es of students whose
general education has been neglected than to serve as anything in the
nature of a university arts course. I am quite aware of the value of a
sound training in mental science if given in connection with a full
university course, but I am equally convinced that the Maynooth
education, on the whole, is no substitute for a university course, and
that while its chief end of turning out a large number of trained
priests has been fulfilled, it has not given, and could not be expected
to have given, that broader and more humane culture which only a
university, as distinguished from a professional school, can adequately
provide.

Moreover, under the Maynooth system young clerics are constantly called
upon to take a part in the life of a lay community, towards which, when
they entered college, they were in no position of responsibility, and
upon which, so far as secular matters are concerned, when they emerge
from their theological training, they are no better adapted to exercise
a helpful influence. In my experience of priests I have met with many in
whom I recognised a sincere desire to attend to the material and social
well-being of their flocks, but who certainly had not that breadth of
view and understanding of human nature which perhaps contact with the
laity during the years in which they were passing from discipline to
authority might have given to them. However this may be, it is clear and
it is admitted that education as opposed to professional training of a
high order is still, generally speaking, a want among the priests of
Ireland, and I look forward to no greater boon from a University or
University College for Roman Catholics than its influence, direct and
indirect, on a body of men whose prestige and authority are necessarily
so unique.

It is, therefore, to Trinity College, or the University of Dublin, that
one would naturally turn as to a great centre of thought in Ireland for
help in the theoretic aspects, at least, of the practical problems upon
whose successful solution our national well-being depends. Judged by
the not unimportant test of the men it has supplied to the service of
the State and country during its three centuries of educational
activity, by the part it took in one of the brightest epochs of these
three centuries--the days when it gave Grattan to Grattan's Parliament,
by the work and reputation of the _alumni_ it could muster to-day within
and without its walls, our vener