expected; but could anything be imagined more different, to take this education question as an instance, than the circumstances of England and those of Ireland? There, all differences are questions of degree; but in Ireland there is one difference only, which is so sharply accentuated that all minor points, such as High and Low Church, &c., sink into insignificance, and yet it is persistently sought to mix these discordant elements and to braise in one mortar ingredients which cannot possibly be amalgamated. Suppose that the English people were to try and look at affairs here from the point that in some essential matters, at all events, Irishmen know what is best suited to the circumstances of their own country. I should myself-though not a Catholic, living among Catholics in constant intercourse, and among whom I count some of my greatest friendsbe most anxious to see this highly important question solved in such a way as to remove all possible cause of complaint, and so as to give to all creeds in Ireland absolute equality in all matters of education. There is but one way to effect this, and that is by denominationalism. I think that all parties in Ireland have pretty much come to this conclusion.

Take the case of our neighbours in France. No one can have thought of the events which happened there in 1871 without feeling that the spread of infidelity is a worse calamity to a nation than any differences of creed which could possibly exist, and without feeling that, however opinions may vary on controversial subjects, it is absolutely necessary that the teachings of religion should be retained in intimate connection with the training of the young, as the only means by which virtue and morality can be upheld in a nation. God forbid that we should ever have a Commune in this country! I do not believe that such feelings are natural to the Irish people. The religious feeling of the Catholics of Ireland, although, I regret to say, apparently impaired by recent events, is, I maintain, still there, and we saw on several occasions lately at political meetings, where the bishops have been present, the whole assembly kneeling down to receive their blessing-a most impressive and remarkable sight. I think it is certain that, the people having been led away into the commission of crime of late years, it must tend to an improvement in Irish affairs that the clergy should be able to control the course of events, and this can best be done by influencing the minds of the young. The way to combat crime is not by withholding religious and educational advantages, but by admitting those who, in Ireland, are the great majority of the people, to the utmost privileges on a complete equality with their countrymen of other creeds, so as to reclaim them from temptation by removing all just cause for animosity or jealousy, and giving every facility for the inculcation of religious as well as secular knowledge in the young, before and in connection with their entrance into the duties of citizens on attainment of manhood. It

has been said that if the conduct of education is handed over to the influence of the Catholic clergy, the standard of the curriculum would be lowered; but we have in the pronouncement lately delivered by the Catholic Archbishop of Dublin a complete refutation of that charge.

I quote his words, uttered at the opening of the Medical Session of the Catholic University in Dublin, on the 6th of November, 1885.

The requisite goodness of curriculum we cannot and do not object to, but what we must continue to object to, is our being subjected to a system in which, if we wish to hold our heads as high as our more fortunate neighbours are entitled to hold theirs, we can do so only by making our curriculum better and our examination stiffer than those by which their qualifications are tried. We surely have a claim to an equal share of prestige, as well as to an equal share of everything else.

In his address to the students of the French College, Blackrock, shortly after his return from being consecrated at Rome, he says:

I regard it as the first, the most formidable, and, if the word be not too strong a one, the fatal defect of the structure of the new university [meaning the Royal University], that it has been built upon a principle radically different from that laid down as fundamental in one of his greatest speeches by that great statesman, of whom, notwithstanding much that has been said and written, I cannot speak but as an earnest friend of Ireland, Mr. Gladstone. That principle, so lucidly set forth in the speech in which he unfolded the nature of his well-meant, but in so many respects sadly defective, Irish University Bill of 1873, was this, that if the university arrangements of Ireland were to be remodelled so as to admit Catholics and their colleges to the advantages of a university system, the university should not be a new university, 'hobbling and lagging,' as he expressed it, behind the ancient University of Dublin. The very starting-point, then, of his proposed reform was that we should be admitted to the advantages of the University of Dublin itself, in which, in fact, he would have included the whole university organisation of the country. And, as he showed, by thus including it, so far would he have been from introducing any violent change into the constitution of the Dublin University that he would rather be giving effect to one of the fundamental principles of that constitution; for, as he explained, Trinity College, Dublin, had originally been founded, not as practically constituting a university, which it now does, but as the 'Mater Universitatis,' meaning thereby, to quote Mr. Gladstone's words, 'that from that college a university was to spring up'-as it soon sprang up, in fact—' a university of which other colleges were to appear from time to time.'

Archbishop Walsh went on to quote again from his own former speech :

In suggesting the amalgamation of all our university colleges, all that are worthy of the name, into the compact union of a National University, let me nct be misunderstood. That union, if it is to be effected, as I believe it ultimately will be, must be effected in a way that will be in no respect unworthy of the venerable institution which now stands in so unnaturally an isolated condition. And among other advantages to which I should look with confidence as certain to result from a settlement of the question based upon the fundamental principle of Mr. Gladstone's scheme, would be that from our present so-called university system would be eliminated much that is sadly out of place in it, which would thus, to the advantage of both University and Intermediate Education, be fixed in its own natural sphere in the Intermediate School; and you [addressing the medical students] as well as I have by this time sufficient knowledge of some so-called university colleges and their ways, to know that if, as an essential principle of such a scheme, it were

insisted, as of course it should be, that the same scholarship, the same amount of academic training, which are now certified by a degree of the Dublin University, should be an essential condition of obtaining a university degree in the National University of Ireland, it is not from your college, or from those others which form our present Catholic University organisation, that any objection to the proposal is to be feared.

The feeling is evidently very strong in Ireland that Catholics and Protestants should be placed upon an absolutely equal footing with regard to university education. When Mr. Ion Trant Hamilton wast addressing his late constituents in Dublin and soliciting their suffrages for re-election to Parliament the other day, questions were addressed to him as to whether he would, if re-elected, support a measure for a national university, with endowed denominational colleges affiliated to it. His answer was that the Conservative party always considered that religion should not be separated from education. There I entirely agree with him. That is the contention of the Catholic bishops and clergy. It is also the sentiment of the Protestants of Ireland. The Protestants have established, since their Church became a voluntary one, a Board of Religious Education, mainly with the object of training the Protestant teachers in national and other primary schools in the tenets and principles of the Protestant Church. I think, as a Protestant myself, that this is a most important and essential thing, so that the children in Protestant schools should have instructors who will be competent to teach them in the hours set apart for religious learning. This is exactly what the Catholics also desire, and the Catholic schoolmasters, in the same way, are trained according to their creed, for the same purpose. These objects, therefore, are already provided for, both by Catholics and Protestants in primary schools. Why not in higher education? It is so in the Catholic University, but the complaint is that, while all disabilities against Catholics in the United Kingdom have been abrogated, they are still at a great disadvantage in comparison with their endowed Protestant brethren, not only because they have no endowment, but no equipment in the way of buildings, libraries, &c. Of course their university has not the prestige of old Trinity, nor has it at present even the privilege of conferring degrees. The letters T.C.D. after a man's name carry as much weight, from an educational point of view, as degrees of Oxford or Cambridge or the London University; but the Dublin Catholic University is not looked upon by the world as so important an institution, and, whether the curriculum there be as stiff as those of other universities or not, still it is a great fact that a student of the Catholic University in Dublin would not, so to speak, bear a hall-mark which would be sufficient to warrant him in the way in which students of the University of Dublin are warranted. This inferiority of prestige may be sentimental, but many Irish grievances are sentimental, and it is felt most strongly, and the Royal University has been lately established, with a strong

and representative governing body, with a view of remedying that evil. I believe, however, that it is now, after having been tried for some years, admitted by many, not only Catholics but Protestants, not to have entirely removed the grievance, although it may have to some extent mitigated it. The Catholics feel, as the large majority of the Irish nation, that even with that boon (and it is admitted to be a boon as far as it goes) complete equality has not been attained. What they desire, and demand as their right, is that there shall be no difference whatever between the university which passes the Protestant into the world as a finished scholar and the educational test of the Catholic, either in examinational standard or prestige. They say that one great university would be sufficient for Ireland, the University of Dublin. Their view is that expressed in Mr. Gladstone's measure of 1873, that the university now seated in Trinity College should be made a really national one, including all colleges throughout Ireland, whether Protestant or Catholic, under itself, as one great national institution.

Public opinion was not ripe for this in 1873. When Mr. Gladstone made his great speech on this question, as I remember well, there was a pause, and those in Ireland who took interest in the subject held their breath for a short time to weigh and consider on every side the bearings of his most important proposal.

It is an extraordinary thing to think that until 1879 the great University of Dublin was practically closed to Catholics, who number more than three-fourths of the population of the island. People who have not taken up the subject of the former government of Ireland wonder at the ceaseless complaints of Irishmen, and it is often said that although so much has been done for them of late years still they remain discontented and dissatisfied, crying out against the alleged misrule of England, wanting a separate Government, saying that they get no justice from an 'alien' Parliament, and they are looked upon as insatiable agitators, ready to devour their Protestant neighbours, and always in an incurable state of discontent. There has been much done for Ireland lately, and no one, in either past or present time, has done so much as Mr. Gladstone, and I have great confidence that if he has the opportunity, he will be able to set this matter also at rest. But here is a grievance, surely a great one, and although the Royal University has been set up, with many eminent Catholics on its governing body, the Irish people still complain, and do not consider that institution an adequate recognition of their claims.

The Catholics, to remedy as far as lay in their power their educational wants, so lately as 1854 established the Stephen's Green Catholic University under Cardinal Newman, of which the Very Rev. Gerald Molloy is Rector; but how could they, few of whom are wealthy, endow or maintain a university commensurate with their numbers, or hope to rival the ancient one of their Protestant fellow

countrymen? Their religion prevents them entering in any considerable numbers into Trinity, or being examined at the university connected with it, where the governing and examining bodies are still almost entirely Protestant. There is still, at the present time, only one Catholic Fellow of Trinity College. Of course it will be said that the university has always been open to them, and that it was their own fault if they did not take advantage of it. But to any one who knows how Catholics cherish their own faith, and how jealous they are of any interference, can it be a wonder that they have held aloof as a body from an institution where they considered that faith to be in danger?

Now, as an Irishman and a Protestant, I should be the last person to say anything against the University of Dublin.

I consider that Trinity College and its university are among the noblest institutions in Ireland, with their ancient traditions, their great wealth, their splendid buildings and magnificent museums and libraries. But it will be acknowledged by Irishmen, and perhaps by some even of the adherents of old Trinity themselves, that as a national university it does not satisfy the aspirations or meet the wants of the people of Ireland as a whole. What is required is an equal institution, with provision made for Catholics corresponding to what Trinity College, Dublin, is to Protestants. The main flaw in Mr. Gladstone's scheme was that, while it opened to Catholic students the examinations and degrees of the University of Dublin, it provided no endowment for the colleges which would enable them to give the education to fit the students for the examinations. It left to the Protestant community the endowments of Trinity College, and left the Catholics to their own meagre and insufficient resources. The same general scheme as was proposed in his Bill would be perfectly satisfactory if only it was made to provide for them equal endowments to those enjoyed by the Protestants in Trinity College.

This is the essential point, and would involve, of course, a considerable money vote, but it would be a small sum compared with what the British nation has over and over again expended of late years upon wars which have brought but little glory and credit. to its arms, and would remove a cause of dispute and make a permanent peace on this question in Ireland which would be more honourable to the English people than any of those I have referred to. I am sure that if it came home in all its naked truth to the thinkers of England that there was this great institution, with everything comprised in it that is necessary for the university requirements of the Irish nation, and which is only prevented from being available by the obsolete notions formerly in vogue as to the ostracism of Catholics, they would consider whether such a beam in the eye of Parliament, such a standing injustice to a nationality, such a reproach