THE NEW IRISH UNIVERSITY.
[TO THE EDITOR OF THE " SPECTATOR."] SIR,—Last week you allowed me to point out how unsatisfac- tory the position of Irish Catholics must remain, so long as their colleges are unendowed. To-day, I will, with your per- mission, show the peculiarly disadvantageous conditions under which the new University must enter on her career.
Whatever the defects of the measure of 1873, this at least must be acknowledged, that its great author saw how arduous must he the struggle for existence of the new Colleges to be engrafted on the University of Dublin, and that he did what lay in man to ensure them a fair start in the race. He would not, it is true, give them a share in the glorious traditions of Trinity, but at least he incorporated them in the University of Swift and of Goldsmith, of Congreve, of Berkeley, and of Burke. Under that scheme, they would have equal rights in the representation of the University, and doubtless an equal right to use its precious library. They would have had the -services of a highly-paid body of Professors, and that most valuable all University rights, the right to self-government. Under the present measure, we have none of these things. The new University runs no small danger of fulfilling the dismal prophecy of the Premier in 1873, and " hobbling and lagging" behind the powerful corporation which has 300 years of glory, and a great annual income, a trained Professorate, and a host of friends, high in place and strong in their devotion, to sup- port her against the Examining Board which Parliament has dignified with the great name of a "University." But if the new- creation is to fulfil even its own modest functions with success, it is absolutely necessary that it should be put in some respects upon an equal footing with the great body, which we are bidden to hope it will one day rival. We do not want buildings for residence, we do not want lecture-rooms, we do not even want a chapel ; but we want an examination-hall of which we need not be ashamed when we stand in the noble quadrangle of Trinity ; we want laboratories, and appliances ; we want salaries for examiners, and prizes for successful students which may bear some comparison with those bestowed on her children by the- richest University in Christendom.
Even with all this, as I endeavoured last week to show, we should still be far, very far, from an equality with our Pro- testant fellow-subjects; but if, through any misplaced humility on the part of the Senate in asking, or misplaced parsimony on the part of the Treasury in granting, we are compelled to com- mence the struggle at a disadvantage, the whole of this great scheme, on which such high hopes have been built, must in- evitably fall to the ground. Brunt etiam alters Bella. We shall have the old wars over again, I fear with the old result.—
Previous page
