CARDINAL NEWMAN ON CATHOLIC

New Zealand Tablet, Volume VII, Issue 338, 10 October 1879, Page 11

CARDINAL NEWMAN ON CATHOLIC

EDUCATION IN IRELAND.

(From the Liverpool Journal.) A deputation from the Catholic University of Ireland and the Cvi Bono Club, Dublin, waited upon Cardinal Newman at the Oratory Birmingham, lately, for the purpose of presenting his Eminence with a congratulatory address, and also of asking his acceptance of two volumes of the National Manuscripts of Ireland. Cardinal Newman, in acknowledging the compliment, said -—In thanking you for the address of congratulation which you have done me the honour of presenting to me. I am led especially to express to you the pleasurable wonder I have felt on reviewing its separate portions as ther succeed one another, and at the most friendly dili°;ence with which you have brought together and arranged before me whatever could be learned to my profit during the years which I filled the distinguished post of rector to your Catholic University I know well— or if this is presumptuous to say, I sincerely believethat a desire to serve Ireland was the ruling motive of my writings and doings while I was with you. How could I have any other ? What right-minded Englishman could think of bis country's conduct towards you in times past without indignation, shame, and remorse? How could any such man but earnestly desire, should his duty take him to Ireland, to be able to offer to her some small service in expiation of the crimes whirh his own people in former times committed there? This wish, I believe, ruled me, but that in fact I had done any great thing during my seven years there has never come home to me. Never have I had by me any tale of efforts made or of successes gained in your behalf such as I might now produce supposing I was asked how I had spent my time and what I have done while rector of the university I cannot then deny that, dffident as I have ever been in retrospect of any outcome of my work in Ireland, it has been a great satisfaction to me, and a great consolation, to find from you and others that I have a right to think that those years were not wasted, and that the Sovereign Pontiff had not sent me to Ireland for nothing. There is another thought your address suggests to me— namely, that on looking back to the years when I was in Ireland, I have, as it would seem' a good hope after all that I had my share of success there. So now we must none of us be discouraged if during the twenty years which have elapsed since wu have had so many difficulties and a success not commensurate with them. The less the work the longer it takes to accomplish it. You, indeed, gentlemen, are not the persons to be accused of want of courage ; but zealous men, though not discouraged maybe disappointed. Letts all, then, recollect that our cause is sure to succeed eventually, because it is manifestly just, and next because it has the blessing of the Holy See. We must be contented with small successes when we cannot secure great ones, and we shal gain our object surely if we resign ourselves to the progress which is gradual. Cardinal Newman afterwards looked through the two volumes, and expressed his admiration of them. At the close of the proceedings the deputation partook of lunch with his Eminence