The Felon's Track; Or, History of the Attempted Outbreak in Ireland / Embracing the Leading Events in the Irish Struggle From the Year 1843 to the Close of 1848

by Michael Doheny

"That memorialists are disposed to co-operate on fair and reasonable terms with her majesty's government and the legislature, in establishing a system for the further extension of academical education in Ireland.

"That a fair proportion of the professors and other office-bearers in the new colleges should be members of the Roman Catholic Church, whose moral conduct shall have been properly certified by testimonials of character, signed by their respective prelates. And that all the office-bearers in those colleges should be appointed by a board of trustees, of which the Roman Catholic prelates of the provinces in which any of those colleges shall be erected shall be members.

"That the Roman Catholic pupils could not attend the lectures on history, logic, metaphysics, moral philosophy, geology, or anatomy, without exposing their faith or morals to imminent danger, unless a Roman Catholic professor will be appointed for each of those chairs.

"That if any president, vice-president, professor, or office-bearer, in any of the new colleges shall be convicted before the board of trustees of attempting to undermine the faith or injure the morals of any student in those institutions, he shall be immediately removed from his office by the same board."

It will be observed that the principle of mixed education is not here directly approved or condemned. But approval is an inference, as clear and emphatic as words could express. The memorial prays for distinct and specific alterations in the details of the Bill. It demands that certain branches of secular education should be taught to the Catholic students by Catholic professors approved of by the prelates, and it insists upon other guarantees to secure the Catholic youth from the danger of all and every species of interference with the tenets of their faith.

How far the demands of the bishops were just or extravagant, is not a fit subject of inquiry here. But the fact of making the demands stamps the principle of the bill with their incontrovertible approval. The argument which denies it involves an accusation against those Most Reverend and Right Reverend divines, of evasion, treachery and untruth. Any defence which implies that they avoided the direct condemnation of the principle because they knew their memorial would be disregarded, which would enable them to interdict the whole Bill, principle and details, on the ground of the immorality of the latter, involves an implication that moral and Christian turpitude is synonymous with Catholic zeal. Such an implication, inevitable from the premises assumed by the opponents of the mixed system, would be foulest calumny. The Catholic prelates were eminently sincere; and had they been warmly seconded they might have obtained such ameliorations in the details of the system as would be satisfactory to every rational, liberal and honest man. But the old jealousy, division and calumny which had grown out of the Bequests Act, obtruded themselves on every attempt at calm consideration, and scattered the elements indispensable to successful moral combination. The principle and details of the academic project became confused and confounded, and while some clamorously opposed, others unthinkingly supported, the entire. Thus the minister was enabled to balance the voice of public opinion as he found it arrayed for and against his measure, and under pretence of indifference to despise both parties. For a long while, the action of the Association was paralysed. There were deeper questions at issue there than even those which appeared on the face of the bill. The educational party insisted that any measure which did not embrace the University was scanty and illiberal. They claimed its honours, advantages and emoluments for all the youth of Ireland alike; and they sought to make the academic subordinate to and parcel of the collegiate system. The Dublin University and Trinity College are separate and distinct foundations and establishments. They proposed that Maynooth and Trinity College should be both sufficiently endowed for all purposes of ecclesiastical education, without any interference, direct or indirect, from each other or the Government, while the University should be open alike to all who had obtained distinction in the provincial colleges. Any measure of narrower scope would, they contended, leave dullness and bigotry where it found them.

Mr. O'Connell, on the other hand, insisted on the inviolability of Dublin College as a Protestant institution, inaccessible to Catholics, except through the slough of perverted and perjured faith. He would then have new colleges purely Catholic and entirely under the control of the Catholic bishops, but endowed by the State, and chartered to confer literary degrees. He would extend the same right to the members of other religious persuasions. It was answered that these positions and his arguments addressed to the academic question were irreconcilable and incompatible. Catholics were already admissible to Dublin College, and entitled to certain degrees and a vote. He either intended that they should be thenceforth excluded or he did not. If not, then the argument against mixed education would hold for nothing: if he did, then he attempted what was impracticable, or, if not impracticable, preposterous and absurd. It is not conceivable that Catholic young men, of laudable ambition, would be deterred from entering the lists with their Protestant contemporaries where most honour was won by superior eminence, or that they would be swayed by a warning that a college course would be attended with risk to their faith and morals, when they remembered that for the past century, while the risk was infinitely more imminent, no such warning had been ever heard from council, synod or conference. It is a strange fact in the history of these troubled times that no voice of denunciation against Dublin College could be heard in the polemical din, although it was well known that its literary honours stamped preliminary degradation on the Catholic aspirant, and were used at once to mock his political condition and pervert his faith—no voice was heard although one at least of the prelates had obtained degrees in the University, while the bishop and priests of an entire diocese, in conclave assembled, solemnly resolved that they would refuse sacraments to any Catholic parent who sent his son to one of the Godless colleges. But supposing it were practicable to exclude Roman Catholics from the University, and that the system of exclusive education among the middle and upper classes were applied in all its rigour, when were Protestant and Catholic to meet? If it were dangerous to faith and morals that they should discuss together the properties of an angle or the altitude of a star, it could hardly be safe to have them decide together a principle of law or determine the value or limits of a political franchise. All this was urged on Mr. O'Connell, and sometimes apparently with success, for he more than once consented to forego the discussion of the question in the Hall; and he would have strictly adhered to that engagement had he not been goaded by the intemperate counsels of others.

In the desultory history of this question, two facts have been stated requiring distinct proof. They are:—First, that Mr. O'Connell was favourable to the principle of mixed education in the commencement.

And, secondly, that the Seceders—those who were afterwards so glibly denounced as infidels for their support of the Godless bill—were as much opposed to that bill as he was.