On Thursday night, after the recess, the scrimmage took the
form of a cross duel, beginning with Sir Thomas Bateson's attack on Mr. Gladstone for attributing to the Government, in his Wor- cestershire letter, the wish to endow the Catholic Church ; and, then, of course, taking the shape of a battle, intended on one side to press home the truth of that charge against the Govern- ment, and on the other to rebut the accusation. Lord Mayo even went so far as to say that they had proposed nothing more with respect to the Catholic University than Sir George Grey had proposrld under Lord Russell's Government. What is the truth ? Lord Russell never offered a shilling to any denomina- tional institution. He offered to so enlarge the Senate of the Queen's University as to give the Catholics confidence in its impartiality on religious questions, and then to affiliate, as a College, to that University, the institution now known as the Catholic University, and to provide more scholarships for the competition of the various candidates for degrees in the new University. But in every examination men of all religions would have met on perfectly equal terms, and the Government would have bestowed nothing whatever without the guarantee of an examination controlled by a Senate in great measure of its own nomination. What Lord Mayo proposed was to give State money to a University solely and strictly Catholic, and to emancipate it from all practical conditions even as to its secular examinations. Lord Mayo must be hard pressed to wriggle out of his declared policy, when he can take refuge in assertions so uncandid.
