at the election.

Mr. Fox opened the case for the sitting Member, and maintained that there was no instance of undue influence, and he was followed by Mr. Boyd on the part of the Provost. Then Mr. Plunkett spoke to evidence, against the Provost and the sitting Member. The Recorder replied for the Provost in very eulogistic terms, mentioning his seven Under-Graduate premiums, his college reforms, improvements, &c. He disparaged the made-up arithmetical evidence of Miller and Magee, and was followed by Mr. Chamberlaine for the sitting Member. Mr. Burrowes closed the argument in a very eloquent speech, which was as severe on the Provost as the “Lachrymæ” or “Pranceriana” was. It is noticeable, by the way, that Duigenan took no part in the petitions, and that he was neither employed in the case nor even named in the examination. Burrowes said that Miller’s rejection of the Provost’s offer of his questions was “a moral miracle.” It was Miller’s third attempt for fellowship.

Burrowes “lamented the necessity of the odious investigation which exposed to public view the disgraceful and disastrous state of the University—condoning the undue influence would make the college as corrupt as any pot-walloping borough—the University would be shortly depopulated, and its only remaining trace would be the octennial convention of an unresisted Provost, and unresisting electors, to return suitable representatives to Parliament, and celebrate the festival of banished literature and vanquished public spirit. The decay of the University in such an event, would be desirable; its honours ought to be a brand of disgrace in society, and the contaminated Scholar ought to become a despised and abandoned citizen.” Burrowes was full of pride and loyalty for the old place. He was himself an Ex-Scholar,[57] as were also amongst the lawyers in the case Beresford Burston, Plunket, Smith, Fox, and Boyd; and he was jealous for the honour of the Academic prize. “Some of the most important officers in the state,” he exclaimed, “are filled by men who were Scholars of the University; in the learned professions the most eminent men have in their youth been Scholars. The most respectable divines, the most eminent lawyers, a considerable number of the Judges of the land, have been Scholars. Every individual of the eight lawyers[58] who appeared before this Committee have been Scholars of the University.”[59] Burrowes closed his speech:—“I sit down assured you cannot pronounce the Honourable Francis Hely Hutchison to have been duly elected.” Forty-one witnesses were produced by the petitioners, of whom ten were Fellows and thirteen Scholars. The Hutchisons produced six witnesses—no Fellow, one Scholar, and a lady.

The Committee sat from the 14th February to the 24th March, when, by a majority of one, including the double vote of the chairman, it resolved (Wellington and Lord E. Fitzgerald voting in the minority) “That the Hon. Francis Hely Hutchinson had made use of no undue influence; that he was duly elected a burgess to represent the University in the present Parliament; and that the Provost, as Returning Officer of the University, acted legally and impartially at and before the election.”

Perhaps the most significant fact evolved by the investigation was that some of the Scholars were Catholics, the Statutes and the Anglican Sacrament notwithstanding. There was no reserve in the statement, and no remark on it was made by any member of Committee.[60] The point was not brought forward in the petition, nor pressed by any of the Council, except in the case of one Scholar, whose conformity was accepted by the Committee. In fact the “Popery” seems to have been taken quite as an understood thing,[61] and this coincides entirely with the famous declaration of Fitzgibbon. In 1782, speaking on Gardiner’s Bill, in the Irish House of Commons, as Member for the University, he asserted that “the University of Dublin was already open, by connivance, and that no religious conformity was required.” It is not easy to reconcile this with the then existing regulations for students as well as for Scholars, and in that debate the Provost did not speak exactly in this strain. On the contrary, he lamented that the religious disabilities did exist, and he was urgent for a King’s Letter to give the Catholics equality in the University, under a Theological Professor of their own.[62]

That debate, it may be noticed, is memorable for the cordial and consenting speeches of the Provost and of the two Members for the University, Hussey Burgh and Fitzgibbon. They all were in favour of Catholic relief, especially in the matter of education, and they all would have opened the College freely and liberally to Catholics. It was in this debate that Hussey Burgh protested against the Irish Bishops’ practice of ordaining men on Scotch degrees. The Provost warmly thanked Burgh for sustaining the right and the dignity of the University. He said that the number of yearly degrees had risen from 95 to 109, and that Trinity College Graduates could be supplied for as many curacies as had the legal allowance of £50 a year.[63]

Plunket was very indignant at the miserable bribery and corruption that were administered by the Provost, but he had not a word to say against the deeper and wider corruption that was ingrained in the sectarian exclusiveness of the constitution of the place. How could he say anything, being himself in the same condemnation? He was the son of a Unitarian minister;[64] and is said to have lived and died an Unitarian, and still he was a Scholar of the House.

In 1790, a very able pamphlet, suggested by Provost Hutchison’s despotic regime, was published anonymously, entitled: “An Inquiry how far the Provost of Trinity College, Dublin, is invested with a negative on the proceedings of the Senior Fellows by the Charter and Statutes of the College.”

The pamphlet is traditionally ascribed to the Rev. G. Miller, F.T.C.D., who gave such important evidence before the parliamentary committee; and, substantially, it is based upon the arbitrary acts of the Provost, which were brought out before the committee, and which are more fully stated in the “Lachrymæ” and “Pranceriana.”

The “Enquiry” asserts that the Provost claimed and exerted a negative upon all Board proceedings; and that in the