A CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY.
IT is to be hoped that the difficulties with America which have occupied men's minds so greatly during the week will not have entirely overshadowed the con- troversy between Mr. Lecky and the Bishop of Limerick, and that the attention they deserve will have been given to their letters on the subject of Irish University educa- tion. The subject is one of very great importance. If we do well and wisely in the matter of Irish Univer- sity education, a vast deal may be accomplished to solve the Irish question. If we do the wrong thing, or do nothing, or, again, do less than the right thing, we shall miss one of the best opportunities ever offered for putting the Irish Roman Catholic Church and educated Catholic opinion in Ireland on the side of the Union, and of allaying a grievance, or what is felt to be a grievance, by a very large body of Irishmen. The question of Irish University education may seem a. small matter—a matter of form almost—and one which is not of capital im- portance, like the Land question, or the question of Local Government. In reality, it is quite as im- portant as the last of these, and almost as important as the first. Solve it truly and permanently, and you have struck a blow for the Union as great, or greater, than the gaining of a dozen seats in the South of Ireland. The reason is plain. If you can get the Irish Catholic Church as an organisation on the side of the Union, in favour of the political status quo, and against any rash experiments in the way of particularism, you have given the Unionist cause a buttress which makes it almost impregnable. But can you get the Irish Church on the side of the Union ? We believe you can,—by satisfying its claims in regard to Irish University education. We are aware that when we have said this we have not necessarily proved the wisdom or the policy of doing what the Irish Bishops ask in regard to Irish University educa- tion. Commodities may doubtless be bought too dear ; and it is of course possible that the Catholic demands may be so unreasonable, so dangerous, so injurious to the Protestants, that even the stability of the Union ought not to be bought at such a price. For example, if the setting-up of a Catholic University would oppress or do wrong to the consciences and religious beliefs of the Irish Protestants, we hold that no such scheme should be tolerated for a moment. We are not going to do evil that good may come, in Ireland or elsewhere.
But would the grant of a Catholic University of the kind the Irish Bishops desire, do injury to the consciences of the Protestants, or oppress them in the slightest degree ? We do not believe that any such contention is arguable for a moment, unless it is an oppression of the conscience for a man to pay £20 in taxes, and to know that if he could trace out the money through a hundred channels he would ultimately find that Is. 41d. of his con- tribution went to support the teaching of a creed which he disliked. Under such an argument, no doubt, the Quakers are terrible sufferers. Their money is almost all spent in paying for old wars, or preparing for new ones. Seriously, however, there is not, and cannot be, any just pretence that the Protestants of England, Scotland, and Ireland would be oppressed by the setting-up of a Catholic University on strictly Catholic lines. Dr. Kane, if we remember rightly, has in effect admitted so much. The only serious arguments—and we agree that they are serious arguments—offered against the proposal are indeed of a perfectly different kind. They are dealt with in- ferentially in Mr. Lecky's very able letters to the Times of Saturday and Friday last. In effect they come to this. What ought to be done in Ireland is to main- tain the best possible University system,—one which will have the best educational results on the youth of the country. But a University entirely managed by the ecclesiastics of a special creed, and virtually containing none but students of that particular creed, cannot possibly be a good University, or give the type of education and cultivation which a good University gives. A University in which the Catholics of Ireland will be all herded to- gether, would be an educational misfortune.—That those who argue thus do so with perfect sincerity, we do not doubt for a moment. Mr. Lecky, and those who agree with him, do not wish, either as Protestants or upholders of Liberal ideas, to get hold of the young Catholics and convert or rationalise them. They merely want, as many strong Catholics also want, to obtain for the Catholic laity as wide an intellectual horizon as they can. They would like, that is, to leave them Catholics, but Catholics who have been submitted to the wider intellectual influences of a non-sectarian University. We so far agree with this view as quite to admit that the Universities of Oxford and Cam- bridge did not in any sense cover the nation when they were merely Anglican, and further that the wisdom of throwing them open has been amply proved. Again, if we were ourselves called upon to advise a young Catholic whether he should go to an open University or to one virtually closed to all but those of his own creed, we should advise him most strongly to seek the wider and freer intellectual atmo- sphere, and to avoid a purely Catholic University. But in our opinion all these views as to the abstract rights and wrongs of University education are entirely beside the mark, and if they are intruded into the present question, will ruin an excellent chance for most materially advancing the solution of the Home-rule question. What we want to do is not to set up an ideal University in Ireland, but to give satisfaction to the demands of the Irish Catholics in regard to University education. And their demand is not for what we or Mr. Lecky would consider an ideal University, but for a Catholic University of their own, which shall be for them what Trinity College once was for the Protestants, and what they believe, though doubtless erroneously, it still is. As we have said, this demand may not, from the educational point of view, be a very wise or reasonable one ; but at any rate it is one which is quite harmless politically. It does no man wrong, and it satisfies the Irish Bishops. Trinity College is left as the ideal University, where a Catholic who is wise enough to want to widen, not to narrow, his horizon may go, and also as a place where the extreme Protestants may still find, to a considerable extent, that sectarian atmosphere which they, like the Roman Catholic Bishops, consider essential. With a Catholic University for the Catholics handsomely endowed (and the thing must be done handsomely and without risk of any grumblings that Trinity College, though the University of the minority, is the richer), and Trinity College as-it now is, every one, indeed, ought to be satisfied. The Catholic Hierarchy will have all they want. The enlightened people, Catholic and Protestant, who want width of horizon will have it on one side of Trinity College and in the fact that all the posts are open to free competition. On the other hand, the strict and unyielding Protestants will have all they really want, in the fact that, in spite of the letter of the constitution, Trinity College has, and will continue to have, a distinctly Protestant atmosphere.
Can the attitude which we have taken up—namely, that for political reasons, and in order to conciliate them, the Irish Bishops ought to have what they ask for in the matter of a Catholic University—be fairly described as cynical ? We do not think so. We hold that the key- note of the Unionist policy as regards Ireland must be to give to Ireland whatever we know she would give herself had she Home-rule, provided always that such grant does not oppress or injure any minority in Ireland, or endanger any Imperial interests. We ought, that is, to show Ireland that there is nothing which she would have a moral right to ask from a Home-rule Parliament which she cannot have by asking for it at Westminster. But if we accept this principle, and we believe all thinking Unionists do accept it, then most clearly it is right to give the Irish Catholic majority the University which their Bishops demand, and not to try and put them off with an ideally perfect University system which they detest. We know that if Home-rule were granted, the local Parlia- ment would give Ireland a Catholic University on the Bishops' plan. We know also that the Bishops' plan injures no minority and hurts no Imperial interest. Then most assuredly we ought, in justice to Ireland, to give the Irish the University their Bishops desire. Depend upon it, if we do this boldly and simply, and with no pretence that we are not really doing it—we dread a mere money-grant, and no proper power of granting degrees and constituting a true University—we shall have enormously strengthened the Unionist cause. That this is so, one need only cite the Bishop of Limerick's admirably temperate and clearly reasoned letter in Thursday's Times. Though the words are very guarded, one cannot fail to see what the Bishop thinks will be the result if a generous policy is pursued by the Government. " Many of us," he says, "earnestly hope that the present Government may have the courage to deal with the question, and thoroughly. In my humble opinion no mere material measures which they may pass can compare in importance with this of higher studies, and by settling it they will do much to lay a foundation of true Conservatism for public life in Ireland. I think, too, that there is no question of the first rank at present before us capable of an easier solution." We will go further, and will venture to prophesy that if the Government satisfies the Irish Church on this matter, and then facilitates the creation of freeholders in Ireland, the demand for Hume-rule will within ten years be hardly more vital than the cause of the White Rose.
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