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1 Chapter 4 Nationalist Scientists Three Different Surveys, Quoted At Chapter 4 Nationalist Scientists Three different surveys, quoted at the start of an earlier chapter, found that the majority of nineteenth-century Irish scientists had Ascendancy backgrounds; the estimated proportion of Catholics is somewhere around the 10% to 15% mark. 1 This is not negligible, but it is well below the 70% to 75% of the Irish population who were Catholics. Some writers have suggested that either the Roman Catholic Church, or Irish Nationalism, or perhaps both, were in some way responsible for inhibiting the growth of science among their respective followers before 1921 and for stunting it afterwards. So for instance John Wilson Foster writes of ‘the calculated exclusion of science, particularly natural science, by the architects of the Irish Cultural Revival around the turn of the century’ 2. Roy Johnston blames religion rather than politics: Cardinal Cullen blocked Catholics from going to the ‘Godless Colleges’, and access to scientific technology for the sons of the rising Catholic bourgeoisie was severely restricted for the next 50 years, until the NUI was set up… Protestant predominance in 19th century Irish science must be attributed to Cardinal Cullen. [Nicholas] Callan showed what the potential was, and it was strangled at birth. 3 This thesis has argued that the picture is considerably more complex. The extent to which discrimination against Catholics existed in the institutions of the Ascendancy has been demonstrated previously. While Johnston is right to point out that a crucial factor in discouraging Catholics from following scientific careers was the lack of an education system which they were prepared to buy into, this chapter will suggest that the responsibility for this state of affairs was more widely shared. The roles of the institutions which were set up with the intention of providing higher education for the largest tradition on the island, and the role of science within the intellectual culture of Irish Catholics before and after 1920, will also be discussed. Finally the policies of three influential Nationalist political figures on the practice of science in Ireland will be reviewed. Because there were not many Nationalist / Catholic scientists in the first place, and because even they are under-represented in the historiography of Irish science, there has been a tendency to see the situation as more one-sided than it in fact was. While published sources on Trinity College, the RDS, and the Science and Art Institutions are plentiful, only one of the three constituent colleges of the National University has recently inspired an institutional history. Primary as well as secondary material is scarce; Nationalist scientists, and those charged with the task of administering them, seem to have left fewer written records than have those working in the institutions of the Ascendancy or the Administration, and since this thesis originated in a search for extant manuscript resources it will reflect this fact. There is certainly plenty left to say about the Nationalist tradition within Irish science, which has been neglected by historians both of Irish politics and of Irish science. 1The three surveys are: 1) Richard Jarrell, ‘Differential National Development and Science in the Nineteenth Century: The Problems of Quebec and Ireland’ in Scientific Colonialism ed. Nathan and Marc (1987), who found 8%-13% Catholics; 2) J.A. Bennett's unpublished paper on ‘The Scientific Community in Nineteenth-Century Ireland’, presented at a joint meeting of the Royal Irish Academy and the British Society for the History of Science in 1985 and again to the Cambridge Group for Irish Studies in 1989 (in press as ‘Science and Social Policy in Ireland in the Mid-Nineteenth Century’ in Science and Society in Ireland ), which had a figure of 10.5%; and 3) Gordon Herries-Davies' less systematic survey in ‘Irish Thought in Science’ ( The Irish Mind , ed. Richard Kearney (1985)) p. 305, which listed 7 Catholics of 50 named scientists or 14%. 2‘Natural Science and Irish Culture’, p. 95 3Johnston, ‘Godless Colleges and Non-Persons’, Causeway 1 no. 1 (September 1993) pp. 36-38, p. 38. 1 The National University: constructing Irish learning The impact of the Irish University Question on Trinity College has been outlined in an earlier chapter. In fact the various measures proposed and enacted had considerably greater effects on the other higher education institutions in Ireland. These were the College of St Patrick at Maynooth, founded in 1795 by Act of Parliament as a Catholic seminary; the Queen’s Colleges in Belfast, Cork and Galway, founded by Act of Parliament in 1845; and the Catholic University of Ireland, founded and funded by the Catholic Church, which opened in 1854. 4 Much of the nineteenth-century debate revolved around the vexed question of the extent to which the State could be expected to sponsor ‘denominational’ rather than ‘undenominational’ or ‘non- denominational’ education. ‘Denominational’ in this context meant ‘Catholic’, since Trinity College had a distinct Ascendancy, Church of Ireland ethos and Queen’s College Belfast inevitably developed a more Dissenting and distinctively Ulster atmosphere. Most of the Catholic hierarchy wanted a church controlled system of education for Catholic students; this, they argued, was the case in most European countries (the University of Louvain was often mentioned as a precedent). But successive British governments were hampered by the anti-Catholicism of their own supporters — if anything, more in England than in Ireland — and found it politically impossible to fund any project for Catholic education. The Queen’s Colleges had been founded in 1845 as constituents of the federal Queen’s University of Ireland, a non-denominational institution in which there were to be no religious tests and no teaching of theology. The Catholic hierarchy, after some initial hesitation and internal division, declared with the backing of Pope Pius IX that the colleges were dangerous to faith and morals and decided to set up their own university under the rectorship of John Henry Newman. 5 Without State financial support, the Catholic University was dependent on voluntary contributions, and without the legal power to grant degrees it had difficulty in attracting students. In the meantime the hostility of the hierarchy to the three Queen’s Colleges certainly slowed their development. On the one hand they were separated from the mainstream of Catholic Nationalist Ireland, and on the other the Ascendancy perceived them as of lower status than Trinity College. An institutional reform in 1879 brought some indirect State funding to the Catholic University. The Queen’s University of Ireland was abolished and replaced with the Royal University, which was mainly an examining body. The new institution appointed twenty-six Fellows who were to administer the examinations, and it was arranged that half of these Fellowships should be appointed from the staff of the Catholic University and Maynooth, and the others from the staff of the Queen’s Colleges and Magee College, a Presbyterian theological college in Londonderry. Internal manœuvres on the Catholic side resulted in Maynooth pulling out of the new arrangements and also in the Catholic University being renamed University College Dublin, and passing under the control of the Jesuits rather than the bishops in 1883. 6 4As in Chapter 4, I have used T.W. Moody, ‘The Irish University Question of the Nineteenth Century’, History 43 (1958) 90-109, and Fergal McGrath, ‘The University Question’, p.85-142. Also useful have been J.A. Murphy, The College: A History of Queen's/University College Cork, 1845-1995 (1995); Ollsgoil na h-Éireann: The National University Handbook, 1908-1932 (1932); a number of essays in Struggle with Fortune: A Miscellany for the Centenary of the Catholic University of Ireland, 1854-1954 ed. M. Tierney [1954]; and A page of Irish history: story of University College, Dublin, 1883-1909 , Compiled by Fathers of the Society of Jesus (1930) 5see Louis McRedmond, Thrown Among Strangers: John Henry Newman in Ireland (1990), and Fergal McGrath, Newman's University: Idea and Reality (London, etc.: Longmans, 1951) 6See chapter II of T.J. Morrissey, Towards a National University: William Delany S.J. (1835-1924) (1983) pp. 33-60 2 This still left UCD in a parlous financial state, although it benefited greatly from the increase in state funding offered by the Royal University. The Queen’s Colleges in Cork and Galway were still regarded with some suspicion by the hierarchy and this may have had some effect on their ability to attract students; it is clear that the great majority of students at Cork were there for the medical school. 7 The bishops, supported by Irish Nationalist MPs and by some Unionists, continued to lobby for the creation of a state-funded university which would be acceptable to them. There followed the two Royal Commissions of 1901-03 and 1905-06, which have been described in an earlier chapter, and the final settlement of the University issue by the creation of the National University of Ireland in 1908. This joined UCD with the renamed University Colleges in Cork and Galway, leaving Trinity College Dublin untouched and promoting Queen’s College Belfast to separate status; Maynooth was permitted to affiliate to the NUI as well, and Magee College opted to join up with Trinity rather than QUB. Although the bishops had consistently demanded formal control of any new Catholic university, in 1908 they settled for a situation where the Church’s control was more de facto than de jure . They might well have done so earlier, had such a solution been on offer from the government; the atmosphere was perhaps more conducive in 1908 to the compromise which was eventually imposed. Roy Johnston, in a number of articles, has accused the Church of carelessly ensuring ‘Protestant predominance in nineteenth century Irish science’ by deterring Catholics from attending the Queen’s Colleges, but this puts effect before cause; the failure to arrive at an acceptable format for Irish higher education was the result of a policy impasse between the Catholic Church and the government, and it was after all the government, not the church, that had the power to legislate.
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