n 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 t