The conflict over " compulsory Irish" at the new National
*University still rages with unabated fury. Mr. Dillon, who had the courage to talk common-sense to the Nationalist Con- vention, met with a hostile reception, and local Councils on all sides are clamming for compulsion, in spite of the advice of the Rerun Catholic hierarchy and the protests of the pro- fessional classes. If irony could kill a movement, the coup do grace ought to be administered by the delicious resolution unanimously passed at a meeting of the Blessington Steam Tramway Company at Terenure, Dublin, on Saturday last :— "That in future no official or employ6 be appointed to do duty on the Blossington and Poulaphouca, line who has not got a thorough knowledge of the Irish language, and that the present Staff and employee now doing duty be granted ten years to make themselves acquainted with this most important and useful medium of expressing their thoughts. Furthermore, that after ten years all printing and official transactions on this line be conducted in Irish, to the entire exclusion of the barbarous language of the Saxon."
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