Mr. Isaac Butt, who had taken the oaths at the
beginning of the sitting, made his first speech to this Parliament on the ques- tion, and an able speech it was, advocating the endowment of a slew Catholic College within the walls of the University of Dublin, —which he knew Mr. Gladstone could not grant,—and urging very forcibly that it was a simple remnant of the old tyranny to say to the Catholics, 'I differ from you, and I will force you to have either secular education, or education in a Protestant estab- lishment.' A division taken on the motion for adjournment showed the Irish Catholics voting in a minority of 24 against a majority composed of Liberals and Conservatives of 281, after which the debate stood adjourned by the arrival of the hands of the clock at ten minutes to 6.