Mr. Matthew Arnold, in spite of his horror of intervening
in polities, has for once condescended to such an intervention on behalf of the Irish Catholics in relation to the University ques- tion ; and his intervention, in a letter in Thursday's Times, was worthy of him. He is dignified, of course,—incessto patnit dons,—but that is all the better, as it contributes to his saying weighty things in a more telling way. Nothing, for in- stance, can be better than this :—" We plead that we cannot now aid a Catholic University in Ireland, because we have made the English and Scotch Universities and Trinity College, Dublin, undenominational. Perhaps this must be to a Catholic the most irritating plea of all. We have waited until the Universities have become thoroughly of the character that suits us, and then, when the Anglican character of the English Universities, the Presbyterian character of the Scotch Universities, has got thoroughly established and secure for the next generation or two at any rate, we throw open our doors, declare tests and subscriptions abolished, pronounce our Universities to be now perfectly undenominational, and say that, having made them so, we are precluded. from doing anything for the Irish Catholics. But an Irish Catholic may say, All we want is an unde- nominational University, just like yours. Give us a University where the bulk of the students are Catholic, where the bulk of the teachers are Catholic, and we will undertake to be open to all comers, to accept a conscience-clause, to impose uo tests, to be perfectly undenominational.' We will not give him the chance."
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