Chapter V: During the Nineteenth Century (3)

THE THEOLOGICAL SOCIETY.--Shortly after the Divinity School was placed upon its present basis, it was found that a place of meeting was required where theological students could discuss the important questions which formed the subjects to which their attention was directed. The Society was founded outside the College on November 23, 1838. Its first presidents were Rev. Doctor Singer, then a Junior Fellow, the Rev. Robert J. M‘Ghee, and the Rev. Charles M. Fleury. The Society met in a room in Upper Sackville Street, and the discussions of the members were very much confined to the Roman Catholic controversy. It was soon found necessary that the Society should be brought more under the control of the teachers in the Divinity School, and in 1860 the then Regius Professor of Divinity was appointed President; the other Professors in the Divinity School, along with the assistant Divinity teachers, were made Vice-Presidents; and since that year the Society meets in a public room in the College. Dr. Butcher, the then Regius Professor, always presided at the weekly meetings up to 1866, when he became Bishop of Meath. His successor, Dr. Salmon, gave the same unwearied attention to the Society until he became Provost, and the discussions of the Society, which now take a much wider range in Theology, are always conducted under the control of the Regius Professor, or of Archbishop King’s Lecturer in Divinity.

CARVED OAK--GILT.]

FOOTNOTES:

[98] These stamp duties had been imposed on the English Universities by an English Act of Parliament (55 Geo. III., cap. 184), but were not exacted in Ireland. In 1842, when Sir Robert Peel imposed an Income Tax on England, from which Ireland was exempted, he assimilated the stamp duties in the two countries in order to make up for the relaxation of the Income Tax in the case of Ireland. A few years afterwards, when the Income Tax was extended to Ireland, the stamp duties were still exacted.

[99] In the case of scholars not students in Divinity, two-thirds of these lectures sufficed for the term. At the present, Divinity students are obliged to attend every lecture in the term, except one, in each subject.

[100] From a calculation made in 1880, there were at that time 2,322 names of holders of Divinity Testimoniums in the University Calendar for that year. Of these there were then serving as clergymen in Ireland, 841; in England, 638; in the Colonies, unaccounted for, and dead, 843. Of holders of Divinity Testimoniums from the disestablishment of the Irish Church in 1869 to 1880, 89 were clergymen in England, 121 in Ireland, and 30 were unaccounted for. Of those who obtained the Divinity Testimonium from 1866 to 1880, 170 were in England, 187 in Ireland serving as clergymen, and 67 unaccounted for.

[101] James Macartney was a native of the County of Armagh. He pursued his studies partly in Dublin, but mostly in London. He was not a graduate of the University, nor does he appear to have ever been a student in Arts. He became in 1800 a member of the London College of Surgeons, and shortly afterwards commenced to lecture on Anatomy and Physiology in St. Bartholomew’s Hospital, London. Macartney died March 6, 1843, aged 73 years. He left a sum of money to defray the cost of editing and publishing an account of his life and labours. This task was committed to the care of his nephew, at one time his Demonstrator, Hugh Carlile, or Carlisle, who died in 1860, as Professor of Anatomy and Physiology, at Queen’s College, Belfast, before he made any marked progress in this work. The executors then handed the material left partly sorted by Carlisle to Dr. E. Perceval Wright, but on the decease of the executors, while the work was in preparation, it was found that the money for the book was not forthcoming, and the wishes of Macartney have not yet been carried into effect.

[102] See Dr. Stubbs’ _History of the University of Dublin_, p. 257.

[103] _Ibid._, p. 258.

[104] He published his treatise on Analytic Geometry in 1819.

[105] It may be well to remark that the University of Dublin was really in advance of Cambridge in encouraging new studies at the B.A. Degree Examination. In 1816 the examination for gold medals in Classics was established in Dublin; eight years afterwards Cambridge instituted the Classical Tripos. In 1834 the examination for Moderatorships in Ethics and Logics was founded in Dublin; seventeen years after that date the Moral Sciences Tripos was instituted at Cambridge. In 1833 Theological Examinations, as they are at present, were first established in Dublin; this example was followed by Cambridge in 1856. In the latter year the Provost and Senior Fellows founded a Moderatorship in Law and History. Cambridge did the same twelve years after. In one case the two Universities acted simultaneously, in founding in 1851 the Honour Degree Examination in the Natural Sciences.

[106] _William Whewell_, by Isaac Todhunter, vol. i., page 8.