§ MR. MACFIEasked the First Lord of the Treasury, Whether the degrees of Bachelor and Doctor of Divinity are 1740 among the scholastic titles referred to in Clause 11 of the University Education (Ireland) Bill; and, if so, whether the Colleges of the Episcopalian, Presbyterian, Methodist Churches, and of the Roman Catholic Church, might in his belief, if the Bill becomes Law, legally confer these titles, honorarily or otherwise, on co-religionists who had not educated in Ireland, and are resident in other parts of the United Kingdom; and if, not so, who might?
MR. GLADSTONESir, my hon. Friend has put to me a question which possibly he might have put with more advantage to my hon. and learned Friend the Attorney General, inasmuch as it turns upon the legal effect of a clause. On that I will not undertake to answer him. But I will say that the intention, not of Clause 11, but of another clause, I think Clause 16, is to provide against the inconvenience that might arise if, in consequence of the removal of the theological Faculty from Trinity College, Dublin, the ordinary usage with respect to persons of certain standing or acquirements in theology—the usage, I mean, of marking their names with the addition of a sign of a degree—were to be interfered with; and the intention is that that clause applying to all denominations alike should place people in a condition in which without fear of being charged with breaking the law they may, if they please, grant those designations to such persons as they conceive to be worthy of them, subject only to the condition that they shall indicate the source from which the designation comes, lest it should be the means of deceiving anyone as being used by those who are not competent to give it.
§ MR. MACFIEasked, whether Trinity College, in its re-constituted state, would be the only body empowered to grant those degrees; and whether they might be conferred upon persons resident in England and Scotland?
MR. GLADSTONEIf my hon. Friend will only read the clause, he will obtain a much better answer to that Question than I can give him.