The opponents of the O'Conor Don's Irish University Bill had
a meeting on Monday, Mr. Courtney in the chair, when resolutions were moved condemning the Bill, and charging it with being a Bill for endowing denominational education in disguise. Lord Edmund Fitzmaurice even went so far as to found an argument for this thesis on the fact that the Spectcdor, which has for many years supported frankly the endowment of a Roman Catholic University,—conditionally, how- ever, he should have said, on the most ample State guarantees for securing a high standard of secular education in all who are to gain the honours and degrees of such a University,—supports the O'Conor Don's Bill ; while the Daily IVetos, which opposes all denominational endowments also opposes this Bill. But with all respect for Lord Edmund Fitzmanrice, a feebler argument than this cannot be imagined. He might as well argue that because a man who openly professes his prefer- ence for sunlight, welcomes a lamp in the absence of sun- light, while a man who dreads sunlight, also deprecates the entrance of the lamp, the lamp so welcomed and frowned upon must be sunlight in disguise. We have, we confess, never been able to see the connection between what is called Liberalism and the disendowment of all religions, rather the contrary. None the less, when the State offers rewards for success in imparting secular education, and for that alone, and offers the same rewards to any institution which attains that success,—be it religious or secular,—it is not easy to impute, on a purely constructive ground, to such a scheme, a motive of religious favouritism. What we want is to promote by State aid the secular education of Roman Catholics, in the best way possible, but not to promote by State aid their education in the tenets of Roman Catholicism.
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