The Catholic priesthood of Ireland appear to have become alive
to the fact that "concurrent endowment" is not in all cases either inexpedient or immoral. After rejecting concurrent en- dowment for their Church, they are demanding concurrent endowment for their educational institutions. At an aggregate meeting held in the Rotunda, Dublin, on Friday week, on a requisition signed by 35,000 persons, the leading Catholics, clericals and laymen, resolved that the injustice hitherto prevalent in Ireland in the matter of education cannot be remedied without perfect educational equality, and that "this equality can only be attained by the concurrent endowment or total disendowment of educational institutions." The latter proposal is at once absurd and unjust, but the former has been recommended for years by all far-sighted Liberals. The main obstacle to it, no doubt, has been the prejudice of English and Scotch Protestants, who cannot see that if Catholicism is as false as they think, any step in enlightenment must decrease its influence ; but the next obstacle has been the resistance of the priesthood, who flung over Mr. Gladstone's plan of compromise, and left him to bear the whole brunt of sectarian hostility, without being able to say that he had removed the sectarian sense of injustice. They seem to have re- considered themselves, and may possibly obtain something from Lord Beaconsfield, who is entirely indifferent to any creed, and about, it is believed, to admit a Papal Nuncio,—a wise act, but one which comes oddly from a Ministry of which a red- hot Orangeman is Lord Chancellor, and next to the Premier, perhaps the most influential Privy Councillor.
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