MAYNOOTH COLLEGE (IRELAND) BILL—ADJOURNED DEBATE.

HL Deb 03 June 1845 vol 80 cc1298-374

Order of the Day for resuming the Adjourned Debate, read. Debate accordingly.

The Earl of Hardwicke

said, that in addressing the House on the question then under discussion, he would abstain from making any remark on the existing agitation in Ireland, except so far as regarded the evil tendency which that unhappy agitation on political subjects had to render it difficult to carry into effect the good intentions of the Government of ameliorating the condition of Her Majesty's subjects in Ireland, from the circumstance that the agitation itself rendered a great number of the people of this country disinclined to adopt measures of kindness and amelioration in respect of Ireland. The present course which the Government was pursuing, would have been more easy if the agitators in that country had been disposed to abstain from any active denunciations of the views of the Government. In the course of the discussion of last night, he had been struck with the very narrow limits to which the debate appeared to have been confined, having extended itself no further—so to speak— than the walls of the College of Maynooth; the latter part of the discussion in particular having reference only to the religious feelings and opinions of its inmates. He considered the measure now under the consideration of the House as one of those great steps which, during the last half century, they had gradually been adopting for the amelioration of the Roman Catholics of Ireland. Step by step had that movement gone steadily forward, in spite of every difficulty and opposition, until they had at last very nearly arrived at the point which had not only brought the Catholics of Ireland, but the religion which they professed, to an entire equality with the Protestants and the Protestantism of the Empire. In pursuance of this policy, the present measure had been proposed. Let their Lordships look to what was the state of the College of Maynooth. They had evidence to show that the condition of that institution was such as to render it insufficient for the purposes which it was intended to accomplish. They had had the history of its rise and progress from the noble Duke who last night opened the debate. They had seen how it had become, by the lapse of time, and the increase of population, insufficient to carry out the intentions of its founders, and how the necessity of doing something for it had arrived. Some remedy must, therefore, he adopted, and three courses were open for the Government to pursue: they might leave the institution as it was; they might abolish it entirely; or they might adopt that course which they had actually chosen. The two former alternatives, it was quite impossible that under present circumstances they could have adopted. No course was, therefore, practically left, but that which would carry out the intentions of the original founders—the Protestant Parliament of Ireland, and place the College in a good and efficient state for all the purposes for which it was originally established. So far no new principle was introduced by the Bill; and in this respect, therefore, it could not have raised feelings of alarm in the minds of the people of this country. But the deep feeling and great excitement which it had occasioned must have been the effect of the new principle which the Bill did undoubtedly introduce into Ireland, namely, the endowment and incorporation of the Irish Roman Catholic Church. The right rev. Prelate (the Bishop of London) who had last night addressed the House, objected to the institution of Maynooth upon the ground that the students were principally taken from the very lowest classes of society. Of this assertion, however, no proof was advanced, and he was by no means certain that it was quite correct. Indeed, they had evidence to prove that, in order to gain admission to the lowest class of Maynooth, applicants were required to undergo the test of an examination in various branches of the classics—the acquisition of which would involve the necessity of a somewhat expensive previous education. Passing from this point, however, to the more important part of the Bill, which introduced a new principle into the policy we had so long pursued towards the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland, it was well known and understood, particularly in this country, where the endowment of our own Church had brought about such benefits, that endowments were essentially important to the advancement of religion and the well-being of society at large. What was the state of that religion which they were about to endow? Could they carry out the principle of eradicating and abolishing it altogether? Had they not up to the present time not only tolerated but given it power and wealth, and very recently taken a much greater step than that for the endowment of the College of Maynooth, namely, the sanctioning last year the endowment of private property in connexion with the Roman Catholic Church? The principle of joint endowment was adopted in the Mauritius, Newfoundland, Malta, Canada, Trinidad, St. Lucia, and Gibraltar; but it was one which Was perfectly novel in Ireland, and he must say that he was perfectly ready and willing to see that principle, and others akin to it, carried out to their fullest extent, and that he entertained no apprehension of the safety of the Protestant Church being endangered by the experiment. In all the evidence that had been taken on the subject, no instance had been shown in which the Roman Catholic Church had evinced any desire to take to itself any portion of that which belonged to the Established Church, or any unwillingness to have sufficient power exercised over it by the State. He contended for the payment of the Catholic clergy by the State; and he conceived that such a course would ensure two great and desirable objects—the elevation of the character of the priest, and the removal of a burden from the shoulders of the peasant—objects, the accomplishment of which would do more for the social condition of Ireland, and more tend to promote its peace and prosperity, than would that of almost any others. He believed that the endowment of what were called "Antagonist" Churches, so far from injuring, would tend much to the support of the Protestant Church of Ireland. The endowment of the Church of 6,000,000 of the Irish people could not but have a beneficial effect upon the Roman Catholic clergy, who would thus be enabled to perform their sacred duties free from those influences which now affected them; and would tend to relieve a great mass of suffering. As to the opinion that the property of the Irish Church Establishment was coveted by the Irish Catholics, they had every ground for believing that that opinion was fallacious. Dr. Doyle had distinctly declared that there was no desire on the part of the Roman Catholics of Ireland to obtain the temporal possessions of the Protestant Established Church; and Mr. O'Connell, although he had spoken in favour of attaching the Catholic clergy to the State by a golden link, had denounced the idea that there was any intention or wish on their part to deprive the Protestant Church of its revenues. He knew that a different opinion as to the endowment of the clergy now prevailed; but although it might be said that the Roman Catholics of Ireland would not accept of any State endowment for their clergy, he thought the acceptance of the endowment offered to them by the present measure, was a proof sufficient that the well-thinking classes of that community would be disposed to look with gratitude to any fair offer of that description that might be made to them. The source from which that endowment should be paid was another question. There might be circumstances connected with the Protestant Church of Ireland, which might make it matter for grave consideration whether it would not in fact strengthen that Church to abstract a portion of its revenues, not to the uses of the State, but to the uses of religion. Was it true that there were 151 parishes in Ireland in which there was not a single Protestant? He did not know for a fact that it was so—but he asked the question—was it so? If that were really the case, it was indeed a monstrous state of things. Was it true that there was a revenue of 58,000l. a year paid to the Protestant Church in 151 parishes in Ireland, in which there was not a single Protestant? He said again that he did not know whether this was the case or not, but he asked the question—was it so? And if so, then he would repeat it was indeed a monstrous state of things, and it was in no degree matter of astonishment that the minds of men, in a highly educated state, beholding such a picture, should feel that the time was come when, for the sake of religion—for he sake of public security—for the sake of placing the Protestant Church in a high and strong position—that that state of things, if it did exist, should exist no longer. These were his own opinions, formed upon his own judgment, and entirely unconnected with any one with whom he had had communication on this subject. They were opinions that had arisen in his mind, from an anxious but calm consideration of the present state and condition of Ireland, and of the aspect which it bore to him, viewing it, as he did, from a distance. They were opinions that had arisen in his mind from seeing the great advancement which Ireland was daily making, in spite of all that was opposed to it, and from an entire conviction that no settlement of affairs in that country would be perfect until all those points were placed upon such a footing as would enable, not the Irish people only, but the people of England, to look with satisfaction upon the state of things in Ireland. The proposition of two antagonist Churches existing together in perfect amity, and with entire security to the Protestant Church, was not new. They had the spectacle of two such Churches existing together in perfect amity and contentment in more than one country, and they saw them working together side by side in their respective missions, and both conducing to the advancement and interests of true religion. In Austria, where the Established Church was Roman Catholic, they found Protestants admitted to perfect equality, and to all employments, civil as well as military. In Bavaria, there were three religions existing in amity together—the Roman Catholic, the Calvinist, and the Lutheran, all being on terms of perfect equality, and all having the same rights. In France, the same burying grounds were common to both religions; and in the kingdoms of Saxony, Holland, and Hanover, they found Roman Catholic and Protestant existing together on terms of equality and amity, not only without injury to the religion of either, but to the advantage of both. And it was a monstrous state of things to exhibit a spectacle unlike anything that was to be found elsewhere in the whole world. In looking at the present state of Ireland, it was impossible to cast out of considera- tion the rapid growth of the power of the Irish Roman Catholics. Parliament had placed them upon an equality with their Protestant fellow subjects; they had given them the power, and they had obtained wealth and influence; they had placed them in a position in the social scale equal to their own; and yet they refused the elementary support to that Church which, under a proper state of things, might be expected to exercise a useful and powerful influence in the good government of that portion of the community. In what he was now saying, he wished not to be understood as intending to give any sanction to the Roman Catholic religion. He was, he hoped, as sincere a Protestant as any noble Lord in the House. But in his mind, if he were to enter into an inquiry, as proposed, as to the state of the Roman Catholic religion as taught at Maynooth, into the books read by the students, and the nature of the spiritual instruction given, it would be a proof that he desired to interfere with the spiritual affairs of that establishment; and though he might find nothing in that spiritual instruction which was not customary to the Roman Catholic Church, which (he hoped he might say without offence) he abhorred, still he should find nothing that would not be in his mind, as a Protestant, pernicious in itself, and therefore it was that he would not by inquiry be supposed to give any personal authority or approval of what was there taught. At the same time he did not see that it was at all inconsistent with his view that he should desire to raise the standard of education there given to those who were to be the spiritual teachers of the Irish people. A noble Friend of his, not now in his place, had on the previous evening attempted to connect the Irish priests educated at Maynooth with the crimes and outrages which had unfortunately prevailed to so great an extent in Ireland. Now, he had looked into the evidence taken before the House of Lords in 1839, and he found that Colonel Kennedy traced the existence of crime in Ireland to religious differences only so far as religious differences affected the social state of that country; and Major Warburton, after speaking of the great influence the Irish priests had over their flocks, went on to say, that they had used that influence to maintain the peace of the country, and had on several occasions aided the constabulary force when it was called upon to act. Another witness, Mr. J. H. Hamilton, had stated that the priests were opposed to ribbonism, and mentioned instan- ces in which they had actually given information against men who were implicated in the ribbon conspiracy, and had denounced that conspiracy from the altar. The same witness also added that he had never known an instance of a priest sanctioning the ribbon combination. The result of the evidence taken before their Lordships' Committee was far from showing that the murders and crimes committed in Ireland had their source (as his noble Friend had inferred), or were supported in any way by the Catholic priest. In fact, the whole tenor of that evidence led to a directly opposite conclusion; for it was proved that they gave, to the best of their power, their assistance to the Government in preserving the peace. He hailed the step now taken as one of great and vital importance, and he hoped he should see those whom he now addressed live to carry out those measures which he believed to be necessary to a final and satisfactory settlement of those questions which now agitated Ireland, the result of which settlement, he was convinced, would be to establish the security of this great Empire.

The Earl of Carnarvon

said: My noble Friend (Earl Hardwicke) has brought before your Lordships the state of our Colonial endowments, with reference to the support of the Roman Catholic priesthood; that system of Colonial arrangement which maintains in harmony those internal relations upon which the internal peace of States so much depends. But my right rev. Friend (the Bishop of London) who has addressed your Lordships with great ability in opposition to this measure, has argued that our Colonial arrangements are justified by considerations wholly inapplicable to the Bill before us. He tells us, my Lords, that in many of those Colonial possessions we are bound by solemn treaties, by treaties of capitulation, to support the Roman Catholic priesthood. It may be so, my Lords; but I tell this House that interests, however great, are not to be weighed in the balance with national morality; if we are really bound by solemn engagements to the maintenance of a sinful system, there is but one course which a great and moral country should pursue. Let us not violate our treaties, but let us abandon our interest in those possessions; let us give up Canada, let us give up Malta, let us give up the Mauritius, let us make any sacrifice of national advantage, but be not, my Lords, any longer parties to the continued burden of great national guilt. Is my right rev. Friend prepared to advocate this policy, is he prepared to push his principles to this their only consistent end? Do not, I implore you, adopt one policy towards possessions which from political circumstances you must treat with consideration, and another, towards a country more at your mercy and control, and which should be bound by still nearer and dearer ties to every British heart. Do not, my Lords, deny to Ireland what you dared not refuse to Canada. Let it not be said that a sense of interest could warp the honest inflexibility of your principle of opposition to this measure—that honesty which, in my humble opinion, is its only real value. But the course which my noble Friends require your Lordships to pursue, would involve you in the most glaring inconsistency, not only with your Colonial policy, but with the arrangements which you have introduced into Ireland itself. You have sanctioned—nay, you have compelled the appointment of Roman Catholic chaplains in Irish gaols and workhouses; you have conferred upon them ample salaries, and yet you now maintain that the priests inculcate great and deadly error. Why, then, do my noble Friends recoil from the effect of their own principles? Why do they refrain a single hour from pressing upon the Legislature a repeal of these unholy arrangements? But they do not, and they will not adopt this course, and I will tell them why. Because, whatever may be their theoretical opinion, they have not practically the courage, or rather the harshness to say to the poor misguided being, perhaps under sentence of death, "You shall have no religious instruction in this most awful period of your life, when your last sands are running out, and you are about to appear before your offended God; you shall have no religious consolation, unless you will accept it in that new and unaccustomed form in which I will give it you." My noble Friends, therefore, cannot act up to the principles they profess; they may be zealous, but they cannot be consistent champions of the cause they maintain. A right rev. Prelate, who addressed this House in a very different tone and temper from that which characterized the speech of my other right rev. Friend, dwelt in terms, I think, of most unbecoming harshness on the falsehood of the Roman Catholic religion. But upon what authority does that right rev. Prelate so dogmatically lay down what is religious truth, and what is vital religious error? Shall the line of demarcation drawn by the right rev. Prelate, be the only line accepted? It rarely falls to the lot of any man to inculcate truth pure and unmixed with error. I am sure it does not fall to the lot of that right rev. Prelate. I believe that the Church of England differs in its general spirit more widely from the Church of Scotland than from that of Rome; and yet we endow the Church of Scotland without a hesitating scruple, while with a strange inconsistency we contend against any additional relief being extended to the impoverished ministers of the Roman Catholic faith. Many men, my Lords, in the bosom of the Church of England, able and devoted men, are of opinion that the deep Calvinism of the Presbyterian Church is more prejudicial in its tendencies on human conduct, and more fraught with perilous misconception, than any tenet of the Church of Rome. Does the right rev. Prelate, who pronounces so hardily on what is religious truth and what religious falsehood, remember that in this very city in which we are now debating, the Tractarian and the man of the Evangelical school, hold on certain points, and on points of no slight importance, opinions diametrically opposed to each other? Absolute truth, my Lords, cannot dwell with both parties; truth unmixed with error probably dwells with none. Yet shall we upon this account entirely proscribe that mode of religious instruction which does not flow in the one particular channel to which we may have particularly pinned our faith? A noble Friend who spoke early in the debate, was of opinion that Roman Catholic doctrines were fraught with vital mischief in a spiritual point of view; and this I know is the predominant motive of his honest opposition. If I held this doctrine, I would, however, be more consistent than my noble Friend. I would not only oppose this Bill, but I would weary the Legislature with prayers for a total cessation of any grant. The sin, if sin there be, lies not in increasing the grant to 22,000l., but in giving any grant at all. My noble Friend has told us that the Protestant spirit has been roused throughout the length and breadth of the land, by the promulgation of this Anti-Protestant principle. But, my Lords, this is no question of principle; it is a mere question of detail, a mere matter of amount of money. The Protestant thunders have slept over the impious principle of voting money for the support of the Roman Catholic priesthood at Maynooth, for the last fifty years. It were easy, my Lords, to rest my vote on a thousand reasons, based upon expediency, but I will not assign mo- tives. which only partially affect me. I vote in favour of this Bill, because I believe the Roman Catholic to be a true though not altogether a pure branch of the Christian faith; and because I believe that the good which it inculcates is out of all proportion to the error with which it is imbued. I believe, my Lords, that it contains the elements of saving truth; and having come to this conclusion, my course is clear before me—no doubt hangs heavy on my mind—I feel it my bounden duty to assist, as far my humble vote can go, in improving the character of that religious instruction which we cannot alter, and which, inferior in my humble opinion to that in which I have been born and bred, and in which I hope to die, still animates its votaries with high religious hope, imposes upon their passions restraints superior to those of the law, and will, I firmly believe, extend salvation — why should I scruple to use the word in a British House of Peers?—will extend salvation to the people who receive it with earnest and devoted hearts. If the noble Lord could establish—as he has vainly striven to do—that the question lies between the extension of the Roman Catholic faith and the increase of ours, between the Church of England and the Church of Rome, between what he might consider truth nearly unalloyed on one side, and truth clouded on the other, I could understand his feelings; but practically the question is between imperfect and inadequate Roman Catholic instruction on the one hand, and Roman Catholic instruction in a more perfect and sufficient shape on the other; between that which is good and that which is comparatively bad of the same quality and kind. But a noble Duke has argued that a Roman Catholic priest is more prejudicial to the community when highly educated, than when ignorant and unenlightened. With great respect for the noble Duke, this notion is absolutely abhorrent to my mind; for it proceeds upon the narrow and ungenerous, and, I think, utterly mistaken assumption, that a Roman Catholic priest can teach no good. I have lived in early life in countries where the doctrines of the Roman Catholic Church exercised an almost unlimited ascendancy over the public mind; and even in those countries where it is supposed to exist in the most dangerous plenitude of its authority, I cannot think that it deserves the harsh expressions with which it has been assailed to-night, or that it is entirely without that blessing from above, which the Protestant Dissenters of this country—judging by their petitions— would exclusively arrogate to themselves. But serious charges have been brought in this debate against the priesthood of Maynooth. The noble Earl who moved the Amendment overflows with kindly feeling towards the Roman Catholic peasantry of his native country, but seems by his language to forget that the priest is also a fellow countryman and an Irishman, and in those capacities entitled to some portion of his sympathy. I do not believe in the deep-seated disaffection to the British Crown among the clergy of Maynooth, which has been so much dwelt upon by the noble Lord. The Roman Catholic priesthood have been true to this country in all great emergencies. When the Presbyterians fanned the flame of rebellion, the Irish priesthood, as a body, stood fast by the Crown of England. When Napoleon Bonaparte made splendid offers to that body, those offers they nobly rejected. When our Empire was shaken to its base by the mutiny of the Nore, the priests were mainly instrumental in restoring the deluded Roman Catholic sailors to their lost allegiance; and I have been informed by a noble Lord—once high in Mr. Pitt's confidence, and with whom some of the noble Lords whom I now see were well acquainted—that Mr. Pitt acknowledged to the last day of his life the important services performed upon that occasion by the Roman Catholic priests. Let it also be remembered, that during the late memorable struggle in Canada, the Colonial priesthood forsook their flocks when they abandoned British interests, and adhered with undeviating fidelity to the cause of the mother country and the Crown. But if, my Lords, the noble opponents of this Bill have argued correctly in maintaining that the priests in Ireland have become disaffected, heart and soul, to British connexion, to what shall we attribute this change in their feeling? Why, my Lords, to the policy which has kept them so long in a state of strange anomaly and undeserved inferiority; there they are influential, but poor in a land where great revenues once belonged to their Church, idolized by the people, but too often looked down upon by the great, as this debate has unhappily shown. The very indifference manifested for their well-being, and even respectability, in the desolate and poverty-stricken establishment of Maynooth, might well convert the most ardent loyalty into coolness and utter alienation. Be just to them, my Lords, and they will be true to you. But a noble Duke has brought an accusa- tion against the priesthood of a still graver character. The noble Earl has accused them of exciting political discontent, and keeping up political agitation; but the noble Duke has dwelt upon the injurious consequences arising from the immoral nature of the doctrines they propound. If we are severe, let us at least be just! I ask those noble Lords who are best acquainted with the internal condition of Ireland, whether private immorality has been the practical result of those doctrines? I do not feel by any means so sure that the calumniated priesthood of Ireland have failed in the greatest of their great requirements. I believe there is no country where reverence in religious matters is more widely diffused, where morals are more pure, or where among the population generally, the marriage vow is more hallowed than in Ireland. When the noble Duke attributed the agrarian outrages and general insubordination to the law which has so much afflicted that unhappy country to the direct influence—and if I understood him rightly to the positive connivance—of the priests, I was filled, indeed, with almost irrepressible astonishment. I have lived much in Roman Catholic countries, and I never heard such conduct attributed to the priesthood, even by the most determined enemies of their faith. The noble Duke has studied the history of Ireland to little purpose, if he can find no other and more satisfactory cause for that tendency to local and agrarian crime which has so long and so fatally characterized her population. Those evils are remote in their causes, but their effects remain, and cannot be eradicated in a day by the better principles and better governments of our time. Those outrages which the noble Duke imputes to the influence of the Roman Catholic priesthood originated, I grieve to say, in the guilty policy of our Protestant forefathers; and was the indirect result of that withering penal code which convicted the Governments that administered it of injustice—which deprived the law of all respect—which reared the subject in an habitual and almost hereditary hatred of the governing powers of the land, and perverted all the duties and poisoned all the social relations of life. The persecution of the Marian reign scarcely excites in my mind so much shame and sorrow as that persecution of a different but more systematic and cold-blooded character—that persecution I more inexcusable, because, carried on in a far more instructed age—that persecution enforced after the Revolution of 1688, by statesmen tolerant in England, and supposed to be attached to civil liberty but who rivetted on unhappy Ireland a code of laws which, in point of deliberate perversion of every sound and Christian feeling, is a wondrous proof of the extent to which party apprehensions and party passions can carry the minds of men not wholly indisposed to good. My Lords, it is time that a just and equal policy should blot out the bitter wrongs of centuries. I never thought that I should have heard again the old arguments touching the infallibility of Popes, and their power of deposing princes, renewed in this House; but the ghost has been again evoked. But do noble Lords forget that it was distinctly stated by the great Roman Catholic authorities, in their examination before the Commissioners appointed to inquire into the doctrines held at Maynooth, that papal infallibility applies only to what are termed dictates of essential morals, or to moral points of a general and immutable character: the papal power of deposing princes they utterly repudiated as inconsistent with their temporal allegiance to the Sovereign, and they supported this view of the case by the concurring opinion of all the late Italian canonists? Again, the doctrine which restricts salvation to members of the Roman Catholic Church was qualified, to a great extent, according to their statements, by exceptions and limitations which greatly modify that general proposition. But if the harshest view of the case is to be assumed from the letter of particular declarations, and not from their general spirit, might not charges of a very intolerant character be brought against the Church of England, the most tolerant Establishment in the world? I was reading only yesterday a homily in which positions are laid down, excluding from the pale of salvation every Roman Catholic as an idolater. Again, my Lords, the Athanasian creed, which is incorporated in our service—and which I must be understood as naming with respect—might be objected to as uncharitably involving the utter condemnation of every Arian, and indeed of every man entertaining opinions in the slightest degree at variance with those of the Established Church, touching the procession of persons and the equality of the Godhead. You allow our Church to modify the apparent harshness of particular positions by Christian explanations, and by the general tone and temper of our faith: why do you not mete out the same measure of justice to the Roman Catholics? Why will you not permit them to place their own construction on their bulls, and councils, and decrees? I do not, for a moment, maintain that their own construction would please your Lordships; still it would most materially vary from that construction which noble Lords, acquainted only with their faith from the dislike in which they hold it, are determined that those bulls and councils and decrees shall bear. You assume that the Roman Catholics entertain the most monstrous errors of opinion, and you call for an inquiry. The inquiry is granted, and your charges are disproved; but in a short time the accusations are renewed with all their former vehemence; and when you are reminded that the refutation was recent and complete, you turn round and say, "Some centuries ago, the Roman Catholics held, as a dogma, that papal authority was infallible in matters temporal and spiritual, and that the papal fiat could depose the princes of the earth. The Catholic religion never changes; and therefore, as such was your opinion formerly, such must your opinion still remain, however much you may deny it; such was formerly, such, therefore, is, and such shall be, your opinion to the end of time." My Lords, it is impossible to contend against such a shifting battery as this. It has been observed by a noble Lord, that even if the first grant to Maynooth was justified by the state of Ireland in 1795, the conversion of that grant into a permanent endowment is not required by the circumstances of the present day; but I contend, that if the policy upon which the original grant was based was justifiable in 1795, that policy is far more necessary, and, indeed, even requires extension, in the present day. Since the College of Maynooth was established, the Roman Catholic population has increased in Ireland from three to six millions; and in point of intelligence, independence, and vigour of thought and action, the advance has been still greater. Look at the state of the Irish Bar—look at the state of the Irish Bench. Look at the House of Commons, where some of its most gifted Members are of that persuasion. Look nearer home, my Lords, where the Roman Catholic nobles—no longer, thank God! excluded from their birthright in this House—participate, on equal terms and with equal activity, in the transaction of the general business of the country. Some years ago, you gave their Commons representation in the Legislature, and consequently, solid power; last year, you conferred upon their Prelates precedence and rank. Can you, then, suppose that when the whole of Roman Catholic Ireland is thus on the advance, it is a wise or even a practicable policy to keep the working Roman Catholic clergy of that country, in the midst of this great onward movement, degraded and depressed? Do what you will, those priests whom you so much depreciate are, and must remain, the spiritual guides of millions of your countrymen. The practical question for you, my Lords, to consider, is this—will you conciliate, or will you alienate, men who can wield such formidable influence for good or for evil? Will you have them fanatic, or well instructed—with you, or against you—attached, or hostile, to British connexion? The noble Earl has told us that this attempt to conciliate the priesthood will not succeed; and in support of this position, he has adverted to the recent language of a Roman Catholic dignitary with reference to the present measure. But I have yet to learn that because one man makes use of injudicious language, a whole nation will therefore be ungrateful. It has been observed, that this measure is calculated to endanger the Protestant Church and faith in Ireland. I confess, my Lords, that if our faith could be shaken by an act of charity, by the mere breath of toleration and love, it would be valueless in my eyes; because I should then be well convinced that it had no inherent strength—that it was not of God, but of man. But though our faith may rest on a rock, the Protestant Church of Ireland may stand on looser foundations. I do not mean to say this measure will directly advance the cause of Protestantism. I do not think it will; but this I say, that if, with the growing numbers, growing intelligence, and growing power of the Roman Catholic world in Ireland, we refuse them that religious instruction which is nearest and dearest to their hearts, we shall accumulate a mass of jealousy and hatred against that Protestant Church Establishment, which, strongly as we are bound to defend it, is still, I will not say the weakest, but the most anomalous, and consequently, in the unhappy temper of the present times, the most endangered part of our Irish polity. But it has been argued that this measure is likely to impede the work of Protestant Reformation in Ireland. I confess, my Lords, that I regard as visionary the hope of inducing any large portion of the Roman Catholic population of Ireland to renounce their ancient faith. If this object could ever be even partially effected, it could only be effected by conciliation and generations of kindly rule; it cannot, I am sure, be effected by harshly telling the people of Ireland, that we their masters consider it our bounden duty to resist every measure which will confer a better character on that only kind of spiritual instruction which they can conscientiously accept, and that we will stint them as far as we can in the very amount of that spiritual instruction to which the poor Irishman clings as his best support in his painful path through life, and which sheds peace—and, I believe, not a false peace—upon his bed of death. Shall we then, my Lords, adopt such an ungenerous policy in the stern, though visionary, hope of ultimately forcing a people into the adoption of a faith from which they dissent? If the British Parliament should actually adopt these views, however much I might regret a Repeal of the Union as seriously prejudicial to the interests of both countries, I should yet feel that a Legislature which considered itself bound to oppose, on religious principle, the religious feelings of millions of their countrymen, however well adapted to Protestant England, had become unfitted by their strong, though honest, prepossessions to govern Roman Catholic Ireland, and could no longer legislate with advantage for a people with whom they could not sympathize. But, how can a line of demarcation be drawn? it has been asked. On what principle can we fairly establish a difference in meting out the public money between the Roman Catholics of Ireland and the Free Church of Scotland, and others who dissent from the Established Church? On every plea, I say, my Lords, which expediency recommends—on every ground which justice sanctions. In Ireland, the people have not seceded from their Church, but their Church has been torn from them; and at the present time not a minority, not an equality in point of numbers, but an overwhelming majority of the nation, remain profoundly attached to their early faith. But the noble Earl who moved the Amendment has told us that this measure was not required by any party, and will produce no practical good. So thought not those who are best acquainted with the practical grievances of Roman Catholic Ireland—the Roman Catholic prelates of that country. When I read their statement—that memorial to which my noble Friend (Earl St. Germans) has adverted in his able speech, when I became acquainted with the miserable details of poverty which attach to the institution of Maynooth—when I found that two or three students were compelled to sleep in the same bed from want of accommodation; that actually term time was frequently broken up from the want of funds to purchase the provisions necessary to keep body and soul together—when I saw that studies intended to elevate the character and improve the minds of the priesthood were in consequence suspended, and in this manner the object of the institution practically defeated — and more than all, when I learnt that many of the parishes in Ireland remain without pastors in consequence of the defective arrangements resulting from this miserable state of penury, I sickened at the notion that such a condition of things could have been so long tolerated by this really generous country, and I warmly concurred in the intended measure of the Government. This country may be for a season deluded by its prejudices; but, I believe, that it will ultimately awake to a sense of the propriety of this measure. Public opinion is often, I think, in England, mistaken in the direction it first takes on public questions, but it is generally fair and right in the long run. But the noble Earl who moved the Amendment spoke of fear. He spoke of the Government as being acted upon by fear in bringing forward this measure. The Ministers of the Crown can defend themselves; and will, I doubt not, reply to this observation of the noble Earl; but I would distinctly ask him to what he refers? Fear of whom, and fear of what? Does the noble Earl advert to distant clouds in the western hemisphere? If so, I should have thought that any apprehension in that quarter would have been tranquillized by the statement of Her Majesty's Ministers on a recent occasion, that while this country would continue to treat the rights of other States with almost religious exactness, it would still maintain inviolate, at all costs and at every hazard, the honour and interests of Great Britain. Does the noble Earl advert to an apprehension on the part of the Government of some ebullition of political discontent in Ireland? Never was such an apprehension less likely to operate on the minds of men. The majesty of the law had just been vindicated; those monster meetings which carried terror in to the hearts of the Protestant population had just been suppressed; law may indeed have technically faded in one memorable instance, but the spirit of law was yet triumphant! A happy conjuncture of circumstances rendered the time pecuï liarly well chosen for the adoption of this measure. We have, at the present moment, as Lord Lieutenant of Ireland Lord Heytesbury, a man of great conciliation and great sagacity, as those are well aware who have lived in countries where he served his Sovereign with undeviating fidelity, and with that talent and address which were never wanting even under circumstances of almost unexampled difficulty. Never was a wiser or more fortunate appointment made. The noble Earl spoke of idolatry as connected with the Roman Catholic religion; and the words idolatry and idolaters flowed very glibly from the lips of one right rev. Prelate. These, my Lords, are hard words, particularly when uttered in the presence of noble individuals who must acutely feel these aspersions on their faith. But I do not object to this language only because it is unnecessarily uncourteous, but because I think it incorrect and unjust. I cannot admit that the charge of idolatry attaches to educated and enlightened Roman Catholics. That right rev. Prelate has revelled in the still vaguer charges of Roman Catholic bigotry and superstition; but let me ask him, is there no bigotry but the bigotry of the Roman Catholics? Is there no bigotry in Protestant legislators now? Was there no Protestant bigotry in the days of Titus Oates, when this nation lent a ready ear to accusations which doomed the high, the noble, and the innocent to a shameful and unmerited death? Was there no bigotry in that Protestant population which, almost in our recollection, filled London with fire and terror, and was led to the work of devastation by the scion of one of the noblest houses of Protestant England? The fierce, intractable, undisciplined spirit which grew up with the Reformation, and was the evil genius of a movement intrinsically good, survives in the intolerant petitions which crowd the Table of your Lordships' House to-day. It was my lot, my Lords, in early life, during the Spanish civil wars, to mingle with the rude uneducated soldiers of the faith—children of the Inquisition as they were called—and with the priesthood who directed them; but yet I never heard, even in moments of the fiercest excitement, expressions half so uncharitable to our faith as those which, week after week, have been lavished upon the Roman Catholics by the respectable and enlightened Protestant Dissenters of my country. I cannot, my Lords, contrast their intemperate language at many of our public meetings with the calm, forgiving, and dignified tone, adopted by the Roman Catholic gentry on a recent occasion, without feelings of mingled shame and sorrow. I do not intend to speak disrespectfully of any class of my countrymen in using these expressions; but I do sincerely regret the course pursued upon this occasion by many dissenting bodies in this country. Thank God! the clergy of the Established Church have, generally speaking, remained during the whole of this crisis tolerant and tranquil. I have trespassed for a long time upon the attention of the House. I have only one or two concluding observations to make. The great movement which took place in county Clare, as far back as 1828, and which announced even before the Ministerial fiat had gone forth, that exclusive power had already passed away from a respectable and once most influential party, and that the reign of Roman Catholic disabilities were virtually at an end, were not to my mind more full of prophecy, than are the events which have occurred in Ireland within the last two or three years—events which convince me that we can no longer stand with safety on the beaten track. The Government has been anxious, I believe, to promote the interests of Ireland; but this anxiety has not sufficed to produce political calm. I am sure that no Government can henceforth calculate upon a single hour of settled peace in Ireland—a single hour of assured safety for the Protestant institutions of that country, unless we confer practical remedies where practical grievances are felt, unless we mitigate by the consideration of our general treatment, a sense in the Irish mind of those anomalies in our institutions, the existence of which we may regret, but which in my humble opinion it would be equally wrong and perilous to assail; unless, in short, we walk hand in hand, at least as far as we safely can, not only with Irish interests, but with Irish sympathies. My Lords, I am no eulogist of the present or of any Government; there is indeed a portion of their Irish policy, a measure just introduced into Parliament from which I totally dissent, and to which I look with the utmost apprehension; still with reference to the Bill before us, I feel that a debt of gratitude is due to Her Majesty's Ministers. It is easy to bring forward measures fraught with popular inducements; but to propose a measure which will shake their popularity in the country, expose them to the misconstruction of enemies, and to that which is per- haps more painful, the alienation of former friends, this is an ordeal which requires the exercise of a courageous honesty; and nothing, I conceive, can have induced the Ministers of the Crown to adopt a policy so detrimental to their immediate popularity, but an honourable determination to prefer the real and permanent interests of the country to prejudices however respectable, and to the clamour—I trust only the fleeting clamour—of the day.

The Earl of Winchilsea

said, since he had had the honour of a seat in that House, he had never risen to address their Lordships under the influence of more painful feelings than he did upon the present occasion; for this night he found himself diametrically opposed to the leaders of that political party with which he had been so long connected, and to whom, entertaining the most sanguine expectations from their declarations, he had, when they took office, given his unqualified support. He found himself opposed to them on public grounds; and if this was a most painful situation for him to be placed in, how much more painful was it when he knew he should also be separated from many noble Lords, for whom he entertained the deepest respect, and with whom he had been connected by the strongest ties of human friendship! He found himself opposed to them on a question deeply affecting the great interests of this country; and he hoped and trusted, and fervently prayed, that the result of this night might not produce those heartfelt regrets, which he could testify some noble Friends of his had carried with them to the grave, who had supported, in 1829, that measure which had shivered their party to the winds, as this would do. The predictions respecting that measure had been verified to the letter; he was against it then, and he was of that opinion now; and fervently did he hope that, when noble Lords looked back hereafter to the votes they would give that night, they would be saved from that remorse, bitter indeed, which some noble Lords would have given the world to be free from. This was a question, which from the bottom of his heart and soul he believed, if their Lordships gave their assent to it, would prove in the result an act of the greatest national suicide ever committed by any civilized country since the world had been called into existence. It was the question of the endowment of a Roman Catholic Church in a Protestant country for the first time since any nation had cast off the yoke of Rome. It was a question of great and vital importance to this great Protestant country; and he only stated this—that if he thought that this concession of principle would tend to the pacification of Ireland, he would endeavour to bring his mind, if he could, to support this measure. But it was impossible—if we, as a Protestant country, acted upon the principles which our ancestors professed, who, acting on sound wisdom and sounder religious principles, placed us upon the rock of Protestantism—that we could, as Protestants, abandon that position. Some noble Lords might sincerely ask, "What is Protestantism?" He would answer, not that "ideal thing" that it had been described by a late Member of Her Majesty's Government, from whom England had expected great things, but who had supported this measure by a speech so mystified by casuistry and Jesuitical reasoning, that he, after most frequent and earnest perusal of it, had come to the conclusion, that that right hon. Gentleman must have been educated at some seminary of Jesuits. He would tell what Protestantism was. It was our national Christianity; it was the religion of the Bible; it was the religion which our Lord and Saviour bequeathed to us as the first and most invaluable of all earthly possessions, the most sacred of all religious trusts. Then it had been asked, "What has Protestantism done for England?" It was, in the first place, the foundation of our long-cherished civil and religious liberty. Secondly, it was the foundation of that openness and honesty of character, and of those moral virtues, which had elevated our nation above every other on the face of the globe, which had proved the foundation of English greatness, and of our unparalleled Empire. England's greatness had proved the truth of God's unerring word, that nations which upheld his honour and glory he will uphold. He had on another occasion drawn their Lordships' attention to the strong distinction between the Members of the Gallican Church and those of the Ultramontane Church; and he had said he could with safety make concessions to those members of the Church of Rome by whom he saw himself surrounded, and for whom he did not feel anything but Christian kindness. He protested, however, against this measure, in the name of the great body of the Protestants of this country, amongst whom it had excited stronger and more irritated feelings than had ever been shown at any period of our history. Their Table groaned under the petitions of the people against this Bill. In the other House of Parliament the number of petitions received had been 11,000, and they had been signed by between 1,300,000 and 1,500,000 persons. He protested against the measure, on the ground that it would be an act of national sin against God, to pass a Bill for the endowment of a Church which the majority, at least, of their Lordships had declared that they believed to be idolatrous and superstitious. There were, in fact, three distinct grounds on which he felt bound to protest against this measure. The first was, that it was a national endowment of the Church of Rome. He knew it had been said that it was a mental delusion, or a mere quibble, to treat this Bill as though the proposed alteration in the grant was an alteration in the principle upon which it was made; but, with all humility, he must declare that in his opinion it would be a downright absurdity to consider it in any other light. Another ground on which he opposed the measure was, that it was in direct opposition to the oath which the Sovereign took when she ascended the Throne of this great Protestant Empire. Although he did not rise with the noble Duke (the Duke of Newcastle) to refer to that subject at the commencement of the discussion, yet he entertained a very strong feeling that before so great a change was proposed to be made in the constitution of the country, the Ministers of the Crown ought, in the first instance, to have obtained the approbation and consent of their Sovereign. The third ground on which he protested against the Bill was, that there were certain opinions and principles inculcated and taught in the College of Maynooth which were antisocial, disloyal, and intolerant. He could not but remark that the grant, when originally made, was not intended to be perpetual. Any one who looked into the Parliamentary documents of 1798, would find that the Government of that day had the greatest difficulty in getting the grant conceded in the Irish Parliament three years after it was first carried. With reference to the tenets taught at Maynooth, he must say, that if in any College in this country he found only the works of authors who held Unitarian doctrines, he would naturally come to the conclusion that that establishment was devoted to the teaching of those particular doctrines. He would not refer at any length to the works used at Maynooth, but there were one or two to which he would shortly advert. Their Lordships would all agree that the welfare and even the existence of society, the security of life and property, the safety of the Throne, depended on the sacredness and inviolability of an oath. If any person took an oath with a mental reservation, he believed there was not a Protestant in the Empire who would not consider him to be guilty of gross perjury. Now Bailly, who was the author of a Maynooth class book, said, at p. 125, vol. ii., that vows and oaths were of equal consideration. In this their Lordships would agree with him. He then went on to say, however, that there existed in the Church a power to dispense with vows and oaths; and that this power was expedient, nay, necessary for the common good of the people; since that which was in the first instance better and more salutary, might become less good and less salutary. He then mentioned, as just causes of dispensing with an oath, the honour of God and the utility of the Church. It had been denied that the College of Maynooth was a Jesuitical establishment. But who was this Bailly, whose work on moral theology was shown by public documents to be a standard class book at Maynooth? He was, it appeared, a French ecclesiastic. For twenty-five years he was Professor of Theology in the College of Dijon; and during the time of Napoleon his works were actually prohibited from being read in seminaries of the Church, because they were tainted with the principles of Ignatius Loyola. If such were the antisocial, disloyal, and intolerant principles in which the priesthood of the Ultramontane Church in Ireland were educated in Maynooth College, and if the same principles were instilled into the breasts of the great body of the Roman Catholic body over whom they had spiritual charge, when they left that College, could their Lordships wonder at the distraction, disloyalty, and disaffection to the Protestant Monarch and the Protestant laws and Government of this country, which had, for a period reaching beyond the memory of man, characterized the great body of Roman Catholic subjects in Ireland? It had been contended that this grant of 30,000l. a year would totally alter the character of the principles inculcated in this College, and that they would become more liberal and enlightened. What security had they, after surrendering all power of inspection and inquiry, that such would be the result? His own belief was, that the present state of things would continue. If the Catholics conscientiously adhered to these opinions, a mere money consideration would surely not induce them to alter them. If he himself held a conscientious opinion, neither 26,000l. nor 100,000l. would be sufficient to effect a change in his mind; and he thought it was precisely so with the Catholics of Ireland. Whilst France was doing all in her power to prevent the education of the people from falling into the hands of the priests, we were, on the other hand, doing everything to put it into their hands. A greater delusion could not fall upon that House, than that under which it might sanction such a measure as this. The noble Earl then quoted extracts from a Catholic gentleman, the author of "Catholicism in Austria," to show that the monks were constantly in the habit of keeping up a foreign correspondence, and that they paid more obedience to their foreign superiors than to those who had the immediate supervision of them. He could not, acting conscientiously with the duty which he owed to his God, support a system of education which inculcated such principles as those which were taught at Maynooth; and it appeared to him to be downright insanity in the Government of this country to propose such a measure as this; for the obnoxious opinions to which he had alluded would continue to be inculeated in the College which they were now preparing to endow. The Government, instead of this, should, as a right rev. Prelate had urged last night, act up to its duty, without fearing for the result. No country which abandoned its duty, and was guilty of a sacrifice of principle, could reasonably expect to escape the punishment which such culpable conduct was certain to entail upon it. He would raise his voice to the very last against this measure, and he would fight it out. Let not the lofty mitre be unfaithful to its high trust; let not right rev. Prelates abandon the sacred duty which they were now called upon to perform; let them not desert the Church, of which they were the honoured heads, in this the hour of its danger and distress. How could they, or any of them, support a measure of this kind without justly forfeiting the respect and esteem of the great body of the Church of this country? He would join with the right rev. Prelate who had last spoken, and say, that rather than see the disgusting spectacle of a State endowment of two Churches, he would raise his voice for a severance of the Established Church from the State; nor would he cease his efforts until he had effected it. This was a bold declaration, and their Lordships might consider it so. Let not the glittering star, or the tempting ribbon, or the highsounding title, cajole or deceive any noble Lord into a favourable vote that night. He feared that many of those who would vote for the Bill would yet carry a feeling of bitter remorse with them to the grave. The question could not rest here. The Protestant feeling of England was so strong that it could not so rest. This was a direct endowment of the Roman Catholic Church. Other measures would follow—were sure to follow. They were to have bit-by-bit legislation, administered in successive doses, as the quack administered his nostrums to conceal the extent to which he had dosed the unconscious and unhappy patient. No outbreak would ensue in Ireland from withholding this measure, but he would not answer for what might be the consequences in England of passing it. He hoped that every noble Lord who agreed with him on this momentous question, would join with him in controlling and regulating that deep and pervading feeling which the proposal of this measure had excited in the Protestant mind of England.

The Marquess of Normanby

said, that to all that the noble Earl had said as to his own strong feeling upon the measure then before their Lordships, he gave the most implicit belief. But before he briefly adverted to some of the remarks of the noble Earl, he must say, that there was nothing in the noble Earl's speech which precluded him from putting this question to their Lordships, how was it that from the noble Earl opposite (the Earl of Roden), who had led the opposition to this measure, down to the noble Earl who had just spoken, not one single person who had spoken on that side of the question had addressed himself to the fact—so clearly, so concisely, and so conclusively alluded to by the noble Duke in moving the second reading—that their Lordships were legislating for six millions of Catholics; for a nation seven-eighths of whose people were Catholics; to which the noble Duke most justly and tersely added, that their Lordships could not avoid, that they, the majority of the Irish poople, would continue Catholics? No one could argue this question in a statesmanlike manner, if he allowed his mind to be swayed from that fact. As to much of what had been stated by the noble Earl, he felt it unnecessary to trouble their Lordships in answer. He paid the greatest respect to the religious feelings with which the noble Earl had addressed their Lordships; but when the noble Earl said that he felt himself obliged to part politically from those to whom he had been attached, he could not but remind him of the very next sentence in his speech, which brought to his recollection that this was not the first time that the noble Earl had been so obliged to separate himself. The noble Earl stated that, in 1829, the party to which he belonged was shivered to atoms. But those entrusted with the conduct of the affairs of this kingdom were obliged to be guided by practical considerations. The noble Earl, therefore, found those with whom he was associated, and who were entrusted with the affairs of this country, under the painful obligation of differing from him on this great and important question. The noble Earl asked what was Protestantism? and seemed afraid that he should meet with some flippant reply. Not so from him. As to what the noble Earl said with regard to the benefits which Protestantism had conferred on this country, with every word which he uttered upon this point, he (the Marquess of Normanby) cordially concurred. More than that, he was prepared to say, that, so far as they could, they should do all in their power, consistently with other obligations, to strengthen that system of religion. He might here allude to the humble part which he himself had taken in protecting those, in a distant dependency of this country, who were endeavouring to spread Protestantism among the negroes in Jamaica. The noble Earl seemed to identify our Colonial Empire with the exclusive maintenance of the Protestant religion. The exigencies of our Colonial Empire might sometimes oblige them to do that which might not always seem strictly accordant with Protestant or Christian principles; and he must remind their Lordships, that in India there existed a religion endowed by the State which was not even Christian. He said the noble Earl's argument completely failed, when he attempted to connect the extent of our Colonial Empire and the magnitude of our dominions with the exclusive maintenance of Protestantism; and, therefore, he said also, that although Protestantism had done well for England, it did not do well for Ireland. And why? Because it had been found impossible, notwithstanding the efforts of three centuries, notwithstanding all the powers of the Legislature, and all the rigour, and sometimes the violence of the Executive, to force it upon the unwilling minds of the people. He, therefore, limited the benefit conferred by Protestantism to those parts of the Empire where it was the religion of the great majority of the people. As to what were called the Ultramontane doctrines of the Roman Catholics as to the Oath of Allegiance—the noble Lord stated it as if it proved that the Ultramontane doctrines formed the creed and practice of Maynooth. This was distinctly denied, and he believed the very reverse to be the truth. The noble Lord then entered into an analysis of oaths and vows, which he considered to be the same thing. Certainly, if the oath were of the same nature as the vow, they were the same; but though there was a power of dispensation for vows made in respect to religious observances, there was a distinct and positive denial that any such dispensing power existed in the case of the Oath of Allegiance. He would beg to read to their Lordships—although he was always unwilling to trouble them with documents—a few words of evidence given on the occasion to which the noble Earl alluded, and from an authority to which he would, no doubt, be ready to defer. What he was going to quote, was stated by the Rev. Matthias Croly, who had been one of the Professors at Maynooth, but had renounced what were called the errors of Popery, and had become a Protestant clergyman. The noble Earl, therefore, would consider this as perfectly unsuspicious testimony. Did you teach that the power of the Pope was confined to spiritual things, and that he had no power in temporal matters?—I forget whether that question was discussed in our course of divinity while I was there. What was your own belief at that time upon that subject?—My belief was, that his power was confined to spirituals. What did you believe at that time with respect to oaths; did you believe that the Pope had the power to absolve you from an oath of allegiance taken to the Crown?—I did not. I took the Oath of Allegiance when I returned to the College of Maynooth a second time; and I declared, when I took that oath, that I did not believe that any power upon earth had any power to absolve me from it. Did you so believe at that time?—I did. Was that the prevailing opinion at that time in the College, so far as you were acquainted with it?—I believe it was. So far, then, from the noble Earl having redeemed his pledge, he thought he (the Marquess of Normanby) had, on his side, confirmed what had been said by a noble Lord (Lord Clifford of Chudleigh) so clearly last night, and which had not been contradicted by the noble Earl. A great deal of prejudice, he knew, had been excited with regard to the class books used at Maynooth. Now, he admitted that some of these books contained passages which he thought it would be better not to put into the hands of the pupils at such a seminary; but let their Lordships recollect there was no proof that the doctrines contained in them were taught, or that these particular parts of the books were submitted to the pupils. In these books, as in books of science, law, and on many other subjects, there might be parts which one would not wish to be exposed to the inspection of very young persons. We must judge of the tree by its fruits. [Cheers from Lord Roden and other Peers.] He accepted the cheer of the noble Earl opposite. He was aware that they differed on this and on many other points; but however they differed in political opinions, the noble Earl knew him to be a person who had taken great pains to inform himself on all these matters when in Ireland. He believed he could appeal to those of all political persuasions in their Lordships' House, that there were no complaints of the moral conduct of the young men who were instructed at Maynooth. As to those whom they were taught to instruct, was it not a fact that the Irish people possessed more than an average share of honesty, for instance? He believed he was speaking under the mark, when he stated, that of offences against property, there were 70 committed in England, for 30 in Ireland. And with respect to the Irish women of every degree, was it not notorious to the world that a race of women more exemplary in the discharge of all the domestic and social duties was not to be found on the face of the earth? Was it nothing, too—and this was coming one step nearer to the connexion between the habits of the people, and the religious instruction which they received—was it nothing that the Irish people had cured themselves of inveterate habits, and were at the present moment a most sober people? He believed that that reformation would have been neither so general nor so permanent, if it had not mixed up with their religious feelings and religious instruction. Before he left this part of the subject, he wished to read to their Lordships one of the rules in force at Maynooth. It was in these words:— Strenuam operam navato theologicus dogmaticus professor persuadeat sacrosancta fidei jura esse quæ Regiæ Majestati obligatos tenent, nulla vi extorqueri posse, nulla potestate resolvi. Anything more clear than this, which was on the statutes of Maynooth, or more directly contrary to anything that could tend to teach absolution from the Oath of Allegiance, he thought he could not produce. Much had been said of the disloyalty of the Irish priests. He could truly declare that when he was connected with the Government in Ireland he had received on all occasions the most important assistance from that body in the discovery of crime; and not only in the discovery of crime, but these priests exercised their influence almost universally with beneficial effect in its prevention. As to violent language towards those opposed to them in religious opinions, it must be confessed that there was much to be regretted on that score on all sides in Ireland; and before he sat down, he was afraid he should have to convince their Lordships that such language, so uncharitable to those opposed to them, was not confined to Roman Catholic priests, but had been used by a Member of their Lordships' House, who now sat upon the right rev. Bench. In the circumstance referred to by the noble Earl, as having occurred at Dingle, he believed there might have been much to complain of in the manner in which the parties were treated. But a noble Duke, not now present (the Duke of Manchester), had attempted to connect the priests and the hierarchy of Ireland with all the crime that was committed; he said that all the crime originated at their conferences—that the bishops settled at their annual meetings what was to be the fashionable crime, and the order of crime for the year; this was communicated to the priests, and that they inculcated it on the people. Anything more monstrous, or more utterly void of foundation, he had never heard, even in the most extraordinary paroxysms of fanaticism. He was far from denying that the state of crime at present in Ireland was very formidable. From the Returns of the Constabulary for the last year, it appeared that serious offences in certain parts of Ireland had so operated upon the aggregate amount of crime, as to make it exceed that which had occurred for twelve or fourteen years before; and only this very morning he had been distressed by seeing an account of a collision between the police and the peasantry in Leitrim, in which the former at first had the advantage, but the people renewed the conflict, and drove the police from the spot. He attached no blame to the police for their general conduct. Nothing could be more effective than the police force of Ireland; and none could be more energetic in their efforts to repress crime. When the noble Duke attempted to connect the state of crime with the Roman Catholic priests, as if organized by them, he must express his humble opinion of the absurdity of such an argument. But there was a curious fact in the proof attempted by the noble Duke; for he had stopped at the year 1833, and begun again in the year 1845. Why had he omitted those years which had been the subject of an inquiry originated by the noble Earl opposite? The noble Earl had on a former occasion said that all the mischief was caused by the priests. "All this." he said, "must be put down—'Delenda est Carthago.'" That was the noble Earl's case; but what was the opinion of the Committee to which the subject was referred? They were of opinion that no body of men had ever used more energy for the repression of crime than the Roman Catholic priests had done during the period referred to; and this the noble Duke had omitted. He now came to a speech which he, in common with some of their Lordships, had heard last night—and he had never heard any speech with greater pain than that which had been addressed to their Lordships by a right rev. Prelate towards the close of the discussion. He had never heard a speech every passage and every word of which dealt more exclusively in a feeling of antagonism, and showed less sympathy for the millions of his countrymen, amongst whom the speaker had been elevated to the post which gave him the honour of a seat in their Lordships' House. He was not aware that it was necessary for him to follow that speech in detail; but he was anxious to make a few comments upon it early in the debate, while it was fresh in the recollection of those of their Lordships who had heard it. The right rev. Prelate was rather apt to deal in figures of speech. On the first occasion when he addressed the House, he made some allusion in a metaphor, which it was not easy to follow, about a "coach and horses." The danger of using these figures was, that their failure gave a tendency to ridicule, which he should be sorry to see indulged on an occasion of so much solemnity. Last night that right rev. Prelate spoke of a draught. He asked, would you recommend to others a draught which you wonld object to take yourself? Now, in the first place, the right rev. Prelate put himself in a position which he did not occupy. He was not the physician to prescribe the medicine; whether rightly or in error, the patient chose another physician; and the question was not whether you would recommend to him a draught which you would not take yourself, but whether you would allow the patient to apply for aid to the physician in whom he had confidence. The right rev. Prelate, in presenting a petition the other night, and pronouncing an eulogium upon the moral and professional character of the Protestant clergy of Ireland, in every word of which he was happy to be able sincerely to concur, had said that perhaps there might be some appointments of noble Lords opposite to him to which there might be some objection. He thought that when noble Lords on the Ministerial bench heard the torrent of intolerance which was poured into their ears, some feeling of regret must have crossed their minds for the indiscretion of one of their appointments in supplying the diocese to which the right rev. Prelate had been elevated. He thought a man of humbler spirit, of more enlightened mind, of more firm reliance on his own faith, and, at the same time, a more comprehensive charity for the conscientious faith of others, than the late Bishop Sandes could not exist; and to the end of his life one of the circumstances upon which he should reflect with the greatest satisfaction was, that it had been in his power to recommend to his Sovereign the elevation of Dr. Sandes to the See of Cashel. The right rev. Prelate succeeded him, and delivered a charge on his visita- tion. He would read to the right rev. Prelate what was generally believed to be the substance of the charge delivered by him on that occasion. He was informed that, if necessary, what he was about to read would be verified upon oath.

The Bishop of Cashel

The charge I delivered was printed and published. Is it on the printed and published charge the noble Marquess is about to accuse me, or is it on some hearsay and garbled statement? [Loud Cries of "Hear, hear."]

The Marquess of Normanby

said, he was informed that it was taken down by a person who was present. [Renewed Cries off "Hear, hear."]

The Bishop of Cashel

I printed and published my charge, and I am not accountable for any other version of it.

The Marquess of Normanby

said, what he was about to read was what the right rev. Prelate was supposed to have said. It was in the following words:— That Satan, with all his ingenuity, never contrived a more diabolical system to estrange the souls of men than the Popish religion—that the breath of the Popish priests was contamination, and he warned those under his spiritual care to avoid them as much as possible, and keep to themselves; they should keep no Catholic servants, for the bad morals of those people should be avoided as a plague; they should also be more exclusive in their dealings. With regard to the national schools, he commanded his clergy to caution their flocks not to send their children to what were commonly called national schools, but which would more properly be called devil's schools.

The Bishop of Cashel

It may perhaps be irregular, but after such a charge as that which has been openly made against me, I must get up and answer it. I can only say, that from beginning to end the accusation is false and abominable. [Vehement Cheers, particularly from the Episcopal Benches.] And I must say, I think it a most discreditable thing that a noble Lord who has filled the office of Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, and who has had opportunities of making himself somewhat acquainted with the people of that country, should, when the charge has been printed, published, and circulated, have kept a document in his pocket sent him by some enemy. [Immense cheering, in which the Bishop of Exeter joined with great energy] The charge I did deliver I shall have the honour of sending to his Lordship; and I hope it will disabuse him and open his eyes a little on the subject, and make him distrust a little those from whom he hears stories from Ireland. [Loud Cheering.] If it would not be trespassing too much on your Lordships, I would ask him to read some of that charge to your Lordships next time he is in want of a speech. [Loud Cheers.]

The Marquess of Normanby

trusted he had extended every courtesy to the right rev. Prelate. [The Bishop of Cashel appeared to wish to proceed with his answer, but the Marquess of Normanby proceeded.] The right rev. Prelate was wrong in supposing he had had the document for a length of time. He had heard of the matter two years ago, but the words had been in his hands only since yesterday morning. He should now read, with the name of a Protestant clergyman who was present at the delivery of the charge, an account of its nature. As to the words he had referred to, he had no knowledge of them, but this letter came from the Rev. Mr. Mackesy, and was in reference to the charge delivered by the Bishop of Cashel in 1843.

The Earl of Charleville

rose to order. He put it to their Lordships whether, after the disclaimer given by the right rev. Prelate of his having made use of any language but what was contained in the charge which he had printed, it was either customary or usual in their Lordships' House to attach to a Peer, a Member of that House, hearsay statements communicated to a noble Lord who had not given the authority upon which he was making them. The noble Lord had undoubtedly stated, in reference to this letter, that he was prepared to give his authority; but after the contradiction which the right rev. Prelate had given to the assertions in toto, he put it to their Lordships whether it was consistent with the custom, the usage, the practice, or the habit of debate in that House, to persist in statements which a Member of that House from his place asserted were not true.

The Marquess of Normanby

said, in the first place, the noble Earl was wrong in his recollection. He was not aware that the right rev. Prelate had said that there was nothing in the charge but what he had printed.

The Bishop of Cashel

said, he would send the noble Marquess the charge as it had been delivered.

The Marquess of Normanby

said, if the right rev. Prelate would say that there was nothing in the charge as delivered that was not contained in the printed one, he (the Marquess of Normanby) should say no more.

The Bishop of Cashel

said, it was printed as completely verbatim as any publication of a speech could be. He did not say that every word was the same, but as far as he was capable of judging of an honest publication, it was that of the charge which he should send to the noble Marquess.

The Marquess of Normanby

said, he should now proceed—and he was perfectly in order in doing so—to read to their Lordships the impression which had been made by the charge.

The Earl of Winchilsea

said, he must really rise to order, and enter his decided protest against this course of proceeding. The noble Marquess referred to a public charge delivered by a bishop on subjects of great importance, and then he called upon them to hear the individual opinions of this man or that man. Where was this to end? The right rev. Prelate had declared, that the paper read contained a false representation of the charge delivered by him, and had offered to place the charge itself in the hands of the noble Marquess, and he hoped he would go no farther. If the noble Marquess considered what was due to himself, and to the character of their Lordships' House, he would not say a word more on the subject.

Here several Peers rose to order simultaneously.

The Marquess of Lansdowne

obtained a hearing, and said that, after what had passed, there could not be the least doubt that it would be improper, and he was sure it was far from being the intention of his noble Friend, to state one word as having been used by the right rev. Prelate which he denied. What he understood his noble Friend to be about to do was to state—he had not the means of knowing what the statement was, for he had not yet seen it; but his noble Friend had distinctly stated his intention—and he was perfectly in order—to read the impression which had been produced upon an individual who heard the charge, and the general opinion entertained of the Prelate who pronounced it. This, he repeated, was perfectly in order. It had been done again and again in that House, and the opinions of various persons had been quoted in that House as to the state of Ireland as arising out of the conduct of those in authority there. The noble Earl (the Earl of Roden) had done it himself. In fact it had been done on both sides of the House, and there was not a shadow of objection to his noble Friend reading such a document as connected with his own views on the subject.

The Earl of Winchilsea

said, that after what had occurred, he did not think it a fair or even a just course to a Peer, even bearing a lay, but especially a clerical character, to allow it to be read.

The Marquess of Normanby

said, he should read the letter to which he referred, as the impression made upon the mind of a Protestant clergyman, who, at the visitation in question, had been censured by the right rev. Prelate for having visited a national school. [Much confusion, and cries for order.]

The Earl of Wicklow

admitted, that the noble Marquess was not at all out of order; but it was for him to exercise his own discretion as to the fairness or propriety of his pursuing the subject, after having brought one of the strongest charges he had ever heard against the right rev. Prelate.

The Marquess of Clanricarde

and several other Peers again rose to order.

The Marquess of Normanby

was at length suffered to proceed. He said he should read the letter, putting altogether out of view the confirmation of the substance of the charge as derived from the impression of persons present. It was in these terms:— Glebe House, Clashmore, May 16, 1845. With regard to national education, the system was denounced by the Bishop of Cashel in the most decided terms. I shall not easily forget the painful position in which I stood at the visitation, when, after a ministry of nearly a quarter of a century, without a blemish on my character, and honoured with many strong testimonials (among them one from my late diocesan, Dr. Sandes), I was, for the first time in my life, subjected to the severe animadversions of my bishop, on account of my candid avowal of opinions favourable to national education. Amongst the whole assembled body of the clergy, I alone declared myself friendly to the system; and I was told by the bishop, that a Protestant clergyman could not, consistently with his duty, visit a national school, even for the purpose of seeing the rules carried out. I feel that my prospects of preferment have been blighted by the course I have pursued. [Loud cheers from the Ministerial side.] Was it a matter of satisfaction to noble Lords that a clergyman whose character for thirty years was unimpeached, and who had testimonials from his late dio- cesan, should, merely because he stated that he had been present at an examination of a school sanctioned by the Government of his country, and conducted on a system countenanced by the Parliament, receive a censure and reprehension which had never before been applied to any part of his conduct? [Loud cries of "Hear, hear," from the Ministerial, side.] He was sorry to perceive by that cheer that there was an indication of the spirit which he regretted to see introduced in the diocese to which he alluded in other quarters also. The letter which he had in his hand went on to say—

"But I have the consolation of knowing that the national school established by me in this parish has been of infinite benefit, notwithstanding that I was told by the bishop he would prefer my having no school at all. Permit me to add, that I have the happiness of living on the most cordial terms with my Roman Catholic neighbours, and I feel proud to acknowledge that from Roman Catholics, both lay and clerical, I have ever experienced more kindness than I can express, and for which, I trust, I am not ungrateful.—Believe me, my dear Sir, yours most truly,

"WILLIAM MACKESY.

"Very Rev. Dr. Fogarty, V.G. and P.P., Lismore."

Their Lordships would recollect that in the part of the country to which that letter referred, it was almost impossible to collect together a school consisting of others than Roman Catholics. The writer was the Rev. Mr. Mackesy, the Rector of Clashmore. The right rev. Prelate (the Bishop of Cashel) opposite had concluded his speech last night with a quotation through which he (the Marquess of Normanby) would not follow him. It was a quotation which he had himself described as too coarse to be introduced to their Lordships, and it certainly could not be said, that there was any excuse for that coarseness to be found in its applicability. The right rev. Prelate appeared, from his speech last night, to consider himself a sacrificed man; for he talked about crossing the Atlantic, of the sufferings of the Martyrs, and of being led to the stake like Cranmer. It appeared, however, notwithstanding the eloquent allusion of the right rev. Prelate to the sufferings of martyrdom, the only stake to which he had been tied as yet, was the See of Cashel; and the only martyrdom which he had suffered, was the sitting on that bench so near the noble Lords who were his bene- factors, and who had placed him there. The noble Earl (the Earl of Roden) who had spoken last night on this subject, appeared to have rather an exaggerated idea as to the universal feeling of the Protestants of Ireland on the subject of this proposed grant—a fact which a letter that he had received from a clergyman in Ireland went very far to illustrate. The letter to which he had alluded was written by the Rev. Mr. Smith, Rector of Larne, a town three-fourths of the population of which were Protestants. Larne was, he might remark, one of the places from which a petition had been presented by the noble Earl opposite (the Earl of Roden) against the grant to Maynooth; and it did not appear that, so far as that town was concerned, there existed anything like the unanimous feeling of opposition to the grant which the noble Earl appeared to think characterized the Protestants of Ireland. The letter which he had received from Mr. Smith, contained a passage to the effect—that in the four parishes surrounding him, containing 12,000 persons, who were almost entirely Protestants, there was a complete absence of any strong feeling with regard to the measure, although a petition had been presented from that district against the Bill—[Earl of Roden: Hear, hear]: yet it contained but 200 signatures out of that population of 12,000. The noble Earl cheered the statement that a petition had been agreed to against Maynooth, but he had cheered too soon; for it appeared that there were but 200 signatures to that petition out of a population of 12,000, and that was a proportion which could not be said to indicate any very unanimous or decided feeling amongst the population of that part of the country against the grant.

The Earl of Roden

Is Mr. Smith a clergyman of the Church of England?

The Marquess of Normanby

said, that Mr. Smith was a clergyman of the Church of England, being the Rector of Larne. He had received several other letters from different parts of Ireland, with which he would not on that occasion trouble their Lordships, as it was quite sufficient to state that their contents went to show that the statements which had been made, to the effect that there was a strong and unanimous feeling of opposition to this measure amongst the Irish Protestants, had been very greatly exaggerated. The noble Earl concluded his speech of last night with a spirited appeal on the part of the Protestants of Ireland against what he called the "ungrateful conduct of the Government" to them. With that part of the subject it was not his (the Marquess of Normanby's) intention to mix himself up—he would leave the noble Earl to settle the question with the noble Lords who sat near him, as to whether they had raised expectations in their supporters, by their previous conduct, which had not since been answered; but he would admit, with the noble Earl, that the conduct of the noble Lords on the opposite bench, when they first came into office, and, above all, the appointment of the right rev. Prelate opposite (Bishop of Cashell), was not such as could be supposed to give any ground for the expectation that they would adopt the course which they had since taken. On that question he would, however, leave the noble Earl to deal with the noble Lords, as he must be the best able to form a judgment with respect to it. He did not wish to look upon the subject of these measures in any connexion with party feeling; and he should only say that it would have been very fortunate if they had been introduced some years back, when there could be no doubt of the perfect success of the measure, which he trusted their Lordships would pass to-night by a large majority. It would have been a great advantage to have introduced those measures at a period when they would have received so favourable a consideration, and before such a prejudice had been raised upon the subject in England—before the word "register" had been sent abroad in connexion with the exhibition of anti-Catholic feelings, or before a cry expressive of those feelings had been raised on the hustings and elsewhere. He was of opinion that it would have been better and more fortunate if such a message of peace had been sent to Ireland while the Repeal cry was dead in that country, and when the Irish people looked anxiously in expectation of a series of measures of justice to that country, which had been pointed at in the other House of Parliament, and in that by a noble Viscount not then in his place. The noble Duke last night had stated that it was more honourable to concede such a measure in a moment of strength on the part of authority, and when Repeal was weak. He (the Marquess of Normanby) sincerely wished that the Repeal cry in Ireland was as dead as the noble Duke supposed it to be; but on the very day on which the noble Duke had delivered the speech referring to the weakness of Repeal, it appeared by the papers that there took place what he, from his knowledge of the country, looked upon as a formidable demonstration of the desire, on the part of those who had taken part in continuing that agitation, to persevere in it, and that the weakness of the Repeal cry in Ireland was not so great as the noble Duke appeared to think. [The Duke of Wellington: I never said a word about it.] He said, that he was only repeating the substance of the speech delivered by the noble Duke, which was, that it was more honourable to give concessions at a time of strength on the part of the Government, and weakness on the part of the advocates of Repeal. He wished sincerely, that he could concur in the opinion of the noble Duke with respect to the decline of that cry; but when, after eighteen months had elapsed since the projected meeting at Clontarf had been prevented, and when, after that period had elapsed, he saw a more formidable and a more numerous meeting in the heart of Dublin than that meeting would have been had it taken place—when he saw that meeting organized, and deputations attending it from different parts of the country—however he might wish to agree in opinion with the noble Duke, he could not participate in it. Whether, however, that were the case or not, he would give the Government full credit for the present measures—he gave them credit from himself, and, he believed, he might say on the part of his noble Friends around him, for the introduction of such measures; he approved of them for the good which they were calculated to effect, without reference to the quarter from which they came; for, however much the previous conduct of the Government had contributed to their present difficulty, those measures were calculated to confer benefit upon the country; and so long as they held power for the good of the country, and used it only for that purpose, no other Government could receive with more sincerity the sincere, and he trusted efficient, support which they gave to a system which they believed to be eminently calculated to improve the condition and maintain the integrity of the country.

The Duke of Wellington

said, the House must permit him to say one word. He had not, in the speech to which the noble Marquess had alluded, said one syllable with respect to agitation, or the meeting in Dublin, of which he could have had, in fact, no knowledge at the time when he addressed their Lordships yesterday. What he did say was this: that no man, who saw this country, and saw the proceedings which had taken place in Ireland, could believe it possible by tumult and violence to force the Legislature of this great country to adopt the measure of a Repeal of the Legislative Union. That was the impression produced on his mind by the occurrences of the previous years, setting aside altogether the consideration of the effect produced by the decision of their Lordships in that House in the Appeal case, which had been before them in August and September last. That was his view; and he said, that in consequence of the course of events, during the preceding year, the Government was in strength—that authority was in strength in Ireland; and that the cause of Repeal was weak. He said not one word about agitation; for he knew well that no man could answer for the course of agitation, or as to what it might lead to from one day to another. He said what he knew to be true—that Government and authority were strong, and the Repeal cause was only upheld by a part of the Roman Catholics. He took care to guard himself in that too; for he stated, that many Roman Catholics were as much opposed to Repeal as any of their Lordships, and but few Protestants were Repealers, and as the Repeal cause was weak, they who were strong could not be suspected of acting from any views in bringing forward those measures other than those which they had avowed, and that they should take care even not to be suspected of persecuting those who were weak.

The Bishop of Cashel

said, that he had never rebuked the Rev. Mr. Mackesy, at the visitation at Lismore; but the year after the visitation, the parish of Thurles was expected to become vacant, and Mr. Mackesy asked him (the Bishop of Cashel) to appoint him to it. To that he (the Bishop of Cashel) answered, that in giving preferments, he had a heavy responsibility imposed upon him, and that he would consider all the clergy of his diocese who were eligible to any spiritual office, whenever he was called on to use his spiritual power in that respect; but that no one of his clergy would ever find himself in a better situation in making his application, for expressing his approbation of himself.

The Archbishop of Dublin

said, he had heard those who supported the Bill denounced in the strongest terms, as if all were latitudinarians who did not oppose the grant; and, as if every prelate who supported such a measure must necessarily be indifferent to his own religion, or indifferent to the Articles which he had subscribed. Amongst other statements which writers had made in treating this question, he had seen quoted something that he himself was alleged to have said in reference to the education which prevailed at the College of Maynooth. He did not, on that occasion, recollect whether he had said what was attributed to him by those writers or not. Perhaps he had; for with the education afforded at Maynooth, he had often expressed his dissatisfaction, and he knew that in some cases that education had been imperfect. It never occurred to him, however, up to the present time, that his opinion of its insufficiency was an argument against his consistency in now wishing it to be improved. He had had occasion, more than once, to examine students wild had been educated at Maynooth, and had become converts to Protestantism, and who had applied to him either for preferment in the Established Church, or as tutors; and he found their education very insufficient and imperfect. That imperfection might, he admitted, be in each case the fault of the student himself; but from what he had heard of that College from several Roman Catholics, as well as from his own experience, he was of opinion that there was a deficiency in the education given at Maynooth—that it was not such as was sufficient to constitute such a degree of instruction as would be expected from a well-educated Roman Catholic. He spoke, however, of the insufficiency of the education at Maynooth. He did not mean to say anything against the professors for not bringing up the students as Protestants instead of Roman Catholics. That was not to be expected. His object in supporting this measure was to obtain a better system of education—a more sufficient system—and he did not mean to say by that better education that he would be enabled to induce the Catholics to give up their pastors. They would not do that so easily. They could not, by a legislative enactment, induce 6,000,000 of Roman Catholics to become Protestants; but they could, by a legislative enactment, establish a system, which would give them better pastors, It was said that by making this a perpetual grant, the Ministry gave another ground of objection; but so far from thinking its perpetuity an objection, he was of opinion that it was a recommendation, by affording a great check to the evil which arose from making this question a battlefield every year in Parliament, It was stated by many of those who opposed the measure, that the Government would have no check upon the system of education at the College after the permanence of the grant had been once established. Why, noble Lords who opposed the measure had told them, in the most earnest manner, and in the strongest terms, that the College, under the check which now exists, was a place where disloyalty, and error, and every sort of crime, were taught; that the Ultramontane doctrines were inculcated; and that all the evils which could flow from those doctrines were produced. It appeared, then, that hitherto the system pursued at the College was miserably deficient, and that in order to meet the views of those who complained so loudly and strenuously of that system, it was absolutely necessary to adopt a better plan, which would be done by supporting this measure. Noble Lords had complained of the education at Maynooth; but that was an argument in favour of the increased grant; for the mode in which to secure a more perfect education was by a more liberal endowment. He was in favour of this enlarged endowment; and he spoke not only for himself, but for a great number of his clergy, who, though they were not the most clamorous clergy, were not the least pious or devoted to the Church, and who did not consider it a proof of indifference to their own faith, to exhibit toleration to that of others. He knew many Roman Catholics whom he greatly respected, though they differed from him in religious opinion; and he respected many Protestants who also differed widely from him in opinion on matters connected with religion. For example, he respected those who thought that the State ought to dictate to the subjects what they were to believe, although he held such a doctrine as that to be altogether opposed to the Gospel. If the State were to dictate in such matters, and no religion were to be tolerated but that enjoined by the State, then in this country, where the Episcopal Church was the Established Church, many of the Dissenters ought to be put down as well as the Roman Catholics: so it would be seen that the Dissenters who used that argument against the Catholics, were cutting the ground from under their feet; for, according to such a doctrine, they would not be more deserving of toleration than the Roman Catholics. He dissented entirely, however, from such a doctrine; and he also dissented from the doctrine that called this a profession of the tenets which were taught at Maynooth. Let any member of the Established Church who used that argument carry it out fairly and manfully, and see what it would lead to. If that objection were to be successful against this grant to Maynooth, why should it not be urged with equal strength against the grants to Roman Catholic chaplains of gaols, and to all cases in which any Minister of the Roman Catholic Church was paid by the State funds? But they were asked, how could men who were opposed to the Roman Catholic doctrines go against their consciences? To that he would answer, that he could not see how any man's conscience could fairly object to 28,000l., and have no qualm at 8,000l. or 9,000l. Now, as to the permauency of the grant, he would ask, would it have been possible for any Minister to stop it, without assigning a reason, out of mere caprice. No Minister would have dared to do so. Then, with respect to this part of the measure, all the difference was, that the grant was not to be brought annually before Parliament; but if it should be afterwards found that bad principles—that inimical principles—were taught, surely it would be then for Parliament to retrace its steps. If good reasons could be shown for doing so, any measure could be stopped at any time. Therefore, he could not see that there was a question of principle between this and the former measure. A question of political wisdom and expediency there might be. He respected the motives of many who had opposed this grant for many years; but he thought it probable that many of the petitioners against the present measure had never heard of the grant until the present time. He must complain, however, of the opponents of this measure calling upon the clergy and the bishops to oppose it also on the ground of the sacred vow which they had taken. He trusted that he had as strong a sense of the sacredness of the vow he had taken as any man had; but he did not think it fair or just that he should be denounced, because he did not interpret it in the same way that others did. He had solemnly vowed "with all faithful diligence to banish and drive away all strange and erroneous doctrines which were contrary to God's word." But there were different ways of driving out strange doctrines. How was he to drive them out? By secular coercion, by penal laws, by the bayonet? Was the religion of Him, who forbade his followers to draw the sword in his defence, to be supported by those means? If they were, he would sooner renounce the office he held, he would sooner renounce his profession—nay, he would renounce his religion, if it taught such a course, and draw his sustenance, if necessary, from the humblest manual toil. How were they to drive out such doctrine? Was it in the manner that had been adopted by Ferdinand and Isabella in Spain, by driving away its professors. He would drive away strange and erroneous doctrine from his own Church—he would oppose those who would introduce strange doctrine into the Established Church. With all due respect to the right rev. body of which he was a member, he trusted he might say that no one could more assiduously and zealously exert himself than he had done to drive out what appeared to him to be strange doctrines from the Church. He had wished properly to respect and tolerate others who differed from him, and over whom he claimed no jurisdiction; but those who called for his reprobation and censure were they who appeared to advocate doctrines inconsistent with the Church, and who held the principles of one Church, and the emoluments of another. As for those who were not of his own communion, he claimed no authority over them, as he said before; but he had written, and spoken, and published, he trusted in the spirit of meekness and gentleness, and of Christian candour and frankness, his opinions of their tenets; and he was happy to say, that with many of those he lived on terms of personal friendship; and though they did not agree with him, they felt no resentment at his having, as the Apostle says, and he hoped in the spirit of the Apostle, "in meekness instructed those that opposed themselves." The only other question which remained was not a question of principle, but of (he must speak the word) expediency. He knew it was an awful sounding word. It had been rung in their ears for thirteen years past; and it always appeared to be a word of ill omen. But if it was allowable for them to abstain from enforcing their own religion on others, and to set apart some portion of the public money towards the education of those who were not of the same persuasion as themselves—towards giving them the best education they could receive—if it was allowable, not as a question of absolute right or principle, then it must be one of expediency. He wished, in the first place, to separate it from a question with which it had been confounded. He heard a great deal of the influences and impropriety, and ungodliness of giving money to support what they believed to be error. He believed the word "giving" or "granting" money confused the minds of many men. But it was not a question of giving; the money was not theirs to give, it belonged to the nation. He meant that the money was not theirs as Protestants. Even if a man of known liberality and bountiful munificence were called upon to contribute to a Roman Catholic chapel, and declined to do so because he conscientiously objected to maintain or to promote that which he considered to be error, whether justified or not justified in so declining, he (the Archbishop of Dublin) would not say—still he would be justified in supporting this measure; because in the one case it was his own money he was called upon to contribute, and in the other the money was the money of the nation. They might talk as they pleased of a Protestant nation; but there were 6,000,000 of Roman Catholics in the country, whom it would be vain to tell that they were no part of the nation, and who did contribute out of their own purses to the national funds. The money being the money of the nation, it was for the Legislature to consider how it could be best laid out for the benefit of the nation. He was not saying that every claim that was advanced should be acceded to. But this was not a claim upon their private purses, nor upon Protestant funds; but it was a claim upon the funds of the nation, of which the claimants were a portion, and upon whose property they had a claim. With respect to considerations of expediency, he must pro- test against the outcry that was raised against that word. It was commonly asserted that expediency was opposed to principle. It was said that they were going upon suggestions of expediency. He for one was content to take that responsibility upon himself. He professed himself to be a votary of expediency; and he did not see what business any one had in that House who was not one. He did not mean personal expediency—or the expediency of a class or an interest, an expediency which would cause those belonging to any interest to think of nothing but themselves; but another expediency, which could not be called ungodly, for it was contained in the prayer of the Church for the Houses of Parliament, that the Lord "would be pleased to direct and prosper all their consultations for the safety, honour, and welfare of the Sovereign and her dominions, that all things might be so ordered and settled by their endeavours upon the surest foundation." If that was not political expediency, he did not know what it was. It was said by those who brought forward this cry of expediency, that expediency might be opposed to principle and duty; but be maintained that expediency could not be opposed to principle and duty. It was a question of expediency in what branch of trade a man might choose to invest his capital; but it could not be a question of expediency as to whether a man should be dishonest or not. If any man supposed that expediency and duty might be at variance, he should wish to hear his proofs. He should be glad if those who condemned expediency, and asserted that it frequently drew men from the path of duty, would say what they really meant. He held such expediency in abhorrence, for it was a false expediency, a pretended expediency. He could not place any confidence in the man who would declaim against virtue, while in fact, he meant only the simulation of it, false virtue, hypocrisy; nor in the man who condemned the use of coin, meaning only counterfeit coin. That which bore only the semblance and pretence of expediency was not the expediency which he supported. Following out, then, the course of real and true expediency, although they might be unable to remedy the greatest evils under which Ireland laboured, they might introduce some amel oration by improving the system of education, by giving more learning, more literature, better science, greater taste, and more gentlemanlike habits to those who were to teach 6,000,000 of their fellow subjects, and who were Roman Catholics, and would continue so in spite of legislation and penal laws. An argument had been advanced, not so much in that House as in various papers and pamphlets, to the effect that this measure was not worthy of support, nor likely to accomplish any good in Ireland, because the agitators of that country treated it with scorn and ingratitude, and did all they could to render it unpopular. The speeches made in opposition to it by some of the more active and notorious agitators in Ireland, were adduced as proofs that the people of Ireland, so far from receiving the proffered extension with gratitude or satisfaction, scorned and rejected it; and it was therefore at once set down that the measure would be as inefficient in practice as it was said to be objectionable in principle. Now, upon his mind, the speeches in question produced a very different effect—knowing, as he did, perfectly well, that any measure which was likely to tend to the pacification of Ireland, would be distasteful to those who made a trade of agitation—whose business it was to keep Ireland in a ferment; and would meet with their bitterest hostility. Persons not so well acquainted with Ireland as he was, might and did entertain a notion that the clamours, which, from their louder noise, must have reached their ears, were necessarily the voice of the whole Irish people. So long as a handful of men in Ireland were disposed for agitation, they would always find an agitator, and that agitator would always shout forth that he was the people of Ireland; but it did not at all follow that such was the case. Burke, referring to some noisy politicians, some brawling clamourers of his own time, who assumed to be the spokesmen of the whole nation, said, you might as well talk of the chirruping of a party of grasshoppers on a sunny bank as representing the voice of all the inhabitants of the field, when the burly oxen who were grazing over its broad surface were tranquilly silent. As little were the noisy politicians, the clamorous agitators of Ireland, entitled to call themselves her spokesmen, when they scorned and rejected, on the alleged behalf of her people, a measure calculated to do them so much good—a measure that was the more inestimable in reality, because it was denied to be so by men who for their own profit dealt in the trade of agitation.

Lord De Ros

briefly spoke in favour of the measure. He thanked the most rev. Prelate for having called back the attention of the House to the question for consideration. He and another noble Lord had heard the able and pious head of the College of Maynooth declare that he had been, and was still, opposed to the cause of Repeal. So much for the charge of disloyalty against it. And he could appeal to a noble relative as to the fact that the influence of the institution was exercised in the support and promotion of charitable purposes. If heretofore the students of that College were thought not to manifest much gratitude to the Government, it should be recollected how poorly they were provided for. His prayer was that all who called themselves Christians might be led and knit together in the bonds of peace; and believing that this measure was calculated to cement that bond of peace, he had great pleasure in giving it his cordial support.

The Bishop of Exeter and the Earl of Clancarty both rose to address the House; the noble Earl gave way, in deference to the apparent wish of the House.

The Bishop of Exeter

said, that if anything could add to the unwillingness with which he interposed between the noble Earl and this House, it would be the notion that he had been called up immediately to answer — he presumed — the most rev. Prelate (the Archbishop of Dublin). On that supposition, however, he readily yielded to the call which had been made upon him; though, when he said this, he hoped the noble Lord who had just sat down would not imagine that he had failed in attention to his observations. He could assure that noble Lord that he was much struck with a portion of his very short speech, for it confirmed observations he had before heard. This House seemed to him totally to disregard the merits of the institution at Maynooth. It was not a national institution. It had been regarded as if it were an institution established by the State, at the expense and at the mere motion of the State; whereas it was nothing more than an institution which had been left upon the hands of the State by those who, in the first instance, had undertaken to provide for its maintenance. The document that had been laid before their Lordships under the title of a "Memorial from the Trustees of the College of Maynooth," kept out of sight altogether the real origin of the institution. The memorial stated, that the College was founded by the Government with the intention of educating priests for the Roman Catholic population of Ireland. He begged to say that that was a total mistake—he would not say misrepresentation; but he was surprised that these reverend persons had not better records of the history of the institution. He held in his hand a copy of the document by which the College of Maynooth was originated, signed by Dr. Troy, Archbishop of Dublin, and addressed to the Earl of Westmorland, Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, in 1794. This document was an earnest petition to the Government of the day, setting forth that, under the laws formerly existing, the memorialists were obliged to resort to foreign countries, and particularly to France, to obtain an education for their priesthood; that they had established several valuable institutions, in which 400 persons were constantly maintained; but that in the anarchy then prevalent in France, those establishments had been destroyed; and they entreated the Government to allow them and their friends to institute and endow a College in Ireland. With this request the Government of that day complied. The memorialists said, they were prepared to establish proper places for the education of youth for clerical duties, if, as they had been advised by counsel was necessary, His Majesty's Royal License were granted to them, to enable them legally to secure the funds by which they were endowed. By the advice of the Lord Lieutenant, who went further even than the petitioners requested, an Act of Parliament was passed, enabling the Trustees, all of whom, except the great law officers of the State, were Roman Catholics, to receive donations, and to endow and institute the College of Maynooth. But the Government went still further, and said," We will assist you by a grant of 10,000l. towards the 30,000l. required for the purpose, the rest being made up, as promised in the Memorial, by donations from the Roman Catholics themselves." For some years the Parliament continued to sanction a grant in aid of the institution; but in 1799, they refused to do so. The grant, however, was afterwards continued, until it was at last found that the Roman Catholics of Ireland had ceased to contribute to the support of this institution. This was the history of that dilapidation which had excited the shame of some noble Lords. The noble Earl who was recently Secretary for Ireland (the Earl of St. Germans), had said that he blushed when he witnessed the dilapidated condition of the College of Maynooth. He (the Bishop of Exeter) thought the noble Lord might rather have blushed at the conduct of the Roman Catholic gentry, who had thus permitted their own institution to fall into ruin. This institution—the sacrifice of which, it was said, would deeply wound the feelings of all the Roman Catholics of Ireland—had not obtained a portion of their sympathy for the last twenty years. Up to 1814, with the exception of an estate which now produced about 5,000l. a year, the whole amount of donations to the College did not seem to have amounted to 5,000l. annually: since 1814, not a groat! He thought, therefore, it must be inferred that the Roman Catholics of Ireland had a very bad opinion of this institution—that they did not think it was calculated to effect the objects for which it was established. He thought these facts clearly disproved the charge of parsimony with regard to this institution which had been made against Parliament: in fact, it appeared to him that successive Governments had regarded the grant to Maynooth as a vote in favour of a chance institution. The noble Earl the late Secretary for Ireland, who spoke last night, had said that this Bill did nothing more than supply a technical defect in the original Act—the object of the original measure being to make the institution perpetual, to constitute it a corporation; and this would have been done, according to the noble Earl, but for the circumstance of some technical defect. The noble Earl was, however, labouring under a total misapprehension in fancying that the intention of the framers of the original Bill was to render the establishment permanent; for it did not contain a word that showed any desire to make the Trustees a corporation. But the next Act, to amend the original measure, effectually excluded the notion of incorporation; for it enabled the Trustees to sue and be sued by their secretary. They were told that the adoption of the present measure would prevent the annual discussion of this ques- tion. What was the fact? There had, now and then, been a discussion in the other House on this subject, but he believed there had never been an adjourned debate; and his conviction was, that if all those discussions on the Maynooth grant had been condensed into one debate, they would not have occupied half the time that had been consumed in any day's discussion on this Bill in either House of Parliament. It was five or six years since any discussion had taken place in the other House on this subject, except upon the annual vote. In 1840, the present Prime Minister of this country said, that it was the duty of Parliament to inquire into the condition of Maynooth, and the doctrines taught in that institution. It was proposed, by the Bill now before their Lordships, that an annual visitation of the College should be established, and that such visitation should take place as often as the Lord Lieutenant might think fit. But what was to be the nature of this visitation? It was asserted that intolerant and antisocial doctrines were constantly inculcated at Maynooth; and were they to be told that a system of visitation was efficient, when the visitors were precluded from making the slightest inquiry as to the doctrines taught in the College? As he had before said, the Roman Catholics of Ireland had deserted this, their own institution. It might be asked, why was this? It could not be from poverty. They had been told, that Roman Catholics in Ireland were attaining to great wealth; and he was glad that such was the case. Were they backward, then, in contributing to religious objects? He would not speak of the O'Connell rent, or anything of that kind; but he might state, that for the last twelve years the Roman Catholics of Ireland had been contributing 6,000l. or 7,000l. a year to the Institution for the Propagation of the Faith at Lyons. This being the case, he would certainly have thought that if the Roman Catholics of Ireland entertained any desire to maintain the College of Maynooth, they would not have permitted those who were designed to be the instructors of the people of their faith to be subjected to such disgraceful and inconvenient accommodation as had been represented to exist at Maynooth. But what were the objects of this Bill? There was to be a visitation; but the inquiries of the visitors must be confined to the merest trifles, such, for instance, as the treatment received by the students from the professors. They had heard that, though there was now a triennial visitation, the visitors did nothing; and why? Because they had nothing to do. What, he would ask, was the great want of Ireland with respect to the clergy who were to instruct the Roman Catholic population? They required a set of men who would remind those over whom they were placed of their duty to God and to their country—who would remind them that their first duty to their country was to live in peace, to cultivate peace; and who would remember that it was their own duty to set an example of that peaceful conduct. They were told that great allowances ought to be made for the priests educated at Maynooth, inasmuch as they belonged to the people, and must be expected to share the feelings and passions of the people. He was ready to make all due allowance on this point; but the clergy whose duty it was to instruct a tumultuous, or it might be a rebellious population, ought not to take their character from the people, but ought to endeavour, by God's blessing, to communicate to them feelings of Christian peace and charity. How, then, were the clergy of Ireland to be educated in order to fit them for this situation? Surely not by shutting up 500 of them together, as proposed by this Bill, in a monastic institution, leading lives of total seclusion, and utter hardship and privation, of utter serfism; debarred, not merely from all refined intercourse with society, but actually kept sternly within the narrow limits of their own establishment; not permitted, for the seven years of their servitude at Maynooth to leave the place but occasionally, for a short space, in the vacations; and at all other times not allowed to quit the walls for a country walk, nor to walk out at all in their own boundaries, but in the presence of a dean, whom they are forbidden to remove themselves from the sight of under penalty of expulsion. Surely this state of slavery was not adapted to fit them for the office which they were destined to fill. And if the day which makes the slave robs him of half his virtue, what quantity of the remaining half would survive the day which turned the slave into a despot? Ay, a despot; for the hope of one day becoming a despot was the great object which reconciled these young men to all the sufferings of their seven years' slavery. At the end of that period they saw before them all the triumphs of spiritual despotism, when they should go forth among the people as the representatives of God—as the representatives—not as the ministers—of God; such was the character which their books taught them, after the usual probation, they were to possess: Vices gerere Dei. How great was the contrast between the Roman Catholic clergy in Ireland, and the members of the same body in England! Here it was well known to all that the Roman Catholic clergy among us were eminently fitted, by their habits, acquirements, manners, and feelings, to fill the sacred character. He had himself had great gratification, in the course of his life, in making the acquaintance of several Roman Catholic clergymen, and he had never known one who was not remarkable for meekness, mildness, and amenity of character. How was this occasioned? By their living, during the period of their education, in a manner exactly opposite to that in which under this Bill the Irish Roman Catholic priests were brought up. He believed that the young men intended for the ministry of the Roman Catholic Church in England were brought up in the society of those intended for other professions, and even during the period of their instruction for the ministry they enjoyed considerable intercourse with such persons. This, he was convinced, accounted for the great difference in the characters of the Roman Catholic priests of England and of Ireland. It had frequently been stated that the lowest class of the people alone were educated for the Catholic priesthood in Ireland. He believed, on the best possible testimony—the evidence taken before the Commissioners in 1826—that that statement was wholly unfounded. He believed it repeatedly occurred in the evidence, that many of the gentry send, or did send, their sons to that College; but it was the opulent merchants, and the most respectable farmers and tradesmen of great respectability, whose sons formed the chief body of young men preparing for the Roman Catholic priesthood. Then, he asked, was this measure likely to improve the College in that respect? So far from it, that it tended to take away the security they now had: for that security, of the education not being merely eleemosynary, was a very great benefit—it insured a superior class of young men for the ministry in Ireland. If it had failed in that respect, it must have failed from the degrading character of the institution; most certainly it ought not to be otherwise; for they could not doubt that the gentry of Ireland must be as eager to give their sons to religion as the gentry of this country: and he repeated, that if there was that reluctance on the part of the gentry of Ireland to send their sons to Maynooth, it must be because the education was degrading—different from what it was in England. By the present Bill the total expense of all the 250 young men, divinity students, was to be defrayed by the country. Then, who were to appoint them? The Roman Catholic bishops of Ireland. Would not the result of this measure then be, to give to the Roman Catholic bishops influence of the most efficient kind in naming the provision of not fewer than 250 young men? But that was not all; as for every place to be filled up there would be ten expectants. Upon all constitutional grounds patronage of that kind should be in the Crown. But the Crown, in giving that enormous power of the entire support of these young men at Maynooth, ought to have in its hands the power of selecting them; and it was peculiarly important in Ireland that that should be the case, for the Crown wanted to be connected with the people of that country by benefits felt by them. If, however, that were thought to be giving too much power to the Crown, another course might be adopted—that of giving these situations on competition. Let the Crown have the power of nominating four times the number of young men necessary to supply the vacancies, and let them be examined publicly in Dublin by the Roman Catholic bishops, or persons appointed by them; and let the candidate who was the best qualified for admission be the successful one. With such an examination, they would have well-conditioned persons appointed to Maynooth, and there would be some gratitude to the Crown: but if the Roman Catholic bishops were to supply the vacancies, that gratitude would go, not to the Crown, but to the bishops. That might be made the means of great benefit to Ireland, but certainly not if they continued the institution of Maynooth in its present monastic state. As to the expense of the measure, it was beneath the country to entertain it for a moment. But he should wish to see, instead of the College of Maynooth, four proper places of good education, connected, if they would, with the measure now before the House of Commons. Let there be appended to each of those three or four places proposed by that Bill, a special place of education for the Roman Catholic clergy, and let them be made places of liberal education. Let there be, if they would, that due discipline which there ought to be over the clerical students; but let them have the same examination with the gentry, as in this country. He knew nothing in the Irish character that was incompatible with that object. Now, the right rev. Prelate who had spoken on the previous evening with so much ability, had been reproached for failing to point out any remedy for the evils of Ireland. He must say it was not merely unfair, but unconstitutional, to call on the right rev. Prelate to do so. He was not the Minister of the country; he was not responsible for the Government. He (the Bishop of Exeter) was sure, however, that if this Government went out upon this measure, the noble Lords opposite could not come in, for in fact they were all of the same way of thinking on this question; but of all Governments that was the worst that could not carry those measures which it thought best. He thought that the present Government, after what had been stated, could not deny the objections to this measure. They were evident, they lay on the surface, and he must say, that if they perpetuated such an institution as that of Maynooth, they were perpetuating a curse upon Ireland. Even without immediately considering those very important particulars which were brought to their attention by the noble Earl who moved the Amendment, and the noble Duke who supported it, he should not have entered into that part of the question, but for what was stated on the previous evening by a noble Lord for whom he had a very high respect, founded upon his conviction and experience of the honourable and can did manner in which that noble Lord (Lord Beaumont) performed his duty in that House. More than once had he had occasion to congratulate that House that the measure of 1829 had brought with it some compensation in giving to them the benefit of so able and high-minded a coadjutor. The noble Lord, in referring to the statement of the noble Earl as to the conferences of the Roman Catholic priests, said the questions mentioned by the noble Earl were put forth in a speculative age of the Church, when there was great liberty of discussion; but he (the Bishop of Exeter) had not read history as the noble Lord, if he spoke of that as a speculative age in which there was such liberty of discussion. He was, however, bound to say, that he had the best and plainest evidence of the accuracy of the noble Earl's statement respecting those conferences. What was the nature of them? He held in his hand the Statutes for the province of Dublin published by order of the right rev. Dr. Murray. Here was one. It was a special direction to be visited by suspension ipso facto if not obeyed, that every priest should have with him some work of moral theology, in which he should very often, and if possible every day, read at least one chapter or one title with attention (a title was the heading of a series of chapters), in order that by the assistance of that frequent reading they might be better able to direct the consciences of the people committed to their charge. That reading was to prepare them for the conferences at which they were to be instructed for the confessional. Now, what were the questions proposed at those conferences? "Are infidels to be allowed to join themselves to those born of the faithful? May the faithful communicate with infidels? Is it lawful to tolerate heresy? What are the punishments to be decreed for those who are affected with heresy?" Those were the subjects of conference in 1832, in order that the priests who considered them in conference might be the better able to instruct their people. Were they to be told that the questions were put, but that there were no answers? Why, what answer could be given to that question, "What are the punishments decreed against heretics?" They were told to follow the authority of Dens. It was said, that that meant they were only to take the order of their questions from Dens. But, he would put it to any scholar whether it was possible for him so to construe it? There could be no doubt they were to follow the authority of Dens; but what were the answers Dens gave? They were the punishment not merely of excommunication, but the confiscation of goods, imprisonment ay, and death. It might be said, that those were only the private opinions of Dens; but there could be no doubt that the canon law did inflict death by burning, for heresy, and that that was the canon law at the present moment. But how to the people of reland could such a doctrine be safely pre ched in their confessionals by the priests, and, if it could not, why was it made the subject of conference in the instruction of priests for the confessional? Those were tremendous considerations; but the question was not whether they were horrible, but whether they were true. They might say that that had no special connexion with Maynooth. He thought it had; for if they would take the trouble to look at the regulations of Maynooth, they would find that the Dunboyne students were educated for the special purpose of heading these conferences; but, even if it were not so, there was in the education at Maynooth enough to make them tremble at the persecuting doctrines taught there. The noble Earl had referred to the works of Maldonatus. It was frightful to contemplate the doctrines laid down in his works, and yet he was the favourite commentator on the Gospels referred to at Maynooth. He would only just refer to one or two of his doctrines. On that beautiful text, Luke ix., v. 55, "Ye know not what spirit ye are of," Maldonatus said— This does not seem to me to be properly spoken of the gospel dispensation at large, but only of Christ, who, Almighty as he was, and deserving of his vengeance as men were, yet 'came not,' as he says immediately afterwards, 'to destroy men's lives, but to save them.' He would not force his gospel on the world by arms, but chose rather to insinuate it by meekness, teaching, miracles. But now, as often as the occasion demands, religion must be defended, and preserved by the sword from the earth, and by fire from heaven. We must slay the Turks who are invading the Church,—we must burn heretics as traitors and deserters! That was taken from the Catechism for the Parochial Clergy. But he would read another passage:—On Matthew, v. 13, "If the salt have lost its savour," he said— What Ezekiel says of the vine, our Lord here says of salt. The meaning of both is the same, that degenerate teachers, as heretics above all others, are good for nothing but to be punished, to be trodden under foot, to be burned with fire. Now he had lately had a communication with a gentleman educated at Maynooth, who had authorized him to say that, in case their Lordships should agree to the Amendment proposed by the noble Earl, he was ready to come forward and state what was the sort of instruction he had received at Maynooth. He (the Bishop of Exeter) asked him, by letter, whether any especial caution was given to the young men there respecting these persecuting doctrines; and the answer was— I do not recollect any such caution having been given. I do recollect that, in vindicating the Council of Constance for their mode of dealing with John Huss, the professor claimed for the Church the corporal punishment of heretics—which, however, he left to the temporal power. This person had high credentials to his good character. With respect to the loyalty inculcated at Maynooth, he said— I never knew the professors to encourage or discourage feelings of loyalty. They seemed to me to avoid the subject. They certainly do not encourage charitable feelings towards the Protestants. I once heard the professor from the chair declare that heretics could not enter into the kingdom of Heaven, and that Protestants must be regarded as heretics in places where they could not have the plea of ignorance. Dr. M'Hale, he (the Bishop of Exeter) considered a good specimen of one imbued with the spirit of Maynooth, where he was bred, and of which college he was President for eleven years; and Dr. M'Hale, it came out in evidence before a Committee of their Lordships' House, on the occasion of some Roman Catholics having become converts to Protestantism near Achill, forbade their Roman Catholic neighbours from speaking to those who had been so converted. It also appeared from that evidence that a priest named Hughes had advised his parishioners to use pitchforks and put into bogholes any one who approached their dwellings in order to teach the Scriptures or distribute tracts. Now, he (the Bishop of Exeter) most earnestly trusted they should get rid of that spirit in Ireland soon. As indicating the animus of the Church of Rome, and the effect of the canonical law, he might mention that in 1815 the Belgian bishops had addressed their then King on his declaring his intention to confirm to the Roman Catholic Church its privileges to this effect: — They affirmed that to confirm to the Roman Catholic Church its privileges was inconsistent with another article of the Constitution, which gave equal laws to all the Belgians; for that the ancient canonical law was incompatible with liberty of conscience, and that the Roman Catholic Church would therefore be opposed to the laws of the State. The King persisted, and gave equal laws to his subjects; the bishops persisted also, and twenty years afterwards drove him from the throne. The Pope, in 1832, in an encyclical letter, denounced the doctrine of liberty of conscience as a pestilential error. But what had been the practical effect of the sanguinary instructions that were given to the priests? He had a document to show this proceeding, not from any clergyman, but from a very high functionary in Ireland, who was well known to be one of the most liberal lawyers in Ireland and an ornament to the bench, he meant Mr. Baron Richards. At an assizes at Castlebar, in 1838, that learned judge tried a woman for homicide, and passed sentence on her, and in doing so observed— I cannot but grieve over the depraved character of a people who can be guilty of the many cases of this description which have come before me this assizes, and several of these homicides have occurred as the parties were returning from the mass-house. I must here say, I cannot but think that the minds of the people of this country are as open to instruction as those of any other, and if the proper and due precepts were impressed upon them they could be restrained from the violence and bloodshed which so greatly disgrace this country. I am certain that the people could be humanized; and, without any thing like reproach, I do say, that a heavy responsibility rests on those who meet these people in the house of God—I mean the spiritual instructors of the people, whose duty it is to keep them from violence and murder—and I think that could be done by proper exertion and persuasion. Many of the rev. gentlemen I allude to are excellent men, and for them I have a high respect; but in the discharge of my duty I must say that I conceive the people of this country as susceptible of receiving benefit from the instruction their pastors should bestow as the people of any other. It is by the efforts of their clergymen more than by law that the people can be humanized and rendered amenable to the voice of justice and peace. Feeling that such is the case, it strikes me with amazement that the people should still exhibit such savage conduct. Very many cases of murder that have come before me were committed on the return of those concerned from the house of God, and that murderous habit I cannot reconcile with the mo- ral and religious instruction that ought to be unceasingly impressed upon the people. It was right that their Lordships should know what were the doctrines that were actually taught at Maynooth. The right rev. Prelate here read a passage from the evidence of Dr. M'Hale before the Committee of the House of Lords in 1826:— When I say that the Church has the power of dispensing from oaths, I understand that the Church is then the interpreter, in some measure, of the Divine will. In casuistry the shades between right and wrong may be sometimes so indistinct as not to be seen by an ordinary eye; then the Church, being the interpreter of the Divine law, only decides what seems best in the particular case. 'We find it laid down in the class-book, p. 145, that the following are just causes of dispensation in those cases—viz., 1st, the honour of God; 2nd, the utility of the Church; 3rd, the common good of the republic; 4th, the common good of society. Who is to be the judge of what 'the utility of the Church' may require? The superiors of the Church.' If there are paramount obligations founded on natural law, or on the Divine law, and which are clearly impressed on every mind, then we never entertain the question of dispensation, because we know that neither bishop, nor Pope, nor any power on earth, whatever utility could be derived to the Church, can attempt to release a person from an oath confirming these obligations. If the Pope, from a mistaken zeal for the Church (as there have been such instances), should attempt to release subjects from their oath of allegiance, that is one of the cases in which every person may judge for himself that such dispensation is invalid. 'There are certain great landmarks: the duties we owe to kings, sovereigns, persons of subordinate condition, parents, &c., but such is the complexity of human affairs, and such is often the conflicting variety of duties, that it will be impossible to determine every case with certainty. If all cases were determined we should have no necessity for tribunals, either ecclesiastical or civil.' (285.) 'Who is to decide in doubtful cases?—If it was a perplexed case, it will be left to the superior; but if it be a clear case, then every man's own reason can judge.' In 1800, Pius VII. acceded to the Popedom, and on that event, on the 14th of March, wrote to Louis XVIII., acknowledging him as the successor of St. Louis and the legitimate Sovereign of France. Louis accordingly sent Cardinal Maury ambassador to Rome. In March, 1800, it would be remembered, the affairs of the republic were at the lowest ebb. Bonaparte was shut up in Egypt with his army, and there was a great prospect of the speedy return of Louis to the throne of his ancestors. But, in 1801, the battle of Marengo took place, which put Bonaparte in possession of the whole of Italy; and the Pope having entered into a concordat with Bonaparte, published it, and thereby absolved all Frenchmen from their allegiance to their legitimate sovereign, and consented to the oath by which all parish priests and bishops swear that they will bear true allegiance to Bonaparte, and reveal all conspiracies against his government. This was an instance to show that the deposing power was still claimed and acted on by the Pope. He would add a proof of what amounted to a direct teaching of perjury. In the book called De Pœnitentiâ, pp. 285, 286, it was stated that— If a priest be interrogated by the magistrate on matters which have come to his knowledge from confession only, he ought to answer that he knows them not—ay, and to swear that he knows them not, without any danger of hereby swearing falsely. The reason is, according to Estius, because a man neither lies nor equivocates who speaks to the mind of him who asks, and so brings forward nothing but truth. And such is the position of the priest in the aforesaid case; for the judge does not put the question to him of what he knows in the way of confession, as representing God (quatenus Dei vices agit), but what he may know as man (quatenus homo), and therefore out of confession. To Estius all divines assent in this. But if the judge press him, and further demand whether he knew such or such a thing from confession, some authors say that the priest may give the same answer, that he knows nothing of the matter on which he is interrogated—because, say they, whatever be the will of the judge, he cannot interrogate the priest, except as man. But the far more common opinion, and that which must be followed in practice, is, that in such a circumstance the confessor must say that he can give no answer to the question: the reason is,"—not because the other answer would be false, but—"because this answer only consults for the sacredness of the seal, be the case what it may, and at the same time for men's reverence for the sacrament. For it may have been that the penitent has already declared to the judge that he has committed the crime which had been the subject of confession, and then what would the judge think of the denial of the confessor, which the penitent himself has proved to be false? Again, if the crime should be proved by other evidence, and the confessor had affirmed with an oath that he had heard nothing of it in the sacred tribunal of confession, would he not give reason to conjecture that a full confession had not been made by the penitent? Therefore, in the case supposed, the only thing which is fit for the confessor to do, is to give an evasive answer, or to hold his tongue, whatever be the threatened consequence, even though it be death. If that were not directly instructing the clergy in perjury he was not able to understand what was meant. If the Government proposed to perpetuate and take into the bosom of the State this institution—if they were willing to grant this special favour to a perjury-teaching College—let the responsibility rest upon them. But unless it could be shown that this teaching of Maynooth was as conducive to truth, justice, and honesty, as he believed he had shown it to be in direct contradiction to them, he did trust, that whatever had been the previous Resolution of their Lordships with regard to their votes, if he had been the humble means of opening their eyes to the iniquities of the system there pursued, a majority of their Lordships would act upon their conviction, and say "Not content" to the Motion for the second reading of the Bill.

Lord Brougham

said, that in addressing their Lordships upon this now almost exhausted subject, he wished, in the first place, to point out the remarkable discrepancy between the line of argument taken by the right rev. Prelate who had so ably addressed their Lordships, and the arguments previously addressed to their Lordships by every one of the noble Lords who had before spoken on the same side of the question; a discrepancy so signal, that he could not help felicitating his noble Friends opposite, and his two noble Friends who occupied the cross benches, and wishing them joy of the support which their contention had met with from the right rev. Prelate. For, what was their ground for opposing the grant? It was, that this was an institution for the propagation of idolatry — superstitious and abominable doctrines—all that was most erroneous in creed and pernicious in practice—all that the State should put down, and the ministers of religion discountenance—and that the Government ought not to give its countenance to the endowment of a College for teaching Roman Catholic priests, who would disseminate those errors and perpetuate those principles. Though he thought that those objections were wrong, and that the ground of the opposition of his noble Friends was unimportant, they were at least consistent, and their argument was to be understood. But what said the right rev. Prelate? "I object," said the right rev. Prelate, "to this particular College of Maynooth. I find fault with it in its principle and in its detail; but let there be a good establishment upon the same principle, and then found four colleges, at each of which there may be taught not only secular learning, not only the sciences and letters, to lay pupils; but to each of those Colleges," says the right rev. Prelate, "there shall be added an ecclesiastical seminary for the express purpose of teaching Roman Catholic priests, and qualifying them to go forth on their Papist mission." There was, however—to use a theological phrase—a backsliding in the right rev. Prelate's observations; for, however much he differed from his noble Friend in the announcement of principle, in the manner in which he followed it up he was equally discrepant with himself. The right rev. Prelate said, here was a great change proposed by this Bill; here was the endowment, for the first time, of a College that had never been endowed before; and that was the chief argument upon which the other side rested. The right rev. Prelate said, that all that the State had hitherto done was—on the representation of the whole body of the Irish people—not to endow, but to give the Catholics an opportunity of endowing the seminary themselves. It was rather, according to the right rev. Prelate, the object to found an endowable than an endowed College. But how did that statement tally with the fact? In the year 1795, the Act the 35th Geo. III. was passed. Did that Act, or did it not, endow the seminary? He said it did, most distinctly and clearly. It appointed Trustees, to whom it confided all the powers of a corporate body, and, in all but the use of the word corporation, which was accidentally omitted, it made a corporation of those trusts; and so far from its having been intended that the institution should depend on Roman Catholics for its maintenance, in that very year was the first grant of the State for its support made. Then came the Act of 1800. Certain things had been omitted in the first Act, and it was found necessary to add those powers which were found wanting to carry its objects into effect; and at the same time a new system of visitation was founded. The Act of the 48th of Geo. III. followed next; and that Act gave all those powers which the previous Acts, the 35th and 40th of the same reign, had left wanting; but it still omitted the terms "corporation" and "corporate body:" and that omission had occasioned a doubt whether the Trustees could take leases as a corporate body, or only for themselves as individuals. And when they heard of the clamour which had been excited in consequence of the omission of this main word—when they found that omission was sufficient to raise a flame throughout England, Ireland, and Scotland—they might indeed say that words were things. But what were the words of the 48th of George III.? "Whereas," said the preamble of that Act, "a seminary has been established, maintained, and endowed, for the education"—the exclusive education was the word—"for educating exclusively persons professing the Roman Catholic religion: be it therefore enacted." To say that endowment was never heard of before, and that it was reserved for the year 1845 to speak for the first time of the endowment of Maynooth, was a mockery of the recollection of their Lordships, or of their senses in reading the words of that Statute. But who was the Sovereign under whose government the last of those three Acts passed? George the Third: that Sovereign, as was well known, was no great enemy to the Protestant Establishment, nor was he any great admirer of the Roman Catholic faith; and he would venture to say, of all persons in England, no one was more conscientiously and zealously attached to the religion of his ancestors, their firm adherence to which had been the ground for selecting that illustrious family to fill the Throne of these realms. George III. was the Prince to whom those Acts were recommended, which afterwards passed the Irish and the English Houses of Parliament. But who was the Minister by whose advice the 48th of that King was passed? That Minister was neither more nor less than Mr. Perceval, of Protestant memory; a man of truly anti-Catholic prejudices, if he might so speak, of what were in his case sincere and conscientious opinions, in support of which he was ready to make any sacrifice, not of office merely, but of life. Mr. Perceval's attention was called to the subject; and it could not be supposed that he was indifferent to the errors of the Catholic religion, for this was the very year after he had displaced the Ministry of Lord Grenville and Lord Grey, on the ground of their difference with the Sovereign upon Catholic Emancipation. This strenuous advocate of Protestantism—this enemy of the Catholic system, the Catholic creed, and the Catholic religion—was the Minister under whom this Act was passed, which, in repeating the two former Statutes, expressly stated that the seminary was endowed. He (Lord Brougham) thought that a seminary for the education of a spiritual class of men, to the exclusion of laymen, was to be lamented, and he regretted the change that was made in that respect in the constitution of Maynooth; but it had been made before Mr. Perceval's time. From the time of the passing of the first Act, with the exception of one year, he believed in consequence of the agitation then existing in Ireland, the grant in support of this seminary had been made every year since. But, said the right rev. Prelate, that grant is only for each year; but was the intention of Parliament less distinct or more doubtful on that account? On the contrary, its being annual stamped it fifty-fold more strongly with the authority of Parliament, and increased fifty-fold the arguments in favour of this measure; and, as the most rev. Prelate (the Archbishop of Dublin) had most justly asked, who was the Minister who would now dare to propose to Parliament the refusal of the annual grant? If this Bill had never been heard of, the grant would have been made every year; it was, in fact, a lease of years renewable for ever; and if no one could doubt that, where, in God's name, was the difference between giving it altogether, once and for all, and giving it every year—between giving it for ever at once, and giving it in a way that was never to end? By giving it at once, they had at least this advantage—they avoided those debates without end in Parliament, which the annual reference to this subject gave rise to; they avoided all that agitation and excitement in the country which they annually witnessed, and those efforts made by men who, it might be said, knew no better, but who, with all charity, he suspected did know a little better than those who were their dupes; they would have, instead of the present annual crop of anti-Maynooth meetings, of religious animosities, of discord raised in each parish and in each family circle—for it extended to the domestic hearth—instead of that, they would have the matter settled, once for all; and there would be a prospect that that agita- tion and that discord which now existed would be overcome, and that the present storm, by which the whole surface of society was ruffled, would subside into the calm of good feeling and Christian charity. They had, then, the right rev. Prelate telling them of the kind of teaching and the kind of people that were sent forth from Maynooth. The right rev. Prelate said they were treated as slaves when they were there, and that they became despots at the end of seven years. Now, he would wish to say one word of that which ran through the whole of the arguments of the right rev. Prelate and others; and that was, the grievous error of arguing one question when there was another before them. They had been arguing as if the question before them was, if all the evils of Maynooth were to be continued, or to be put down. They had no such choice. They had Maynooth, whether they liked it or not. They had had the endowment for half a century; they could not revoke it; they could not disfranchise Maynooth, and therefore they must continue to have it, with all its bad teaching, and even with its slaves, who were afterwards to become despots. Was it not, then, he asked them in sober seriousness, if they must have slaves who were afterwards to be despots—if it would not be better to have them gentlemen, or something approaching gentlemen, educated liberally, with something of gentlemanlike fashion? — then, he asked them, was it desirable that they should have them in that state which had been described by an English gentleman who had gone over to Ireland, and visited Maynooth? In that description, it was said of Maynooth that an Irish union workhouse was a palace to it; there was to be found in it nothing but lazy squalor, from the dining room to the kitchen; and "why," the writer asked, "should the place be so ruinous and foully dirty?" There was a noble Duke (the Duke of Leinster) who lived near to the place, and who must be aware that the picture was not overcharged. This argument applied to the whole question. Whatever arguments they might use against Maynooth, whatever might be its police, its habits, or its discipline—whether there was a want of education, a perverted education, or a defective education, or whether there were bad priests reared up, or, to use the strong expression of the right rev. Prelate, the students were fitted to be despots by being turned into slaves; whatever the circumstances might be—and admitting the pictures that had been given of Maynooth to be perfectly true—what was the result? They could not put a stop to Maynooth—they must continue it; and the only question was, how were they to remedy the evil, and how were they to make the mischief cease? Thus, every topic that had been used on the other side gave an additional force to the arguments in favour of this measure. He came, then, to the worst argument of the right rev. Prelate, who said that there was no security whatever for the good government of this institution. His reply was, that they had the best security that was to be got, under the circumstances in which they were placed. The Trustees were to have the power of making by-laws. They might make regulations for their own government, their own police, their own discipline, within certain limits, for regulating the doctrines that were taught. Then there were to be visitors, and they were to have the power of making inquiries. It was no longer to be nominal; and even hitherto, he was aware, it had not been altogether formal, but in some instances effectually used. Why, the right rev. Prelate was ignorant of the history of the institution which he charged with so many defects. The visitatorial power had been formerly exercised—it had been repeatedly exercised by Lord Plunket. At one time, sedition had been said to have been circulated amongst the students; an inquiry was made; expulsions took place, and the remedy was found to be effectual. On one occasion, too, inquiry had been made whether bad doctrines had been taught — whether they were bound by their oaths to refuse to give legal evidence. An inquiry was instituted, and the answer again was that they claimed no exemption—that they were obliged to answer on their oaths, notwithstanding a prior engagement. He now came to speak with respect to a point that it was painful to him to allude to upon any occasion or in any place, particularly because the opinions that he had to express might very possibly be found unpleasing, and be heard with disrelish by some Members of their Lordships' House for whom he entertained an unfeigned respect—the Members of their House who were of the Catholic religion. After all the clamour that had been excited out of doors, after all the attempts that had been made, if not within doors, at least not discountenanced by the course pursued within doors; not by the reasoning but by the declamation within doors; it became necessary to exempt oneself from the charges thus made; it became necessary to state the preference which he gave to Protestantism over the Catholic faith, which, in his mind, was a grievous error. He did not wish to use a harsh expression; but such was his opinion of that form of worship and that form of faith. No man, he said, in that House, or out of that House, be he ever so loud in the profession of his attachment to the Protestant faith, could surpass him in his opinion as to the errors of the Catholic system; meaning by that, the Romish religion, and the evil tendency of its policy—not of the religion, mind, but of the policy—the policy engrafted on the Catholic religion. He said nothing of its Articles of Faith, for that was not the place in which such sacred points should be discussed; but laying aside its Articles of Faith as being of a purely spiritual nature, and which only concerned the souls of men, which only taught the relations between man and the Supreme Being, and with which no man had a right to interfere; that he said, was a point on which it was not necessary for him to enter. But then, as to doctrines which did not belong to the Catholic faith, which were separate from it, but which had been engrafted upon, which had been introduced into it, by the weight and authority of men who wore mitres, and men who were armed with crosiers, and men who flourished under the sanction of the Pope or Bishop of Rome; — he denied the right of the Popedom to make these introductions, to engraft these things on the original pure faith which had been handed down from the apostolic times. Of these errors, he said, he disapproved. Now here, he said, they had nothing to do with these questions, nor with nine parts out of ten that had been brought forward on the other side, and to support which they had large volumes produced—happily not read; but still they had considerable references made from books of all sorts—from theological books and class books, and he had strong impressions that some of the Fathers even had been quoted. [Laughter—a noble Lord mentioned Thomas Aquinas] No—Thomas Aquinas was not a Father, he was merely a Doctor. He wrote in the thirteenth century, the Fathers in the first four or five centuries. Upon all these arguments and quotations he had a short observation to make. He said their argument destroyed itself; for supposing these things taught at Maynooth, the question was, would they not put it on a better footing? His noble Friend (Lord Beaumont) was wrong in supposing that all the bad doctrines mentioned were not to be found in these books. The bad doctrines were certainly there; and if the question depended upon that, he should vote for inquiry. The truth, however, was, that they had nothing to do with the question. The things were taught in the Catholic Church; and when he said "Catholic," he meant Roman Catholic Church, for they were all Catholics. The doctrines were to be found in those books which constituted the Corpus Juris Theologici, and, as such, they were taught in Maynooth; but then out of the 100,000 pages in those books, it would be found that the bad doctrines shrunk within one or two pages: and it did not follow that a single line in these were taught as the doctrines of the Roman Catholic religion. But then, he said, don't let them suppose that the Roman Catholic Church was the only Church that had fallen into the grievous error of preaching such doctrines, or that intolerance was confined within the walls of the Catholic Church. All Churches armed with secular power, by an alliance with the State, had fallen into the same error, and all promulgated persecution, though none had carried it so far as the Catholic Church. Even their own Anglican Church, the least persecuting Church, had divines who had written within the last three centuries—not in the thirteenth century, like Thomas Aquinas — but who put forward persecuting doctrines. They must not even say that they were quite free from intolerance at the present moment. What was said four or five times in the year, and what was the place in which it was said,—"This is the Catholic faith, which, unless a man have, without doubt he shall perish everlastingly;" which unless a man faithfully believe, he shall not be saved! Now, where and when were these things said? He need not answer these questions. They were not like the questions proposed at the conferences for discussion, as those very men could answer. If they then found their church anathemas "dealing damnation to all around," if they had found this to be a Catholic formula, which they (Protestants) had not happened to have adopted, he did not doubt but that these quotations from the Athanasian creed would have been read the last night and that night. Amongst the other quotations that had been presented to them by noble Lords and the right rev. Prelates, sure he was that the Bishop of Cashel would have favoured them with such extracts, although in reading the quotations with which he favoured them, he must have forgotten the minacious parts of the service of which he was so suitable an expounder. Now, who were those who had made the greatest efforts against the Maynooth grant? They were chiefly Dissenters and Wesleyan Methodists. The Wesleyan Methodists were partly Churchmen but mostly Dissenters. There were Presbyterians, Baptists, Anabaptists, and Independents, the most zealous of the whole, he was sorry to perceive. Now he would remind those who would not, extend toleration to the Catholic religion, and who were on this occasion the allies of the right rev. Prelate—that their Church, as the law-established Church, was not merely Protestant—it was the English Episcopal Church—a Church which had the greatest repugnance to Dissenters who did not acknowledge the rule of bishops—a much greater repugnance to them than to the Catholic body who acknowledged bishops. Let the Dissenters remember that when they would carry on a crusade against their Catholic brethren. And were there no persecuting doctrines among the Dissenters? He would quote these doctrines, and he should like to know who it was that preached them? It was John Calvin. Even he, whose name was so venerated by Presbyterians and Anabaptists; they took it as the name of the purest filtration of pellucid and orthodox belief; and he might remark, that no inconsiderable body of their own Episcopal Church were followers of Calvin. He advised, then, those who held to the pure Calvinistic faith—to the discipline of Calvin—that it was not for them to carry on a crusade against Maynooth, because of the works of Thomas Aquinas, and his talking of heretics being removed as tares; when, if he (Lord Brougham) were to select any writer, who did not merely speak of it as a matter of right thus to treat heretics, but who laid it down as a positive duty to exterminate heretics, by burning the body to save the soul: then the one he would name, without hesitation, was John Calvin himself. And what he preached, he supported by act and example. This did not rest on Calvin's precepts; it was not a thing said and then forgotten; but, in the course of his life he acted on the precept, and by an act of the most atrocious perfidy—by opening letters—he entrapped his victim from Vienna; and having him in Geneva, his victim (Servetus) was accused of Arian or Socinian doctrines, there tried, and after an absolute mockery of a trial, was condemned to death and burned. The same inclination to persecute was exhibited, even by the Pilgrim Fathers, who settled the first colonies in North America. Jared Sparkes, who had written a history of these early settlers in Massachusetts, showed to what an extent they were tainted with the besetting sin of persecution; he mentioned the cases of two sent in chains by the very first ship that returned from Salem to England, and the crime laid to their charge, horresco referens, was, that the prisoners had presumed to say their prayers according to the service of the Church of England. The men were sent to England, they were imprisoned, but their lives were saved. This was persecution, not carried on by the Catholic Church, but by men who accused it of persecution. Let him now say one word, drawn from him by the allusion which had been made to that illustrious prince, the pride of this country, and who should be the pride of Ireland too—he meant William III. He revered the memory of that great monarch, and not only because he founded the civil liberties of the country, but because he had saved them from popery. That was his opinion, and it was the opinion of every man who had well weighed the eventful history of King William's time. That his glorious memory might be made the catchword—might be made the symbol — might be made the cry, the rallying cry, in order to make factious men, and zealous, over zealous, fanatical, and intolerant men, band themselves together—he was not ready to deny; and it was not in that sense that he would have their Lordships suppose that he used and echoed these words. But that they owed a debt never to be paid by endless gratitude, for the services in the cause of civil and religious liberty of that illustrious Prince, he was as fully persuaded as was his noble Friend, the noble Earl (the Earl of Roden) on the bench opposite. If they had lived in the days of the Somers, the Godolphins, and the other great men of their day, or of the days which immediately followed their time—if they had lived in these times, much as they now reprobated the provisions of the penal code, they would have no doubt felt it to be their bounden duty to have passed similar laws to those they thought necessary for the protection of religion and of the liberties of the country. But these times had passed away. There was no longer any occasion for them, and these laws had therefore been repealed—that code had ceased to exist: but that was no reason for despising the provident wisdom of those who founded that code—a code which they deemed necessary to save the country from ruin. He said this much to show his noble Friends on the other side of the question how very little animated was he with what they were pleased to call the Popish spirit. Last of all, they were told by the right rev. Prelate who presided over the metropolitan diocese, that they could not conscientiously give money for the purpose of propagating error; of propagating that which they believed to be pernicious error. In the first place, the error would be propagated whether they gave the money or not; and, in the next place, it was not their own money which they were called upon to give, it was a mixed fund to which Catholics as well as Protestants contributed. And let him, last of all, ask them what they had done before? Was this the first time that they had thus given money? He had already shown that it was not the first time, even as regarded Maynooth. But Maynooth was only one of a dozen cases in which they had given money without stint, and certainly without grudging, and, undeniably, without clamour ever being raised, or conscience being ever invoked to take part in the crusade against it. This was no question of conscience—it was simply a question of policy and of expediency. What had they done with Canada, where they had established the Roman Catholic Church? But, said the right rev. Prelate, there was the greatest difference in the world between the two cases; for, if they considered—and they must, it was urged, be ignorant of the history of Canada not to know it; this was done because Canada was ceded to us at the Peace of Paris, after the seven years' war, when we bound ourselves by treaty to maintain the Catholic Church in that province. They might be very ignorant, it was true; but as regarded this matter, it would be difficult for them to be more ignorant than the right rev. Prelate. There was no such stipulation in the Treaty of Paris at all. The Treaty having been alluded to, he had carefully read it that morning. By the Fourth Article the King of France gave up and ceded in perpetuity the two Canadas to the King of Great Britain, and the King of Great Britain promised and undertook that he would allow his new subjects in Canada the free exercise of their religion; that was to say, that he would tolerate them, that he would not persecute them; that was to say, that he would allow them to exercise the Catholic religion; but not that he was to keep up the Catholic Church, a point on which not one single syllable was said. The King of Great Britain was to allow them the exercise of the Catholic religion, so far as the same was allowed by the laws of England; so that the penal code, in fact, extended to the Roman Catholic subjects of the ceded province. In Canada, he understood, there were constant grants given—not to the Church, because the Church was sufficiently endowed by the King in his legislative capacity, and by his Ministers, which endowment was confirmed to it by Lord Grenville's Act of 1792, voluntarily, and without any obligation arising from the Treaty—but constant grants were made, to and for what? Why, if secular priests were bad, the regular priests were a great deal worse; and it was much more unconscientious to encourage and to support monks, than it was to encourage and support the secular clergy; and yet it was to support convents and monasteries that these constant grants were made. As to Malta, the case was a great deal stronger. The cession of that island first took place in 1802, and then in 1815, and no stipulation was made as to the Catholic religion. If that religion presented a forbidden aspect anywhere, it was certainly in Spain. By the Treaty of 1802, his Catholic Majesty ceded in full sovereignty the island of Trinidad, and we then undertook—not even to tolerate the Catholic religion, but to allow the Catholics three years' exercise of their religion, if they chose so long to remain on the island. There was, therefore, no obligation whatever arising from treaty to support the Roman Catholic faith in respect to Trinidad, and yet Roman Catholicism of the most intolerant and rigorous nature — that of Rome herself could not be more so—was established, endowed, and supported by this Protestant Government in the island of Trinidad; and yet no cry, no voice, no whisper has been ever raised against such a policy. Before he sat down, he wished to say one word with respect to the mode, the time, and the manner of making this endowment, which they were now contemplating. It appeared to him that the mode of so doing had been made the subject of great misrepresentation. He had heard it said, that the right hon. Gentleman at the head of the Government had avowed as one reason for giving this grant to Maynooth, that there was some considerable alarm in respect of our relations with a foreign country. He had heard it said also that the same right hon. Gentleman had assigned as another reason, that agitation could never be put down without it. He had recently seen a contrast invidiously drawn between this alleged declaration of the right hon. Gentleman, and the concluding portion of the speech last night delivered by the noble Duke in introducing this Bill, when the noble Duke said that agitation had been put down. Justice to this Government—a debt of gratitude to the Ministers who had brought forward this measure—the love of doing that which it must always be delightful to be able to effect, of rendering any service in the vindication of those whom he knew to have been calumniated—made him desirous, before he sat down, of rendering that small service, if it were in his power so to do. The right hon. Gentleman to whom he had referred might have made allusion to America. He might, in the course of his observations upon this subject, have referred to our relations with the United States. He might then have alluded to difficulties which might possibly have arisen from the dispute pending between the two countries. But he (Lord Brougham) denied, as broadly and as distinctly as his words could enable him to give it the denial, that any such apprehensions as those alluded to had, or could have had, by any possibility, any place amongst the motives which induced the Government to bring forward this measure. And why was he so clear in giving this denial? Why, for these obvious reasons. To believe that such was the case, involved an anachronism; because last year, before there were any difficulties with America, before these difficulties were dreamt of, in answer to his Friend, Mr. Wyse, in the other House of Parliament, the right hon. Gentleman distinctly announced the intentions of Her Majesty's Government, both as to Maynooth and as to the plan of academic education for Ireland. That was enough; but he would go a step further. Even if the insinuation were not met by its anachronism being stated, he would still say, that it was impossible that any apprehensions as to America, or anything of the kind, could have influenced this step on the part of Her Majesty's Ministers. And why did he say this? Because these very Ministers had taken the ground, the very highest ground, that it was possible to take. They had even gone outside and dehors the bounds of prudence, in the high ground they took in their avowals and declarations in that and the other House of Parliament, in respect to the American question. But as one reason, one argument, one advantage, was not the right hon. Baronet entitled to say—"Among the reasons which should induce you to pursue a just, an equitable, a humane, a conciliatory policy towards your countrymen in Ireland, one advantage is, that, happen what may in our external affairs, it is always safe and good to have things in a peaceful, tranquil, and conciliatory state at home." Why was the next observation made? "It is vain," the right hon. Baronet was alleged to have said, "to think to put down agitation by force." Why, he (Lord Brougham) said so too; and any one who reflected would see that it was an identical proposition. It must of necessity be true, whether any one chose to apply it invidiously or not. It was nothing new—it was no secret divulged — there was no novelty in it. It was utterly impossible to put down agitation by force until it broke out into unlawful acts. But the right hon. Baronet knew he might rely upon his countrymen; and if it should break out into unlawful acts, he was not the Minister who would shrink from putting it down by force—he was not the man who could by possibility have forgotten what his slanderers seem to have forgotten altogether, that where agitation was no longer the spirit of discontent, which could not be put down by force, but broke out into seditious acts—he could not have forgotten what it was convenient to them to forget, but he did use force, and that the use of that force was triumphantly successful. He (Lord Brougham) was by no means inclined to think agitation, before it broke out into violence, was not a serious evil. It was a great mischief to any thickly peopled country to have men's minds agitated by a disturbance of the public peace, so as to make it at any one moment a matter of risk that illegal acts should be committed. A good deal had been said of the language used by Dr. Higgins; but he must say, he set that right rev. agitator's expressions down for no more than they were worth. And this he said because he recollected that, two Sessions ago, when he fulminated his wrath against the British Parliament and in favour of the Repeal of the Union, but which he (Lord Brougham) called the severance of the countries, he added to his protest the remark, that he owed nothing to the British Legislature but what he should be always ready to pay—his unbounded contempt. Now this same individual had, some years previously, signed—he would not say a fulsome—but a loyal and wholly complimentary address to the noble Duke opposite, to His Majesty and to the Parliament, for that great act of policy, the repeal of the Penal Code. That he might in the course of a few years discover that we were to be paid off in unbounded contempt, was possible; but it took considerably from the value of his opinion, and made him (Lord Brougham) rate it at what it was worth, and regard his praise at the same rate as his scorn. The argument that the Irish people had no right to be grateful for the grant of 17,000l., because it did not amount to three farthings a head for the Roman Catholics of Ireland, would have been equally used if it had been 300,000l.; in which case, it would have been cavilled against as being only fivepence per head. But these men were not the indices of the Irish mind. They were not Ireland; they no more represented the sentiments of the people of Ireland, than those who associated together under the title of the people of England, being two in number, and who, when there were none others present than themselves—Mr. Wilkes and Alderman Sawbridge — issued their manifestoes, "We, the people of England." He did not consider those who made the most noise as the most to be trusted as representatives of the people. What their Lordships and the Government should do, was, to turn neither to the right nor to the left, not to go in chase of popularity, not to be disappointed when they lost it; to be glad and grateful when they obtained the thanks and the affections of their countrymen, but not to be disappointed if for the present they failed to reap that rich reward, being assured that the popularity which follows great actions is infinitely preferable to that which is run after; and that if they pursued such a course, they would deserve — ay, and, he would ven- ture to say, would ultimately obtain—that reward.

Debate further adjourned.

House adjourned.