If the Senate of the National University were composed of State officials, they would feel themselves bound to maintain the interests of all the Colleges committed to their care, and it would be impossible to maintain the standard of Degrees at a point higher than the attainments of the weakest College in the partnership, whose defective standard would regulate that of the University Degree, just as the sailing of the slowest tub in the squadron regulates the manoeuvres of the entire fleet. If, on the other hand, the Senate of the National Irish University should be composed, after the model of Oxford and Cambridge, of the heads and representatives of the various Irish Colleges, although liberty of education might be preserved, the standard of the degrees would become degraded by the simple operation of a natural law easy to explain. The heads of the Irish Colleges, united into a "happy family" University by the hands of a paternal Government, would either struggle with each other for supremacy, or enter into a compromise for peace sake, on some such plan as the following:-- After a few preliminary skirmishes, to try each other's skill, in arranging a common curriculum in Morals or History, it would be found that profound and irreconcileable differences existed among the Colleges on the most elementary principles, and that it would be impossible for the heads of Trinity College, of St. Patrick's College of Maynooth, of Queen's College of Belfast, and of other institutions, to agree upon a common curriculum of education, or even of examination for Degrees, that would satisfy the reasonable and conscientious scruples of all parties. Under these circumstances, a sort of bargain would be made between the heads of the various Colleges, who would agree to take each other's certificates without challenge, and confer the Degrees recommended by each independently of the others. The University and its Senate would thus become simply a machinery for authorizing the Students of the various Colleges to add certain letters, such as M. A., or LL. B., after their names; and it would become the interest of all the Colleges in which a really good education was given, that such letters should have a formal significance only; the education itself, testified by the addition of the name of the College, having alone a real market value readily appreciated by the public. Each College of reputation would be careful to have its own name inserted after the letters signifying the University Degree, and thus would be practically created as many Universities as there are Colleges in Ireland, and a disastrous competition downwards would be the inevitable result. The Degrees of the so-called National University would be like the bills of a weak firm--dishonoured by the public unless endorsed by the name of a solvent trader--and the letters M. A., or LL. B., would become like the praises on a bad man's gravestone, purchaseable at so much a letter.