ng compensation; but on
this occasion the police refused to show Lord Ashtown their report,
stating that they had received orders from the Government not to do
so. But shortly before the case came on, a report, not made by the
police authority in charge of the district, but by another brought in
specially for the purpose, appeared in the Nationalist papers. This
report contained the remarkable suggestion that Lord Ashtown had done
it himself! When under cross-examination at the trial, the Inspector
of the Royal Irish Constabulary who made the report was obliged to
confess that he did not believe that he had, but had only inserted the
suggestion in obedience to instruction received from the Government.
Lord Ashtown proved his case and was awarded compensation. But the
matter did not end there. He had employed a surveyor, Mr. Scully, to
draw plans and take photographs showing the amount of the damage. Mr.
Scully was surveyor to the Waterford Corporation. It was proposed at
the next meeting of the Corporation that he should be dismissed from
his office for having given evidence for Lord Ashtown. The motion
was carried unanimously, eight councillors being present; and at the
following meeting it was ratified by eight votes to two. A question
was asked about the matter in the House of Commons; and Mr. Birrell,
with the figures before him, replied that Mr. Scully had never been
dismissed.

Two other instances of this period must be briefly referred to. It
has already been shown how the Irish Parliament endowed Maynooth as a
College for Roman Catholic students both lay and theological; and how
Trinity College, Dublin, opened its doors to all students, without
distinction of creed. But the Roman Catholic Church turned Maynooth
into a seminary for theological students only; and the bishops forbade
young laymen to go to Trinity. In 1845 Sir Robert Peel attempted to
supply the want by founding the Queen's University, with Colleges at
Belfast, Cork and Galway, where mixed education should be given in
secular subjects, and separate instruction in those appertaining to
religion; but that again was denounced as a "satanic scheme for the
ruin of faith in the rising generation"; and the crusade against
the university was so successful that in 1879 it was destroyed and
another--the Royal University--put in its place. This in its turn was
abolished in 1909; the College at Belfast was raised to the status
of a University, and a new Univer