would have thought that a well-educated laity was better able than one without education to withstand the encroaches of clericalism.  We do not ask for a denominational college, but remember that the only colleges, Keble and Selwyn, founded in Oxford and Cambridge in the last eighty years are purely denominational.  In the last forty years six new universities have been founded in England, and the number of university students has risen from 2,300 to 13,000.  In Ireland, on the other hand, for three-fourths of the population knowledge must still remain a fountain sealed; it is as though one were applying literally to that country the text—­“He that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow.”

In connection with what one may call the Bryce scheme it may be well to point out that as long ago as 1871 the hierarchy proposed a solution on the same lines.  In a Pastoral letter of that year, after insisting on the principle of equality, the following passage occurred—­“All this can, we believe, be attained by modifying the constitution of the University of Dublin, so as to admit the establishment of a second College within it, in every respect equal to Trinity College, and conducted on purely Catholic principles.”

On the motion to go into Committee on the Bill for the abolition of tests in 1873 an Irish member moved a motion to the effect that a Catholic College should be founded in the University of Dublin, in addition to Trinity College.  Two years later Mr. Isaac Butt, the Protestant leader of the Irish Nationalists (himself a Trinity man), and The O’Conor Don, a Catholic Unionist, brought in a Bill on the same lines, but both motion and Bill were defeated.  The advantages of this mode of dealing with the question are seen from its acceptance by the hierarchy and the general mass of the Catholic laity.  The Senate of the Royal University have since its promulgation readily recognised its soundness and have given it their support, as have the Professors of University College, Dublin.  It will serve to make an end of the underhand manner by which, as we have seen, that College, though not merely a denominational, but, moreover, a Jesuit institution, is subsidised by public money, though we are always told that State endowment of religious education is alien to all modern principles of government.

One would have thought that the authorities of Trinity would have felt themselves estopped from refusing to accept this solution.  The offer of facilities inside Trinity itself—­if it is the generous concession it professes to be—­must be made with a full recognition that, if accepted, the process of “capturing” the College would be effected before long, thus modifying the Protestantism which is its proudest boast.  If, on the other hand, the expense of life in Trinity College would prove prohibitive to any but a small section of the four thousand matriculated students in the Royal University, the much-vaunted liberality of Trinity is seen to be very greatly restricted, since the results of acceptance of the offer would only touch the mere fringe of the educational demand.