Page:The Celtic Review volume 5.djvu/331

Rh John Macdonald of Balcony, son of Sir James of Sleat, and  had by her John Macgregor Murray and other sons.

. John Macgregor Murray was a general in the East India Company’s Service and auditor-general of Bengal. He was a man of ability, culture, and wealth. In 1784 he was acknowledged by eight hundred and twenty-six Macgregors as chief of their clan. He was created a baronet in 1795. He died a few months afterwards.

is safe to say that not since the death of Parnell in 1891 has Ireland been in such a state of excitement as at present. Certainly not since Parnell’s time has any such deep and widespread interest in public affairs been manifested (except perhaps when the Liberal Government introduced their Council Bill) as has been shown over the University question during the last few months. Almost every elective body in Ireland has been thrown into excitement and forced to decide one way or another upon a question which would à priori appear to be the very last one in the world to arouse the interest of public bodies. For it is after all an academic question which has created all this trouble, namely, what sort of entrance examination is the new University going to have, and is the Irish language to be an essential subject in it.

I have said that this is an academic question, and at first sight it appears, to the outsider, to be nothing more. But the instinct of the Irish people has discerned, and I think rightly discerned, that under an academic disguise there really lies involved a national question of the first magnitude, a question in its own way as fraught with weighty possibilities for the future of the Irish nation as the land question or even the question of Home Rule itself.