LITMIR.BIZ

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that any measure which did not embrace the University was scanty and illiberal. They claimed its honours, advantages and emoluments for all the youth of Ireland alike; and they sought to make the academic subordinate to and parcel of the collegiate system. The Dublin University and Trinity College are separate and distinct foundations and establishments. They proposed that Maynooth and Trinity College should be both sufficiently endowed for all purposes of ecclesiastical education, without any interference, direct or indirect, from each other or the Government, while the University should be open alike to all who had obtained distinction in the provincial colleges. Any measure of narrower scope would, they contended, leave dullness and bigotry where it found them.

      Mr. O'Connell, on the other hand, insisted on the inviolability of Dublin College as a Protestant institution, inaccessible to Catholics, except through the slough of perverted and perjured faith. He would then have new colleges purely Catholic and entirely under the control of the Catholic bishops, but endowed by the State, and chartered to confer literary degrees. He would extend the same right to the members of other religious persuasions. It was answered that these positions and his arguments addressed to the academic question were irreconcilable and incompatible. Catholics were already admissible to Dublin College, and entitled to certain degrees and a vote. He either intended that they should be thenceforth excluded or he did not. If not, then the argument against mixed education would hold for nothing: if he did, then he attempted what was impracticable, or, if not impracticable, preposterous and absurd. It is not conceivable that Catholic young men, of laudable ambition, would be deterred from entering the lists with their Protestant contemporaries where most honour was won by superior eminence, or that they would be swayed by a warning that a college course would be attended with risk to their faith and morals, when they remembered that for the past century, while the risk was infinitely more imminent, no such warning had been ever heard from council, synod or conference. It is a strange fact in the history of these troubled times that no voice of denunciation against Dublin College could be heard in the polemical din, although it was well known that its literary honours stamped preliminary degradation on the Catholic aspirant, and were used at once to mock his political condition and pervert his faith—no voice was heard although one at least of the prelates had obtained degrees in the University, while the bishop and priests of an entire diocese, in conclave assembled, solemnly resolved that they would refuse sacraments to any Catholic parent who sent his son to one of the Godless colleges. But supposing it were practicable to exclude Roman Catholics from the University, and that the system of exclusive education among the middle and upper classes were applied in all its rigour, when were Protestant and Catholic to meet? If it were dangerous to faith and morals that they should discuss together the properties of an angle or the altitude of a star, it could hardly be safe to have them decide together a principle of law or determine the value or limits of a political franchise. All this was urged on Mr. O'Connell, and sometimes apparently with success, for he more than once consented to forego the discussion of the question in the Hall; and he would have strictly adhered to that engagement had he not been goaded by the intemperate counsels of others.

      In the desultory history of this question, two facts have been stated requiring distinct proof. They are:—First, that Mr. O'Connell was favourable to the principle of mixed education in the commencement.

      And, secondly, that the Seceders—those who were afterwards so glibly denounced as infidels for their support of the Godless bill—were as much opposed to that bill as he was.

      How Mr. O'Connell expressed himself when the bill was first announced has been already stated. It is at once conceded that the writer's memory of a conversation, in its nature almost private, were he even above all suspicion, would not be a safe authority. In this instance there is no need to rely on it—the statement is more than sustained by Mr. O'Connell's recorded words. From a number of occasions, equally available, I select one, because of its solemnity and importance.

      In a prolonged and most earnest debate in the House of Commons, on motion for going into Committee on the Bill, June 2nd, Mr. O'Connell, after eulogising the Maynooth grant, says:—

      "Take one step more, and consider whether this bill may not be made to accord with the feelings of the Catholic ecclesiastics of Ireland. I ought not to detain you: I am not speaking here in any spirit of hostility. I should be most happy to give any assistance in my humble power to make this bill work well. I have the most anxious wish to have this bill work well, because I am desirous of seeing education promoted in Ireland; but even education may be misapplied power. I admit that at one time I thought the plan of a mixed education proper, and I still think that a system of mixed education in literature and science would be proper, but not with regard to religious education."

      And further on: "Again I repeat I am most anxious for the success of this bill, but I fairly tell you it cannot succeed without the Catholic bishops. …

      "There may have been harsh expressions in the public papers, but depend upon it great anxiety exists in Ireland to have such a measure."

      The second proposition would be abundantly sustained by a single sentence in Thomas Davis's commentary on the speech from which I extract the above.

      "On our part we had feared O'Connell conceded almost too far."

      But the testimony of Mr. O'Connell himself will be considered more conclusive.

      Speaking in the Association on the 6th of July, he said:—

      "I may remark for the present that on this subject a question of difference has arisen among ourselves. Some of the members of the Association are for what is called mixed education, and others of us are against it, but that difference of opinion ought not to create any division among us, for neither the one nor the other of us is gratified by the bill as it stands."

      Again, in the course of the same speech, he said:

      "We (Mr. O'Brien and himself) did our best to avert such a calamity. We called upon the Government not to persist in working out this bill in all its details of blackness and horror."

      He concluded by lauding Lord John Russell for his valuable assistance in the attempt to amend the bill, and finally said that, having failed in this attempt, he "flung the bill to the ministry, to deal with it as they pleased."

      Mr. O'Brien continued in London, and proposed amendments to the bill in every stage of its progress. It was during that time he was assailed by Mr. Roebuck with all the little malevolence of his envenomed nature. He failed in every attempt to remedy the defects of the bill, which passed its last stage in the Commons on the 10th day of July. On the 17th of the same month, Mr. O'Connell, speaking in the Association, said:

      "In the resolution I am about submitting to the Association, we have not inserted one word about mixed education. This is a question upon which there exists some differences of opinion. I have my opinions upon the subject, I am the decided enemy of mixed education. …

      "I fully respect the contrary convictions entertained by others, and I am the more ready to proclaim that respect because at present all possibility of discussion on the matter is out of the question."

      It will be observed that Mr. O'Connell's opinions underwent a serious and important change during the time over which these speeches range. That change was produced gradually, and not without infinite trouble on the part of his son whose inveterate zeal knew no bounds. In his father's presence, and more particularly so in his absence, he denounced the bill, and held up any Catholic who dared to support it to public indignation. He called on the people of Waterford to demand Mr. Wyse's resignation, not because he was an unfaithful representative, but because he was unchristian. If he had not determined to divide the Association on this question, he did all a man could do who had so determined.

      I shall only trouble the reader with two quotations more. They refer to the question immediately under discussion, namely, that the Seceders were as much opposed to the obnoxious clauses of the bill as those with whom they differed. But while they are unequivocal and conclusive on that branch of the subject, they go still further and attest the sincere forbearance with which they treated language and conduct which appeared to them in the utmost degree narrow and intolerant. Discussion among the bishops naturally produced discussion among the chiefs of

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