University College, Dublin

A constitutional college of the National University of Ireland. By its charter, granted 2 Dec., 1908, in accordance with the Irish Universities Act of that year, members of the college include every graduate of the Royal University of Ireland who was a matriculated student of "University College, St. Stephen's Green, Dublin, or of the Medical School, Cecilia Street, Dublin". Thus the history of the existing college is linked with the story of Newman's foundation in Ireland. From 112 November, 1883, when the Irish Jesuits opened University College, St. Stephen's Green, Dublin, in the old Arts School of the Catholic University, to 1 November, 1909, when the new college began its work, the history of Irish Catholic and national university education centred mainly in the St. Stephen's Green institution. The college had two purposes to fulfil; first, to show by its success in the competitive field that Irish Catholics had the material and capacity, given equal opportunity, to establish a university of their own upon the highest academic level; second, to afford a university training to young Irish Catholics, whom conscience prevented from availing of Trinity College, with its Protestant Episcopalian atmosphere, or of the Queen's Colleges, with their secularist atmosphere. The first president of University College was Rev. William Delany, S.J. With an interval filled by Rev. Robert Carbery, S.J., Father Delany continued in office until the new college was founded. His colleagues of the Society at the beginning were Rev. Thomas Finlay, philosopher and economist, Rev. Denis Murphy, Irish historian, Rev. James J. O'Carroll, Gaelic scholar and linguist, Rev. Gerard Hopkins, Oxford Classicist and poet, and Rev. Robert Curtis, mathematician. Of Newman's old guard and their first successors there still remained Thomas Arnold, son of the Master of Rugby, Robert Ornsby, the biographer of Hope Scott, James Stewart, a Cambridge rector who had followed Newman, John Casey, the Irish mathematician, Dr. John Egan, afterwards Bishop of Waterford, and Abbe Polin. Among the assistant professors selected by Father Delany were Mr. William J. Starkie, a Cambridge scholar, now Resident Commissioner of National Education, and Mr. (now Sir) Joseph Magrath, the present registrar of the National University. Father Delany began practically without endowment. The only public assistance received was indirect. Beaconsfield's University Act empowered the senate of the Royal University to appoint Fellows, with a salary of 400 pounds a year out of the university revenues, on condition of their examining for the university and lecturing at certain assigned colleges. Fourteen Fellows, out of twenty-eight, were assigned to University College, the remainder to the Queen's Colleges, already endowed to the extent of 12,500 pounds a year each. Two of the first Fellows were Jesuit Fathers; some years later the number was increased to five, and with their salaries the equipment and maintenance of the college were undertaken. +