The Irish University debate of Thursday in the House of
Com- mons ended in a considerable victory for the Government, who, after defeating Mr. Shaw'e amendment, carried the second reading without a division. This result was obtained greatly by Mr. Lowther's promise that the Senate of the new Uni- versity, so soon as it was created and had got into working order, should be liberally endowed by Parliamentary grants; and partly by the defections of the fanatic undeuomina.- tionalists,—Lord Edmond Pitzmaurice, Mr. Fawcett, Mr. Courtney, Sir John Lubbock, &c.,—from the Liberal to the Tory ranks ; and by the great deficiency of Liberal sym- pathy with Mr. Shaw, the greater number of Liberals having apparently stayed away from the division. Mr. Shaw obtained only ninety votes for his amendment, affirming that "no measure of University education can be considered as satisfactory to the people of Ireland which does not provide increased facilities for Collegiate education, as well as for the attainment of University degrees." And of these ninety Liberals, about half were Irishmen, and half Gladstonian Liberals. The truth certainly is that very few Liberals are Liberal enough to promote any education which they believe to be not Liberal in some of its tendencies, even though they can secure that it shall be, so far as they have anything to do with it, sound and accurate. The bigotry of Liberalism is naturally the limit of Liberalism. M. Jules Ferry has many English followers who have a sneaking admiration for his thoroughness in persecuting illiberal creeds.
