The Irish University debates have really produced some good results.
They have quickened the Irish Catholic intelligence, and made the English Catholics act on their principles. A very remarkable protest har3 been addressed by seventy students, or former students, of the Irish Catholic Univertity to Cardinal Cullen, "complaining of the absolute scientific incompetence of the Catholic University. "No one can deny," they say, "that the Irish Catholics are miserably deficient in scientific education. That deficiency is extremely galling to us. In a commercial sense it involves a loss to us, while in a social and intellectual sense it is positive degradation." And they give substantial proof, supposing their facts to be correct, of the gross inefficiency of the arrangements for scientific purposes in the Catholic University. At the commencement of the new Session of the Catholic University on Thursday, this damaging protest does not seem to have been directly alluded to, but the speakers dilated on the new extension the University would gain from the affiliation of 31 Irish schools and colleges, spoke of the intention to create a University worthy of Ireland, and boasted that the Catholics had last Session brought the strongest Government ever seen in England "on its knees." That was rather a wild boast. The Irish Liberals, by deserting in a body, can almost at any time defeat the Government with which they usually act ; but if they brought Mr. Gladstone's Government "upon its knees," it certainly was not to the Irish Catholics that it prayed for help. As far as we can see, the cheerful result of their tactics is that Mr. Disraeli is bidding eagerly for the Orange support, and Mr. Gladstone grimly warning the Catholics that he wants their aid no longer, and that they must do without his.
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