Page:Perils of home rule.djvu/12

10 times old-fashioned Englishmen and Irishmen—your ancestor, my Lord Archbishop of Dublin, Lord Gough, the Duke of Wellington, Lord Wolseley, and Lord Roberts, and many others—thought themselves honoured by being elevated to the peerage. What a grand thing it will be for Irishmen to be elevated to the Chamber of Snobs. (Laughter.) If the Bill were a fair Bill would not the University of Dublin have had members assigned to it? (Hear, hear.) But we find nothing of the kind, and one knows what excuse will be made. I would pledge a great deal if I were a betting man, which I am not—(laughter)—that it will turn upon the one man one vote principle—that splendid principle, so elastic—a thing to make one blush, to think of one man having more than one vote, but not to have the faintest blush to think that

ONE MAN IS TO HAVE 10,000 VOTES IN HIS POWER (Applause.) The Nonconformists of England have proved themselves to be the friends of a Liberal University Education. When I was a young man at Oxford no Nonconformist was allowed to come as a student within the walls of the University. The University of Dublin was much more liberal at that time. (Hear, hear.) The Nonconformists stormed the key of the position—they insisted that round the demands of conscience a sacred fence should be made, a sacred circle should be drawn, and that what a man believed or did not believe, or the things that lie behind the veil should not be permitted to interfere with his God-given intellect receiving the best instruction which universities can afford. (Hear, hear.) We have here a time-honoured University, the glory of this land—(applause)—one of the few things that have thoroughly succeeded in Ireland, and yet you will hear arguments afterwards that will prove to you—Lord Ashbourne has proved it—that forfeiture and alienation are within the four corners of that Bill. (Applause.) The master of the eighty slaves—(hear, hear)—has shown that he covets the very site on which the University of Dublin stands. If this change ever takes place, in the day when the