Page:My Life in Two Hemispheres, volume 1.djvu/125

 Ireland. There was heat with the United States which might kindle into war, and before engaging in a conflict with America he hoped to revive concord at home. There was a dangerous conspiracy in Ireland against the authority of Parliament, which could not be broken up by force; but he was persuaded it might be broken up by forbearance and generosity, and he was about to make the experiment. His first proposal was to increase and make permanent the provision for supporting Maynooth College, where students for the Catholic priesthood were penuriously and inadequately educated. This measure, which was received with applause in Ireland, and with a roar of disapprobation from the English Dissenters, after much resistance became law. The second proposal was of a still larger scope. It was a plan for establishing middle-class education in the Irish provinces. Genius or patriotism could not devise a measure more stringently needed. The State, which had endowed preparatory schools, colleges, and a University for Protestant education, had made no provision for the sons of the Catholic gentry and professional classes. There was not then, and there is not now, a body of gifted young men so ill- equipped and disciplined to fight the battle of life anywhere in Europe or in the greater Christendom which embraces three continents. The proposal was welcomed in the House of Commons by the Irish members, including on the occasion a nephew of O'Connell. The middle classes in Dublin and Cork hailed it with rapture. It was proposed to educate Catholic and Protestant students together, an arrangement which seemed to Thomas Davis to insure concord and liberty in the near future. What it was to me, to whom education was the essential and indispensable preliminary of freedom, I need not describe, but as I was no longer a member of the Association I could only help it with the pen. The task of safeguarding our policy from misrepresentation fell on Davis, and was performed with the calm enthusiasm and exact knowledge which a great minister gives to a vital law.