The Dissenters and Voluntaryists are unfortunately not the only section
of the community who are doing all in their power to get up an agitation against the O'Conor Don's Irish Univer- sity Bill. The Conservative Protestants,—including Mr. Holt, M.P., Mr. Newdegate, M.P., Lord Oranmore and Browne, Sir Leopold M'Clintock, Sr.c., appear to be taking the same course, and indulging in very strong language against the proposal ; while the Times, counting on the immemorial unpopularity dial measures intended for the benefit of Irish Roman Catholics, treats the proposal as unreal. The opponents of the measure indeed, are agreed entirely on one point,—that unless the Irish are willing to receive their higher education in purely undenomi- national Colleges, they have no right at all to any State aid, even though that be given exclusively to the secular element in their education, and to nothing else. Unless Irish Catholics will take their education in the precise form in which English Protest- ants take it, they may pay for it wholly out of their own pockets, and go without any academical stamp testifying to its genuineness. Such is the generous and statesmanlike policy to which the Protestant Conservatives, and a considerable section of the most enlightened Liberals, appear to be committing them- selves. Clearly they have no true faith in the power of sound. education, literary, historical, and scientific, to promote wide religious views, whether it be amongst Roman Catholics or any others.
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