ery limited, that they
must either emigrate, or rely on their talents and education, in pushing
their way in the learned professions in England and the Colonies. Hence it
follows, that any lowering of the standard of University Education in
Ireland would be followed by peculiarly disastrous effects.

At the present moment, Trinity College may be regarded as a manufactory for
turning out the highest class of competitors for success in the Church, at
the English Bar, in the Civil Service of India, and in the Scientific and
Medical Services of the Army and Navy; and any legislation which would
produce the effect of lowering the present high standard of her degrees,
would tend to destroy the prospects of the educated classes in Ireland, and
become to those classes little short of a national calamity.

In order to establish my objection, it is necessary to call to our
recollection the ancient and true notion of an University.

With the exception of Oxford and Cambridge, there is no example of an
ancient University in Europe composed of a collection of free Colleges,
united by the common bond of an University, of which all are members, and
which conducts the Examinations for Degrees.

All other ancient Universities resemble the University of Trinity College
in Dublin, in consisting of a single College possessing, either from the
Pope or from the Crown, the University privilege of granting Degrees.

In modern times, no nation but France has seen fit to depart from this
ancient form of University Education; and in that country centralization is
so popular and so complete, that the University of France, with its
affiliated Colleges, has met with a success very certain not to follow a
similar experiment in Ireland. All the Colleges in France are moulded upon
the same type, from which no deviation is permitted; and all are under
State control, which in France restrains freedom of education by the same
trammels as freedom of speech, or liberty of the press. The Minister of
Public Instruction can boast that when the clock strikes his telegraphed
order sets in motion the tongues of his Professors in Paris, in Strasburgh,
in Lyons, and that the same lectures, in almost the same words, are
delivered within the same hour to all the educated youth of France. This
drilling of the intellect by the sergeants of the Emperor pleases for the
present the fancy of the French; it would infallibly fail in Ireland.

The condition essential to s