ber of O'Connell's Repeal Association, but
took no prominent part in its proceedings, except on one momentous
occasion on which we must dwell for a while. The debate was on the
subject of Peel's Bill for the establishment of a large scheme of
non-sectarian education in Ireland. Of this measure Sir Charles Duffy
writes:--

"A majority of the Catholic Bishops approved of the general design,
objecting to certain details. All the barristers and country
gentlemen in the Association, and the middle class generally,
supported it. To Davis it was like the unhoped-for realization of a
dream. To educate the young men of the middle class and of both
races, and to educate them together, that prejudice and bigotry
might be killed in the bud, was one of the projects nearest his
heart. It would strengthen the soul of Ireland with knowledge, he
said, and knit the creeds in liberal and trusting friendship."[3]

But O'Connell, though he had previously favoured the principle of mixed
education, now saw a chance of flinging down a challenge to the "Young
Irelanders" from a vantage-ground of immense tactical value. He threw
his whole weight against the proposal, taunted and interrupted its
supporters, and seemed determined at any cost to wreck the measure on
which such high hopes had been set. The emotion which Davis felt, and
which caused him to burst into tears in the midst of the debate, seemed
to some of his friends at the time over-strained. But he was not the
first strong man from whom public calamities have drawn tears; and
assuredly if ever there were cause for tears, Davis had reason to shed
them then. More, perhaps, than any man present, he realised the fateful
nature of the decision which was being made. He knew that one of the
governing facts about Irish public life is the existence in the country
of two races who remain life-long strangers to each other. Catholic and
Protestant present to each other a familiar front, but behind the
surface of each is a dark background which in later life, when
associations, and often prejudices, have been formed, the other can
rarely penetrate and rarely wishes to do so. It was Davis's belief that
if the young people of Ireland were to be permanently segregated from
childhood to manhood in different schools, different universities,
where early friendships, the most intimate and familiar of any, could
never be made, and ideas never interchanged except through