Then came the last great battle of that Parliament, in which Fawcett was to play so dramatic a part. Trinity College, Dublin, was a Protestant university financed by the State. Liberals were eager to remove the religious tests which prevented Catholics from enjoying the emoluments of the college. This proposal had Fawcett’s enthusiastic sympathy. His standpoint in dealing with these questions can best be shown by a comment he once made on Mill’s book on _Liberty_. ‘As I was reading Mill’s _Liberty_—perhaps the greatest work of our greatest living writer—as I read his noble, I might almost say his holy ideas, I thought to myself, if every one in my country could and would do his work, how infinitely happier would the nation be! How much less desirous should we be to wrangle about petty religious differences! How much less of the energy of the nation would be wasted in contemptible quarrels about creeds and formularies; and how much more powerful should we be as a nation to achieve works of good, when, as this work would teach us to be, we were firmly bound together by the bonds of a wise toleration.’ Fawcett resented any narrow sectarian rules, and, though never irreligious, was out of sympathy with ceremonial and dogmatic detail. He himself really lived according to the creed that ‘the world was his country, and to do good his religion.’ He had probably little true understanding of the depth of feeling that can be aroused by differences of creed and church. All men were alike to him, the Catholic, the Jew, or the Agnostic; and for Ireland as well as for England he fought for absolute equality of privilege for all. Even in his first Parliament, Fawcett had urged the removal of religious tests in Dublin, and had continued to do so in the various sessions that followed. His friend, Professor Cairnes, and he would discuss the matter. Fawcett studied it very thoroughly and pressed this reform incessantly. At last in 1873, when he had again brought in a Bill for abolishing tests and for certain other changes, he agreed to withdraw it in favour of a Government Bill if this latter should seem to him sufficiently satisfactory. [Sidenote: Gladstone’s Speech.] The Government measure was introduced by Gladstone in a speech so persuasive that Fawcett said that ‘if the decision could have taken place whilst the House was still under its spell, the Bill would have been almost unanimously carried.’ But, after a careful examination, Fawcett found it impossible to give it his support. He was, however, much moved by Gladstone’s speech, and afterwards congratulated him most heartily on his eloquence. Gladstone’s eagle eye glanced at him with a slight air of reproach as he replied, ‘I could have wished that it had proved more persuasive, sir.’