te would thus become simply a machinery for
authorizing the Students of the various Colleges to add certain letters,
such as M. A., or LL. B., after their names; and it would become the
interest of all the Colleges in which a really good education was given,
that such letters should have a formal significance only; the education
itself, testified by the addition of the name of the College, having alone
a real market value readily appreciated by the public. Each College of
reputation would be careful to have its own name inserted after the letters
signifying the University Degree, and thus would be practically created as
many Universities as there are Colleges in Ireland, and a disastrous
competition downwards would be the inevitable result.

The Degrees of the so-called National University would be like the bills of
a weak firm--dishonoured by the public unless endorsed by the name of a
solvent trader--and the letters M. A., or LL. B., would become like the
praises on a bad man's gravestone, purchaseable at so much a letter.

I believe, therefore, that I am entitled to protest against the scheme of
forming a National University by fusing together the different Colleges in
Ireland, on the following grounds:--

1. Because such a scheme for a National University would prove to be a
failure, on account of the want of similarity in the Colleges
composing the University.

2. Because such a scheme would, in the long run, infallibly lower the
standard and degrade the character of Irish University Degrees; a
result that would prove peculiarly disastrous to the educated classes
in Ireland.

III. ROMAN CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY OF IRELAND.

Having disposed of the first two schemes for satisfying the demand of the
Irish Catholics for University Education, and shown one to be impolitic,
and the other to be injurious, it might naturally be expected that I should
now proceed to advocate the advantages of the remaining plan, which
consists in a Charter and Endowment for a Roman Catholic University in
Ireland, in which the Irish Catholics and their Clergy should be allowed to
arrange their own programme of University Education without the
interference of Irish Protestants, or of English doctrinaires; but this
course I feel to be unnecessary, as it mainly concerns Roman Catholics
themselves to state their wishes and explain their views respecting it.

Protestant interference in such a question is as irrit