HL Deb 14 April 1845 vol 79 c578
The Marquess of Breadalbane

, in presenting a great many petitions against any grant to Maynooth from many places in Scotland and elsewhere, said that he should not do justice to the petitioners, if he did not state to the House their sincere and anxious view of the question. However much they objected to the grant, they did not wish to interfere with the principles of civil or religious liberty, as they wished their Roman Catholic fellow-countrymen to enjoy perfect freedom of opinion. But they regarded the enjoyment of civil rights and the endowment of the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland as very different things. For his own part he had always acted upon this principle, and had constantly voted for Catholic Emancipation, and for an equality of civil rights among all classes of his countrymen; but with the petitioners he drew a distinction between civil rights, and in substance making a new Church Endowment and Establishment. He thought that the course taken by Her Majesty's Government in this matter was most imprudent and censurable.

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