THE IRISH UNIVERSITY BILL.
[TO THE EDITOR OF THE " SPECTATOR.") SIR,—Those who speak in the name of the Irish Roman Catho- lics on the University question have not told us what will satisfy them. My opinion is that their Bishops will be satisfied with nothing short of a large endowment of public money, whether out of the Church surplus or the Consolidated Fund matters nothing, for a University with full degree-giving power, and absolutely exempt from any control but their own. It is scarcely possible that Parliament can ever consent to this. Parliament must, at the very least, retain effectual guarantees for the soundness of the secular education.
It ought not, however, to be difficult to reconcile the claim of the State to supervise secular education with the reasonable claims of the Churches ; and I would propose that while the teaching and degree-giving functions of the Queen's University and Colleges remain as they are, the system should be supple- mented by the formation of halls in the immediate vicinity of the Queen's Colleges, and perhaps of Trinity College, Dublin, also, but under avowedly denominational management, where students may have their home life and their religious teaching under the control of their respective Churches, while they learn the secular branches of education at the Colleges which are unclenominational.
I think this would be not only an endurable compromise, but desirable in itself; and it would be well to endow such Halls out of the Church surplus. It might benefit the Roman Catholics most—I do not know whether it would, or not—but the benefit would, of course, be open to all who were willing to avail them- selves of it. To those who think that any proposal is to be condemned if it can be called an endowment of religion, I reply that it is primarily an endowment of the home life of students, and I hope it is not needful to say much in order to show how
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