THE EDUCATIONAL PROBLEM
"When I consider how munificently the Colleges of Oxford and
Cambridge are endowed ... when I remember from whom all this
splendour and plenty is derived; when I remember what was the
faith of Edward the Third, and of Henry the Sixth, of Margaret
of Anjou, and Margaret of Richmond, of William of Wykeham, and
of William of Waynefleet, of Archbishop Chicheley, and
Cardinal Wolsey; when I remember what we have taken from the
Roman Catholics, King's College, New College, Christ Church,
my own Trinity; and when I look at the miserable Dotheboys
Hall which we have given them in exchange, I feel, I must own,
less proud than I could wish of being a Protestant and a
Cambridge man."--T.B. MACAULAY, Speech on the Maynooth
Grant, 1845.
"What the Irish are proposing is nothing so enormous or
chimerical. They propose merely to put an end to one very
cruel result of the Protestant ascendancy, the result that
they--the immense majority of the Irish people--have no
University, while the Protestants in Ireland, the small
minority, have one. For this plain hardship they propose a
plain remedy, and to their proposal they want a plain,
straightforward answer."--MATTHEW ARNOLD, _Mixed Essays_,
1880.
The fact that the recurrent educational problem in England is that of
the Elementary Schools, while as to Ireland the only question which is
ever to any extent ventilated is that of University Education, has led
to the totally wrong impression that everything in this sphere in
Ireland, with the exception of Higher Education, is in a satisfactory
condition. Nothing, in point of fact, could be further from the truth,
and perhaps the strongest indictment against the present Executive
system in the country is to be found in the chaos which exists in
educational matters.
The National system of Education in Ireland was started by Lord Stanley
in 1833. Up to that date there had been no organised education in the
country, and in fact there were still many living who could recall the
time when for a Catholic to receive education from his co-religionists
was a penal offence, involving legal and equitable disabilities.
The main vehicles of elementary education up to this date were the
Charter Schools and the Kildare Street Schools. The former, which were
founded about 1730 by Primate Boulter, and lasted a hundred years, were
frankly proselytising agencies--the address for the charter to the Crown
specifically setting out that it was a society for teaching the
Protestant religion to Papist children. John Howard, the philanthropist,
condemned them as a disgrace to Protestantism and a disgrace to all
society, but for all that, in the course of their career, they cost the
public nearly two millions of money. The Kildare Street Schools, which
were founded in 1811, and which secured a Government grant for the first
time in 1814, professed to be non-sectarian, and so long as they kept to
their professions were successful, but their subsequent association with
proselytising agencies, such as the Hibernian Society, was their ruin,
and in 1831 the public grant was withdrawn from them by the Chief
Secretary, who two years later introduced the National System.
On the establishment of the National Board all creeds and parties in
Ireland were anxious that the basis of the system should be
denominational, but in the teeth of this unanimity the principle adopted
was that of united secular and separate religious instruction.
One would have thought that on the establishment of the National System
the danger of its capture by the Protestant ascendancy, which was very
obviously anxious to secure its control, would have ensured the
insistence on safeguards for the rights of the weaker section of the
community at a time when no longer held good that _obiter dictum_
pronounced from the Bench in 1758, which was equally true for many years
after, that "the law does not suppose a Papist to exist in the kingdom,
nor can they breathe without the connivance of the Government." On its
formation the National Board included among its members Dr. Murray, the
Catholic Archbishop of Dublin; Dr. Whately, the Protestant Archbishop of
that city; and Dr. Carlisle, a Presbyterian Minister. No attempt was
made to effect anything approaching a proportional representation of the
creeds concerned, and the two Catholic members were outvoted by their
five Protestant colleagues on the Board for the control of the education
of the children of a population in which Catholics were to Protestants
in the ratio of about 4 to 1.
The English Archbishop and the Scottish Presbyterian, in whom power was
in this way placed, set themselves by their regulations to effect the
Anglicising of the Irish children in the schools of the country. The use
of the English language was enforced for the education of children,
thousands of whom spoke Gaelic, and though this may possibly be
justified on grounds of its greater use in the transactions of everyday
life, the same cannot be said of the manner in which the history books
employed were of a kind in which the subjection of Ireland by Elizabeth,
James I., and William of Orange were extolled, as was also the defection
from Rome of England in the sixteenth century.
Whately's policy was avowedly to Anglicise the children in the schools,
to effect the "consolidation," as he called it, of Great Britain and
Ireland, and in a reading book produced under his auspices occur the
following lines, written with that aim in view:--"On the east of Ireland
is England, where the Queen lives. Many people who live in Ireland were
born in England, and we speak the same language, and are called one
nation."
From the reading-books as first published were expunged such verses as
Campbell's "Downfall of Roland" and Scott's "Breathes There a Man with a
Soul so Dead," owing to their tendency, one must suppose, to suggest
emotions other than those which it was deemed fitting to inculcate, and
in their place was inserted a verse from the Archbishop's own pen which
is familiar to most Irishmen, but which is, I find, unknown to most
Englishmen:--
"I thank the goodness and the grace which on my birth have smiled,
And made me in these Christian days a happy English child."
To appreciate fully the irony of the divergence between the sentiments
expressed and the real facts, one must remember that these lines were
written at a time when land reform and church disestablishment were
regarded by those in authority as the proposals of unspeakable
demagogues.
The views of Whately on the value of the educational machine which he
controlled, as an instrument of proselytism are very frankly set out in
a conversation which he had with Nassau Senior, which is quoted from the
diary of the latter in the Archbishop's biography:--
"I believe," he said, "that mixed education is gradually enlightening
the mass of the people, and that if we give it up we give up the only
hope of weaning the Irish from the abuses of Popery. But I cannot
venture openly to profess this opinion. I cannot openly support the
Education Board as an instrument of conversion. I have to fight its
battles with one hand, and that my best, tied behind me."[20]
This extract more than justifies the policy by which, when Dr. MacHale
succeeded Dr. Murray in Dublin, a bland acquiescence in Governmental
action began to be no longer the line of action of Catholic prelates.
The system of National Education was, as I have said, founded at its
inception on the principles of undenominationalism, but, as a matter of
fact, the determined views of all creeds in Ireland prevailed to a very
great extent, so that at the end of the nineteenth century out of a
total of 8,700 schools in the country more than 5,000 were attended by
children of one religion only; of these 4,000 were Catholic schools, the
remaining 1,000 belonging to one or other of the Protestant
denominations. Of the 3,700 schools which are not purely denominational,
there are many in which the great majority of the pupils belong to one
religion, but in these, of course, the minority is safeguarded by a
conscience clause.
The members of the National Board are appointed to-day--as they were in
1833--by Dublin Castle. They are nominees in no sense responsible to
anyone, amateurs in educational matters, whose debates are carried on
_in camera_, and when they have arrived at decisions their fiat goes
forth without reason being given for changes of system or of policy, and
without opportunity being afforded for revision or appeal.
In these circumstances it is not surprising that the system of
elementary education in Ireland does not meet with the popular attention
that it should. There is no consultation on the part of the Board with
those responsible for carrying on changes which it orders, and when
innovations are introduced without reasons being offered, those who have
to apply them are not likely to do so with good grace, still less with
enthusiasm. When the arguments and reasons in favour of alterations are
unknown to the public such changes almost invariably meet with
opposition at the hands of those who have to effect them.
The multiplication of schools arising partly from the denominationalism
which so largely holds the field is accentuated by the financial system
which is adopted by the National Board. In all the schools under its
control, with the exception of the 300 convent and monastery schools,
where the State-aid takes the form of a capitation grant, the grant is
ear-marked for the payment of teachers' salaries, the largest charge
incurred by the school; and in this way the responsibility on that
account and the occasion for economy on that score of the managers is
removed, leaving to them only the control of the school buildings.
Moreover, the non-application of the capitation system of grants fails
to bring into play what would be a direct financial inducement to the
locality to improve the school attendance of the children, as would also
any system of local control. The small size of existing school areas
results in inevitable mischief, for under it the poorest districts are
those in which the school accommodation is worst, and since more money
has to be raised than in richer localities the poorer districts have to
pay most and the richest least for elementary education.
A primary effect of the larger number of schools is that the average
attendance is much smaller than in Scotland, where conditions are in
many respects similar, and side by side with the small size of the
schools goes the very low standard of salaries paid to the teachers,
which begin at £56 a year for men and £44 each for women, and advance by
triennial increments to £172 for men and £140 for women. Two-thirds of
the primary school teachers of Ireland have a salary of less than 30s. a
week. The average payment to head teachers is in Scotland 75 per cent.
and in England 48 per cent. higher than in Ireland. The general state of
inefficiency of education in Ireland may be gathered from the fact that
the Census of 1901 showed that of persons over five years of age no less
than 13.7 per cent. could neither read nor write, the percentage of
illiteracy being in the four provinces, 11.3 in Leinster, 12.5 in
Ulster, 14 in Munster, and 20.7 in Connaught. The children in Scottish
schools attend on 85 per cent. of the days on which the schools are
open, in English on 84 per cent., and in Irish schools only on 65 per
cent.; but in considering these figures allowance must be made for the
fact that school attendance in Great Britain has been compulsory for
just over thirty years, while in Ireland it was only in 1892 that an Act
was passed sanctioning the formation of School Attendance Committees
with power to enforce the attendance of children at school.
In addition to the Board of National Education there are in Dublin the
Intermediate Board, the Commissioners of Education, who deal with the
few Educational endowments in the country, the Department of Agriculture
and Technical Instruction, the Senate of the Royal University, the Local
Government Board attending to the education of children in work-houses,
industrial, and reformatory schools, all concerned with primary and
secondary education in its administrative aspect, while the Board of
Works is occupied with the erection of school buildings. The
extravagance and inefficiency which results from this diffusion and
consequent overlapping of power and duties on the part of officials
scattered about in Tyrone House, in Hume Street, in Merrion Place, and
three or four other parts of Dublin, is well illustrated by the fact
that out of every 20s. given as Exchequer aid to education--
In England and Wales
17/- goes to Education and 3/- to Administration and Inspection.
In Scotland
16/2 goes to Education and 3/10 to Administration and Inspection.
In Ireland
13/6 goes to Education and 6/6 to Administration and Inspection.
Administrative extravagance, it will be seen, is in inverse ratio to the
quality of the educational service. If we take the three Irish Boards of
National, Intermediate, and Technical Education, the total cost of
administration and inspection is £120,000 per annum; the similar charge
on Scotland is exactly half that sum, and yet Scotland prides herself on
her education, and Ireland is taunted with her illiteracy.
The state of secondary education in Ireland differs fundamentally from
that of England in this--that the number of educational endowments in
the country are extremely few. Practically the whole of the money spent
on this branch of education comes from taxation and school fees. It is
controlled by the Intermediate Board, which was established some thirty
years ago, and is in its management entirely dissociated from the
National Board, so that all arrangements with a view to the transfer of
clever pupils from the schools of the one type to those of the other are
made as difficult as possible.
The Intermediate schools are, on the other hand, subject to the
Department of Technical Instruction as well as to the Intermediate
Board. Each of these awards grants, in some instances, for the same
subjects, but dependent in many cases on different standards and
conditions, so that it sometimes happens that schools earn grants twice
over for the same subjects; and in other cases they enjoy aid from one
Department of State which is refused for the same subject by another,
owing to failure to comply with its conditions or to attain to its
standard. Just as the connection of the Elementary schools with the
Intermediate schools is very imperfect, so at the other end is the
connection with the universities. The system of payment by results,
under which the Intermediate schools are subsidised, is notoriously
unsound from the point of view of education, since it leads to
"cramming," and, moreover, under it the amount of grant earned by a
school is subject to extreme variations. Lastly, if the pupils suffer
from existing arrangements, the case of the teachers is no better, for
from a recent report it will be seen that the average salary of lay
teachers in Intermediate schools in Ireland is at least half what it is
in corresponding schools in England.
In a country where elementary and intermediate education are in so
unsatisfactory condition as we have seen them to be, one would expect
university education to be seriously crippled, but in Ireland there
arise in this connection further complications from religious
differences which serve to perpetuate a state of affairs which twenty
years ago Mr. Balfour declared was an intolerable grievance, and which
still remains one of the chief disabilities of Ireland. There are at the
present moment two universities in the country, but since one of these
is only an examining board let us begin by considering the status of the
other. Trinity College, Dublin, was founded by Queen Elizabeth with the
proceeds of confiscated Catholic lands, both monastic and lay, with the
avowed intention of propagating the principles of the Protestant
religion. During Grattan's Parliament, at the end of the eighteenth
century, it threw open its gates to others than members of the
Established Church--an example which was not followed by Oxford and
Cambridge for three-quarters of a century. There could be no greater
mistake than to imply from this that it thereby lost its strong
sectarian character. After Mr. Gladstone's attempt in 1873 to solve the
University question had failed, Fawcett's Act removed the religious
tests which barred not only Catholics but also Presbyterians from its
offices and scholarships, and thereby made the College, in theory,
undenominational. In point of fact it is little less Episcopalian than
it has ever been. Its chapel services are Protestant, as are also its
Divinity schools. Its governing body, comprising the Provost and seven
Senior Fellows, is entirely Protestant, while of the 4,200 names on its
electoral roll 2,600 are those of Protestant clergymen.
Of other institutions affording opportunities for higher education in
Ireland, the three Queen's Colleges in Cork, Galway, and Belfast were
destined by their founder, Sir Robert Peel, who established them in
1838, to supply the higher education which was lacking among the
Catholics of the country. The Protestant "atmosphere" of Trinity being
the great obstacle in the way of Catholics who wished for higher
education for their sons, it was thought that by removing this and
setting up undenominational colleges all would be well and the religious
difficulty would be solved. It was as great a mistake as it was possible
to commit. They were stigmatised by a leading Protestant of the time as
godless colleges; they ran counter to all Catholic principles of
education, which demand at least some connection between secular and
religious teaching, and the taboo to which they have in large measure
been subjected has to a great extent resulted in making a failure of
Cork College, and still more of Galway College. The undenominationalism
of Queen's College, Belfast, not being in opposition to the consciences
of the Presbyterians of that city, has resulted in the fact that the
College there has succeeded to a far greater extent than have the other
two.
The Royal University, founded in 1882, is, as I have said, nothing more
than an examining body, established on the lines of the London
University as it existed at that date, with power to award scholarships
and fellowships. About fifty years ago John Henry Newman founded the
Catholic University in St. Stephen's Green. Unendowed and depending on
the voluntary contributions of the poorest people in Western Europe, it
is not surprising that the venture failed. From it, however, rose the
University College, controlled by the Jesuit Fathers, which occupies the
same buildings, and the pupils of which compete for the degrees of the
Royal University as those of the Queen's Colleges have done ever since,
on the foundation of the Royal University, the Queen's University--of
which the three colleges were components--was destroyed. The indirect
mode in which the Catholic University College is endowed is worthy of
attention. The Royal University, out of its income from the Irish Church
Fund, maintains twenty-nine fellows, each with an income of £400 a year
on condition that they should act as examiners in the Royal University,
and in addition give their services as teachers in colleges appointed by
the Senate (namely, the three Queen's Colleges, University College,
Dublin, and the Magee College in Derry). Of these Fellows fifteen are
allotted to University College. On the assumption that of their salary
one-quarter represents the payment as examiners to the University--and
the estimate is generous in view of the payment of only £30 to each
examiner in the Cambridge Triposes--if this be assumed to be the case,
the remaining £300 stands for the salary given as teacher in University
College, which thus, albeit indirectly, is endowed to the extent of
£4,500 a year--a fact which, though contrasting unfavourably with the
£12,000 or £13,000 enjoyed by each of the Queen's Colleges, nevertheless
would have seemed to cut the ground from under the feet of those who
argued that the University question was insoluble since they would not
countenance the application of public funds to a sectarian college.
It is often alleged that the anxiety of the Irish for other facilities
for higher education than are at present afforded arises from their
priest-ridden condition, and that the clergy urge the demand only in
order that they may obtain more power than they already possess. The
conditions in University College are some answer to this charge. It is,
as I have said, under the control of the Jesuits, and a very able member
of that Society is its President. Founded though it was for Catholics,
the proportion--namely, about 10 per cent.--of non-Catholic students has
for the last twenty years been greater than that of Catholics attending
Queen's College, Belfast. Of its professorial staff only five out of
twenty-one are priests. There have always been some Protestants among
them, and on the governing council only one member is a priest, and of
the five laymen one is a Protestant.
The history of the University question in recent years is instructive.
In 1868 Lord Mayo, the Chief Secretary, endeavoured without success to
formulate a scheme. In 1873 Mr. Gladstone brought in a Bill which risked
the life of his Government, and failed to pass. Three years later a Bill
of Isaac Butt's was introduced, but was unsuccessful, and after another
three years, in 1879, was established the federal Royal University. In
1885 the Conservative Chief Secretary, Sir Michael Hicks Beach,
expressed a hope on the part of the Government that in the following
session they would be able to bring in a Bill in settlement of the
question. The letter of Lord Randolph Churchill to Lord Justice
FitzGibbon, which has been quoted elsewhere, shows that at the end of
the same year the Conservative Government was anxious to make an end of
the matter by legislation. In 1889 Mr. Balfour, as Chief Secretary, on
two occasions expressed in the House of Commons the intention of the
Government to proceed to a solution, for the conditions in Ireland, he
went on to say, were "such as to leave them no alternative but to devise
a scheme by which the wants of the Roman Catholics would be met." We
have seen in another connection the quotation from the Life of Lord
Randolph Churchill urging legislation in 1892, and in 1896 Lord Cadogan,
as Viceroy, explicitly spoke of it as "a question with which the present
Government will have to deal."
Eight years ago, in 1899, Mr. Balfour launched a manifesto on this
question which proposed the maintenance of Dublin University with its
Episcopalian atmosphere, while a St. Patrick's University was to be
founded in Dublin with a Catholic atmosphere, and a University of
Belfast with a Presbyterian atmosphere was to be founded on the basis of
the existing Queen's College in that city. The reasons which Mr.
Balfour gave for desiring a settlement of the question deserve
quotation:--
"For myself I hope a University will be granted, and I hope it will be
granted soon. I hope so, as a Unionist, because otherwise I do not know
how to claim for a British Parliament that it can do for Ireland all,
and more than all, that Ireland could do for herself. I hope so as a
lover of education, because otherwise the educational interests both of
Irish Protestants and of Irish Roman Catholics must grievously suffer,
and suffer in that department of education, the national importance of
which is from day to day more fully recognised. I hope so as a
Protestant, because otherwise too easy an occasion is given for the
taunt that in the judgment of Protestants themselves Protestantism has
something to fear from the spread of knowledge."
Two years after this declaration a Royal Commission on the whole
question was mooted, and immediately the cry of "Hands off Trinity" was
raised, in spite of the fact that no Royal Commission had sat on that
College since 1853, an interval of time in which there had been four
Commissions on Oxford and Cambridge, and three on the Scottish
Universities. The terms of reference of the Commission of 1901 on its
appointment under the chairmanship of Lord Robertson were vague. A Judge
of the High Court in Ireland threatened to resign if Trinity
College--the main centre of University education in the island--were
included in the scope of the inquiry of a Commission on the means for
obtaining such education in the country. The Commission sat in private,
and it was not till the first volume of evidence was published that it
was discovered that the terms of reference had been so interpreted as to
exclude Trinity from the inquiry, and to retain the services of the
learned Judge.
After discussing the alternatives of a new Catholic University, or a
reconstitution of the Royal University with the addition of a new
Catholic College, the Commissioners decided in favour of the latter.
Their plan comprised a federal teaching University with four constituent
Colleges, the three Queen's Colleges and a new Catholic College to be
situated in Dublin. Changes in the constitution of the Queen's Colleges,
to remove the religious objections at present entertained towards them
were proposed, and in reference to the endowment of the new Catholic
College it was claimed that it was not truly open to the objection that
it introduced denominational endowment into the University system of
Ireland since the Jesuit University College receives, and has received
for nearly a quarter of a century, a large annual sum out of moneys
provided by Acts of Parliament for University purposes. The reason which
the Commissioners gave fer not making this institution the basis of a
new College was declared to be its meagre scale which makes it
unsuitable for expansion.
In January, 1904, Lord Dunraven propounded a scheme in a letter to the
Press by which the question was to be solved by enlarging the University
of Dublin so as to include the present Queen's College, Belfast, and a
new College which should satisfy Catholic needs in Dublin, each of the
Colleges being autonomous and residential, and on August 3rd, 1904, Mr.
Clancy, in the House of Commons, read a telegram from the Archbishop of
Dublin saying that the bishops would accept either the Dunraven scheme
or that of the Robertson Commission.
So matters were allowed to rest until, with the advent to power of the
present Government, the lacuna, which owing to the recalcitrancy of Mr.
Justice Madden, had been left in the public information on the problem
by the omission of Trinity from the Robertson report, was filled up by
the appointment of a new Royal Commission.
Early this year their report was published. Five of the Commissioners
are in favour of a modified Dunraven scheme, three follow the Robertson
scheme, and one--the only Catholic Fellow of Trinity, one of the very
few of that faith who had ever been elected to that office--is in favour
of no change, an opinion which he expounds in three lines.
It must be remembered in connection with the minority recommendation
that the importance of its coincidence with that of the Robertson report
may easily be exaggerated if sufficiently strong insistence be not laid
upon the exclusion of the University of Dublin from the purview of the
latter.
The chief respect in which the majority recommendations differ from
those of Lord Dunraven is in the inclusion in the new federal Dublin
University of the present Queen's College in Cork, and possibly of that
of Galway. It is important to study this proposal, because it is,
according to Mr. Bryce's last words on resigning office, to be the means
by which the Government hope to effect a solution.
The fact that both the Robertson and the Fry Commissions reported
against Mr. Balfour's plan, to the promotion of the success of which in
the eight years which have elapsed he has done nothing, on the grounds
of the difficulty of bringing it into play, show that for the moment
opinion is set against the multiplication of Universities, and the
choice for the present lies between the two methods of dealing with the
two existing Universities, one of which does not teach, while to the
other the students of the country cannot in conscience go to be taught.
After Mr. Bryce's speech we can no longer ask British statesmen, "How
long halt ye between two opinions?" That the plan adopted by the
Government is the better of the two at present mooted I shall endeavour
to show. In the first place, it is a mere accident that Trinity College
has continued so long the sole College in the University of Dublin,
Chief Baron Palles, in a very able note appended to the report,
disentangles from a number of legal decisions and statutory declarations
the distinctions between Trinity College and the University of Dublin
which it is endeavoured to confound. The Charter of James I., conferring
on Dublin the privilege of a University, foreshadowed the establishment
of other Colleges. Both the Act of Settlement, 14 & 15 Car. II. (1660),
and the Roman Catholic Relief Act, 1793, expressly authorise the
erection of another College in the University--a fact which makes the
proposed change which partisans are anxious to paint as revolutionary
vandalism appear in truth merely the belated performance of a
long-expressed intention. The advantages to Trinity in making it a part
of a great National University are hard to exaggerate. She has long been
described as the only successful British institution in Ireland, and in
that may perhaps be found the comparatively evil days on which she has
fallen, as her admission lists every year testify, and as was explained
to me recently by a member of the very class from which she used to draw
her undergraduates, when he said--"The respectable Protestant country
gentry don't send their sons to Trinity now in the numbers in which they
used to. They send them to Oxford and Cambridge." The last part of his
remark I was able to indorse from my own personal observation.
On two occasions advances have been made by the Board of Trinity College
to the heads of the Catholic hierarchy, asking them what would be their
attitude if Trinity were to allow Catholic students in the College the
same facilities for religious teaching by the members of their own
Church as are at present provided for undergraduate members of the
Episcopalian Protestant Church. On the first occasion Cardinal Cullen,
shortly after the passing of the University Tests Act, replied that he
could be no party to such a proposal. When the process of sounding the
Catholic bishops was repeated in November, 1903, the Provost and Senior
Fellows expressed their willingness to consent to the erection of a
Catholic chapel in the College grounds provided a sufficient sum of
money was forthcoming for its erection. A similar advance was made to
the Moderator of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church, and
the reply in each case was the same--that the parties concerned could
not accept the offers made by the College Board. The failure on the part
of Presbyterians to make use of the College has been attributed by the
Commissioners to the ancient alienation of the Presbyterians from
Trinity, as well as to the existence of the useful work done for that
body by the Queen's College, Belfast. That this ancient alienation
exists in the case of Catholics far more than in that of the
Presbyterians is but natural, seeing that the College was founded by
Elizabeth to undermine the Catholicism of the people. For all that,
however, the taunt is raised with some superficial measure of
plausibility that in refusing the offer the Catholics and their bishops
lay themselves open to a charge of narrowmindedness, seeing that they
have not a College suitable to their needs as have the Presbyterians in
Belfast. That the _genius loci_ is Episcopalian Protestant no one will
deny. At an inaugural meeting of the College Historical Society a few
years ago Judge Webb declared--"Their University was founded by
Protestants, for Protestants, and in the Protestant interest. A
Protestant spirit had from the first animated every member of its body
corporate. At the present moment, with all its toleration, all its
liberality, all its comprehensiveness, and all its scrupulous honour,
the _genius loci_, the guardian spirit of the place, was Protestant. And
as a Protestant he said, and said it boldly, Protestant might it
evermore remain." To this exposition of the spirit of the College two of
its most distinguished members--Lord Justice FitzGibbon and Professor
Mahaffy--gave their assent.
In the light of this frank admission the attitude of the Catholics
takes a new complexion. No suggestion, it will be noted, is made in the
overtures to the bishops to give Catholics any--not to speak of a
proportionate--representation on the Councils of the College. As at
present constituted, the Board, owing to the abolition of celibacy as a
condition of Fellowship and the extinction of the advowsons belonging to
the College by the Irish Church Act of 1869, has become a body of men,
the average age of whom is over seventy and the average time since the
graduation of whom is a little more than half a century. There is at
present one Catholic Junior Fellow in the College, and from the above
facts it will be seen that he may get on the governing board, if he
survives, in about forty years from now.
The government in a college by men whose undergraduate days were fifty
years ago is not calculated to inspire hope for a liberality of
treatment with which a more modern generation might be imbued. The
suggestion that Catholics show narrowmindedness in refusing to throng
the halls of a College admittedly envious of its Protestantism and
maintaining automatically its purely Protestant government for
three-quarters of a century more is very disingenuous.
That if they were to comply, Protestantism would have by some special
means to maintain its supremacy is obvious, for the Episcopalian
Protestants are only thirteen per cent. of the population of Ireland,
and if Catholics were to swamp Trinity and to succeed in obtaining a
share in its councils proportionate to their numbers in the country, the
body for which Trinity was founded would find themselves unable to
obtain any dominant voice in its government.
"Trinity College is quite free from clerical control," said the
Vice-Provost in his statement to the Commissioners, regardless
apparently of the fact that of the seven Senior Fellows who, together
with the Provost, form the College Board, no less than four are
clergymen. In this connection I cannot do better than quote from the
statement submitted by the Committee on Higher Education of the General
Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland for the information of
the last Royal Commission:--
"So long as Trinity College remains practically as it is there is a real
grievance for all denominations except the Protestant Episcopalian, and
the members of those denominations will still be able to say that the
best education in the country--and whether it is the best academically
or simply possesses a greater social acceptance and prestige it is
needless here to discuss--is withheld from them, except on conditions
that tempt their sons to abandon the faith of their fathers or to become
weakened in their attachment to it."
No one--least of all an Irishman--can deny the greatness of a College on
the boards of which are such names as Berkeley, Swift, Grattan, Flood,
and Burke, but it will be admitted by all that as far as the fame of her
_alumni_ is concerned--and there is no other test for a collegiate
foundation--Trinity reached the zenith of her greatness during the years
in which a free Parliament served to break down the barriers of religion
in the island. With the passing of that phase of political history she
relapsed into her place as the "silent sister" in the country, but not
of it, taking no part in national life other than to offer opposition to
the legislative changes, which even she is now constrained to admit were
reforms.
As owner of some 200,000 acres, Trinity College has proved herself one
of the worst landlords in Ireland. An estate belonging to the College in
County Kerry gave rise to one of the bitterest struggles of the land
war. In view of the cry which is being raised in England to-day as to
the broad tolerance which is alleged to hold the field in the College
to-day, the bitterly anti-Catholic spirit of the present Provost and of
his predecessors deserves mention; but I must further call the reader's
notice to a recent event which attracted much attention in Ireland, but
was passed unnoticed in Great Britain. In a sonnet, written by a leading
Fellow of the College in "T.C.D.," the College magazine, the writer
spoke of the Catholic churches in Ireland as "grim monuments of cold
observance, the incestuous mate of superstition," of which "to seeing
eyes each tall steeple lifts its tall head and lies." Sentiments of this
kind, expressed in such taste, are not calculated to encourage Catholic
parents to send their sons to a college where they may come under
influences of which the writer is an example.
The idea of putting into practice the proposed expedient of swamping
Trinity by the encouragement of all Catholics to send their sons to that
College is to a member of an old university as attractive as on paper it
appears easy, but there are drawbacks to its practical application other
than the presence in the College of such a spirit as I have exemplified.
In England, where there are public schools, and Oxford and Cambridge
colleges, many of which have behind them a career of three or four
hundred years, one is inclined to overestimate the value of tradition in
a country where educational endowments are rare and ancient endowments
are the exception. The traditions, moreover, of the origin and of the
mission of Trinity are not such as to foster for her the same feelings
as Oxford and Cambridge have the power of provoking in England. The part
which Trinity has played in Irish history is in no sense analogous to
that played by the English Universities in the history of that country.
English Catholics make use of Oxford and Cambridge for the education of
their sons because in view of their numbers the notion of a separate
university or even a separate college would be ridiculous. In England
Catholics are a small sect. In Ireland they form the great bulk of the
nation. In Montreal, where Catholics form only forty per cent. of the
population, a Catholic University was established by Royal Charter, and
the same principle has been applied in the establishment of Catholic
Universities in Nova Scotia, in Malta, in New South Wales, and in the
founding of the Mahommedan Gordon College at Khartoum.
As long as Trinity maintained tests, so long did the Catholics demand as
of right a purely Catholic University on the grounds of civic equity,
but in these days of open doors they have again and again expressed
their demand for a college or university open to men of all
creeds--Catholic in the sense that Oxford and Cambridge are Protestant,
and are in consequence thronged with young Englishmen; Catholic in the
way that the Scottish Universities are Presbyterian and that Trinity,
Dublin, is Episcopalian. Not a rich man's college, but one to which all
may go as they do to those in Scotland and like those racy of the soil,
and for the rest, in Cardinal Newman's words--"Not a seminary, not a
convent, but a place where men of the world may be fitted for the
world."
Everyone recognises to-day the grievance of the Dissenters in England
and Wales in single school areas under the Education Act of 1902.
Ireland may not unjustly be said to be a single university area, for to
call an examining Board a university is a misnomer. It is surely not too
much to assert that the conscientious scruples of the Irish Catholics to
forms of education of which they do not approve are as strong as the
feelings of the Non-conformist conscience. The attempt to force
undenominationalism on the country has been an expensive failure.
Recognising this, the denominational--nay, more, the Jesuit--University
College has in a niggardly fashion and by a back door been subsidised by
the State. The demand is for no more than a university which shall be
Catholic in the sense that it shall be national, and this in a
preponderatingly Catholic country implies Catholicism. The Irish
Catholic bishops in 1897 declared they are prepared to accept a
university without tests in which the majority of the governing body
are laymen, with a provision that no State funds should be employed for
the promotion of religious education. It is idle, in view of this, to
protest that the demand is urged only on behalf of rampant clericalism,
and that the only form of university which Catholics will accept is of
such a kind as would serve to strengthen the hand of the priests, whose
sole aim in this demand is to secure that increase of power. The shifts
of intolerance are many, but I cannot believe that it will long continue
to masquerade in this manner as the statesmanlike buffer between a
priest-ridden country and an aggressive clergy. Granting, for the sake
of argument, that this was the case, one 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.
Last year, of the 1,114 students on the books of the College only 261
were resident within the College--there being accommodation for only
275. Of the 853 returned as residing outside the College, more than a
hundred do not attend lectures or classes, and are entitled to call
themselves members of the College though their only connection with it
is in the examination hall--an evil system which the Commission has
condemned, and which one must suppose was borrowed from the Royal
University.
Everyone is agreed that a university to be worth the name should, if
possible, be residential. The absence of disciplinary control in Trinity
on those residing out of College, the omission on the part of the
authorities to enact rules which would allow terms to be kept only in
licensed lodging-houses, subject to inspection and to a rigid "lock-up
rule" at twelve o'clock, are absent in Dublin not only at Trinity, but
at the University College, where one can only suppose its absence to be
due to the unorganised condition of a small and temporary makeshift. Not
only, however, for the exercise of disciplinary control, but also
because of the close association of men with each other which residence
ensures, is this to be regarded as the best means of getting the heart
out of a university education.
This being the case, if Trinity were to receive a new accession of
numbers its accommodation would have to be largely increased, so that
the line of least resistance, which leaves the very largely autonomous
constitution of Trinity unimpaired, will be seen to lie in the direction
of the establishment of a new college, in which, moreover, it will be
possible to make expenses more economical than they are in Trinity.
"It is not for us," said Mr. Balfour at Partick in December, 1889, "to
consider how far the undoubtedly conscientious objections of the Roman
Catholic population to use the means at their disposal are wise or
unwise. That is not our business. What we have to do is to consider what
we can do consistently with our conscience to meet their wants."
The proposals of the Government, as outlined by Mr. Bryce and
recommended by the Royal Commission, offend against no one's conscience.
They assail no vested interest unless one so calls that of which Matthew
Arnold spoke as one very cruel result of the Protestant ascendancy; they
tend to establish something approaching equality between creeds; they
make an end of the mischievous system by which the Royal University has
encouraged a false ideal of success by making examination the end-all
and the be-all of a so-called university education, and which, moreover,
according to the final report of the Robertson Commission, "fails to
exhibit the one virtue which is associated with a university of this
kind--that of inspiring public confidence in its examination results."
The advantages of the present proposal over a reorganised Royal
University are that the size and poverty of the country are strong
reasons against the creation of two universities when one would be
equally efficient. The scheme will be readily accepted by the
Presbyterians as well as by the Catholics, which would not be the case
with a reconstituted Royal University, and it is the only solution of
the question which will bring the young men of different creeds in the
country together at an impressionable age when friendships are formed
which may serve to break down the barrier between creeds.
The objection of Trinity College to the inclusion on the roll of the
University under the new conditions of the present M.A.s of the Royal
University is scarcely consistent with its recent action in admitting to
_ad eundem_ degrees women who have passed the final degree examinations
at Oxford and Cambridge, and if the objection to the proposal is based
on the change in political complexion which the electoral roll of the
University would undergo, the answer is that University representation
is an anomaly which in any circumstances is not likely to continue for
many years more in the case, not merely of Dublin, but of the other
universities of the three kingdoms.
* * * * *
Since the foregoing chapter was written the Provost of Trinity has
announced to a meeting of Graduates of the College that he has received
assurances from the Chief Secretary that in the forthcoming Bill the
University of Dublin will be left untouched. I have said enough to show
that Irish Nationalist opinion has not been committed to the Bryce
scheme to the exclusion of every other solution, but it is to be
regretted, in the interests of education, that the proposal which the
majority of Irishmen regarded as the solution nearest approaching the
ideal should have been launched by the Government merely as a _ballon
d'essai_, to be withdrawn at the first breath of opposition, and to be
replaced by what, at the best, can only prove to be a less hopeful
compromise. One guarantee of a speedy solution the country at any rate
holds--namely, that the Government is pledged to introduce legislation
next session, and that the Chief Secretary has bound himself to stand or
fall by the fate of the Bill.