'Tis also a different thing to propose the establishment of Deans in each College to inspect the religious discipline and moral conduct of the students—a Catholic Dean, appointed by the Catholic Church, watching over the Catholic students; and so of the Episcopalians and Presbyterians. Such Deans, and Halls for religious teaching, will be absolutely necessary, should a residence in the Colleges be required; but should a system of residence in registered lodgings and boarding-houses be preferred, similar duties to the Deans might be performed by persons nominated by the Catholic, Protestant, and Presbyterian Churches respectively, without the direct interposition of the College; for each parent would take care to put his child under the control of his own Church. An adequate provision in some sufficient manner for religious discipline is essential, and to be dispensed with on no pretence.
These, however, are details of great consequence to be discussed in the Commons' Committee; but we repeat our claim for mixed education, because it has worked well among the students of Trinity College, and would work better were its offices free, because it is the principle approved by Ireland when she demanded the opening of those offices, and when she accepted the National Schools—because it is the principle of the Cork, the Limerick, and the Derry meetings; but above all, because it is consistent with piety, and favourable to that union of Irishmen of different sects, for want of which Ireland is in rags and chains.
Against the nomination of Professors by Government we protest altogether. We speak alike of Whig or Tory. The nomination would be looked on as a political bribe, the removal as a political punishment. Nay, the nomination would be political. Under great public excitement a just nomination might be made, but in quiet times it would be given to the best mathematician or naturalist who attended the levee and wrote against the opposition. And it would be an enormous power; for it would not merely control the immediate candidates, but hundreds, who thought they might some ten years after be solicitors for professorships, would shrink from committing themselves to uncourtly politics, or qualify by Ministerial partisanship, not philosophical study, for that distant day. A better engine for corrupting that great literary class which is the best hope of Ireland could not be devised; and if it be retained in the Bill, that Bill must be resisted and defeated, whether in or out of Parliament. We warn the Minister!
We have omitted a strange objection to the Bill—that it does not give mixed education. It is said the Colleges of Cork and Galway would be attended only by Catholics, and that of Belfast by Protestants. Both are errors. The middle class of Protestants in Cork is numerous—they and the poorer gentry would send their sons to the Cork College to save expense. The Catholics would assuredly do the same in Belfast; they do so with the Institution in the Academy there already; and though the Catholics in Cork, and the Protestants in Belfast, would be the majorities, enough of the opposite creed would be in each to produce all the wholesome restraint, and much of the wholesome toleration and goodwill, of the mixed system of Trinity. Were the objection good, however, it ought to content the advocates of separate education.
It has been said, too, that the Bill recognises a religious ascendency in the case of Belfast. This seems to us a total misconception of the words of the Minister. He suggested that the Southern College should be in Cork, the Western in Limerick or Galway, the Northern in Derry or Belfast. Had he stopped at Derry the mistake could never have occurred; but he went on to say that if the College were planted in Belfast, the building now used for the Belfast Academy would serve for the new College, and unless the echoes of the old theological professors be more permanent than common, we cannot understand the sectarianism of the building in Belfast.
A more valid objection would be that the measure was not more complete; and the University system will certainly be crippled and impotent unless residence for a year at least in it be essential to a University degree.
The main defect of the Bill is its omitting to deal with Trinity College. It is said that the property is and was Protestant; but the Bill of '93, which admitted Catholics to be educated on this Protestant foundation, broke down the title; and, at all events, the property is as public as the Corporation, and is liable to all the demands of public convenience. But it is added that the property of Trinity College is not more than £30,000 or £40,000 a year, and that the grant for Catholic Clerical Education alone is £26,000 a year; and certainly till the Protestant Church be equalised to the wants of the Protestant population there will be something in the argument. When that Reformation comes, a third of the funds should be given for Protestant Clerical Education, and the College livings transferred to the Clerical College, and the remaining two-thirds preserved to Trinity College as a secular University.
Waiting that settlement, we see nothing better than the proposal so admirably urged by the Morning Chronicle, of the grant of £6,000—we say £10,000—a year, for the foundation of Catholic fellowships and scholarships in Trinity College. Some such change must be made, for it would be the grossest injustice to give Catholics a share, or the whole, of one or two new, untried, characterless Provincial Academies, and exclude them from the offices of the ancient, celebrated, and national University. If there is to be a religious equality, Trinity College must be opened, or augmented by Catholic endowment. For this no demand can be too loud and vehement, for the refusal will be an affront and a grievance to the Catholics of Ireland.
We have only run over the merits and faults of this plan. Next to a Tenure or a Militia Bill, it is the most important possible. Questions must arise on every section of it; and, however these questions be decided, we trust in God they will be decided without acrimony or recrimination, and that so divine a subject as Education will not lead to disunions which would prostrate our country.