After Limerick
plan succeeded somewhat in its object, but it was an exceedingly wicked one. As for the schools, they never seem to have contained more than two thousand pupils, most of them picked up by the society in a state of destitution. There was a custom of exchanging the children in the Dublin and Cork nurseries, so as to prevent Catholic parents from seeing their babies. It was complained that there was often some collusion between the mothers and the people employed to find nurses in the parishes, the mothers contriving to get themselves chosen as nurses of their own children. It was thought that the system of exchanging the children would prevent this collusion. But the long journey on rough carts between Dublin and Cork killed or injured large numbers of young children, and it was this stern determination to sever all ties between parents and children which supplied another powerful motive for hatred of the Government. There were terrible abuses too in connection with the charter schools. They were ill managed from the very first, and left in the hands of dishonest and disreputable jobbers. On the whole the charter schools were the most contemptible and demoralising form of coercion ever inflicted on the Irish people. In any case they could never have been successful in their aim of
340
