The Chancellor or Vice-Chancellor is required to report annually to the Lord-Lieutenant on the condition and progress of the University.

The Chancellor and Senate have power to found and endow scholarships, prizes, or exhibitions, for which funds may be supplied by grant or donation, under such regulations as they may think fit to make, not interfering with the courses prescribed for scholars of Queen's Colleges, or for matriculation therein.

The Queen's University is empowered to grant degrees in arts, medicine, or laws, to students in the Queen's Colleges who shall have completed the courses of education prescribed by the ordinances. Persons who obtain these degrees shall be possessed of all rights and privileges pertaining to similar degrees granted by other universities or colleges. The Chancellor and Senate have power to admit, by special grace, graduates of other universities to similar and equal degrees in the Queen's University.

All degrees shall be granted and conferred publicly in the hall of the University.

At all meetings of the Senate to confer degrees, the members shall appear in the full robes they may be entitled to wear in respect of any degrees they may have obtained, or offices they may hold. Any member not possessed of a degree or office, to wear the gown of a master

of arts.

Candidates for degrees shall wear the costume of their collegiate standing, and the hoods of the degrees sought.

Candidates being presented to the Senate by the presidents of their colleges, and the secretary having certified that their fees have been paid, and that they have duly passed the examiners, they shall sign the roll of the University, when the Chancellor (or Vice-Chancellor) shall admit them to degrees in the following manner:

In virtue of my authority as Chancellor (or Vice-Chancellor) I admit you (———————————) to the degree of (

·).

The Chancellor (or Vice-Chancellor) shall then proceed to present publicly any exhibition or medal which may have been awarded.

Examiners are expected to attend the public meeting of the Senate.

The present courses of study required by the University are prescribed in the ordinances which were prepared by the presidents of the colleges, approved of by the Lord-Lieutenant, and adopted by the Senate at its first meetings. These ordinances remain in force untiĺ altered by the Senate: such alterations to be subject to the approval of the Lord-Lieutenant. The qualifications of candidates for degrees shall be examined into at a special meeting of the Senate.

Each candidate is required to fill up, with his own hand, a certificate of his name, birthplace, age, and qualifications.

All certificates of candidates to be sent to the secretary fourteen days before examination. The Senate will receive certificates of medical education for two-thirds of the required courses, from the professors of universities and chartered bodies, and from schools and hospitals, which have sought for and obtained the recognition of the Senate; but it is essential that one-third, at least, of the medical lectures prescribed in the course for the degree of M.D., be attended in some one of the Queen's Colleges.

Examinations for degrees, and for scholarships and prizes, shall be appointed and directed by the Senate, who shall elect examiners annually.

In no case shall any member of the Senate, or any Vice-President of a college (liable to be called upon to fulfill the duties of a member.) be elected an examiner.

The salaries of examiners shall commence from the next quarter-day after election.
Examinations shall be by printed papers.

Each examiner shall be present during the whole time that the candidates are engaged in writing answers to the papers set by him; but if a paper be set by more than one examiner, the presence of one examiner shall be deemed sufficient; if, from unavoidable necessity, any examiner be unable to attend, the secretary shall be present.

Every member of the Senate shall have the right of being present during examinations, but only the examiner specially appointed to conduct examinations shall have the right to put questions.

No candidates shall be present except those under examination.

The examiners shall report to the Senate the result of their examination, and shall deliver in at the same time, in sealed packets, the answers to the examination papers of the classes which they have severally examined.

The amount of fees to be paid on the granting of degrees shall be directed from time to time by the Chancellor and Senate, with the approbation of the Lord's Commissioners of Her Majesty's Treasury.

For the present, the fee on the degree of M.D. has been fixed at 51., and the fee on the diploma of agriculture, at 21. Fees on other degrees are not yet settled.

The fees are to be carried to the general fund.

Accounts of income and expenditure of the University shall once in each year be submitted to the treasury, subject to such audit as may be directed.

The Bank of Ireland has been appointed treasurer.

Payments shall be made by drafts signed by the Chancellor or Vice-Chancellor, countersigned by the secretary.

Although much clamor has been raised against the Queen's Colleges, because, in the distracted state of Ireland in religious matters, the British Parliament has at last attempted to establish a plan of liberal education, the special purpose and profession of which is to communicate instruction in certain branches of human knowledge to classes which may be composed of young people belonging to various religious denom

inations, we believe there is no ground for alarm, or distrust, for the safety of the religious principles of the students who may resort to them. On the other hand, securities are provided, more protective and and conservative than exist in any other academic institution in the empire, which are open to other than students of one religious denomination.

At the ancient national universities of Oxford and Cambridge, and Trinity College, Dublin, there are no arrangements which even recognize the existence of any form of religious belief but that of the Established Church; not only is the student who may hold any other creed (in so far as such dissenting students are admitted at all) left without any spiritual superintendence whatever, but the entire system of teaching and discipline is in the hands of members of the church established by law, and is regulated and administered in all respects in conformity with the doctrines and ritual of that church. Yet, Roman Catholics generally have long been in the habit of sending their sons without hesitation or scruple to the university of Dublin; freedom of admission to Oxford and Cambridge has always been one of the demands which Protestant dissenters have urged most clamorously; and no non-conformist community has ever put forth an authoritative denunciation of either the demand or the practice.

In the Scottish universities the professors are all by law members of the Presbyterian Established Church; any seasoning of theology, therefore, that may insinuate itself into the lectures delivered by them, or their mode of teaching, must be Presbyterian; it may be Presbyterian of the strongest and, to all but the disciples of Calvin and John Knox, of the most offensive flavor. On the other hand, at least at Edinburg and Glasgow, there is no religious superintendence of the students whatever. So here is the extreme of rigor and exclusiveness, combined with the extreme of laxity and neglect. Yet these universities are attended by members of all communions; and certainly it is not the liberality of the system in giving free admission to all sects which any body of dissenters has ever made matter of complaint.

In University College, London, there is the same freedom of admission for students of all descriptions as at the Scotch colleges, with the same entire absence of religious superintendence as at Edinburg and Glasgow; and no religious test is applied to the professors any more than to the students. Many religious fathers of all denominations, nevertheless, have been accustomed ever since it was established to send their sons to be educated in all the great branches of human learning at University College.

In the first place, every professor in these Irish colleges, upon entering into office, signs a declaration promising and engaging that, in his lectures and examinations, and in the performance of all other duties connected with his chair, he will carefully abstain from teaching or advancing any doctrine, or making any statement, either derogatory to the truths of revealed religion, or injurious or disrespectful to the relig

ious convictions of any portion of his class or audience. And it is enacted, that, if he shall in any respect violate this engagement, he shall be summoned before the College Council, where, upon sufficient evidence of his having so transgressed, he shall be formally warned and reprimanded by the president; and that, if he shall be guilty of a repetition of said or similar offense, the president shall forthwith suspend him from his functions, and take steps officially to recommend to the Crown his removal from office. The appointments of the professors are all held during the pleasure of the Crown. A triennial visitation of each college is ordained to be held during the college session by a Board of Visitors which has already been appointed by the Crown, and which comprises the heads of the Episcopalian, Presbyterian, and Roman Catholic churches in Ireland.

But further, every student is actually subjected to an extent of religious superintendence such as is enforced nowhere else, unless it be only at Oxford and Cambridge. No matriculated student under the age of twenty-one years is permitted to reside except with his parent or guardian, or with some relation or friend to whose care he shall have been committed by his parent or guardian, and who shall be approved of by the president of the college, or in a boarding-house licensed by the president upon a certificate, produced by the person keeping it, of moral and religious character from his clergyman or minister. The relation or friend to whose care a student is committed must in all cases formally accept the charge of his moral and religious conduct. Clergymen, each approved by the bishop, moderator, or constituted authority of his church or religious denomination, are appointed by the Crown Deans of Residences, to have the moral care and spiritual charge of the students of their respective creeds residing in the licensed boardinghouses; and it is provided that they shall have authority to visit such boarding-houses for the purpose of affording religious instruction to such students, and shall also have power, with the concurrence of the president of the college, and of the authorities of their respective churches, "to make regulations for the due observance of the religious duties of such students, and for securing their regular attendance on divine worship." Finally, at the head of the list of offenses in the statutes of each college for which it is enacted that any student shall be liable to expulsion, are the following: "1. Habitual neglect of attendance for divine worship at such church or chapel as shall be approved by his parents or guardians; 2. Habitual neglect of attendance on the relig ious instruction provided for students of his church or denomination in the licensed boarding-house in which he may reside."

about 2,900 students, Ireland had but one, and even this one was, from its constitution, not available for the nation at large. The result was, that of nearly 6,000,000 of Roman Catholics in Ireland, about 100 were receiving an university education.

In providing a remedy for the evil thus distinctly recognized, three courses were opened to the legislature. It might have opened the emoluments of Trinity College, Dublin, to all classes of the population without religious distinction; or again, it might have founded colleges for the several religious communities which divide the country amongst them; lastly, it had the alternative of establishing colleges based upon the principle of religious equality-colleges which should give combined secular instruction, and which, whilst they afforded facilities to the various ministers of the Christian faith to teach their respective flocks, should steadily repudiate all interference, positive or negative, with the conscientious scruples of their students.

To the first two courses there were insuperable objections. Trinity College was a Protestant foundation, endowed for the propagation of the Protestant faith, and more especially designed as a nursery for the clergy of the Established Church in Ireland. The attempt to open its emoluments to Roman Catholics and Dissenters, not to speak of the shock it would have given to the sentiment of property, would have called forth such a storm of Protestant feeling as would have rendered it wholly impracticable.

Not only was the combined system alone tenable in theory, but its prodigious growth had shown its singular adaptation to the circumstances of the country. It was this consideration which mainly swayed the minds of the Government in its favor. They are the crown of an edifice designed on the plan of religious equality, and which must not have its symmetry marred by the introduction of any thing heterogeneous to its great idea.

The first criterion of the success of the Colleges is, of course, the number of students who have entered them. On referring to the Calendar of the Queen's University, we find that the total number of students who had entered the Queen's Colleges from the first session in 1849-50 to March 1859, amounted to 1786, of whom 1,265 were matriculated, 521 non-matriculated—that is, students who have not passed the matriculation examination, and do not pursue all the subjects included in the university curriculum, but particular courses of instruction which they may select.

The only sure method of determining the question of failure or success is by comparison with some institution, the position of which is unchallenged. We will take Trinity College, Dublin. The number of students who entered in Dublin during the ten years mentioned above was 2,745. Hence the ratio of the average annual entrances of the institutions compared over a period of ten years is as 178 to 274. Such an average, however, would do injustice to the Queen's Colleges, the numbers of which are steadily increasing. Thus in the year 1858-59, 196 new students entered, while in 1859-60, the number amounts to 207.

If failure can not be predicted of the Queen's Colleges on the score of numbers, no more can it be said that they have failed in their great object of giving united education to the youth of the various religious persuasions. In the ten years, 1849-59, the three great religious communities, which make up the bulk of the population, are thus represented among the matriculated students:

Established Church,

Roman Catholics,.
Presbyterians,.

426

445

343

While the 297 students, who have entered this year, as thus distributed:

The first thing that strikes us in reading these numbers is, that the Roman lies in each case head the list.

Passing to the quality of the education given in the Queen's Colleges, on this score but little needs be said on their behalf. The competence of the professors has, we believe, never been questioned, any more than their zeal, not only in maintaining the existing standard of education, but in elevating it to the highest point which the circumstances of the country admit. Nor have their exertions been unrewarded. Fortunately, on this subject, we are not left to conjecture. We have seen that the competitive examinations for the Indian Civil Service were designed to be a test of "the best, the most liberal, the most finished education, which the country provides;" and a careful study of the papers set will show that the examiners have not willingly let them fall below this standard. The examinations are in effect framed on the model of those to which in the universities candidates for the highest honors at the close of their undergraduate course are subjected. They supply, therefore, a fair criterion of the comparative efficiency of our educational institutions. As the universities bring into concourse the youth of their affiliated colleges, so these examinations introduce into a still wider arena the youth of the several universities. It is, then, with just pride that the Queen's University appeals to the fact, that, in this competition, looking merely to the number of places obtained, it stands next in order to the Universities of Oxford, Cambridge, and Dublin. If, however, we regard the quality of the answering, the result is still more in favor of the Queen's University. In the only years in which the Universities we have named came into conflict, the average answering of the successful candidates from each stood as follows:

It thus appears that in the last two years the candidates from the Queen's University stood first, in the preceding year third, in the list. This is sufficiently striking, but we can not forbear commemorating a signal instance of success obtained by one of the Colleges. It will be ever memorable in the annals of the College of Belfast, that, while numbering not 200 students, it bore away at this examination, from all our highest seats of learning, the first, fourth, and ninth of twelve vacant places. So much for the direct action of the Queen's Colleges upon the country: no less important has been their indirect influence.

1. It is surely more than a chance coincidence, that within the last ten years, nearly the whole curriculum of the University of Dublin has been changed; all the leading changes being approximations to the curriculum of the Queen's University. Nor is it merely the courses of study which have been revolutionized; the efficiency of the teaching has, in the same period, been vastly increased. Professorial chairs, which had become almost sinecures, have been rehabilitated, and raised by their occupants to a position of dignity and usefulness. Can we be mistaken in attributing this reforming spirit to the emulation of the Queen's Colleges, or in discerning the same influence in the liberality, which has recently endowed scholarships in the same University (some of them of great value,) open to candidates of all religious persuasions.

2. Such has been the silent recognition which the ancient University of Ireland has given to her youthful sister. Elsewhere the recognition has been, if not more obvious, more avowed. In the year 1855, the Secretary of the Queen's University received a letter from the Regius Professor of Law in the University of Cambridge, in which, after requesting copies of the University Examination Papers, as being so admirably adapted to students of the principles of law, "that I should wish to make use of them as much as I can," he adds-"But it is not only in their law papers that your colleges show their merit and utility. The whole system of education pursued by you is, in my humble opinion, so good, and so well suited to the times, that I sincerely trust that it may defy all opposition."

3. Through them was first discovered the wretched condition of intermediate education in Ireland. Universities without schools are but castles in the

air.

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