d. Of course its decision must be
heartily accepted and obeyed, and that the more, because the decision
proceeds, not simply from the Bishops of Ireland, great as their authority
is, but the highest authority on earth, from the Chair of St. Peter.

Moreover, such a decision not only demands our submission, but has a claim
upon our trust. It not only acts as a prohibition of any measures, but as
an _ipso facto_ confutation of any reasonings, inconsistent with it. It
carries with it an earnest and an augury of its own expediency. For
instance, I can fancy, Gentlemen, there may be some, among those who hear
me, disposed to say that they are ready to acquit the principles of
Education, which I am to advocate, of all fault whatever, except that of
being impracticable. I can fancy them granting to me, that those
principles are most correct and most obvious, simply irresistible on
paper, but maintaining, nevertheless, that after all, they are nothing
more than the dreams of men who live out of the world, and who do not see
the difficulty of keeping Catholicism anyhow afloat on the bosom of this
wonderful nineteenth century. Proved, indeed, those principles are, to
demonstration, but they will not work. Nay, it was my own admission just
now, that, in a particular instance, it might easily happen, that what is
only second best is best practically, because what is actually best is out
of the question.

This, I hear you say to yourselves, is the state of things at present. You
recount in detail the numberless impediments, great and small, formidable
or only vexatious, which at every step embarrass the attempt to carry out
ever so poorly a principle in itself so true and ecclesiastical. You
appeal in your defence to wise and sagacious intellects, who are far from
enemies to Catholicism, or to the Irish Hierarchy, and you have no hope,
or rather you absolutely disbelieve, that Education can possibly be
conducted, here and now, on a theological principle, or that youths of
different religions can, under the circumstances of the country, be
educated apart from each other. The more you think over the state of
politics, the position of parties, the feelings of classes, and the
experience of the past, the more chimerical does it seem to you to aim at
a University, of which Catholicity is the fundamental principle. Nay, even
if the attempt could accidentally succeed, would not the mischief exceed
the benefit of it? How great the sacrifice