The Sun.
London, England, 1859-09-08 00:00:00

.next session of Parliament to propose a measure for
increasing academical education in Ireland, the
Mayor and Corporation of Cork presented a memo-
rial to the Lord Lieutenant in October in favour of
establishing provincial colleges on a secular founda-
tion, and praying that one college should be located
in Cork. Public meetings were also subsequently
held in Cork, Galway, and other towns, for the
purpose of furthering the same object.
Such, then, being the state of public feeling in
Ireland, Sir James Graham in May, 1845, intro-
duced a Bill into Parliament, "To enable her
Majesty to endow new colleges for the advancement
of learning in Ireland." On its second reading its
rejection was moved by Lord John Manners, but
the second reading was carried by a majority of 311
against 46. In the minority there was not a single
statesman of eminence, while the majority contained
the leading men of the House of Commons.
While the College Bill was under discussion the
Irish Roman Catholic prelates presented a memorial
to the Lord-Lieutenant, in which they expressed
their willingness to co-operate with the Government
on reasonable terms in any plan for the extension
of academical education in Ireland. They - then
went on to specify certain conditions which they
considered necessary to protect the faith and morals
of Roman Catholic students. • These conditions
were not wholly and literally conceded by Parlia-
ment, but they were granted so far as was possible
consistently with the principle of mixed education,
which in their memorial the prelates had un-
doubtedly admitted. And when it was impossible
to allow the conditions which'were claimed by the
Roman Catholic bishops, care was taken to provide
religious securities as ample as the wisdom of Par-
liament could devise. I shall hereafter notice in
detail the claims of the Roman Catholic prelates,
and show how far they have been conceded in
theory, and how much further in practice the securi-
ties actually desired have been found to meet the
rational and well-founded religious scruples of that
body.

The College Bill received the Royal sanction in
July, 1845. The towns of Belfast, Cork, and Gal-
way were subsequently selected as the sites of the
new colleges, and the colleges were opened for the
reception of students in the autumn of 1849.

We have, therefore, the following facts in connec-
tion with the establishment of the Queen's Colleges
in Ireland, which it may be well to keep constantly
in mind :

1. That the College Bill introduced by Sir James
Graham was in strict accordance with the recom-
mendations contained in the report of the select
committee of the House of Commons, published in
1838.

2. That the Government had, been repeatedly
urged to the preparation of such• a bill by indepen-
dent members of Parliament, and by large and in-
fluential meetings held in different parts of Ireland
for the purpose of demanding from Parliament the
institution of provincial colleges in which the prin-
ciple of mixed education should be adopted.
3. That when the College Bill was under the con-
sideration of Parliament a memorial was presented
from the prelates of the Irish Roman Catholic
Church, in which the principle of mixed education
was substantially accepted.
4. That in Parliament the College Bill was sup-
ported not only by the most eminent statesmen, but
by nearly all the Irish members.—l am, Sir, yours,
&c., HIBERNICUS.

NAVAL EXPENDITURE.

(From the Tones.)

When we yesterday appealed to Mr. Cobden to
help the country in Parliament towards the most
important practical reform that lies within our
reach—the reform of our Navy and Military Esti-
mates, and the manning of the Navy out of the
savings—we did so because we feel thatit is scarcely
fair to call upon men in office to do this business.
When Hercules wished to cleanse the Augean sta-
ble he did not set Augeas or the sons of Augeas to
do the heavy work. He went outside, and brought
to bear upon it the independent force of the river
Alpheus. The honest stream, after much soaking
and undermining and continual washing, effected'
the clearance, and, with a justice which seems
common to poetic and prosaic times, the river was
allowed to go back to its old course. Her-
cules was robbed of his reward, and the owner
of the dirty stables was decreed divine honours.
Never mind this. The' cattle had the benefit of
the reform, and we shall be quite satisfied, and so
we are sure would Mr. Cobden be, that the same
distribution of benefit should occur in the present
instance. We should do a greater good to England
than all the platform speakers and reform orators
of the present day have ever done if we could esta-
blish it as a cry throughout the land—" Save us
those five millions and man the Navy." Mr. Cob-
den, or any other public man whose advocacy would
lead other men, would better earn the name of a
patriot if he would give practical effect to this cry
than he would by the most glittering display of
,oratorical powers, crowned only by the result of
making Parliamentary Reform impossible. We
have no prejudices. If we thought it possible that
Mr. Bright could condescend to such mundane
matters, or even let them share his attention with
his celestial abstractions, we would hail him as our
Hercules with his club and river, and make him the
hero of the movement. But it must come from the
outside. No Ministry can do it, except under
popular force. We must have the river.
We do not profess to say where the soil is deepest
and where the water power should be first turned
on, but for a good general notion of the subject we
would point to the figures as they appear upon the
public accounts. We apprehend it will be admitted
that ships are only useful to the extent to which
they can be manned ; yet we make gigantic efforts
and spend tremendous sums to build war steamers,
but when we have got the ships we find that we
have grudged a comparatively trivial sum to insure
the power of manning them. Between 1852 and
1859 our naval estimates have risen from under six
millions to something above twelve millions, and
the great bulk of this enormous difference is spent
in ships and coals. Of course there is some increase
in the ships in commission, some necessary-increase
therefore in the number of men, and some increase
also in the rate of pay; but the great difference is,
as we have stated, in ships and coals. This is the
twenty shillings' worth
,of sack to the ha'p'orth
of broad. We spend more than half a million a
year in marine engines. During the latter years in
which our fleet has been allowed to dwindle we have
spent nearly five millions a year in building and
repairing ships, and we are now making an enor-
mous leap upon this average. Yet, with all this
tremendous money expenditure, it appears that,
although we had in pay fifty years ago 140,000
men, we have now an available force of seamen of
only something like 50,000. If the ships when con-
structed could be trusted to man and fight them-
selves, this might be all very well ; but if we are
to trust not only to the wooden walls, but to the
tars who man them, then it would seem that we
are selling off all our horses in order to buy a very
fine show of carts. Of course, we must have ships,
and ships and equipments 9f the best possible con-
struction ; but if it be worth our while to spend
these large sums upon our ships, it must be equally
worth our while to spend, if necessary, an equal
sum to obtain the means of putting good fighting
crews on board them. Happily, however, it is
abundantly clear that, with tolerable management,
it is by no means necessary that these enormous
sums should be spent upon the mere engines in
which the men fight. The present system may be
illustrated by two examples, which we cite from a
recent article in the Edinburgh Review. In 1846
a naval officer of great reputation had a fancy that
he could build a good ship. He was allowed to do
so upon a small scale. The vessel cost £70,000, and,
atter having been tested and found worthless, was
sold, hull, engines, and all for £3,300. Again, h
set of first-class new engines were put into the Re-
tribution at a cost of £41,170, but tHey were
found too powerful; so that they were taken out of
her and broken up, and sold for old iron at the
price of £2,000. Again, when a ship is paid off, not
only is her crew turned ashore to be scattered over
the world, and re-caught by large bounties, but the
ships themselves are dismantled. This operation
was effected upon most of the ships employed in
the Baltic, and the result has been that to strip and
refit the Wellington cost £17,650; the Arro-
gant, £19,913; the Nile, £13,772; the Euryalus,
£10,828; and many others approximate sums.
All this, and much more than all this, is tho-
roughly well known. It has been set forth in
blue-books, it has been condensed into review
articles, it 'has been epitomised in our own
columns, and it has sunk into the public mind in
the form of a general conviction that there is, year
by year, heedlessly and hopelessly, and without
chance of remedy from official sources, a vast sum
wasted. All that is wanted is the agitation in the
House of Commons which shall give a Parliamen-
tary 1-ffect to this formed conviction.
But the waste is not so bad as the parsimony. If
we waste the money, we have the ships. But in
the a,-title of men we save our money, and have not
the men ; so that our parsimony makes our waste
useless. We have officers enough, many of them
would, indeed, be entitled to the reverence of
Methuselah, but still we have officers enough. We
have 358 captains on the active list, whereof we
can only find ships for 90. We know very well
where to put our hands upon the captains, but
where are the men ? We have, indeed, a seagoing
population of some 300,000 men and boys, but these
are fishermen, who are as useless to go alpft in, a