THE O'SULLIVAN BEQUEST.

Otago Witness, Issue 2813, 12 February 1908, Page 17

THE O'SULLIVAN BEQUEST.

Sir Robert Stout, in a letter to the New Zealand Times, Tefers to the action of the University Senate in accepting the O'Sullivan bequest. He declares that if his suggestion had been accepted the bequest would have been maintained for the benefit of Catholic students, but would not have been a University scholarship. The Public Trustee would have been the trustee, and the fund a private one. He believes that a great injury may be done to Catholics by the University accepting the bequest. By that acceptance the University, he says, invites Protestants to make sectarian gifts — that is, to make it a condition of their benefactions that Catholics shall be excluded from participating in them. In his opinion the University should have so acted as fo have discouraged sectarian trusts, and have maintained provisions that for no University echolarship should there be any religious exemption or trust. He believes the founding of the O'Sullivan University scholarship is an injury to the University, a wrong to all religious bodies in a minority, and will cause the creation of a precedent that must* lead to heartburnings, animosities, and) difficulties in the near futura.