WALSH, WILLIAM JOSEPH. – Irish archbishop and primate, one of the principal advocates of the creation of a free Irish Republic, born on 30 January 1841 in Dublin, where he died on 9 April 1921.
He was educated at the celebrated college of Maynooth under the rectorship of the great Newmann (v.) and, having been ordained a priest, held at the same college the offices of professor of theology (1867), vice-president (1878), and president. In 1884 he was promoted to the archiepiscopal see of Dublin, to which is attached the dignity of primate of Ireland. A tenacious defender of the civil rights of Irish Catholics against the political, social, cultural, economic, and agricultural inequality and inferiority to which the Irish were subjected, he also worked to re-establish complete equality in the field of education and schools.
As representative of the bishops on the parliamentary commission known as the Bessborough Commission (1869), against the great English landowner Leinster, he contributed enormously to the formation of the law concerning the problem of ownership of Irish soil (Land-Act, 1881). Two years later W. gave a clear explanation of the same law in the work A plain exposition of the Land Act of 1881 (Dublin 1883). Connected with this problem is another famous book, directly concerning monetary affairs but indirectly also Irish problems of the restitution of their own land: Bimetallismo e monometallismo. What they are and how they bear upon the Irish land question (2nd ed. Chicago 1893; 3rd ed. Dublin 1894). In the field of theological studies, he founded in 1880 the journal The Irish ecclesiastical Record. On the problems of education, especially university education, W. wrote: Queens College and the Royal University of Ireland (Dublin 1883). In 1889 he became an education commissioner and served public education as a member of various committees and commissions; and he delivered famous speeches, later published as: Irish University question: the Catholic case. Selections from speeches and writings of the archbishop of Dublin (there, 1897). W. desired a Catholic university, because the only University of Dublin was Protestant (Trinity College). His publication The Irish educational question made a great impression among the members of the English Parliament, and led to the establishment of two commissions (1903, 1906), formed to study the problem, and to the foundation of the National University of Ireland, with the colleges of Dublin, Cork, and Galway for Catholics. In 1888 W. turned to the problem of Home Rule and prepared an Italian work to elucidate the question in Rome itself: La questione agraria irlandese. Shortly before the publication of the work, while W. was in Rome, the S. Congr. of the Inquisition issued its condemnation of The Plan of Campaign and Bay Cotting, which aroused some criticism in Ireland. W.’s thought, inspired by dutiful submission, is known from his letters to Cardinal Manning (5 May 1888) and to the editor of the Freemans Journal (7 May 1888). Later he let a few criticisms escape him. He did not disapprove of the insurrection against England during the First European War (1916), but by then his health was already in decline. Death overtook him on 9 April 1921.