IRELAND'S UNIVERSITY EDUCATION. MANIFESTO OF THE IRISH BISHOPS.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXIV, Issue 33, 18 December 1896, Page 27

IRELAND'S UNIVERSITY EDUCATION. MANIFESTO OF THE IRISH BISHOPS.

THEY DEMAND EQUALITY FOR CATHOLICS WITH THEIR PROTESTANT FELLOW-COUNTRYMEN.

The annual general meeting of the Archbishops and Bishps of Ireland was held in St. Patrick's College, Maynooth, on Tuesday and Wednesday, the 18th and 14th October. The following prelates were present : — His Eminence Cardinal Logue, Archbishop of Armagh, Primate of All Ireland (chairman) ; his Grace the Most Rev. Dr. Walsh, Archbishop of Dublin, Primate of Ireland ; his Grace the Most Rev. Dr. McEvilly, Archbishop of Tuam ; Most Rev. Dr. Nulty, Bishop of Meath ; Most Rev. Dr. MacConnack, Bishop of Galway and Kilmacduagh ; Most Rev. Dr. O'Callaghan, Bishop of Cork ; Most Rev. Dr. Healy, Bishop of Clonfert ; Most Rev. Dr. Browne, Bishop of Ferns ; Most Rev. Dr. O'Dwyer, Bishop of Limerick ; Most Rev. Dr. O'Donnell, Bishop of Raphoe ; Most Rev. Dr. Lyster, Bishop of Achonry ; Most Rev. Dr. Magennis, Bishop of Kilmore ; Most Rev. Dr. McGivern, Bishop of Dromore ; Most Rev. Dr. Coffey, Bishop of Kerry ; Most Rev. Dr. Mcßedmond, Bishop of Killaloe : Most Rev. Dr. O'Doherty, Bishop of Derry ; Most Rev. Dr. Sheehan, Bishop of Waterford and Lismore ; Most Rev. Dr. Conmy, Bishop of Killala ; Most Rev. Dr. Browne, Bishop of Cloyne ; Most Rev. Dr. Owens, Bishop of Clogher ; Most Rev. Dr. Clancy, Bishop of Elphin ; Most Rev. Dr. Henry, Bishop of Down and Connor ; Most Rev. Dr. Foley, Coadjutor-Bishop of Kildare and Leighlin ; Most Rev. Dr. Donnelly, Bishop of Canea.

The following statement was unanimously adopted and directed to be published :—: —

I. — THE UNIVERSITY QUESTION.

We, the Archbishops and Bishops of Ireland, regret that it is still our duty to renew the protests which we have been making for many years against the injustice with which Irish Catholics are treated in the matter of education. For us it would be much more grateful to our feelings, and more in keeping with our office, to promote, if we might, a spirit of contentment on the part of our people with the institutions under which they have to live. But while a grievous wrong is being perpetrated against the material as well as the spiritual interests of our people, we should be false to our duty if we did not work for its redress. On previous occasions we have dealt with the various branches of that wrong as it affects education in its different grades — primary, intermediate and university — and we have to observe with pain and disappointment how unavailing have been our efforts. We now desire to dwell in particular on the question of higher, or university, education, and we do so as there is some reason to hope from the state of public business that at length the Government may be induced to deal with it. We assume, as admitted on all hands, that in this matter the Catholics of Ireland have a grievance. This has been recognised by statesmen of all political parties, in the Houses of Parliament and in the country ; but by no one has it been stated with greater force, nor the intellectual and material impoverishment resulting from it set forth with greater clearness than by the present First Lord of the Treasury, now seven years ago, in his remarkable speech at'Partick. No later too than the closing days of the last session of Parliament, the Chief Secretary for Ireland made the memorable admission in reference to the same question, that through the want of university education amongst the Catholics of Ireland he found it necessary from time to time to pass them over, and to give to Protestants public appointments which otherwise he would have thought it right to give to Catholics. We must say that, mnch as we feel humiliated by this statement, we are not quite surprised at it. To be crushed: by law into a position of inferiority, and then made to suffer in consequence, has for a long time been the lot of Irish Catholics. There are in Ireland at this moment but two university institutions deserving of the name — Trinity College, Dublin, and the Queen's College, Belfast. We do not regard the work of university education which is being done by the other Queen's Colleges aa worthy of consideration, and we must recognise that our Catholic colleges, however brilliant their successes at various examinations, are limited by the conditions under which they exist to small fields of labour. But, unquestionably, Trinity College does educational work of great extent and of high order ; and in a less, but still considerable degree, the same may be asserted of the Queen's College, Belfast. In these two institutions there are 1,500 students, and, out of that total, less than 100 are Catholics, and the remainder are Protestants of the Disestablished Church or Presbyterians. In this condition of things it is hardly a matter of surprise that educated Catholics are not numerous in Ireland. We who are concerned for the spiritual and also for the material interests of our people, know from bitter experience the loss which they sustain in having the doors of higher knowledge shut in their faces. Those who take any interest in the temporal welfare and progress of the country have brought home to them at every turn the impossibility of raising a nation in which three-fourths of the population are cut off from the direct and indirect advantage of the full training of their best intellects. In recent years, since the institution of the Intermediate Examinations, this incompleteness of our educational system is more obvious and more irritating. Intermediate schools have been multiplied. Year by year the number of their students is increasing. This year as many as 8,700 students, the great majority of whom are Catholics, presented themselves for examination, and in all probability this number will grow still larger. But if any reasonable man asks himself what the goal of all these Intermediate

studies is to be for so many thousands of Catholic students, he will not find it quite easy to get an answer. We know well that undar no circumstances would all, or even the majority, go beyond an Intermediate education, but we know also that a university career is the reasonable and only legitimate completion for studies such as theirs. A distinguished Irishman, the Conservative statesman, Lord Cairns, expressed this view in a happy metaphor when he spoke of the National system of Primary education as the foundation, the Intermediate as the walls, and the university as the roof, of the entire structure. For Protestants and Presbyterians, the edifice is complete, and available without the sacrifice of any religious principles. They have their universities, richly endowed and splendidly equipped, where the cream of their youth have opened to them every career in which higher culture avails. As far as we, Irish Catholics, are concerned, there is no roof over us, and our educational system is incomplete, and, by that incompleteness, pernicious. It must now be plain to everyone that Irish Catholics, as a body, will not accept a university education which is either Protestant or godless. Catholic parents will not send their sons to Trinity College nor to the Queen's Colleges, and consequently the only alternatives practically remaining are either to keep the Catholics of Ireland in ignorance and let them fall behind every other country in the world, or give them opportunities of university education which their consciences can accept. It is out of the question for us to hope to supply our needs by any private efforts or sacrifices. For many years we struggled to maintain the Catholic university of Ireland, and the amount ot money which was voluntarily subscribed to it was enormous in relation to our resources. But, aggravated as it was by the absence of all legal recognition for our university, the unequal effort was found to be oppressive. This is a very poor country and the Catholics are the poorest of its people. Even the generous provision which our forefathers had made for religion, and which would have enabled us to provide for education also, was long ago taken from us ; and we have been forced, out of our poverty, to provide all the means for the maintenance of our Church and of its multifarious institutions. We have not, then, the means to endow a university for ourselves, and even if we were richer, it would be an unequal competition between us and colleges richly endowed by public funds. In these days, too. education is growing in costliness to such an extent that even in England and in the great centres of manufacture and commerce, where the princely munificence of private citizens has founded magnificent colleges, we read of the appeals of the colleges of the Victoria University at Manchester and Leeds. and Liverpool, to Parliament for increased grants to enable them to carry on their work. Surely, if i!he maintenance of University Colleges is considered to be too much for the resources of perhaps the wealthiest communities in the world, it must be evident that in a poor country such as Ireland it is unreasonable and unjust to throw such a burden upon Catholics, and upon them alone. What. then, do we claim ' Simply to be put on an equality with our Protestant fellow-countrymen. We take Trinity College. Dublin, with its endowments, and its privileges, and seeing what is done by public funds and legal enactments for half a million of Protestants of the Disestablished Church of Ireland, we claim that at least as much should be done for the three millions and a half of Catholics. We do not seek to impair the efficiency of any institution. We do not want to take one shilling from the endowments of any other body. We 100k — apart from the consideration of our own inequality — with much admiration and sympathy upon the work which Trinity College and the Belfast Queen's College arc doing. But we ask. as a matter of simple justice, that the Catholic* of Ireland should be put on a footing of perfect equality with them. How that equality is to be reached, it is not tor us now to define. We have stated on many occasions that we are not irrevocably committed to any one principle of settlement ; "and whether that settlement is carried out through a distinct Catholic university or through a college, we shall be prepared to consider any proposal with an open mind, and with a sincere desire to remove, rather than to aggravate, difficulties. In putting forward this claim we consider is not unreasonable on our part to take into account the declarations of the present Government on the subject of education. If there is one principle more than another to Avhich they stand committed, it is that of denominationalism in education. As far as abstract principles are involved we might accept almost without qualification the statements on the subject made by the Prime Minister in recent speeches. And we cannot think that, when it conies to an application of those principle". he will seek to limit it to countries which are mainly Protestant, such as England and Scotland. If. then, our demand is in harmony with the principles which the G-overnment professes, and if at the s^auie time its concession is necessary in order to give the people of Ireland the educational advantages which are essential conditions of progress in a modern state, we can hardly believe that it will be either refused or postponed. It is now twenty-three years since this was made a Cabinet question, and yet in spite of the protests and the agitation of the Catholics of Irelazid, in Parliament and out of it in the meantime, we are practically in the same position as we were then. In England such a miscarriage of legislation on a matter of •-o much importance would be impossible. There Parliament responds to public opinion. The English people are able, through their Parliamentary representatives, to make and unmake Governments. and their maturely-formed "wishes must be granted. Unfortunately it is not so in Ireland. Our wishes and our demands count for very little. We get whatever the Cabinet, which has been formed by English public opinion, thinks good for us : but we are made to feel bitterly the uselessness of constitutional agitation on our part. Violence and excess obtain ready recognition, and lead to the redress of grievances ; but the constitutionally expressed desire of the Irish

people through Parliamentary elections and the action of their members of Parliament count unfortunately for very little. It is little wonder, then, that the minds of our people are alienated from their Government, and every day lose confidence in constitutional methods. This a state of things which we regard as deplorable, but still quite natural. For over forty years we have been agitating this grievance of university education. At any time during all these years an overwhelming majority of our countrymen were in favour of our claims. In every way known to the constitution we have urged them. At this moment, at least two thirds of the Irish members of Parliament are with us, and speak and vote for us ; and yet, while we see one generation after another of our young countrymen pass from the schools into active life with the mark of educational inferiority upon them, and our country, poor as she is in many respects, denied the opportunity of cultivating the wealth which God has given her. we are powerless to do more than complain and wait in the hope that some enlightened British statesman may do something for us. Perhaps reflection on the history of this one question may make clear to Englishmen why Irishmen desire the management of their own affairs, and stand aloof from the actual Government of the country in a spirit of distrust and alienation. Yet, although our task is a weary one, we would ask our countrymen still to urge their claim for freedom of education, which, in reality, is freedom of religion ; and we would impress upon our Parliamentary representatives the importance of pressing this question at all times on the attention of Parliament. t Michael Card. Loutje, Chairman. t Francis J. MacCormack. ) Bishop of Galway and Kilmacduagh. Secretaries t John Healy, ) to the Bishop of Clonfert. j meeting.