catholic tenants of these estates. Schools were founded with that money which it was never the intention of Erasmus Smith should be founded—for instance, in Ennis and Nenagh. Mr. Morley said: "It was quite impossible that the question can remain where it is." Father Humphrey took the matter to the courts, where he was beaten on a technical point.
I do not think it is necessary for me to go into the whole history of it. At any rate, the main intention of the founder is not being carried out. Moneys to the extent of £400,000, I would say, have been expended on purposes upon which he never intended that they should be expended. The Charter is admittedly impossible to fulfil, and a commission should be set up to enquire into the whole matter. It is doubtful, indeed, if the endowments were ever of private origin, because Erasmus Smith was never actively in possession of these estates. They seem to me more like a Royal grant. There are conflicting arguments and many legal points to be settled. A plan for administration was drawn up at one time that would admit of the education of Catholic children, although drawn up by the President of Magee College, who was a non-Catholic. It is quite obvious that the matter requires investigation, so that there should be some finality. Two Chief Secretaries for Ireland, non-Catholics, were in favour of the matter being enquired into and of having the injustice of centuries, as the late Lord Morley said, rectified.
