years, imbued with its spirit, and glorying in its traditions. Nor would this training be at an end when the fellowship was won. It would take a long and laborious life spent in the service of the University to give a voice in its government. The present tone and temper of Trinity College in denominational questions afford a guarantee that if we take full advantage of the present training, any fear of dissension arising from this change is chimerical.

Dr. Salmon describes much better than I can do, the present spirit of Trinity College. To the truthfulness of his picture every Roman Catholic student will bear witness:

In Trinity College alone in Ireland what can really be called mixed education is carried on. Elsewhere men of different religions are to be found in the same lectureroom; but in Trinity College they live within the same walls, dine at the same table, and mix in the same social pursuits. Religious animosity is unknown. Last year the presidents of two Voluntary Societies (analogous to the Oxford Union) formed by the students for the cultivation of oratory and literature, were both Roman Catholics. Quite recently, in a rowingclub which included some non-university men as members, the black-beaning of a Roman Catholic student, to whom nothing but his religion could be objected, was so resented by the University men, that they withdrew in a body and formed themselves into a new society.

It is from a body of men animated with such feelings towards each other that the fellows will be chosen, and before they are called on to exercise their own voice in the management of the University, they will become still more deeply attached to its interests and traditions. If you take a body of Roman Catholics and a body of Protestants, and put them together to manage any other Irish institution, you choose men full of sectarian prejudices to work with others filled with prejudices of the same degree. The principle on which both parties are to work is a new, strange thing,

man Catholics not as members of a hostile church, but as graduates whose sympathies and well-being are dear to the University which has trained them.

A third objection is put in this form by some advocates of the status quo. They say, 'We should be glad to have our Roman Catholic pupils taking fellowships among us, and spending their lives labouring in conjunction with us, for the advancement of learning. But we must remember where the mass of our students come from. The large preponderance of the Irish University-going class are members of the Established Church, and entertain very strict views as such. It will not do, while we are endeavouring to provide for the wants of the few Roman Catholic honourmen, to lose the confidence of the men who really keep the University in its present position as to numbers. If Roman Catholics were admitted to fellowships, a large portion of the Protestant gentry might actually cease to send their sons to Trinity College.' Now that any Churchman will fear proselytising is out of the question. The religious services connected with the Church of Eng

land would all be maintained. Churchmen would still be able to choose tutors of their own faithif necessary, clergymen. All this would be as it was before. The only change would be that in secular subjects they might occasionally have to attend the lectures of a man who belonged to another denomination. This no doubt would be a grand difficulty for an Ultramontane. That it would be found a serious one among members of the Church of England, I shall not do them the injustice to suppose. Besides, it may arise any day under the present system in the case of the open professorships. The real danger which this objection points to is of a different kind. We know that there are some country clergy, and others of very high Protestant views, men, for instance, who would defend the Established Church, not on the ground that it is a valuable and indispensable part of our political constitution, but that it is a heaven-ordained machinery for the protection of Divine truth; men, in fact, of that sectarian type which is discernible in every denomination. These men have long looked on Trinity College as their own proper stronghold, and to them the entrance of Roman Catholics among the fellows will naturally seem an odious and unendurable intrusion. But this portion of the Protestant body will soon recover their temper. They will look around them in vain for any denominational refuge. They will see Oxford and Cambridge engaged in the same process of getting rid of their exclusiveness, and they will very soon recognise the wisdom of profiting by the solid advantages which the University of Dublin will always offer them. They will become wiser men and better Christians, and things will go on as before in all that concerns the number of Church students.

A fourth objection there is to which I do not attach much im

portance, except from my respect for some of those who entertain it. They are men who, having studied Ultramontanism more carefully than is now often done, are as much inclined to overrate the difficulties of dealing with it as the general public are to underrate them. It is said, 'Suppose we had a man of the type of historical Jesuit, specially selected and sent to win his way into our body to spread disunion and mischief, we should have him getting up an organised agitation and discussing the affairs of the University in The Freeman's Journal.' In the first place, in the plan suggested, no clergyman should be permitted to hold any of the open fellowships. But of course, it will be said, a man might be ostensibly a layman and yet bound by Jesuit vows. The modern Jesuit has, I believe, other work to do than undertaking such perilous enterprises, and is much more likely to be employed in administering the police of his own church than in carrying the war in this romantic way into the enemy's camp. But the real security against all this danger will be the public opinion of the college. The spirit of the Roman Catholics who will be associated in the work of the University, will be an insurmountable obstacle to any clerical intriguer. They will be the first to detect and oppose such a person. Their presence would render him utterly helpless. On the other hand, no Roman Catholic could complain of the exclusion of his clergy from fellowships. Indeed, with the present views held by the bishops, the question could never practically arise. No Roman Catholic clergyman could dare to be openly connected with the college. But in any case, the normal condition of a Roman Catholic clergyman, as at present recognised by the Church, makes this rule reasonable. He is not a free agent; he is an integral part of a great system. Without a

treaty with the men who manage that system-the bishops-to admit any part of its machinery would be madness. But a treaty with them is now out of the question; and I hope, for the sake of the University, will never be attempted. The safety of my proposal is, that it is addressed to the laity alone; and it should be distinctly understood that no clergy of any denomination are to be admitted to the open fellowships.

Were this proposal carried out, the agitation for a denominational University would at once assume its natural proportions. The benefit to the nation would be enormous, and the position of Trinity College much more secure. To deprive that college of its University powers, and put it under a mixed University Board, would be fatal to its interests, and must be resisted to the last. Again, the grant of a charter to the Catholic University would be a still more general calamity. It would be virtually saying to the Roman Catholics who now go up to Trinity College, 'Go elsewhere. We have given you a University of your own. This one is specially reserved to those interested in the Protestant education of the country. True, it was the national University, but all that is remodelled. Now it is recognised as the Protestant University. You do not like clerical education? Well, agitate in your own body for the reform of your University. You may be too small a class to make yourselves heard amidst the uproar of the priests and their followers. So much the worse for you. But do not come here intruding into an institution which is reserved for us.' This is the light in which the new state of affairs would be regarded by many high-spirited Roman Catholics. Detesting clerical domination, they would yet find the common ground on which they had taken up their stand abandoned by

their Protestant neighbours. For the first time since 1793 they would find themselves strangers in Trinity College. Hitherto they went there awaiting the natural course of events to give them a full share in the privileges of the national heri tage. Now they would be invited to emigrate to a brand new Ultramontane establishment, or to put themselves before the world as the clients of another denomination. If the Queen's Colleges maintained their position against this abandonment of the secular principle, if they withstood the renewed assaul: which the Ultramontane success would prompt, this class of Roman Catholics would no doubt still find free education in these institutions. Otherwise they would have to go without university training altogether, or to seek it abroad.

Mischievous as such a policy would be for the progress of the country, and unfair towards inde pendent Roman Catholics, its shortsightedness, as regards the imme diate object in view, would be still more discreditable to those who might adopt it. Trinity College might be handed over to a particu lar church for a time; but that the nation should ever permanently ac quiesce in such a perversion is a preposterous delusion. Indeed, a section of the Catholic press already vehement in this declara tion. On the appearance of Dr. Haughton's pamphlet, the Dublis Evening Post-a leading organ Roman Catholic opinion-devoted a series of articles to prove that, though Irish Catholics would accept a separate charter as an instalment, they could never acquiesce in the appropriation of Trinity College to special Protestant purposes. noble heritage of tradition associated with this University will ever make it the property of the country; and this the Ultramontanes would be the very first to assert as soon as they had secured

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