10 DECEMBER 1898, Page 13

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR.

A CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY FOR IRELAND.

[To THE EDITOR 01 THE " SPECTATOR.") SIR,—In enumerating the reasons for establishing a Catholic University in Ireland (Spectator, December 3rd) you have omitted the moat serious and practical. Young Catholics have to run the race of life with Englishmen and Scotohmen, and they run it at a serious disadvantage for want of the train- ing and efficiency which a University education supplies. They are retarded in obtaining professions, and afterwards in procuring employment, from this want. It was my fortune to encounter in Australia hundreds, and indeed thousands, of bright, intelligent young Irishmen whose education had not fitted them for any employment beyond that of a clerk, and who in many cases became waiters in hotels, ponndkeepers, railway-porters, and, of course, diggers, while better educated, and I will venture to say not better endowed, Scotchmen occupied superior positions. I have never heard any reason for refusing them this right, which a man of honour and integrity ought not to be ashamed to acknowledge. They are not asking anything new or peculiar ; there are two Protestant Universities in England, two Presbyterian Universities in Scotland, and one essentially Protestant University for the minority in Ireland. In the name of common-sense and common justice, why should there not be one essentially Catholic University for the majority P—I am, Sir, &c.,