both the Robertson and the Fry Commissions reported
against Mr. Balfour's plan, to the promotion of the success of which in
the eight years which have elapsed he has done nothing, on the grounds
of the difficulty of bringing it into play, show that for the moment
opinion is set against the multiplication of Universities, and the
choice for the present lies between the two methods of dealing with the
two existing Universities, one of which does not teach, while to the
other the students of the country cannot in conscience go to be taught.

After Mr. Bryce's speech we can no longer ask British statesmen, "How
long halt ye between two opinions?" That the plan adopted by the
Government is the better of the two at present mooted I shall endeavour
to show. In the first place, it is a mere accident that Trinity College
has continued so long the sole College in the University of Dublin,
Chief Baron Palles, in a very able note appended to the report,
disentangles from a number of legal decisions and statutory declarations
the distinctions between Trinity College and the University of Dublin
which it is endeavoured to confound. The Charter of James I., conferring
on Dublin the privilege of a University, foreshadowed the establishment
of other Colleges. Both the Act of Settlement, 14 & 15 Car. II. (1660),
and the Roman Catholic Relief Act, 1793, expressly authorise the
erection of another College in the University--a fact which makes the
proposed change which partisans are anxious to paint as revolutionary
vandalism appear in truth merely the belated performance of a
long-expressed intention. The advantages to Trinity in making it a part
of a great National University are hard to exaggerate. She has long been
described as the only successful British institution in Ireland, and in
that may perhaps be found the comparatively evil days on which she has
fallen, as her admission lists every year testify, and as was explained
to me recently by a member of the very class from which she used to draw
her undergraduates, when he said--"The respectable Protestant country
gentry don't send their sons to Trinity now in the numbers in which they
used to. They send them to Oxford and Cambridge." The last part of his
remark I was able to indorse from my own personal observation.

On two occasions advances have been made by the Board of Trinity College
to the heads of the Catholic hierarchy, asking them what would be their
attitude if Trinity were