The letter by Mr. Balfour on Protestantism and University Education
in Ireland published on Thursday is in effect a most able and convincing plea for meeting the demand of the Roman Catholics that they should be given a University to which they consider that they can conscientiously send their sons. What Mr. Balfour suggests is that two new Univer- sities shall be established in Ireland, one in Dublin and one in Belfast, on precisely similar lines, which shall both be rigidly subject to the Tests Acts, where all scholarships and fellow- ships paid for out of public funds shall be open to public competition irrespective of creed, where no public endowment shall be given to Chairs in Philosophy, Theology, or Modern History, where the Professors shall have a right of appeal against unjust dismissal, and, lastly, where the number of clergy on the Governing Body shall be strictly limited. The only difference between the two Universities would be that the Dublin University would be started with a Govern lug Body of Catholic and the Belfast University with one of Protestant complexion. Ireland would then have three Universities— by no means too large a number when we remember that Scotland has four—two of which would be Protestant in atmosphere and one Catholic, "which, as there are nearly three Roman Catholics in that country to one Protestant, seems," as Mr. Balfour says, "not unfair to the Protestants,"
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