s so strong on
the matter that in any neighbourhood even a small group of families of
any particular denomination is always provided with a separate school of
its own. Of late, indeed, opinion has begun to agitate for associating
the laity with the clergy in the management of schools; but this does
not indicate any desire to lessen the importance given to the part
played by religion in education.

Further, so far as Catholic Ireland is concerned, an immense proportion
of the teaching both in primary and secondary schools is done by members
of religious orders, and in these, of course, there is no conception of
separating moral influences from religious. There is, however, no
evidence known to me that even in the few Protestant schools which are
partly or wholly under lay control any duties, other than those of
ordinary school work, are inculcated except as part of a Christian's
religious obligations. This entire state of things is due to the fact
that positive Christian belief, and the practice of religious
observances, are everywhere in Ireland very general, and among the
Catholic population almost universal. It is also hardly necessary to
point out that in many respects the standard of Irish morality is so
high that the example of Ireland may be quoted with confidence in
support of the view which makes moral teaching necessarily a part of
religion.

But from such broad generalities there is not much to be gathered, and I
proceed to examine in some detail the existing institutions--beginning
at the top with higher education.

It follows from what has been said that, in the general opinion of
Irishmen, there can be no positive moral influence where there is no
religious teaching; and for that reason a university without a school of
theology or arrangements for corporate worship is, to Irishmen, a
university deficient in moral safeguards. This accounts for the fact
that Catholic opinion was much less opposed to the Protestant
University of Dublin than to the more modern Queen's Colleges, which,
designed by England to provide for her wants of Ireland, excluded
religion entirely from their purview. This provision satisfied no one,
except to some extent the Presbyterians, who accepted Queen's College,
Belfast, with some alacrity, though in practice demanding that its head
should always be a staunch professor of their own persuasion. But
Catholics as a body refused to accept either the University of Dublin
with its Prote