The Irish 'University Bill was virtually passed through the House
of Commons last week, and is now a part of the law of the land ; but it is evident that it has been passed, so far as the votes of Irish Members are concerned, much more for its destructive than for its constructive working. Yesterday week, when the vote for the Queen's Colleges was proposed in Com- mittee of Supply, Mr. Shaw, as leader of the Home-rulers,, opposed the vote, and pointed out what is, no doubt, quite true, that the Queen's Colleges at Cork and Galway have never been really made suitable for the attendance of Catholic students, in the way in which the Queen's College at Belfast was from the first made suitable for the attendance of Presbyterian students. He declared the intention of the Irish party to resist these votes in future, unless the Professorial staff in Cork and Galway were so, transformed as to render them appropriate for the teaching of Catholic laymen. The O'Conor Don went further, and said that no change in the personnel of these Colleges would over render them 'what Catholics require ; and Mr. Parnell fol- lowed in the same strain. The Irish University Bill has been approved by Ireland on Mr. O'Donnell's grounds,—frankly expressed, on the first mooting of the measure,—that it unsettles an existing University which is very unpopular, rather than for any merits of its own—of which, indeed, it has hardly any.
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