An Address to the Evening Classes
1.
When I found that it was in my power to be present here at the commencement of the new Session, one of the first thoughts, Gentlemen, which thereupon occurred to me, was this, that I should in consequence have the great satisfaction of meeting you, of whom I had thought and heard so much, and the opportunity of addressing you, as Rector of the University. I can truly say that I thought of you before you thought of the University; perhaps I may say, long before;—for it was previously to our commencing that great work, which is now so fully before the public, it was when I first came over here to make preparations for it, that I had to encounter the serious objection of wise and good men, who said to me, “There is no class of persons in Ireland who need a University;” and again, “Whom will you get to belong to it? who will fill its lecture-rooms?” This was said to me, and then, without denying their knowledge of the state of Ireland, or their sagacity, I made answer, “We will give lectures in the evening, we will fill our classes with the young men of Dublin.”
And some persons here may recollect that the very first thing I did, when we opened the School of Philosophy and Letters, this time four years, was to institute a system of Evening Lectures, which were suspended after a while, only because the singularly inclement season which ensued, and the want of publicity and interest incident to a new undertaking, made them premature. And it is a satisfaction to me to reflect that the Statute, under which you will be able to pass examinations and take degrees, is one to which I specially obtained the consent of the Academical Senate, nearly two years ago, in addition to our original Regulations, and that you will be the first persons to avail yourselves of it.
Having thus prepared, as it were, the University for you, it was with great pleasure that I received from a number of you, Gentlemen, last May year, a spontaneous request which showed that my original anticipations were not visionary. You suggested then what we have since acted upon,—acted upon, not so quickly as both you might hope and we might wish, because all important commencements have to be maturely considered—still acted on at length according to those anticipations of mine, to which I have referred; and, while I recur to them as an introduction to what I have to say, I might also dwell upon them as a sure presage that other and broader anticipations, too bold as they may seem now, will, if we are but patient, have their fulfilment in their season.
2.
For I should not be honest, Gentlemen, if I did not confess that, much as I desire that this University should be of service to the young men of Dublin, I do not desire this benefit to you, simply for your own sakes. For your own sakes certainly I wish it, but not on your account only. Man is not born for himself alone, as the classical moralist tells us. You are born for Ireland; and, in your advancement, Ireland is advanced;—in your advancement in what is good and what is true, in knowledge, in learning, in cultivation of mind, in enlightened attachment to your religion, in good name and respectability and social influence, I am contemplating the honour and renown, the literary and scientific aggrandisement, the increase of political power, of the Island of the Saints.
I go further still. If I do homage to the many virtues and gifts of the Irish people, and am zealous for their full development, it is not simply for the sake of themselves, but because the name of Ireland ever has been, and, I believe, ever will be, associated with the Catholic Faith, and because, in doing any service, however poor it may be, to Ireland, a man is ministering, in his own place and measure, to the cause of the Holy Roman Apostolic Church.
Gentlemen, I should consider it an impertinence in me thus to be speaking to you of myself, were it not that, in recounting to you the feelings with which I have witnessed the establishment of these Evening Classes, I am in fact addressing to you at the same time words of encouragement and advice, such words as it becomes a Rector to use in speaking to those who are submitted to his care.
I say, then, that, had I been younger than I was when the high office which I at present hold was first offered to me, had I not had prior duties upon me of affection and devotion to the Oratory of St. Philip, and to my own dear country, no position whatever, in the whole range of administrations which are open to the ambition of those who wish to serve God in their generation, and to do some great work before they die, would have had more attractions for me than that of being at the head of a University like this. When I became a Catholic, one of my first questions was, “Why have not our Catholics a University?” and Ireland, and the metropolis of Ireland, was obviously the proper seat of such an institution.