Introduction. On 2 October 1850, the Dublin Evening Post published an exchange of letters between Archbishop Murray and John R. Corballis, a successful Dublin barrister and Commissioner of the National System of Education. His letter to his friend Murray is a very able and pointed statement of the case in favour of the Queen’s Colleges. He questions the wisdom of Catholics withdrawing from Trinity College after battling so hard for admittance. Murray went on to reveal to Corballis the existence of the minority party petition that had been sent to the pope. The Archbishop of Cashel, Dr Michael Slattery, is the member of the synod mentioned in the letter as being a graduate of Trinity College. This fact was obviously intended to embarrass Slattery, a keen supporter of Cullen. Corballis seems to mock Slattery when he points out the he was better known for his rank rather than for his intelligence, or piety.

Source. Dublin Evening Post, 2 October 1850.

Rosemount, Roebuck

September 30

My dear Lord,

May I respectfully ask your Grace as well for my own information as for that of some other Roman Catholics of your diocese who have sons either in Trinity College, or in the course of preparation for it, or for the newly established Queen’s Colleges, how we are to understand the late Synodical Address on the subject of these Colleges? Are we thereby actually prohibited from sending our children to these Colleges? And, if so, how far is such a provision actually binding on us in foro conscientiae [upon our conscience]? To many of us it appears altogether inexplicable, that after petitioning, in the days of persecution, for admission into Trinity College, after being permitted, with the tacit sanction of your Grace, and your eminent predecessors and colleagues of the Church of Ireland for upwards of half a century, to receive our education there, and seeing that one of the members of that very Synod, most distinguished for rank, is actually a graduate of the University, it does appear strange that in the year 1850, education in Trinity College, or even in any of the Colleges recently established on such a liberal footing as regards us should be unequivocally condemned, and that without one reason being assigned for this sudden change, or any provision in the meantime being made for affording a suitable education to our children. I need not say that this subject is of intense interest to the Roman Catholic gentry of your Grace’s diocese, as well as to the Roman Catholic middle classes of Ireland generally, and I therefore, my dear lord, take the liberty of entreating such an answer from your Grace as I may make known to the numerous persons who have spoken to me upon it; and which if it do not calm our apprehensions, at least may guide our future course of action on this all important point.

Tomás O’Riordan