[1] It was written two years after the government led by the Duke of Wellington, in alliance with Daniel O'Connell, secured the passage and Royal Proclamation of the Catholic Emancipation bill.
It was penned by the Chief Secretary for Ireland, Edward Stanley (later Prime Minister of the United Kingdom as the 14th Earl of Derby) and was addressed to the 3rd Duke of Leinster.
As one commentator put it, "Ireland, as a colony could be used as an experimental milieu for social legislation which might not be tolerated in England where laissez-faire politico-economic policies were more rigid and doctrinaire.
[6] The Stanley letter remains today the legal basis for all national schools in the Republic of Ireland,[7] the predominant form of primary education in the country.
The system outlined in the Stanley letter was used as a model in the creation of state primary education in the Australian colony of New South Wales.