Ireland and the Home Rule Movement

by Sir Michael McDonnell

[134]the Catholic University College is endowed is worthy of attention. The Royal University, out of its income from the Irish Church Fund, maintains twenty-nine fellows, each with an income of £400 a year on condition that they should act as examiners in the Royal University, and in addition give their services as teachers in colleges appointed by the Senate (namely, the three Queen's Colleges, University College, Dublin, and the Magee College in Derry). Of these Fellows fifteen are allotted to University College. On the assumption that of their salary one-quarter represents the payment as examiners to the University—and the estimate is generous in view of the payment of only £30 to each examiner in the Cambridge Triposes—if this be assumed to be the case, the remaining £300 stands for the salary given as teacher in University College, which thus, albeit indirectly, is endowed to the extent of £4,500 a year—a fact which, though contrasting unfavourably with the £12,000 or £13,000 enjoyed by each of the Queen's Colleges, nevertheless would have seemed to cut the ground from under the feet of those who argued that the University question was insoluble since they would not countenance the application of public funds to a sectarian college.

It is often alleged that the anxiety of the Irish for other facilities for higher education than are at present afforded arises from their priest-ridden condition, and that the clergy urge the demand only in order that they may obtain more power than they already possess. The conditions in University College are some answer to this charge. It is, as I have said, under the control of the Jesuits, and a very able member of that Society is its President. Founded though it was for Catholics, the proportion—namely, about 10 per cent.—of non-Catholic students has for the last twenty years been greater than that of Catholics attending Queen's College, Belfast. Of its professorial staff only five out of twenty-one are

[135]priests. There have always been some Protestants among them, and on the governing council only one member is a priest, and of the five laymen one is a Protestant.

The history of the University question in recent years is instructive. In 1868 Lord Mayo, the Chief Secretary, endeavoured without success to formulate a scheme. In 1873 Mr. Gladstone brought in a Bill which risked the life of his Government, and failed to pass. Three years later a Bill of Isaac Butt's was introduced, but was unsuccessful, and after another three years, in 1879, was established the federal Royal University. In 1885 the Conservative Chief Secretary, Sir Michael Hicks Beach, expressed a hope on the part of the Government that in the following session they would be able to bring in a Bill in settlement of the question. The letter of Lord Randolph Churchill to Lord Justice FitzGibbon, which has been quoted elsewhere, shows that at the end of the same year the Conservative Government was anxious to make an end of the matter by legislation. In 1889 Mr. Balfour, as Chief Secretary, on two occasions expressed in the House of Commons the intention of the Government to proceed to a solution, for the conditions in Ireland, he went on to say, were "such as to leave them no alternative but to devise a scheme by which the wants of the Roman Catholics would be met." We have seen in another connection the quotation from the Life of Lord Randolph Churchill urging legislation in 1892, and in 1896 Lord Cadogan, as Viceroy, explicitly spoke of it as "a question with which the present Government will have to deal."

Eight years ago, in 1899, Mr. Balfour launched a manifesto on this question which proposed the maintenance of Dublin University with its Episcopalian atmosphere, while a St. Patrick's University was to be founded in Dublin with a Catholic atmosphere, and a University of Belfast with a Presbyterian atmosphere was to be founded on the basis of the

[136]existing Queen's College in that city. The reasons which Mr. Balfour gave for desiring a settlement of the question deserve quotation:—

"For myself I hope a University will be granted, and I hope it will be granted soon. I hope so, as a Unionist, because otherwise I do not know how to claim for a British Parliament that it can do for Ireland all, and more than all, that Ireland could do for herself. I hope so as a lover of education, because otherwise the educational interests both of Irish Protestants and of Irish Roman Catholics must grievously suffer, and suffer in that department of education, the national importance of which is from day to day more fully recognised. I hope so as a Protestant, because otherwise too easy an occasion is given for the taunt that in the judgment of Protestants themselves Protestantism has something to fear from the spread of knowledge."

Two years after this declaration a Royal Commission on the whole question was mooted, and immediately the cry of "Hands off Trinity" was raised, in spite of the fact that no Royal Commission had sat on that College since 1853, an interval of time in which there had been four Commissions on Oxford and Cambridge, and three on the Scottish Universities. The terms of reference of the Commission of 1901 on its appointment under the chairmanship of Lord Robertson were vague. A Judge of the High Court in Ireland threatened to resign if Trinity College—the main centre of University education in the island—were included in the scope of the inquiry of a Commission on the means for obtaining such education in the country. The Commission sat in private, and it was not till the first volume of evidence was published that it was discovered that the terms of reference had been so interpreted as to exclude Trinity from the inquiry, and to retain the services of the learned Judge.

After discussing the alternatives of a new Catholic

[137]University, or a reconstitution of the Royal University with the addition of a new Catholic College, the Commissioners decided in favour of the latter. Their plan comprised a federal teaching University with four constituent Colleges, the three Queen's Colleges and a new Catholic College to be situated in Dublin. Changes in the constitution of the Queen's Colleges, to remove the religious objections at present entertained towards them were proposed, and in reference to the endowment of the new Catholic College it was claimed that it was not truly open to the objection that it introduced denominational endowment into the University system of Ireland since the Jesuit University College receives, and has received for nearly a quarter of a century, a large annual sum out of moneys provided by Acts of Parliament for University purposes. The reason which the Commissioners gave fer not making this institution the basis of a new College was declared to be its meagre scale which makes it unsuitable for expansion.