the same lines as a Protestant
one. Primary education has become almost absolutely denominational, and,
directly or indirectly, a crowd of endowments are given to exclusively
Catholic institutions. On such grounds, many who entertain the strongest
antipathy to the priestly control of higher education are prepared to
advocate an increased endowment of some university or college which is
distinctly sacerdotal, while strenuously upholding side by side with it
the undenominational institutions which they believe to be incomparably
better, and which are at present resorted to not only by all
Protestants, but also by a not inconsiderable body of Irish Catholics.

Many of my readers will probably come to an opposite conclusion on this
very difficult question. The object of what I have written is simply to
show the process by which a politician may conscientiously advocate the
establishment and endowment of a thing which he believes to be
intrinsically bad. It is said to have been a saying of Sir Robert
Inglis--an excellent representative of an old school of extreme but most
conscientious Toryism--that 'he would never vote one penny of public
money for any purpose which he did not think right and good.' The
impossibility of carrying out such a principle must be obvious to any
one who has truly grasped the nature of representative government and
the duty of a member of Parliament to act as a trustee for all classes
in the community. In the exercise of this function every conscientious
member is obliged continually to vote money for purposes which he
dislikes. In the particular instance I have just given, the process of
reasoning I have described is purely disinterested, but of course it is
not by such a process of pure reasoning that such a question will be
determined. English and Scotch members will have to consider the effects
of their vote on their own constituencies, where there are generally
large sections of electors with very little knowledge of the special
circumstances of Irish education, but very strong feelings about the
Roman Catholic Church. Statesmen will have to consider the ulterior and
various ways in which their policy may affect the whole social and
political condition of Ireland, while the overwhelming majority of the
Irish members are elected by small farmers and agricultural labourers
who could never avail themselves of University education, and who on all
matters relating to education act blindly at the dic