Daniel Conner Lathbury

“ During his parliamentary career Blennerhassett was mainly concerned with Irish university education and the Irish land question. His speeches on Fawcett's Irish university bill in 1871, and on Gladstone's Irish university bill of 1873, which he supported, showed an intimate knowledge of continental universities. He regretted Gladstone's exclusion of modern history and moral philosophy from the curriculum, and pressed the system — borrowed from Germany — of duplicate faculties in the same university. In 1872 he moved the second reading of a bill for the purchase of Irish railways. ”

“ During these years he constantly wrote with fulness of knowledge on political subjects in 'The Times,' the 'Daily Telegraph,' the 'Nineteenth Century,' the 'Fortnightly Review,' the 'Deutsche Rundschau,' and, especially at the end of his life, in the 'National Review.' He deeply regretted the change in the papal policy on the election of Pius X, and the retirement of Cardinal Rampolla, though he admitted the provocation given by the French government, and the difference between the modernism of the Abbé Loisy and the liberal Catholicism of his youth. ”

“ As Gladstone predicted, it proved too Roman catholic for liberals, and too liberal for Roman catholics, and its early support of home rule for Ireland iuil her prejudiced its chances of success. Save on ecclesiastical questions, the paper seldom expressed Blennerhassett's opinions. The 'Chronicle' lacked sympathy with the reasoned imperialism which developed out of Blennerhassett's early admiration of Bismarck and engendered a faith in the superiority of German to English methods of progress. ”