NEWS OF THE WEEK.
THE Parliamentary proceedings of last week were a perfect cor- nucopia of new topics for the craving wants of Conciliation Hall in Dublin. Mr. O'Connell knows as well as most men how to make any one subject go as far as it can, and he has not neglected to improve his materials—the proposed call of the House, the pro- mised bill for amending. the Municipal Corporations of Ireland, and the new scheme of Provincial Colleges ; all telling subjects, and treated with piquant variety of style. The call of the House was an excellent opportunity for some legal display. Mr. O'Connell fought the battle of the Clare elec- tion over again,scrutinized the Act of Union, and pronounced a -professional opinion that that act did not repeal a previous law which would make the Speaker's warrant inoperative in Ireland. He may be wrong, but he may be right; and surely, while any contest between the Commons and Conciliation Hall would be ludicrous and unseemly, an unsuccessful contest would be most derogatory to the dignity of the Honourable House. The House- is likely to be too well forewarned to permit Mr. Hume to betray it into such a doubtful scrape on Thursday next. Government propose to assimilate the Irish Municipal system to that of England : on which Mr. O'Connell patronizingly says that they ought to do so, and proceeds to point out how they should do it, with a minuteness that implies a prejudgment against their measure should it not exactly accord with his own elaborate programme. But his grand subject is the College scheme ; and against that he has declared, with a precipitancy and heat foreboding serious - embarrassment to Ministers. The subject was already beset with difficulties ; and O'Connell so unscrupulously magnifies them as to suggest the, se/en that he does not want to mend but to defeat the measure... Naps any such measure. Because that peculiar form of Protestant religion which is the "true religion" 39 not expressly included in the project, Sir Robert Inglis de- clared it to be " a gigantic scheme of godless education " ; with a different motive, Roman Catholic O'Connell reechoes the de- nunciation in the words of the High Church Tory, and sets to prepare an agitation against the plan if the Bishops do not forbid. Hopeless of reconciling the several sects, Government have practically. adopted the conclusion, that to make general education possible it must be independent of particular creeds. Mr. O'Connell, instead of avoiding sect, would make the plan eminently and avowedly sectarian : he would main- tain Trinity College as a Protestant College in Dublin, have Presbyterian College in the North, and two Roman Catholic Colleges in the West and South ; the officers of those Roman Catholic Colleges to be appointed by the Roman Catholic Pre- lates. He does not say how he is to obtain the consent of a Pro- testant Parliament to the wholesale erection of Roman Catholic seminaries; not to supply a perpetual and inevitable want, as Mayiiooth supplies the priests that must be had, but to bestow upon Romanism in the United Kingdom a new power, an influ- ence which even Protestantism does not possess, since the Popish Colleges would in their nature be more popular than our ancient Universities. Religious instruction cannot be combined with general education in a country where there is at once toleration and a state education. Where there is no toleration it can, be- _ cause then the state religion may be mingled with the state edu- Clition and no question arise. Where there is no state religion, the state May be regarded as the guardian of all ; as is to some extent practically the case in India. But where there is a creed officially recognized, that must claiin the preference if made a branch' of education : yet to enforce the state creed on all who :seek educationat the hands of the state, is not toleration. It has been felt so ; and accordingly, in Ireland, education apart from particular creeds is gradually growing up. Join the education to a creed, and you immediately provoke a forbidding of the bans from those in the interest of other creeds : make it Roman Catholic, and you have the Inglises and Fox Maules—make it Protestant, and you have the Shells and O'Connells raising an outcry. Join it to no one creed, and, forsooth, all unite in the cry of " godless." Yet, as you can combine it with none of all the creeds, of course you must let it go alone—without any creed. Therefore, by insisting upon the union with some particular persuasion, Mr. O'Connell is simply enforcing an im- practicable condition—making the scheme impossible. It may be suspected that he would hardly regret such a result. Hitherto, the Priests have had education all their own way in Ireland— hoe themselves exercised the only moral influence in the society of the country : now, by these .Colleges, it is proposed to establish an influence which would powerfully rival the priestly influence ; there would be the moral influence throughout Irish Romanist society of the Priests and the Colleges—Mr. O'Connell wants to merge the collegiate in the clerical influence ,• swelling the latter, but not raising up a rival to it. A scheme a Protestant Colleges he would less fear, because the influence of such Colleges would be confined to Protestants : but Colleges open to all would exercise a great moral and intellectual power over all—a power independent of the Priests, perhaps not always in accord with them. He would rather have no great national edu- cation at all than one not subservient to St. Jarlath's and the Repeal Bishops. That is O'Connell's tactic ; and, for his present purpose, he astutely enough borrows the unwonted aid of Sir Robert Inglis and his ultra-Protestant zealotry. To that end, he has issued his edict to the Bishops to condemn the scheme„2.for such is the amount of his professed reference to them, with his own strong opinion uttered in anticipation of theirs. Will they obey ? Implicit obedience he has not yet found, even among Repealers. The Members of Parliament in England have in- curred his censure for their " flippant " haste in approving of the measure, without awaiting his leave ; and a member of the Young Ireland party has ventured, even in Conciliation Hall, to express a qualified approval. The honourable Member for Ire- land, however, has not only his boasted eight or nine millions on his side, but he has also all the national bigotry, and even for the nonce the hostile bigotry of England. Ireland's " Liberator " may yet succeed in retarding or defeating this great boon and tran- quillizing donation to his country.
