A PLEA FOR FAIR PLAY FROM MATTHEW ARNOLD.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume VII, Issue 337, 3 October 1879, Page 17

A PLEA FOR FAIR PLAY FROM MATTHEW ARNOLD.

Mb. Matthew Arnold is neither a Catholic nor an Irishman, but Protestant and Briton that he is, he sees gross injustice in the mbb of the Irish University Bill just passed by the British Tj\iament. This injustice he sets forth in the following letter to the London Times : —

Grattan said just before his death, now more than fifty years ago, " England is not one country, it will take a century before she becomes so." We shall all agree that for the Irish to feel themselves of one country with us is just what is most desirable both for Us and for them. But, if it is to come about within a century of Grattan 's death, we have no time to lose. Let us look honestly into whatever keeps us apart. The Irish say that in our treatment of their demand for a Catholic University they have a signal grievance. Some of us maintain that there is no grievance at all. Others think that there is a grievance, but that it is a very slight one. It happens, sir, that I have had to make myself acquainted with the provision for university education in a good many countries, and on that ground you will, perhaps, allow me to say something about this disputed Irish grievance. It seems to me that the Irish have a real grievance. It is a grievance to which I find no parallel elsewhere in Europe. It is a grievance which must perpetually remind Ireland that she is a conquered country. Finally, it is a grievance which must be more irritating from the manner in which it is denied or excused. Unlike Europe. First, there is nothing like it, so far as I know, elsewhere in Europe. The established European type of university instruction is an instruction where a young man, Protestant or Catholic, may expect, in religion and in debatable matters such as philosophy or history, t« find teachers of his own communion. Minorities have university instruction of this type as well as majorities. Take Catholic I ranee. The Protestants in France are now less, I believe, than a thirty-sixth part of the nation. France has lost Strasburg, the great centre of Protestant instruction. But the French Protestants have still the Theological Faculty, as it is called, of Montauban. This faculty has eight chairs. Four of them are in various branches of what we commonly term divinity ; but the other four are in philosophy, Hebrew, Greek, and advanced Latin, natural sciences. In all the chairs of this faculty the professors are Protestants. They are every one of them appointed by the State and paid by the State. What they do in Prussia. Take Protestant Prussia. In the Rhine province there is a large Catholic population. Accordingly, in the University of Bonn, there is a Catholic faculty of theology as well as a Protestant ; and for philosophy and history there i& a system of double chairs, so that in these debatable matters the student, Protestant or Catholic, may find teachers of his own communion. Here, too, the professors are all of them appointed and salaried by the State. The university buildings, collections, and library the students have in common. Let us come to England. Here we find a university instruction of the same type. Oxford and Cambridge are places where the religious instruction is that of the Church of England, and where it would be impossible to find a Roman Catholic filling one of the chairs of philosophy or history. The Scotch universities are places where the religious instruction is Presbyterian, and where it would be impossible to find a Roman Catholic filling one of the chairs of philosophy or history. Our university instruction is provided partly by direct State payment of professors, but mainly from old endowments. Endowments, however, may most certainly be called a form of public and national support, inasmuch as the nation assigns, regulates, and in some cases withdraws them. What the Protestant Irish have. We cross to Ireland. There the Protestant minority has a Trinity College a place publicly endowed where the religious instruction is Protestant, and where it would be impossible to find a Roman Catholic filling one of the chairs of philosophy or history. But in Ireland the Catholics are more than three-fourths of the nation ; and they desire a university where the religious instruction is Catholic, and where debatable matters, such as philosophy and history are taught by Catholics. They are offered something quite different, which they will not have. Then they are told that a university of a kind they want they must found and maintain for themselves if they are to have it at all. But in France the State provides, even for the Protestant minority, a university instruction of the type that the Irish Catholics want. In Prussia the State provides it for the Catholic minority. In England and Scotland old endowments have been made to follow the will of the majority, and supplemented by State grants they provide the majority with a university instruction of the type that the Irish Catholics want. In Ireland, so far are old university endowments from following the will of the majority, that they follow, as every one knows, that of the minority. At Trinity College, Dublin, the Irish Protestants have a university instruction of the type that the Irish Catholics want. Trinity College is endowed with confiscated Catholic lands, and occupies the site of a suppressed monastery. The Catholic majority in Ireland is not allowed the use of the old en lowments to give it a university instruction such as it desires, and such as in England and Scotland we make the old endowments give us, nor is it allowed the aid of State grants. There is really nothing like it, I repeat, in Jijjjrope. To treat the Irish Catholics in this way is really to have one weight and measure for ourselves and another for the Irish. It is, however we may dress the thing up to our minds, to treat Ireland still as a conquered country. It is a survival fiom the state of things when no Irish Catholic might own a horse woith more than £5. The Irish cannot but feel it to be so. Cheating any conscience they may have. The way in which, in order to cheat our consciences, we deny or excuse the wrong inflicted can only make it the more irritating to the sufferers. A Scotch member pleads that Scotland stipulated at the Union for the maintenance in the universities of certain State grants in religion — grants which would not be conceded afresh now. How it must stimulate the fceliug for Home Rule to hear of the Scotch nation thus stipulating for what it wanted and preserving it, in virtue of such stipulation, while in Ireland the desires of the majority in a like matter are to be overridden now because they have

been overridden always ! Or we plead that we cannot now aid a Catholic University in Ireland because we have made the English and Scotch Universities and Trinity College, Dublin, undenominational. Perhaps this must be to a Catholic the most irritating plea of all. We have waited until our universities have become thoroughly of the character that suits us, and then when the Anglican character of the English universities, the Presbyterian character of the Scotch universities, has got thoroughly established and is secure for the next generation or two, at any rate, we throw open our doors, declare tests and subscriptions abolished, pronounce our universities to be now perfectly undenominational, and say that, having made them so, we are precluded from doing anything for the Irish Catholics. It is as if our proceedings had had for their very object to give us an arm against the Irish Catholics. But an Irish Catholic may say, ''all we want is an undenominational university like yours. Give us a university where the bulk of the students are Catholic, where the bulk of the teachers are Catholic, and we will undertake to be open to all comers, to accept a conscience clause, to impose no tests, to be ' perfectly undenominational.' " We will not give him the chance. The prize business. It is said that the Government Bill is " something more than a full satisfaction of all that is reasonable in the Irish Catholic claims, The Government Bill is like the chameleon ; it keeps changing as one gazes on it. It seems admitted that even in the lowest view of the Irish Catholic claims, it is not an adequate satisfaction to them to give Ireland an Examining Board all to herself, instead of an Examining Board with its headquarters in London. Nor is a system, of prizes and competitions what is wanted. Too much of these is even less salutary, probably, for the young Irishman than for the yoang Englishman. But such a system by itself is plainly insufficient. The Times has truly said that some of the beßt subjects for university training are to be found among those who are capable of taking a creditable degree but not capable of winning university prizes. But it seems that, besides prizes for competition, there will be grants to assist students who can reach a certain standard ; and here, perhaps, is an indirect mode for conveying State help to a Catholic University. The student who passes will hand over his grant to the university as the price of instruction for his next year and for another grant. It is not unlikely that in the hope of thus working the Government Bill the Irish Catholics may accept it. They must judge for themselves. My object, sir, in this letter is not to discuss the Government Bill. My object is simply to bring home to the mind of the English public that in the matter of university education the Irish Catholics have a great and real grievance, and what it is. At present we have one weight and measure for ourselves, another for theia. But a spirit of equitableness on this question is visibly growing. Among the country gentlemen on the Ministerial side there is still found, indeed in larger numbers than one might have expected, a spiritual progeny of Sir Edward Knatchbull. But almost everywhere else, among politicians, among the Dissenters, in the newspapers, iv society, there is a manifest and most encouraging advance in the fairness of mind with which this question is treated. We begin to acknowledge to ourselves that as to their higher education the Irish Catholics are not equitably dealt with, and to seek to help them indirectly. More may not at this moment be possible. But some day we shall surely perceive that both they and we should be gainers — both their culture and our influence upon it — by our consenting to help them directly. I am, sir, your obedient servant,

Matthew Arnold.