Chapter XI: Catholic Country And Protestant Parliament. (1873)

It is all very well to establish united education, but if the
persons to be educated decline to unite, your efforts will be
thrown away. The question then occurs whether it is best to
establish a system, rejected by those concerned, in the hope that
it will gradually work its way into acceptance in spite of the
intolerance of priests, or to endow the separate denominational
bodies on the ground that even such education is better than none,
or, finally, to do nothing. The question is one of statesmanship
enlightened by a knowledge of facts, and of the sentiments of the
population.—LESLIE STEPHEN.

I

Descending from her alien throne, the Irish church had now taken her place among the most prosperous of free communions. To Irish cultivators a definite interest of possession had been indirectly confirmed in the land to which most of its value had been given by their own toil. A third branch of the upas tree of poisonous ascendency described by Mr. Gladstone during the election of 1868, still awaited his axe. The fitness of an absentee parliament to govern Ireland was again to be tested. This time the problem was hardest of all, for it involved direct concession by nations inveterately protestant, to a catholic hierarchy having at its head an ultramontane cardinal of uncompromising opinions and inexorable will.

Everybody knew that the state of university education in Ireland stood in the front rank of unsettled questions. Ever since the establishment of three provincial colleges by Peel’s government in 1845, the flame of the controversy had been alight. Even on the very night when Graham introduced the bill creating them, no less staunch a tory and protestant than Sir Robert Inglis had jumped up and denounced “a gigantic scheme of godless education.” The catholics loudly echoed this protestant phrase. The three colleges were speedily condemned by the pope as fatal to faith and morals, and were formally denounced by the synod of Thurles in 1850. The fulminations of the church did not extinguish these modest centres of light and knowledge, but they cast a creeping blight upon them. In 1865 a demand was openly made in parliament for the incorporation by charter of a specifically catholic university. Mr. Gladstone, along with Sir George Grey, then admitted the reality of a grievance, namely, the absence in Ireland of institutions of which the catholics of the country were able to avail themselves. Declining, for good reasons or bad, to use opportunities of college education by the side of protestants, and not warmed by the atmosphere and symbols of their own church and faith, catholics contended that they could not be said to enjoy equal advantages with their fellow-citizens of other creeds. They repudiated a system of education repugnant to their religious convictions, and in the persistent efforts to force ’godless education’ on their country, they professed to recognise another phase of persecution for conscience’ sake.

In 1866, Lord Russell’s government tried its hand with a device known as the supplemental charter. It opened a way to a degree without passing through the godless colleges. This was set aside by an injunction from the courts, and it would not have touched the real matter of complaint, even if the courts had let it stand. Next year the tories burnt their fingers, though Mr. Disraeli told parliament that he saw no scars. For a time, he believed that an honourable and satisfactory settlement was possible, and negotiations went on with the hierarchy. The prelates did not urge endowment, Mr. Disraeli afterwards said, but “they mentioned it.” The country shrank back from concurrent endowment, though, as Mr. Disraeli truly said, it was the policy of Pitt, of Grey, of Russell, of Peel, and of Palmerston. Ever since 1794, catholic students had been allowed to graduate at Trinity College, and ever since the disestablishment of the Irish church in 1869, Trinity had asked parliament for power to admit catholics to her fellowships and emoluments. This, however, did not go to the root, whether we regard it as sound or unsound, of the catholic grievance, which was in fact their lack of an endowed institution as distinctively catholic in all respects as Trinity was protestant.

Such was the case with which Mr. Gladstone was called upon to grapple, and a delicate if not even a desperate case it was. The prelates knew what they wished, though they lay in shadow. What they wanted a protestant parliament, with its grip upon the purse, was determined that they should not have. The same conclusion as came to many liberals by prejudice, was reached by the academic school on principle. On principle they held denominational endowment of education to be retrograde and obscurantist. Then there was the discouraging consideration of which Lord Halifax reminded Mr. Gladstone. “You say with truth,” he observed when the situation had developed, “that the liberal party are behaving very ill, and so they are. But liberal majorities when large are apt to run riot. No men could have stronger claims on the allegiance of their party than Lord Grey and Lord Althorp after carrying the Reform bill. Nevertheless, the large majority after the election of 1832-3 was continually putting the government into difficulty.” So it befell now, and now as then the difficulty was Irish.

II

(M143) Well knowing the hard work before him, Mr. Gladstone applied himself with his usual indomitable energy to the task. “We go to Oxford to-morrow,” he writes to Lord Granville (Nov. 12), “to visit Edward Talbot and his wife; forward to London on Thursday, when I dine with the Templars. My idea of work is that the first solid and heavy bit should be the Irish university—some of this may require to be done in cabinet. When we have got that into shape, I should be for taking to the yet stiffer work of local taxation—most of the cabinet take a personal interest in this. I think it will require immeasurable talking over, which might be done chiefly in an open informal cabinet, before any binding resolutions are taken. But I propose to let Palmer have his say (general) about law reform on Friday.” At Oxford he saw Dr. Pusey, “who behaved with all his old kindness, and seemed to have forgotten the Temple(283) business, or rather as if it had never been.” On November 20, he records, “Cabinet 2-3/4-6-½. Some heads of a measure on Irish university education.” No communications were opened with the Irish bishops beforehand, probably from a surmise that they would be bound to ask more than they could obtain.

_Jan. 16, 1873, Hawarden._—Dr. Ingram [the distinguished fellow of
Trinity College] came in afternoon, and I was able to spend
several hours with him on the university question. 17.—Many hours
with Dr. Ingram on the bill and scheme; in truth, almost from
breakfast to dinner. Conversation with him in evening on Homer and
ancient questions. Read _Old Mortality_. 20.—Drew an abstract of
historical facts respecting Dublin university and college. 21.—Off
at 11. At 11 C.H.T. at 6 P.M. 25.—Mr. Thring 3-5-½ on Irish bill.
Attended Lord Lytton’s funeral in the Abbey. The church lighted in
a frost-fog was sublime. 31.—Cabinet spent many hours in settling
Irish university bill. _Feb._ 2.—Paid a mournful visit to the
death-bedside of my old friend Milnes Gaskell.... Death has been
very busy around me. 8.—Cabinet 2-½-6-½. Passed the Irish
university bill. 13.—Worked until three upon my materials. Then
drove and walked. H. of C. 4-1/4-8-½. I spoke three hours in
introducing the Irish university bill with much detailed
explanation. (_Diary._)

Phillimore has an interesting note or two on his friend at this critical time:—

_Feb. 2._—Gladstone looking well, but much aged. Spoke of anxiety
to retire when he could do so with honour, said he had _forced_
himself into the study of the whole question relating to Trinity
College, Dublin, and that he was sure that his enemies did not
understand the very curious facts relative to the university. It
seemed as if he meant to frame the government measure on a
historical and antiquarian basis. This will not satisfy the
country if the practical result is to place more power in the
hands of the papists. 10.—Gladstone looked very worn and anxious.
Spoke about the relief he should experience after Thursday, the
weight of the matter which he had to deal with, and the general
misapprehension which prevailed; thought the tide was turning in
their favour. 11.—Gladstone in high spirits, confident of success
on Thursday. 14.—Dined at Gladstone’s. Our host in high spirits at
his achievement of yesterday.

The leading provisions of the measure, though found by the able and expert draftsman unusually hard to frame, may be very shortly stated, for the question by the way is still in full blast. A new university of Dublin was to rise, a teaching as well as an examining body, governed by a council who were to appoint officers and regulate all matters and things affecting the university. The constitution of this governing council was elaborately devised, and it did not make clerical predominance ultimately impossible. The affiliation of colleges, not excluding purely denominational institutions, was in their hands. There were to be no religious tests for either teachers or taught, and religious profession was to be no bar to honours and emoluments. Money was provided by Trinity College, the consolidated fund, and the church surplus, to the tune of £50,000 a year. The principle was the old formula of mixed or united education, in which protestants and catholics might side by side participate.

(M144) What many found intolerably obnoxious were two “gagging clauses.” By one of these a teacher or other person of authority might be suspended or deprived, who should in speaking or writing be held to have wilfully given offence to the religious convictions of any member. The second and graver of them was the prohibition of any university teacher in theology, modern history, or moral and mental philosophy. The separate affiliated colleges might make whatever arrangements they pleased for these subjects, but the new university would not teach them directly and authoritatively. This was undoubtedly a singular limitation for a university that had sent forth Berkeley and Burke; nor was there ever a moment when in spite of the specialisation of research, the deepest questions in the domain of thought and belief more inevitably thrust themselves forward within common and indivisible precincts.

III

On Feb. 14, Mr. Gladstone reported to the Queen:—

The general impression last night appeared to be that the friends
of Trinity College were relieved; that the liberal party and the
nonconformists were well satisfied with the conformity between the
proposed measure and the accepted principles of university
organisation in England; but that the Roman catholics would think
themselves hardly or at least not generously used. All that Mr.
Gladstone has heard this morning through private channels, as well
as the general tone of the press, tends to corroborate the
favourable parts of what he gathered last night, and to give hope
that reasonable and moderate Roman catholics may see that their
real grievances will be removed; generally also to support the
expectation that the bill is not likely to pass.

Delane of the _Times_ said to Manning when they were leaving the House of Commons, “This is a bill made to pass.” Manning himself heartily acquiesced. Even the bitterest of Mr. Gladstone’s critics below the gangway on his own side agreed, that if a division could have been taken while the House was still under the influence of the three hours’ speech, the bill would have been almost unanimously carried.(284) “It threw the House into a mesmeric trance,” said the seconder of a hostile motion. Effects like these, not purple passages, not epigrams nor aphorisms, are the test of oratory. Mr. Bruce wrote home (Feb. 15): “Alas! I fear all prospect of ministerial defeat is over. The University bill is so well received that people say there will not be even a division on the second reading. I see no other rock ahead, but sometimes they project their snouts unexpectedly, and cause shipwreck.”

Soon did the projecting rocks appear out of the smooth water. Lord Spencer had an interview with Cardinal Cullen at Dublin Castle (Feb. 25), and found him though in very good humour and full of gratitude for fair intentions, yet extremely hostile to the bill. It was in flat opposition, he said, to what the Roman catholics had been working for in Ireland for years; it continued the Queen’s Colleges, and set up another Queen’s College in the shape of Trinity College with a large endowment; it perpetuated the mixed system of education, to which he had always been opposed, and no endowment nor assistance was given to the catholic university; the council might appoint professors to teach English literature, geology, or zoology who would be dangerous men in catholic eyes. Lord Spencer gathered that the cardinal would be satisfied with a sum down to redress inequality or a grant for buildings.

Archbishop Manning wrote to Cardinal Cullen the day after the bill was produced, “strongly urging them to accept it.” It seemed to him to rest on a base so broad that he could not tell how either the opposition or the radical doctrinaires could attack it without adopting “the German tyranny.” He admitted that he was more easily satisfied than if he were in Ireland, but he thought the measure framed with skill and success. After a fortnight the archbishop told Mr. Gladstone, that he still saw reason to believe that the Irish hierarchy would not refuse the bill. On March 3rd, he says he has done his utmost to conciliate confidence in it. By the 7th he knew that his efforts had failed, but he urges Mr. Gladstone not to take the episcopal opposition too much to heart. “Non-endowment, mixed education, and godless colleges, are three bitter things to them.” “This,” he wrote to Mr. Gladstone, when all was over (March 12) “is not your fault, nor the bill’s fault, but the fault of England and Scotland and three anti-catholic centuries.”

(M145) The debate began on March 3rd, and extended to four sittings. The humour of the House was described by Mr. Gladstone as “fitful and fluctuating.” Speeches “void of real argument or point, yet aroused the mere prejudices of a section of the liberal party against popery and did much to place the bill in danger.” Then that cause of apprehension disappeared, and a new change passed over the shifting sky, for the intentions of Irish members were reported to be dubious. There was not a little heat and passion, mainly from below the ministerial gangway. The gagging clauses jarred horribly, though they were trenchantly defended by Mr. Lowe, the very man to whose line of knowledge and intellectual freedom they seemed likely to be most repugnant. It soon appeared that neither protestant nor catholic set any value on these securities for conscience, and the general assembly of the presbyterians declared war upon the whole scheme. The cabinet—“most harmonious at this critical time,”—still held firmly that the bill was well constructed, so that if it once reached committee it would not be easy to inflict mortal wounds. On March 8th the prime minister reported to the Queen:—

Strange to say, it is the opposition of the Roman catholic bishops
that brings about the present difficulty; and this although they
have not declared an opposition to the bill outright, but have
wound up their list of objections with a resolution to present
petitions praying for its amendment. Still their attitude of what
may be called growling hostility has had these important results.
Firstly, it has deadened that general willingness of the liberal
party, which the measure itself had created, to look favourably on
a plan such as they might hope would obtain acquiescence, and
bring about contentment. Secondly, the great majority of the
bishops are even more hostile than the resolutions, which were
apparently somewhat softened as the price of unanimity; and all
_these_ bishops, working upon liberal Irish members through their
political interest in their seats, have proceeded so far that from
twenty to twenty-five may go against the bill, and as many may
stay away. When to these are added the small knot of discontented
liberals and mere fanatics which so large a party commonly
contains, the government majority, now taken at only 85,
disappears....

It is not in the power or the will of your Majesty’s advisers to
purchase Irish support by subserviency to the Roman bishops. Their
purpose has been to offer justice to all, and their hope has been
that what was just would be seen to be advantageous. As far as the
Roman catholics of Ireland are concerned, the cabinet conceive
that they are now at perfect liberty to throw up the bill. But
they are also of opinion that its abandonment would so impair or
destroy their moral power, as to render it impossible for them to
accept the defeat. There are whispers of a desire in the liberal
party, should the catastrophe arrive, to meet it by a vote of
confidence, which would probably be carried by a still larger
majority. But the cabinet look with extreme disfavour upon this
method of proceeding, which would offer them the verbal promise of
support just when its substance had been denied.

He then proceeds to more purely personal aspects and contingencies:—

What lies beyond it would be premature to describe as having been
regularly treated or even opened to-day. Mr. Gladstone considers
himself far more tied to the bill and the subject than his
colleagues; and if they upon a defeat were disposed to carry on
the government without him, he would with your Majesty’s sanction
take effectual means to provide at least against his being an
impediment in the way of an arrangement eligible in so many points
of view. But his colleagues appear at present indisposed to adopt
this method of solution. There would then remain for them the
question whether they should humbly tender their resignations to
your Majesty, or whether they should advise a dissolution of the
parliament, which was elected under other auspices. This would be
a matter of the utmost gravity for consideration at the proper
time. Mr. Gladstone as at present advised has no foregone
conclusion in favour of either alternative, and would act with his
colleagues as between them. But he does not intend to go into
opposition, and the dissolution of this government, brought about
through languor and through extensive or important defections in
the liberal party which has made him its leader, would be the
close of his political life. He has now for more than forty years
striven to serve the crown and country to the best of his power,
and he is willing, though with overtaxed faculties and diminishing
strength, to continue the effort longer, if he sees that the
continuance can be conducive to the objects which he has
heretofore had at heart; but the contingency to which he has last
referred, would be for him the proof that confidence was gone,
that usefulness was at an end, and that he might and ought to
claim the freedom which best befits the close of life.

The next day, in reporting that the estimates of the coming division were far from improving, Mr. Gladstone returned in a few words to the personal point:—

Mr. Gladstone is very grateful for your Majesty’s caution against
being swayed by private feelings, and he will endeavour to be on
his guard against them. He has, however, always looked to the
completion of that commission, so to call it, which events in a
measure threw into his hands five years ago, as the natural close
of the main work of the present government; and many circumstances
have combined to impress him with the hope that thus an honourable
path would be opened for his retirement. He ought, perhaps, to add
that he has the strongest opinion, upon political grounds and
grounds other than political, against spending old age under the
strain of that perpetual contention which is inseparable from his
present position; and this opinion could only be neutralised by
his perceiving a special call to remain: that is to say, some
course of public service to be done by him better than if it were
in other hands. Such a prospect he neither sees nor anticipates.
But it is premature to trouble your Majesty on this minor subject.

On the 9th Cardinal Cullen blazed forth in a pastoral that was read in all the churches. He described the bill as richly endowing non-catholic and godless colleges, and without giving one farthing to catholics, inviting them to compete in their poverty, produced by penal laws and confiscations, with those left in possession of enormous wealth. The new university scheme only increased the number of Queen’s Colleges, so often and so solemnly condemned by the catholic church and by all Ireland, and gave a new impulse to that sort of teaching that separates education from religion and its holy influences, and banishes God, the author of all good, from our schools. The prelate’s pastoral had a decisive effect in regions far removed from the ambit of his crosier. The tory leader could not resist a temptation thus offered by the attitude of the Irish cardinal, and the measure that had been much reviled as a dark concordat between Mr. Gladstone and the pope, was now rejected by a concordat between the pope’s men and Mr. Disraeli.

The discussion was on a high level in Mr. Gladstone’s judgment. Lyon Playfair criticised details with some severity and much ability, but intended to vote for the bill. Miall, the nonconformist leader, supported the second reading, but required alterations that were admissible enough. On March 10 Mr. Harcourt, who was not yet an old member, “opened the discussion by a speech in advance of any he has yet delivered as to effect upon the House. Severe in criticism on detail, he was favourable to the substance of the bill.” One significant incident of the debate was a declaration by Bentinck, a conservative ultra, that he would vote against the bill in reliance on the declaration of Mr. Hardy, which he understood to be a pledge for himself and others near him, not to take office during the existence of the present parliament. “Mr. Hardy remained silent during this appeal, which was several times repeated.” Then the end came (March 11-12):—

Mr. Disraeli rose at half-past ten, and spoke amidst rapt
attention till midnight. Mr. Gladstone followed in a speech of two
hours, and at two o’clock the division was called. During the
whole evening the greatest uncertainty had prevailed; for himself
Mr. Gladstone leaned to expecting an unfavourable result. The
numbers were, Ayes (for the government), 284; Noes, 287; majority
against the government, 3. It is said that 45 adherents of the
government, or thereabouts, voted against them. It was the Irish
vote that grew continually worse.(285)

(M146) Of the speech in which the debate was wound up Forster says in his diary: “Gladstone, with the House dead against him and his bill, made a wonderful speech—easy, almost playful, with passages of great power and eloquence, but with a graceful play, which enabled him to plant deep his daggers of satire in Horsman and Co.”(286) Speaker Brand calls it “a magnificent speech, generous, high-minded, and without a taint of bitterness, although he was sorely tried, especially by false friends.” He vindicated the obnoxious clauses, but did not wish to adhere to them if opinion from all quarters were adverse, and he admitted that it was the opposition of members from Ireland that principally acted on his hearers. His speech contained a remarkable passage, pronouncing definitely against denominational endowment of university education.