We were unable last week, owing to want of space,
to notice the Report of the Irish University Commission. The general conclusions and recommendations condemn very strongly the existing system of the Royal University, and advise that it should be converted into a Teaching University, and be also a Federal University with constituent Colleges,—i.e., the existing Queen's Colleges and a new College for Roman Catholics to be established in Dublin, a College with a Roman Catholic atmosphere. They also advise that "the endowment and equipment" of this College should be "on a scale required by a University College of the first rank " ; and that an in- crease of endowment be given to the Queen's College at Belfast. Whether these recommendations will be generally acceptable to Irish Roman Catholics, lay and clerical, we do not know If they are, we hold most strongly that they should be carried out without delay, and a College with a Roman Catholic atmosphere be established. If the Government will do this, and reduce the present monstrous over-repre- sentation of Ireland, as well as pass an Irish Land Bill, they will have carried an Irish programme of a very comprehensive kind. But to adopt such a tripartite policy would require great boldness, and as we have said elsewhere, boldness is not the mark of the present Government.
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