THE O'CONOR DON'S UNIVERSITY BILL.
MHE Government are, no doubt, perfectly judicious in not 1. exhibiting too much eagerness to close with the O'Conor Don's proposal. Mr. Gladstone's University• Bill of 1873 offered a great deal more to the Irish Catholics than the present, but failed, because the Irish Bishops had at that time so overweening a sense of their own power, that they could not take into account at all the very large body of hostile feeling with which, in the political nego- tiations of such a measure as this, any Government will have to deal. Sir Stafford Northcote is not, then, to our minds, at all injudicious in declining to catch at the O'Conor Don's offer,—in treating it with urbanity, indeed, but without enthusiasm. If we could be sure that the Government are not unwilling to accept Liberal help in settling this matter, provided they can receive the assurance that the measure proposed is, on the whole, acceptable to the authorities of the Irish Catholic Church, we should not regret, but rather applaud the coyness with which the Chancellor of the Exchequer gave his fish line on Wednesday and Thursday, instead of displaying any eagerness to land it too soon.
This being premised, we must, however, go on to say that we shall think the Government at once very ill-advised, and in the worst sense cowardly, if they really throw away this great op- portunity of settling a most urgent and difficult question, pro- vided they can secure both Roman Catholic sanction, and Liberal co-operation sufficient to enable them to settle it. And we feel the liveliest hope that they may have both. If rumour speaks anything like the truth, the Catholic Bishops have no intention of repeating in 1879 the grave blunder of 1873. And the admirable speeches of Mr. Osborne Morgan and Mr. Lowe on Wednesday held out every hope that both independent and official sections of the Liberal party, quite sufficient to bring very substantial auxiliaries into the ranks of the Government, are prepared to exert them- selves cordially on behalf of the new compromise. Even if Mr. Lowe does not carry all his old colleagues with him, he will carry a sufficient number of the moderate party to swell the highly-disciplined phalanx of the Government into irresistible strength. Hence the approval of the Roman Catholic authorities being once assured, it seems to us that it lies with the Government to settle for a considerable time one of the most vexed questions of political life, and to settle it in a manner which may give back to the Irish Catholics of the next generation the great advantage of a highly culti- vated class of natural leaders, who will be under no suspicion of Protestant sympathies or of lukewarm loyalty to their cause. And to provide, as the Government did last Session, for the sudden and rapid growth of intermediate education in Ire- land, while denying those who fill these intermediate schools, access to Universities such as their consciences and their guardians approve, is merely leaving a great work truncated, and without its fitting and legitimate crown.
We trust that all who have any serious doubt on the sub- ject of the new University Bill will study Mr. Lowe's wise and remarkable speech. As Mr. Lowe justly im- plied, education, especially the higher education, is not the sort of thing you can force on a people whose con- sciences,—or superstitions, if you please,—are offended by the conditions under which it is offered. You might as well try to make people eat game with an abominable sauce to it. The higher education, like game, is a luxury men can do without.
If you insist on giving it them with a flavour in it they detest, they will do without it. And the result will be that though the State may offer Ireland the luxury cheap, the luxury seasoned with State sauce ceases to be a luxury, and is despised. This being so,—and it is clear that what is called "united educa- tion " has failed, both in the primary and secondary schools and in the Universities, simply because the people of Ireland do not appreciate it,—the alternative really is between providing Irishmen with a system of education they do like, and leaving them uneducated. In the primary schools, this has been managed by a very general and wide divergence in practice from the system which Archbishops Murray and Whately devised for the " united education " of Catholics and Protes- tants. Speaking roughly, the system has failed, and the De- nominational system has succeeded it. The measure of last year,—so eagerly received in Ireland, that it is clear that more funds will be wanted than have been provided to carry it out, —proves that precisely the same thing is true of the second- ary education,—that it must be in general religious, i.e., denominational, or that it will not be welcomed at all. But if, with the denominational system established for Ireland for all children between six and seventeen, we are to refuse to permit it in the education of lads at College, we shall be guilty of an inconsistency at once irritating and unmeaning. Mr. Plunket's notion that united education is more necessary at college than anywhere else, seems to us exceedingly questionable. Of course, free communication with people of other modes of thought and belief, whether by word of mouth or through books, is always one' of the essential conditions of perfect culture. But, on the other hand, no doubt, adolescence is the time of life at which there is most reason to be anxious concerning the intellectual and moral influences which predominate in the circle in closest proximity to the growing thought. And it may be fairly said that for the width of culture which is gained by the conflict of oppo- site creeds, there must very likely be paid a heavy price of subverted principle. Hence it seems to us far from true that the State has any right to make united education the absolute principle of all Uni- versity life, as we understand Mr. Plunket to desire. If it had been the principle of the school-life, then there would be no suddenness in the change at the most critical period of a man's life. But when it has not been the principle of school-life, to insist on it as the principle of University life, seems to us like insisting on suddenly exposing the physical system to cold at the very moment when it is most sensitive to such cold. In a country where all the early education is strictly denominational, it is but natural that parents should value most of all the privilege of carrying into the time of greatest temptation the same sanc- tions which had been secured for periods of far less critical change. And holding as we do, we sincerely hope that the " con- science clause" for which Sir Stafford Northcote on Wednes- day seemed inclined to stipulate in all the affiliated Colleges of the proposed University, will not be one inconsistent with the Roman Catholic contention that even secular subjects should be so taught in any genuine University class, as to show their connection with theology, and their dependence upon it. There could be no objection to a conscience clause requiring that a lad of any faith should be admitted on the usual conditions to any of the lectures of the College, and yet permitted to absent himself from any of a nature to offend his religious convictions. But if the conscience clause were to be so drawn as to exclude anything like theological views from the lectures on secular subjects, we fear it would vitiate the whole use- fulness of the Bill, and at once enlist the genuinely Catholic party against the proposal to lend any authority to lessons which to them would seem so mutilated. The conscience clause must at least be consistent with the idea that even non-theological subjects have a theo- logical bearing which the true teacher will see and en- force. Otherwise the stipulation for denominational teaching would have no meaning. A Catholic teacher precluded from dilating on his Catholicity to a class which might contain Protestants, would have no advan- tages, to the Catholic mind, over Protestant teachers them- selves.
With regard to the question of endowment, we cannot think that, after the O'Conor Don's intimation, it can really cause any final stumbling-block. If Parliament be allowed to vote the revenue year by year, there will be ample guarantee against any perversion of the new machinery to purposes which the nation might think alien to the objects of the Bill. For our own parts, we should not in the least object to the diversion of another large fragment of the Irish Church Surplus to an object which seems to us identified with that of the original Disestablishment, the object of religious equality. As for the absurd limi- tations engrafted on the measure of 1869, Parliament may undo what Parliament did, and ten years are not too short a time for a nation to repent itself of a -fanatical blunder. But if the enemies of the measure are disposed, as would seem likely, to make a great rock of offence of this endowment, the O'Conor Don's pacific overture,— his expressed willingness to accept, if need be, a Parliamentary grant,—is a sufficient way out of that difficulty. Yet it will need the hearty co-operation of all large-minded men to carry a measure which appears to rouse so many scruples as this, though it certainly is calculated to rouse fewer of them, and those in a much less invidious form, than any pro- posal which has been suggested during the last six years. Under this Bill, not a penny would go to religious or theological .purposes, not a penny but would be earned by efficient secular instruction ; and if the money so earned did ultimately find its way to the pockets of Priests and Presbyters,—why, so does .a great deal of the money paid to the Irish Army and the Irish Civil Service. There is not a single Voluntaryist objection to this Bill which may not be urged against all State payments made for secular work to sectarian workers.
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