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lastly, that the schools under the immediate care of the clergy of the Established Church were such as have been described in the foregoing extracts. Upon a review of the entire case; while anxious to preserve for ourselves the intellectual superiority communicated to our youth by systems like those of the Christian Brothers, and while anxious to extend the application of those systems to intermediate and upper education; we are far from anxious to perpetuate the degradation to which the parish schools have been reduced by the neglect of the Protestant clergy, and their contempt of secular instruction. If the clergy of the Established church would loyally agree to concern themselves with their own congregations merely, and to embrace frankly the denominational system, we should gladly meet their views. In three of the provinces there is no such thing as united education, and in the fourth it is adopted with great jealousy and with no little heart-burning. If there must be a Protestant and Catholic National school in each parish; be it so; but let them be as emphatically and conspicuously distinct as the Protestant and Catholic churches. If Catholic parents think proper to send their children to the Ministers' school, let it be upon the distinct understanding that the teaching is as Protestant as Calvin could desire. The system of mixed education does not in reality exist; we have only separate education hampered by inconvenient rules. The attempt to extend even the theory of mixed education to intermediate schools would be quite hopeless, and involve the country again in the disastrous controversy that attended the establishment of the Queen's Colleges, and which might have been so easily avoided by allowing open competition to separate and independent universities, with equal advantages and rights. The State has an opportunity of adjusting the long disputed question now, and of reconsidering the entire subject of education. We for our part are not anxious to encroach upon any educational endowments whether of state or private foundation that have been regarded as belonging peculiarly to Protestants. We make no reference at present to the revenues of the Church Establishment. That is an altogether different question. But speaking for ourselves merely, we are quite willing to leave to the Protestants every one of the educational endow

ments they claim as theirs, or that Mr. Stephens claims for them, not by any means, in the case of the schools of State foundation as a matter of right, but as a peace offering merely and upon conditions. We hold what will hardly be disputed, that in the distribution of favours as well as of burthens Catholic and Protestant should stand upon opposite sides of an equation. No one can pretend that they stand in any such relation at present. In respect of primary education the state endowment is nearly all upon the Catholic side for the reasons so abundantly discussed already. In respect of intermediate education it is all the other way, and we for our private part are content to leave. it so. In respect of superior education we have upon the Protestant side the University of Dublin, a great Protestant institution, to the secular teaching, and to some of the prizes of which Catholics are admissible, but upon the Catholic side we have absolutely no equivalent; while the Queen's Colleges, being open to Protestant and Catholic alike, are common quantities, and cannot restore the balance. Complete the equation by giving to the Catholic interest a quantity to balance the University of Dublin. The material is ready to our hands in the Catholic University.

It is not many years ago since the Times, when such an institution was first in contemplation, suggested that if Catholics should be so fortunate as to obtain for their projected University the services of some of the disciplined minds of Oxford and Cambridge that have passed over to their communion, it would entitle them to some sort of countenance. They have obtained for their University all that was suggested, but they do not receive more countenance or support on that account, than if the Rector and Professors were so many hedge-school-masters. The Herald bade welcome to the coming University on the somewhat peculiar ground that Luther was the alumnus of a Catholic University. But now that the University has come, neither the Times out of respect for the literary training it supplies to Catholics "Ilium in Italiam portans," nor the Herald in anticipation of its promised crop of Luthers, has given to it the support they seemed to hold out Never was a moment more propitious for the adjustment of the question. The existence of free and recognised universities side by side with the State university, and enjoy

ing every privilege of a University, is a fact in Belgium, why not in Ireland? Mixed education, like the Turkish empire, has no friends, and yet no one is quite prepared to do without it. This is certainly a favourable time, and the rivalry between the great educational establishments of the country for the prizes thrown open to them by competitive examinations, could not fail to promote the general interests of education. And greater than all would be the gain of the country in harmony and good feeling, by the abandonment of theories and frank adoption of realities. Catholic and Protestant must have mixed education in the great school of the world, even if they learn their alphabet and construe their classics apart. They must meet and rub together, and educate each other in the counting house or stock exchange, at the railway board, in the hall of the Four Courts, in municipal councils, in the same or in a different political connexion in the legislature; but the attempt to confuse the boundaries of Protestant and Catholic education, primary, secondary, or superior, we regard as wrong in principle, and if right not practicable. The bare agitation of the question will estrange the fathers, who will bequeath the estrangement to their sons; suspicion and watchfulness far more than wholesome for the peace of the State will be generated between the parties it was intended to unite; and the substance of that union which mixed education has been instituted to forward, will be lost in the worship of the shadow.

JOHN O'CONNELL.

"Death," writes Jeremy Taylor, to Lord Carbery," reigns in all the portions of our time. The Autumn with its fruits provides disorders for us, and the Winter's cold turns them into sharp diseases, and the Spring brings flowers to strew our hearse, and the Summer gives green turf and brambles to bind upon our graves. Calentures and surfeit, cold and agues, are the four quarters of the year, and all minister to death; and you can go no whither, but you tread upon a dead man's bones." For us, this thought has been ever a grave and wise one, and the death of John O'Connell has brought out all its gravity and force in fuller, and more patent truth.

Three weeks ago he wrote to us from Aldershot, suggesting a paper upon the Foreign Relations of England, and today we saw him laid in his grave; honored by an attendance such as few could have anticipated; and thus, amidst prayers and regrets, we left him; after a busy life of care, and work for Ireland, he lies in peace at last; so near to the vault of "Honest Tom Steel" that the long shadow of O'Connell's monument falls on the tomb of each, whilst around them floats for ever the hallow and glory of the Liberator's memory.

If one wished to point out to a young Irishman entering upon a political career the advantages and disadvantages of his position, the life of John O'Connell would supply the best and completest example. Here was a man of surpassing industry; of indomitable perseverance; of great ability; of thorough honesty, and in all matters bearing upon the political, and social, and financial condition of Ireland, one of the best and ripest of " ripe and good" scholars; yet few gave him credit for the ability which he possessed, and when his speeches did occasionally compel men, in their unwilling gratitude, to admit that he had done his country real service, the admission was but too often coupled with

a sneer.

During the active lifetime of his father, John O'Connell did merely yeoman's service in the popular cause, and it was only after the trials of 1844, that his special claims to be considered a popular leader, were canvassed amongst

the people. He had proved his zeal and ability; he had worked twelve years of anxious national work with his father; he had all the prestige of that great father's name to back his claim to a leadership, but herein it was that the chief bar to his leadership lay, he was measured by the standard of the Liberator.

Men had grown in the belief that Daniel O'Connell was Ireland, and that in him, and in him only, and in his counsels, lay all hope of justice for the country. Monday after Monday, the Conciliation Hall was thronged with followers, who were all but adorers, and that great, towering figure, looming up beside the chairman, thundering invectives, or rousing their hearts with great thoughts of what Ireland once was, and might be again through union and peace; now drawing them into tears by a pathos such as few men in all the world could ever command; and then, after that twinkling of the eye, and dimpling smile that told what was coming, setting his auditors "in aroar," with a humour that was all his own, had become, as it were, the spirit of Ireland: for he, and he only, could proclaim to his countrymen as did Cicero to the Romans, "Togati me uno togato duce et imperatore vicistis."

Who could succeed, as leader, such a man as this? It has been said, had John O'Connell been a man of great genius, he could have held the position left vacant by his father's death. But those who make this statement forget that one who has long served under a great leader, civil or military, can never take the place of that leader. He has had no training in the conquest of obstacles, in the use of difficulty; he has been but a subaltern; he has had no schooling in those phases of life which make men quick yet sure in judgment; which enable a man to see, as it were intuitively, the right road to success; above all, he knows nothing of that training which makes a man self-reliant, and self-dependent.

John O'Connell had not had this training, and hence, when he found the public mind debauched by the slanders of the rump of what was once the great Repeal party; when he saw that old friends had grown cold, and that once staunch supporters had fallen off; when he saw himself accused of "rattling his father's bones" to gain money; and when he read that he and Maurice had kept back their father's dead

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