DUBLIN UNIVERSITY AND THE LIBERAL PARTY. (To THE EDITOR Or
TOT SPECTATOR.") En,—When Home-rule comes we may be sure that the Bishops • and their creatures will give a short, shrift to Dublin University. But why must the party of Mr. Bright and Mr. Forster better them by degrading and enslaving her ? When her ruin is accomplished the painful subject may be dismissed with the reflection that it is impossible to interfere with local self-government. Meanwhile, if Ireland, or rather - the clergy, must have what they have all along demanded, the endowment for a Catholic University, far better give them what they want, and leave the Dublin University to her fate under Home-rule. I have pointed out in the Spectator in 1905 that the Irish Parliament started the College of Maynooth for Catholics, lay as well as clerics; that 2372,000 was given out of the Irish Church surplus, while £300,000 was subscribed in Ireland. As the total of £672,000 does not suffice, there is a sum of more than a million which Mr. Gladstone took from the Irish Church surplus to the relief of the Consolidated Fend, and which, in common honesty, should be restored. With this million the Bishops could start a University after their own hearts, priest-and-Bishop-ridden, as you, Sir, have put it. But will the Liberal Party, for the sake of doing things on the cheap, abolish the Royal University, which has done good work in its way; and, worse still, will it degrade that mother of the many distinguished men Tape earl seposuit Hibernia? Myself a Liberal and Nonconformist, I plead for my Alma Mater. Better kill her outright than hand her over to intellectual thraldom.—I am, Sir, Ac.,
AN OLD CROMWELLIAN.
Previous page
