TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE RADICALS AND IRISH EDUCATION.
IT is not easy to understand what the Radicals would be at. They raise a shout about the retrograde policy of the Government in Ireland just as if they had not been advocating all along a policy which, under the name of Home-rule, would, if it had ever been carried out, have been much more retrograde. As one of the Irish members said last week in reply to Mr. Wallace, the Radicals advo- cate Home-rule on the ground that Ireland ought to be governed as the Irish wish ; and yet the moment it is pro- posed to do anything which the Irish wish, and which the English Radicals do not wish, they scream out that the policy is retrograde, and that they will give it the most tenacious and the most vehement opposition. Yet, whatever else is uncertain, this is not uncertain, that to have given Ireland Home-rule, and then to have complained of Irishmen for erecting a Catholic Univer- sity in Ireland with as many advantages for its students • as the University of Dublin offers to students who are either non-sectarian or Protestant, would have been the most preposterous act of folly ever committed. It is true that Mr. Gladstone, in his very strange compromise of 1886, proposed to debar the Irish Legislature, which he proposed to create, from doing anything to establish any form of religion ; but even if that very arbitrary limitation on the policy of allowing Irish ideas to be embodied in the Irish government, had been sanctioned and had been strictly observed, it would have been impossible to maintain with any decency that to give the Catholics a great University inclusive of theological teaching on a level in resources with the great Colleges and Universities for unsectarian education, would have been a violation of that limitation. No policy can be more short- sighted than to make a great parade of granting the utmost freedom for national aspirations with one hand, and then taking it all away again with the other hand. And we venture to say that the very minimum which any Irishman could have asked in the way of an educa- tion policy would have been what Mr. Balfour ventured to suggest as the general design of the Government foi Ireland in his speech of last week. If the Radicals really intend to bluster about retrograde policy in relation to such a scheme as that, we shall apply to them the parable as to the two brothers, one of whom, when told to go to work in the vineyard, said, " I go, sir," but went not ; while the other said, " I go not," but went. It appears to us that the Radicals, when asked to give freedom to Ireland to do as she wishes, say in the abstract, " By all means," but when the least instalment of actual concession is proposed, fly into a passion and refuse their consent ; while the Unionists, when asked to give a similar freedom in the abstract, refuse, but so soon as a reasonable and moderate concession is offered, accede at once. And if the question were put to any reasonable and impartial judge, " Which one of these twain did the will of the Irish people ? " be would assuredly answer, " The last, rather than the first."
Perhaps it will be replied, as Mr. Gladstone replies, that there is a great difference between giving people the alternative of doing wrong (as you think it) if they choose, and concurring with them in doing wrong ; to which the answer is that doubtless there is a difference, but that it hardly lies in the mouth of the people of Great Britain, who have two Established Churches of their own, to make such a fuss about the Irish people having, not an Established Church, nor anything like it, but a Uni- versity in which their children shall be taught freely all that the great majority of the Irish people think essential to a liberal education, just as the minority have already more that one University in which their sons are taught all that they regard as essential to a liberal education. These Radical Pharisees should take the beam of an Establishment out of their own eye before they offer to take the mote of a wish for Roman Catholic education aided by the State out of their Irish brother's eye. We might understand the outcry if Great Britain were a country in which, from time immemorial, the devotion of State property to the benefit or propagation of any special religion, had been regarded as particularly wicked and had been for. bidder. But for an island with two 4t.44 churches in it, and innumerable colleges living on public property,—and, indeed, property for the most part inherited from Roman Catholic corporations—in which one particular kind of Pro- testant worship, and one particular kind only, is admitted, to be filled with sanctimonious horror because the Government propose to attenuate slightly the grievance of which Ireland complains, in that she is not allowed to share what she thinks the advantages of that arrangement, is surely one of the most monstrous demonstrations of inappropriate moral fastidi- ousness of which the world ever heard. The Irish people have no sort of sympathy with the notion that every Church should be " liberated from State patronage and control," and they are not likely to have a chance of showing how strange such a principle appears to them ; yet the English or Scotch Radical who professes to be altogether anxious to let the Irish govern themselves on Irish ideas, is much more intent on forbidding the.smallest sanction to any use of that property necessary according to Irish ideas to bring about religious equality, rather than inequality, than he is upon carrying out his own principle in his own land, and sweeping away an actual inequality of a very obtrusive kind. If the present writer held the views of the strong Nonconformists as to the wrong of applying public pro- perty to the service of any particular creed, he would never- theless think it only fair to Ireland to grant her the desired Catholic University, seeing that in England and Scotland there is now, and is likely to be for a long time to come, so much public property applied to the service of particular religions. That Ireland should be permitted to rectify what her Roman Catholic population regard as a very serious practical grievance, so long at least as England and Scotland are permitted to go very much further in the same direction, is surely not necessarily to lengthen by a day the duration of the policy which the Liberationists so much condemn. When England and Scotland are converted to the Nonconformist view,—if ever they are converted to it,—they will not wait a day longer to adopt it, only because Ireland has not been forbidden to educate her Catholic laity as her Catholic laity them- selves desire. Indeed, when a lump-sum was given to Maynooth for the education of the Catholic priesthood, with the consent of the anti-State Church party, the principle was admitted in all its force, and its application in a very much milder form is all that is now advocated by the Government.
It is said that Mr. Parnell has been somewhat shaken by the fear which Mr. Davitt has so strongly expressed, that the Catholic University for Irelandwill prove to be a red- herring dragged across the path of the Irish Home-rulers, and will be likely to mislead many of them into co-operation with the Government. The Government, we think, would do well not to take any notice at all of this expression of alarm, either for the sake of winning Mr. Parnell to their side or for the sake of propitiating the Roman Catholic Episcopate. It is not because either the Parnellites or the Irish Bishops are likely to be appeased by this policy that it is right. And we do not see why it should not be pressed with just the same urgency, whether both the Parnellites and the Irish Episcopate show an ostentatious indifference to it, or whether they support it. It is of the 'utmost importance that the Government should not be sup- posed anxious to propitiate either the one party or the other, and for our part, we do not believe that they are anxious to do so, except so far as a firm and just policy towards Ire- land might naturally and rightly diminish their difficulties, —if, indeed, as yet, such a firm and just policy would diminish their difficulties (which is by no means certain). We are sure of this, that the Radical Party would be less violent if they saw that the Parnellites and the Roman Catholic priesthood were not disposed to enter into any alliance with the Government, than if they saw traces of any alliance of the kind. And, as a matter of fact, we feel sure that the more completely and proudly independent of Irish parties the Government remain, the less difficulty they will have in defeating this most bigoted and unreasonable Radical agitation against a just and salutary proposal.
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