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grounds, as well as Fellows' gardens; besides which there is a large area, known as The Wilderness, planted at present with trees and shrubs. The buildings consist of a (Protestant Episcopalian) chapel, residences, halls, lecture-rooms, library, museums, laboratories, etc.; laid out, for the most part, in four quadrangles, with a magnificent frontage on College Green, the centre of the city. No university in Europe can boast of a finer position.

1

In the Report of a Royal Commission which, in 1906, inquired into the state of the College, I find its total income for the year ending 1905 set down as £92,985; of which, as far as I can make out, about £48,000 was derived from State endowments, the remainder being made up of interest on private donations and students' fees. The State endowment consists (1) of landed estates in different counties of Ireland; (2) of ground rents in the city of Dublin; and (3) of mortgages, Bank of Ireland Stock, and other investments in commercial undertakings, principally railways. As a small portion of the capital invested in this way may have been derived from savings on the private endowments of the College, I am not in a position to state exactly the amount of income derived from State funds. The estimate given £48,000-will not, I think, be found to be wide of the mark.

Trinity College was founded by Queen Elizabeth as a strictly Protestant institution, and retained this character till the year 1873, when an Act of Parliament, known as Fawcett's Act, threw open to members of all denominations all offices in the College, with the exception of those held by professors and teachers in Divinity. Notwithstanding this change, it is a fact that nearly all the offices are held at present by non-Catholicsindeed by members of the only denomination to which they were open before the passing of Fawcett's Act. I shall have to return to this fact with a view to determine its cause; for the present I merely state it as a fact, which, however we may dispute about the cause, is itself indisputable. For the past thirty years there have been one or two Catholics, never more, on the staff at any one time.

1 See Appendix to Final Report, p. 490.

4

The number of students in the College is at present about 1,000. In one Return I find it given as 1,114 in January, 1906; in another 3 as 965 in July 1st of that year; and in a third as 1,250 on May 1st of the same year. Of these 1,250 students 929 belonged to the (Protestant Episcopalian) Church of Ireland; 140 were Catholics; 88 Presbyterians; 33 Methodists; and there were 60 others.5 For the six years from 1901 to 1906 the average number of students on the books was 1,002, of whom 251 resided within and 751 outside the College. There were 69 women students on the 1st July, 1906.7

At the present time (Jan., 1908) it is permitted to students to obtain degrees at the University of Dublin by passing examinations only, without residence or attending lectures in Trinity College. It appears probable that about ten per cent. of the graduates obtain their degrees solely by examination, and that the number of such graduates is decreasing.

8

As to the government of the College, it is sufficient for my purpose to say that it is vested, practically, in three bodies; the Board, the Council, and the Senate; that the Senate Board consists of the Provost and the seven most Senior of the Fellows, known as Senior Fellows; of the Doctors or Masters of the University; and the Council of the Provost and sixteen members elected out of the Senate, four by the Senior Fellows, four by the Junior Fellows, four by the Professors who are not Fellows, and four by those members of the Senate who are not entitled to vote as Fellows or Professors." The Council so constituted "is empowered to nominate to all professorships, ex

2 Appendix to First Report of the Royal Commission on Trinity College, Dublin, and the University of Dublin (quoted in future as Report of Commission on Trinity College), p. 21.

4

Appendix to Final Report of same, p. 337.

Ibid. "I called the attention of the Secretary [of the Commission] to the return you asked for as to the number of students on our books on the 1st July, and I pointed out to him that it would be better if the numbers were taken on the 1st May." (Ibid. Evidence of the Provost, p. 200.)

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Final Report of Commission on Trinity College, n. 159.

'Ibid., n. 69.

cept those the nomination to which is vested in some other body, and except certain professorships in the School of Divinity; but the nomination of the Council is subject to the approval of the Provost and Senior Fellows." 10 This applies to the appointment of Professors, Lecturers, etc., as distinguished from Fellows, whose election, as Fellows, depends on competitive examination. Besides the Provost there are seven Senior and 24 Junior Fellows; 69 Professors, Lecturers, or Assistants, who are not Fellows; and 24 other officials.11

In Trinity College there is a Faculty of Divinity, in which there are twelve Professors, Lecturers, or Assistants, whose emoluments amounted in 1905 to £3,186, almost all of which came from funds supplied by the State. The students in this Faculty have, of course, many other advantages, from libraries, museums, residences, grounds, lectures of professors in other Faculties 12 none of which would be available if the Faculty of Divinity were removed from the College, as it would have been long since were it not endowed with public funds. There is, besides, the Chapel, in which the service is that of the (Protestant Episcopalian) Church of Ireland. For the conduct of this service, in addition to what is paid to the Professors in the Faculty of Divinity, there is a sum of £357 shared by nine other officials.13 Further, the Rev. Mr. Gray, one of the Senior Fellows, receives as Catechist an income of £150 a year. As showing the standing of the different denominations, I find two items of £32 and £16 paid to two Presbyterian Catechists in the same year, 1905.

10 Ibid., n. 70.

"A detailed list of the officials and their emoluments is given in the Appendix to the First Report of the Commission on Trinity College, pp. 11 ff.

"I find, for instance, that among the Junior Fellows there is a Professor of Hebrew, with two assistants, both Junior Fellows, all paid out of the State Endowment. There are moreover, professors and lecturers in Logics and Ethics, all plainly intended for the benefit, for the most part, of Divinity students; who have in addition the advantage of lectures in the Ancient Classics, Modern Languages, Mathematics, Physical Sciences, etc.; all of which in strictly denominational colleges have to be provided without any aid from the State.

19 Appendix to First Report of the Commission, p. 19.

As Ireland is a poor country, in which, if education were costly, it would be beyond the reach of all but the comparatively few, it will be interesting to estimate the expense of taking a degree in Trinity College. From a Supplemental Statement. 14 submitted by the Rev. T. T. Gray, one of the Senior Fellows, we learn that "the total cost (in fees) of the B. A. degree at present is £83.4.4, made up of an Entrance Fee of £15, eight half-yearly payments of £8.8.0, and £1 for the Degree and Testimonium." Accordingly, the first year costs in fees, £31.16.0; and the remaining three years £16.6.0 each. Το this must be added the cost of living; which varies, of course, with the style. I do not know what it comes to for those who have rooms in the College; but I am aware that there are distinguished men who, when students of the Royal University, did not spend for board and lodging more than fifteen shillings a week. Let us put it at £1 a week, which those who know student life in Dublin will deem a fairly liberal allowance. For 36 weeks, which is about as much as is contained in an academic year, this comes to £36; or, with fees, to £52.16.0, for the first year, £67.16.0. To this, of course, must be added expenses of traveling, books, clothes, besides a modest share of pocket-money. By way of set-off, however, it must be remembered that there are numerous and valuable prizes; as also that for those whose family reside in the neighborhood of the University, the main item, for board and lodging, would not be felt so much; finally, that many very worthy men have contrived to pass their student days on little more than half the £1 a week which I have allowed for board and lodging.

I promised to return to the question why, notwithstanding Fawcett's Act, so few Catholics have succeeded in obtaining office in Trinity College for more than thirty years. Trinity men, of course, and Protestants in these countries, with but a few noble exceptions, ascribe this failure to the malign influence of the Catholic priesthood, who are afraid to allow those over whom they tyrannise to be enlightened. Catholics openly proclaim that it is due to the fact that Fawcett's Act, while doing away with formal tests, has had little or no effect on the almost

14 Published in the Appendix to Final Report, p. 345.

equally effective test which is informal. That this is the true mind even of Protestants, is plain from the fact that it is mainly on this very score they object to the endowment of a University for Catholics, in which there would be no formal test whatever. 15 The Council of the Royal University Graduates Association put it very well when they say, as quoted in the note at the foot of this page, that "it is not the absence of tests but the constitution of the Governing Body which is important.” Fawcett's Act left the Governing Body of Trinity College absolutely Protestant at the beginning of the new period; and there will never be fair play and genuine open competition till Catholics get representation on that body in proportion to the number of students they can send into the College. This implies, of course, that the Governing Body must be selected for a time on grounds other than academic; but, surely, the competition under which Fellows were selected since the passing of Fawcett's Act was free and open only in name; since, the Governing Body being entirely Protestant, Catholics could not be reasonably expected to enter the College and compete. The Present Governing Body, therefore, has not been selected from the best men in Ireland by competition which was truly free and open; this, as we shall see, has been implicitly admitted by those Fellows and Professors who proposed in 1906 to give Catholics, selected at first on non-academic grounds, one-fourth of the seats. any case, it is only the very simple or the very prejudiced who pay much attention now to the poor kind of academic distinction that is gained, merely by passing an examination for Fellowship, by one who never afterwards did anything and can show no published work of acknowledged merit.

In

This fact is too well known and too often repeated to need proof. At a meeting of the Council of the Royal University Graduates Association held at Belfast on Dec. 18, 1907, the following statement was unanimously adopted: "The Council renews its protest against the proposal to establish at the expense of the State a new sectarian College, and in view of what Mr. Birrell said in his speech in Belfast, desires to point out that the absence of tests is no proof that an institution is unsectarian. The Jesuit College in Dublin is free from tests. It is not the absence of tests but the constitution of the Governing Body which is important." (The Daily Express, Dublin, Dec. 20, 1907, p. 6.)

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