Lord Cairns's University Bill was produced on Monday, and turns
out to be either a mutilated fragment, or a deliberate defiance to the Roman Catholics. It proposes nothing that anybody wants, and takes away no disability that anybody feels. It proposes to substitute a now University for the Queen's University, which shall be for Ireland what the London University is for England,—an Examining Board, to examine all students, whether from colleges or from private study, who apply for degrees, and to confer degrees on them, if they are found duly qualified. It does this and nothing more. Of course the new University would absorb all the scholarships and exhibitions now given by the Queen's University, and ultimately, might have others created for itself alone, though none such are, as yet, set forth in the Bill ; but it offers no help, either directly or indirectly, to any teaching bodies whatever, and therefore does not touch even with a finger the very core of the Catholic grievance in this matter. If the Bill has been maimed through dissensions in the Government, this deformity should never have been produced to the Legislature. If it is what it was intended to be, it is a clumsy missile discharged from a Protestant catapult at the Roman Catholics, in trder to excite enthusiasm at the general election. In either case, it will prejudice the Government which was silly enough to introduce it without cause and without excuse.
