7 - THE RELIGIOUS PROBLEM INTENSIFIED, 1872–3

Summary

The Manchester conference and English politics in 1872

In 1872, the Liberal party began to fall into a trap which was largely of its own making. The government was committed to introducing an Irish University Bill, but it could not solve the Irish university question in a way which would satisfy all components of the party. Nonconformists rejected state endowment of Catholic education; Catholics demanded it. Most whig-liberals disliked any concession to denominationalism, and wished merely for the abolition of tests in Trinity, Dublin; Gladstone strongly disapproved of their apparent insensitivity to the Catholic grievance. Then again, the provisions of the 1870 Education Act had created expectations regarding the Irish measure which it was politically impossible to realise: whig-liberals, nonconformists and Irish Catholics all now expected that the government would legislate on the university question in a way which they would find unacceptable. Yet neither was it feasible to amend the 1870 Act in a way which would please both the leadership and the grass-roots of the party. There was a dispute about the merits of secularism; cutting across that was a difficulty about Clause 25 of the Act, which most Liberals disliked, but which the government refused to repeal – if, by doing so, poor parents would be deprived of the right to select a denominational education for their children.