t professions and literary pursuits. Complaints of
inattention were made against some of its members, and at the election
for officers after the expiration of the first year, others were
substituted for the inattentive and inefficient. The change for the most
part was made by unanimous consent; but when a ballot was called for,
other names were substituted for those on the house list, recommended by
the former committee, and the contest resulted in the rejection of
Richard Barrett and one or two others. This was taken as an affront to
Mr. O'Connell, though personally he neither took part in, nor was
present at, the meeting. Whether it was owing to Mr. O'Connell's
aversion to the green-and-gold uniform, to which he sometimes expressed
his dislike, or his objection to the rejection of his soi-disant
friends, or to his consciousness that the club was not subservient to
his control, he took very little interest in its progress, and
frequently spoke of it in terms of derision.

But that which produced the first sensible and vital difference between
Mr. O'Connell and the Seceders was the Colleges Bill. Education had long
been a subject of anxious solicitude with Mr. Davis, and he was in
continual communication with Mr. Wyse, its great parliamentary champion.
He had repeatedly urged upon him the indispensable necessity of the
principle of mixed education, as the basis of any collegiate system for
Ireland. That basis was recognised in the system of national education
which was accepted and approved of by the whole Catholic Hierarchy, with
one exception, and most warmly sanctioned by the Catholic priesthood and
laity. Extreme bigots of the Protestant school opposed and denounced it
as unscriptural and Godless, and one extreme bigot of the Catholic
school echoed the objurgation. It was not to be supposed that a
principle thus sanctioned, tried, and efficient as applicable to the
children of the poor, would be objected to when applied to those who
were higher in station and older in years. When, therefore, the Bill was
introduced and its principal provisions announced, it was received with
the utmost delight and, even, triumph. Mr. O'Connell proclaimed in a
meeting of the committee his emphatic approval of the principle of the
Bill.

As soon as its details were published, it was submitted to the
parliamentary committee, and, during its discussion there, he expressed
for the first time some doubts as to the practicability of a mix