I have said that Whately’s reputation for a very pronounced Liberalism, certainly at that time unparalleled among his brother heads of houses at Oxford, had been my father’s reason for placing me at Alban Hall. And all that reached the undergraduate world in connection with him was of a nature to lead the academic mind to regard him as a phenomenon of Radicalism. And it is curious to recall such impressions, while reading at the present day such a passage as the following (_Life of Whately_, vol. i., p. 302). The Archbishop is writing about the schemes then in agitation for the application of a portion of the revenues of the Irish Church to the purposes of national education. The italics in the following transcription are mine. “It is concluded, first, that in parishes where there is a very small or no Protestant population, the revenues of the Church will be either wholly or in part, as the case may be, transferred to the education board, as the incumbents drop, their life interests being reserved; secondly, that in the event of an increase of the Protestant population, such portion of the funds thus alienated, as may be thought requisite, shall be drawn from the education board, and restored to the original purpose; thirdly, that in the event of a further diminution of the Protestants, a further portion shall be withdrawn from the Church, and applied to the purpose of general education. This last supposition is merely conjectural, but is so strictly the converse of the preceding, that every one at once concludes, and must conclude by parity of reasoning, that it must be contemplated. Now it will not be supposed by any one, who knows much of the state of Ireland, that we contemplate as probable any such increase of the Protestant population as to call for the restoration of a considerable portion of the alienated funds. In a few places, perhaps, attempts may be made, I fear with disastrous results, by some zealous Protestant landlords to increase with this view the proportion of Protestants on their estates; but on the whole we neither hope nor fear any such result. What alarms us is, the holding out the principle of such a system as the apportioning the revenues of the Church and of the education board to the varying proportions of the Roman Catholic population to the Protestant; and again the principle of making the funds for national education contingent upon the death of incumbents. The _natural_ effect of the latter of these provisions must be to place the clergy so circumstanced in a most invidious, and _in this country a most dangerous situation. No one who knows anything of Ireland would like to reside here surrounded by his heirs, on whom his income was to devolve at his death. And such would be very much the case with an incumbent, who was regarded as standing between the nation and the national benefit_, viz., of provision for the education of their children. _Then in respect of the other point, every Protestant who