[To TM: EDITOR OP THE "SPROTATOR.1
Sin,—There are facts concerning the Catholic University question which you will perhaps permit me to lay before your readers. The first is that the Irish Parliament originally made the grant to Maynooth for the education of the Catholic laity along with the clergy. Next, that £300,000 were raised in Ireland, and £372,000 of the Irish Church Fund were given by Mr. Gladstone for the same object. There being, thus, a total of £672,000, it would seem that there is a sufficient endowment, and that a Royal Charter only is needed to enable clergy and laity to graduate in a thoroughly Catholic atmo- sphere, and free from all taint from association with Protestants. I must not omit that £6,000 a year, represent- ing a capital sum of £200,000 more, is paid to the Fellows of the Catholic University. So great is the ignorance of Irish affairs that it is not impossible these facts may be new to some of your readers.—I am, Sir, &c., AN OLD CsomwELTIAIL P.S.—The demand for further endowment is the crux of this question; but if there be a genuine desire for University training on the part of the Catholic laity, there is surely
sufficient endowment to begin with. - [The Irish Roman- Catholic iPa110211 desire to have a University not merely-with .a Roman Catholic atmosphere, but also with the fullest academic prestige. We hold that as they ask for this, they have a right to have it. The f act that this priest-and-Bishop-ridden University will be, in our opinion, anything but an ideal seat of learning is not material. The Irish Roman .Catholics have a right to have the thing they want, and not the thing we think they ought to want, —pro- vided, as in the case of a Roman Catholic University, that• thing can be given them without encouraging the disintegra- tion of the United Kingdom.—ED. Spectator.]
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