uch a picture of a type as the
French _cure_ whom Mr. Austin Dobson has so gracefully depicted, and it
is difficult to see how such a figure of genial kindliness could have
been portrayed in such a quarter or have received such general
acceptance if there were to be found in any number worth considering the
hard and worldly beggars on horseback whom their enemies allege
constitute the characteristic type of the Irish clergy.

If in the religious nature of the Irish people is to be found one reason
for the influence of the clergy in secular matters, a far more potent
factor is to be seen in the historical fact that the priest has for
centuries been the only guide, counsellor, and friend of the Irish
peasant. The absence of a well-educated middle class, which, failing a
sympathetic aristocracy, would, in a normal condition of things, provide
popular leaders, is the only thing which has maintained any such undue
predominance on the part of the clergy in secular affairs as exists.
With the development of an educated Catholic laity, among some members
of which one may expect to see evolved that critical acumen and balanced
judgment which are what the fine flower of a university culture is
supposed to produce, this preponderance will disappear, but in the
meanwhile, be it noted, it is the refusal of Englishmen to found an
acceptable university which is maintaining the very state of affairs in
this direction against which they protest.

CHAPTER VI

THE EDUCATIONAL PROBLEM

"When I consider how munificently the Colleges of Oxford and
Cambridge are endowed ... when I remember from whom all this
splendour and plenty is derived; when I remember what was the
faith of Edward the Third, and of Henry the Sixth, of Margaret
of Anjou, and Margaret of Richmond, of William of Wykeham, and
of William of Waynefleet, of Archbishop Chicheley, and
Cardinal Wolsey; when I remember what we have taken from the
Roman Catholics, King's College, New College, Christ Church,
my own Trinity; and when I look at the miserable Dotheboys
Hall which we have given them in exchange, I feel, I must own,
less proud than I could wish of being a Protestant and a
Cambridge man."--T.B. MACAULAY, Speech on the Maynooth
Grant, 1845.

"What the Irish are proposing is nothing so enormous or
chimerical. They propose merely to put an end to one very
cruel result of the Protestant