President Berwick, of Queen's College, Galway, comes most powerfully to
the aid of the Government Bill in his just pub- lished report upon the condition of his College during the ses- sions 1870-71 and 1871-72,—the more so that he gives this assist- ance quite undesignedly. He ignores the fundamental distinc - tion between Arts' students and mere professional students throughout the bulk of his report, but his annexed tables are more candid. The annual totals of Arts' students of all denomi- nations in the years 1868-72 have sometimes sunk as low as thirty-five, and never risen above forty-three. In the session 1870-71 the whole of the Arts' students, with the exception of two, were in the receipt of scholarships or exhibitions, that is to say, there were thirty-three paid Arts' students —competition being practically out of the question—out of a total of thirty-five. During the same time the annual totals of Catholics in attendance on the Faculty of Arts have never risen above twenty-one, and have even been so low its eighteen and six- teen. We observe that President Berwick tries to cover the failure of his institution by appealing to the comparative paucity of the population in Connaught. As, however, out of the total of 134 students during the session 1870-71, which Mr. Berwick arrives at by)lumping together medical, engineering, law, and Arta' students indiscriminately, only fijiy-nine come from Connaught at all, while thirty are supplied by Ulster, and as many as seven, strange to say, by England, President Bervrick's plea is not very fortunate. Galway College has been unable to attract even half of its paltry attendance from Connaught, and though laying Ulster, Leinster, and Munster, and even England under contri- bution towards its total, can scarcely assemble three dozen Arta' students. That result is not brilliant.
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