Mr. Balfour's arguments in favour of his scheme are most
convincing, and are specially attractive to us because he speaks so boldly as a Protestant, and declares that all Pro- testants ought to support his proposal. "We claim, and justly, to have been the pioneers of toleration, let us not persist in a policy so perilously suggestive of intolerance. We claim, and justly, that the Reformation scarce did more for the purification of religion than for the advancement of learning. Let us not show zeal for one half of its work by frustrating the other." Mr Balfour ends by supporting the scheme as I a Unionist, a Protestant, and a lover of education. We
liendorse every word of Mr. Balfour's letter from the point of view of Unionists, Protestants, and lovers of education. If the Government now fail to take up this matter and give it the solution which Mr. Balfour has so ably worked out, and
which has received the assent of moderate men on both sides, they will incur a very heavy responsibility. It is, we hold, absurd to say that the measure could not be got through Parlia- ment. The country is Protestant, but it wants to do justice to Catholic Ireland, and if the Government do what is just and right, and set all electoral fears at defiance, they will gain, not lose, popular confidence. If they simply leave the ques- tion alone they will be gnilty of one of those derelictions of duty which always in the end call down Nemesis.
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