the opinion of many that the
Land question cannot be settled without such a change of owners as would
practically amount to a revolution.

With respect to the question of the Church, the more intelligent laymen of
the Irish National party openly avow their wish to alienate the property of
the Church, on the ground that its existence forms a barrier to the union
of Irish Protestants with the Catholic majority in the formation of a truly
National Irish party. It is asserted, and apparently not without reason,
that if the Irish Protestants felt themselves cast off by England, and
their Church endowments confiscated, they might become more willing to join
their countrymen in an anti-English policy, which the rude breath of war
might some day fan into a demand for an Irish Republic, under the guarantee
of France and America. It is for English politicians to decide how far the
advantages of religious equality would compensate for the risk of national
disloyalty.

The questions of the Land and Church in Ireland will, doubtless, be fully
discussed in the House of Commons by persons acquainted with those
questions, and competent to do them justice; but it may be fairly doubted
whether the question of Education in Ireland will be examined with as full
a knowledge as will be brought to bear on the other questions. The
following lines are written in the hope of adding a contribution of facts
towards the discussion of one branch of the Education question--that which
relates to University Education in Ireland.

My apology for writing on this question is, that I have been a Fellow of
Trinity College for nearly a quarter of a century, during which time I have
taken an active part in the educational reforms which have placed the
Graduates of Trinity College foremost in all the competitions for the
public services of India, of the Army, and of the Colonies. I am also
entitled to be heard as a Clerical Fellow of Trinity College, holding in
trust for his brother Protestants the precious gift of education based on
pure religion, handed down to us by our forefathers, in defence of which
all true Protestants are prepared, if necessary, to sacrifice their lives.

Two proposals were discussed, and a third was incidentally alluded to, in
the summer of 1867, in the House of Commons, respecting University
Education in Ireland; one of these proposals involves a betrayal of the
religious base on which the Protestant College of Elizabeth was found