In the declaration of the leading Catholic laity of Ireland presented to the Lord-Lieutenant in the year 1897, a similar claim is made. It was, in fact, made clear from the beginning that, if finality was to be arrived at, equality must be a condition precedent.

With this information before them, the Commissioners, in their report, recommend that the Royal University be reconstituted, that it shall become a federal university, with the three Queen's Colleges as constituent colleges, and that a new college be established in Dublin upon lines acceptable to the Catholics to form a fourth constituent college. Clearly this arrangement would be an improvement on the existing state of things, but it goes without saying that the proposals of the Commissioners do not establish equality, nor do these proposals for that reason afford any prospect of finality. Indeed, the report seems to bear on the face of it the misgivings of its authors. Of the twelve members of the Commission one refused to sign the report, and of the eleven remaining members no fewer than nine have signed with more or less important reservations or further suggestions. In such circumstances the report of the Commissioners can avail but very little in bringing about a settlement. One useful purpose has, however, been served. The evidence given before the Commission and the documents published with the report are replete with information of the highest value. Here we have placed before us in a clear and intelligible form the complicated problem of Irish higher education. But the Commissioners have lost their opportunity. Instead of being guided by the evidence, they have placed before Parliament and the country a shifty compromise, and consciousness of the unsatisfactory character of their proposals seems to manifest itself in the numerous reservations with which their signatures are guarded.

In England the seriousness of this question of higher education for the mass of the Irish people appears never to have been grasped. Out of 3,309,000 Catholics in Ireland-over 74 per cent. of the entire population-there are only some 250 lay students in receipt of higher education in the colleges endowed by the State, or, in other words, one in every 13,000 of the Catholic population; while of the Episcopalian Protestants, 581,000 in number, forming 13 per cent. of the entire population, there were at the date of the Royal Commission in Dublin University alone 1000 students, or about one in every 580 persons of that denomination." Of the Presbyterians, 443,000 in number, one in every 1200 is in receipt of higher education in endowed colleges. It is right that the full meaning of these remarkable figures should be realised in this country. That we should shut out from the benefits of higher education three-fourths of a nation like the Irish, full of natural ability, involves a loss to the Empire, in every part of, it that can hardly be exaggerated. Had we Appendix to First Report of Royal Commission, p. 295. Ibid., Question 2093. Ibid., Question 320.

from the first held out to the majority of the population the same facilities for educational purposes that have been provided even to profusion for the favoured minority, there is no department of the State, civil or military, that would not have profited by such action. We have deliberately let run to waste, and cast aside as of no account, raw material of admirable quality.

In the past, no doubt, religious rancour was the chief motive, but now at least, when we profess to act on the principle of religious equality, to afford equal opportunity to all, it is time to put an end to a state of things in Ireland that has been described by one of the Royal Commissioners as 'intolerable.' In England it is commonly assumed that the Irish prelates are determined to keep entire control over higher education, and that this is the obstacle that still stands in the way and prevents the State from making suitable provision for the higher education of the Catholic people. But what foundation is there for this view? The claim of the Bishops is plainly set forth in a statement dated in June 1897 and signed by them. It will be seen that no such control by ecclesiastics is asked for. On the contrary, it is agreed that the control should be vested in a body of which the majority would be laymen, and this point is still more definitely dealt with in his evidence by the Rev. Dr. Delany, President of the Catholic University College in Dublin. He says that if the governing body of the proposed University were twenty-four in number he would have eighteen of them laymen."

The Bishops further agree that all questions arising in connection with the appointment and dismissal of professors should be met by submitting such questions to the decision of a strong and well-chosen Board of Visitors in whose independence and judicial character all parties would have confidence.'

The Bishops acquiesce in opening up the proposed University throughout to all comers, irrespective of religious belief. They do not ask that a chair of Theology should be provided from public funds. Such a chair exists, it is true, in Dublin University, but on the other hand the ecclesiastical College of Maynooth is partly endowed by the State. The Bishops would doubtless make provision for instruction in theology-Scientiarum Mater-for in a University such as they contemplate the subject could not be omitted, and in connection with this question Newman's notable words are worth recalling:

If you drop any science out of the circle of knowledge you cannot keep its place vacant for it; that science is forgotten; the other sciences close up, or, in other words, they exceed their proper bounds and intrude where they have no right. For instance, I suppose, if ethics were sent into banishment, its territory would soon disappear under a treaty of partition, as it may be called, between law, political economy, and physiology; what, again, would become of the province

7

Appendix to First Report of Royal Commission, p. 387.

1 Ibid., Question 1282.

of experimental science if made over to the Antiquarian Society, or of history if surrendered out-and-out to metaphysicians? The case is the same with the subject-matter of theology; it would be the prey of a dozen various sciences if theology were put out of possession; and not only so, but those sciences would be plainly exceeding their rights and their capacities in seizing upon it. They would be sure to teach wrongly where they had no mission to teach at all."

Having regard to the declaration of the Bishops, on what conceivable grounds can further delay in the settlement of the Irish University question be defended? The report of the Royal Commissioners has been before the Government for two years; the report may not help them very much, but the voluminous evidence, and the documents which are published with the report, practically exhaust the subject. It is action that is now required.

As an alternative to a separate university, a scheme has been put forward to found in the University of Dublin a college to be under Catholic influence to the same extent as Trinity College is under Protestant influence, and the Catholic authorities have stated their willingness to accept, under conditions, such a solution. But the grave question arises here, whether it is advisable-I had almost said admissible to accede to this proposal whereby the whole university training of the country would be centralised in one national institution. The course suggested has been tried in France with very unsatisfactory results. The tendency of the day is against centralisation, and in favour of the multiplication of universities. England has seven such already, and one more at least, viz. that of Sheffield, is in contemplation.

In Scotland there are four universities, and the multiplication of universities is an accepted policy in most parts of the Continent and in the United States. In the words of a recent writer quoted by the President of Queen's College, Belfast, the system of centralisation in this matter 'has wrought unmitigated evil in every country where it has existed.'

Evidence was given before the Royal Commission that if a university acceptable to Catholics were established in Ireland the number of students would probably rise to 2,000, and that amongst these there would be a large contingent from Maynooth College, where from 500 to 600 students of university age are preparing for the priesthood.

The secondary or intermediate schools for Catholics in Ireland contain, it is asserted, some 4,000 boys, and these are instructed by young priests fresh from Maynooth. It is almost pathetic to read, in the evidence given by the Bishop of Limerick, of the disqualifications these teachers labour under owing to the absence of university training.

They come out of Maynooth [the Bishop says] with very clear intellects and very great logical power, but they are absolutely deficient in all classical

• Scope and Nature of University Education, Discourse III., p. 96 (2nd edit.). Appendix to First Report of Royal Commission, Questions 651–656.

9

education, and in all scientific and mathematical education, and, above all, deficient in that undefinable thing which is not knowledge, but culture-the character of a man that is formed when he goes through the process of a real university education; something you cannot put your hand on; a something that cultivates a sense of honour and a right judgment with regard to the affairs of life. If our priests had such an education they would be totally different teachers from what they are now.10

In Ireland the great majority of the Catholic population consists of small traders, farmers, and labourers, who could not unaided make any direct use of a university. But with co-ordination of primary and secondary schools, aided by scholarships to be competed for at the latter, clever boys even of poor parents would have the way opened to them to proceed to the university and to attain the highest positions. The benefit would not stop there, however. The whole mass of the population would partake of it even if it were only the teachers of their teachers that had acquired the wide culture and open-mindedness that come of university training.

The position of university education in Ireland constitutes a huge scandal, which for the credit of the country, if for no other reason, must be put an end to. Let us not, after the miserable series of failures in the past, revert to the practice of forcing upon an unwilling people a system that they refuse to accept, or will accept so long only as something better cannot be exacted by renewed agitation. The people have, after all, natural rights in a matter such as the education of their own children. Let us respect them. No wiser words are recorded in the minutes of the evidence given before the recent Royal Commission than those addressed to the Commissioners by the late Mr. Lecky:

I think the State should say to the Roman Catholics, 'If you will not accept our type of education, give your people higher education in your own way, and under the most favourable conditions; only try to put an end to the lamentable deficiency in it which now exists, and which is exercising a most pernicious influence in every department of Irish life.'

10

GEORGE T. LAMBERT.

Appendix to First Report of Royal Commission, Question 325.

OUGHT PUBLIC SCHOOLMASTERS TO BE TAUGHT TO TEACH?

THE question at the head of this paper would at first seem singularly fatuous. There is a general belief that education matters a great deal, especially in the case of the sons of the ruling classes in the country, if there is still a class to which that expression may be applied. And there is, further, a fairly widespread knowledge that it is difficult. Indeed, this knowledge is rapidly on the increase. Everybody who seriously addresses himself or herself to the task of training a child, especially someone else's child, soon discovers how incredibly difficult it is to approximate to the ideal in any one department of the subject. And the number of parents, or anyhow of mothers, who nowadays give serious attention to the principles of education is certainly much larger than it was thirty or forty years ago. Whether home training is more successful than it was then is a separate question. But no one can doubt that there is far more of educational talk, for more parents know what they ought to aim at; and that is nearly equivalent to saying that far more know how exceedingly difficult it is in education to achieve the object of effort, and to feel that worthy aspirations have been satisfied.

And if that is the case with parents and governesses, it is still more emphatically true of schoolmasters. I doubt if any profession-even the medical-is more convinced of the exceeding difficulty of the art it professes. Read a collection of educational essays written by schoolmasters, and how full they seem of a sense of the complexity of the art of teaching! How wistful! How unlike the tone of the old dominie, or of the schoolmaster who still lingers in the popular imagination, and finds expression in such works of fiction as Vice Versa! Indeed, to many people there would seem to be something of what grammarians call an oxymoron, a paradoxical juxtaposition of opposites in the term a wistful schoolmaster. None the less, he exists in large numbers at the present time, and the reason why he is wistful is that he is seriously trying to train boys' minds, and is finding the task enormously more difficult than he had supposed.

Since, then, there is this consensus of opinion, among those who