On Monday afternoon a meeting of graduates of the University
of Dublin was held in the Middle Temple Hall. Lord Rathmore, who presided, declared that Mr. Bryce's scheme would at once inflict a grievous injury and injustice on the University of Dublin—i.e., Trinity College—that it would unsettle everything and settle nothing, and that while it must exasperate one aide to the controversy, it would not finally satisfy the other, but would plunge both into a furious conflict, paralysing while it lasted the usefulness of such institutions as remained. The authorities of the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland had for the last fifty years declared with ever-increasing stringency against the system of the mixed education of Protestants and Catholics practised in Dublin University, and there were a considerable number of Irishmen of that faith who on that account had refused, and still refused, to avail themselves of the advantages which Trinity could offer them. He did not presume to criticise such action, still less did he desire to question the sincerity of the motives which inspired it, but the more he recognised that sincerity, the firmer became the basis of his belief that the solution of the religious difficulty now offered could never settle the question. Sir Robert Ball and Professor Bowden followed in the same sense, as also did the Dean of West- minster and Mr. Cecil Harmswortli, M.P., who, though he described himself as a very ardent supporter of the present Government, seconded the main resolution.
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