§ MR. HENNESSYsaid, he rose to ask the Chief Secretary for Ireland, Whether the only Candidates who obtained the degree of LL.D. at the last examination of the Queen's University in Ireland were at that time Professors in the Queen's Colleges and Examiners at the University; whether Charles P. Reichel, whose name appears in the recent Report of the Queen's University, page 23, as receiving the degree of M.A. in 1861, is the same Charles P. Reichel whose name appears at page 20 of the same Report as receiving the same degree (M.A.) in 1860, and whose name appears at page 26 of the same Report as the Examiner in Latin to the same University; and whether the same gentleman has not been since 1849 a Professor in Queen's College, Belfast?
§ SIR ROBERT PEELsaid, that the Government had nothing to do with the granting of degrees and diplomas in any of the chartered Universities of England, Scoland, or Ireland. The granting of degrees was wholly regulated by Statute. With regard to the degrees of LL.D. at the last examination of the Queen's University, it was true that the three only persons who took that degree were professors—two at the Queen's College, Belfast, and one at Galway. But it must be remembered there were two sorts of degrees, one of which was conferred upon students and the other upon distinguished persons who had taken degrees elsewhere, and who were desirous of becoming graduates of the Queen's University in Ireland; and the gentlemen in question were of the latter class. There was a clerical error in the Report with regard to the repetition of the degree of Mr. Reichel. That gentleman took a degree of M.A., he believed, in Trinity College, Dublin, in 1860, and afterwards an ad eundem degree of M.A. was granted to him in 1861 by the Senate of the Queen's University.