all around him; and perhaps even transfer to himself the respect which he, and all his parish, had been accustomed to pay to another."

"The nominal expenses of a student at Maynooth, are twenty guineas stipend for the first year, with eight guineas entrance money. The stipend of £21 pays for commons, lodging, and instruction: nominally, a payment of £21 is required yearly; but in point of fact these stipends are not exacted-sometimes not at all— and very rarely a continuance of them beyond the first year, from the lower students. This is, of course, optional with the heads of the college, who will certainly not permit the priesthood to lose a promising member, owing to the difficulty of paying the stipend. It is evident, however, that the expenses of an education at Maynooth form no obstacle to the probations of the lower classes. An Irish landowner, be he rack-rented ever so much, will contrive to scrape together £20 or £30, in order that his son may be a priest: he will starve himself and his family to accomplish this he will work late and early, and run in arrear with his landlord. This is the great object of ambition, and it is accomplished at any sacrifice."-Inglis, ii. pp. 342, 343.

How far the attempt to raise up in their native isle, a loyal and respectable priesthood, has succeeded, yet remains to be considered. Mr. Gifford, in his Life of Mr. Pitt, states, on the authority of Dr. Duigenan, not only that within three years of the establishment of Maynooth College, many of the students joined the rebellion, and fought in the battle of Kilcock, but that Dr. Hussey, the first president, and the titular bishop of Waterford, published "A Pastoral Letter," previous to the outbreak of 1798, charged with treason and rebellion, in consequence of which he was obliged to fly that kingdom, and is said to have died in exile. "Certain it is that sixteen or seventeen were expelled from the college on account of rebellion; but the governors waited with becoming prudence till the rebellion was suppressed, before they executed this act of necessary and political severity."

"I entertain no doubt, that the disorders which originate in hatred of Protestantism, have been increased by the Maynooth education of the Catholic priesthood. It is the Maynooth priest who is the agitating priest: and if the foreign educated priest chance to be a more liberal-minded man, less a zealot, less a hater of Protestantism, than is consistent with the present spirit of Catholicism in Ireland, straight. way an assistant, red hot from Maynooth, is appointed to the parish; and, in fact, the old priest is virtually displaced. In no country in Europe,-no not in Spain,is the spirit of Popery so intensely anti-Protestant as in Ireland. In no country is there so much zeal and intolerance among the ministers of religion. I do believe, that at this moment, Catholic Ireland is more rife for the re-establishment of the Inquisition than any other country in Europe."-Ibid. ii. pp. 341, 342.

On the comparative influence of a domestic and foreign system of education upon the character and manners of the priesthood, Mr. Inglis makes the following remarks:--

*Gifford's Life of Pitt, vol. v. 387, 388.

"I made free to repeat to the vice-president, an opinion I had very often heard expressed; and indeed I may say very generally held amongst the Protestants of Ireland-that since the institution of Maynooth, the Catholic priesthood had deteriorated, and that a priest educated at Maynooth might be at once distinguished from the priest of former days by his less amenity of manners and less liberal sentiments; the result of a more exclusive, more severe, and more contracted system of education pursued at Maynooth. I need scarcely say, that these were not admitted to be facts; and as I could at that time speak only from hearsay, I was fairly enough requested to judge for myself in the course of the journey which I was about to make. But my assertions, or rather my repetition of the assertions of others, was also met by some counter-statements. I was told that France and Spain were not in past days countries where liberal sentiments were likely to be imbibed; -I was told that the opportunity of mixing with the world, two months in every year, is a great advantage to the student of Maynooth; and I was told also, that the education of Maynooth is greatly superior to that formerly required by the candidates for the priesthood, who travelled into foreign countries, and who not being able to pay the expenses of a foreign education, got themselves ordained and supported themselves by saying masses. It may be very true that liberal sentiments of a certain description were not likely to be gathered on the continent, thirty or forty years ago. But surely, that species of liberality which may, perhaps, more properly be called charity, and that knowledge of the world and mankind which is requisite towards the understanding of oneself, are, and must always have been, more likely to be acquired by a residence in a foreign country, by mixing with persons of all nations, by the yielding of tastes and habits, consequent on a residence abroad; by the knowledge imperceptibly gained by merely keeping the eyes open in a foreign country, and even by the mere journeying to and fro, than by returning from the seclusion of Maynooth two months in the year, to the farm-house and remote parish, where the only change likely to be wrought in embryo priests is an increase of selfsufficiency.

"But I obeyed the request which was made to me and in the journey which I subsequently took, I had ample opportunity of forming comparisons between the priest of olden times, and the priest of Maynooth; and with every disposition to deal fairly by both, I did return to Dublin with a powerful conviction of the justice of the opinions which I had heard expressed. I found the old foreign-educated priest, a gentleman; a man of frank, easy deportment, and good general information; but by no means in general so good a Catholic as his brother of Maynooth; he, I found, either a coarse, vulgar-minded man, or a stiff, close, and very conceited man; but in every instance, popish to the back-bone; learned, I dare say, in theology, but profoundly ignorant of all that liberalises the mind: a hot zealot in religion; and fully impressed with, or professing to be impressed with, a sense of his consequence and influence. I need not surely say, that I found exceptions; but I found some, whom the monkish austerities, and narrow education of Maynooth, had left unscathed; and that I found very many,-I might say, the greater proportion,-who, notwithstanding the defects of education which clove to them, were charitable, and heedful of the poor, and who grudged no privations in the exercise of their religious duties."-Ibid. ii. 338-341.

We have not yet touched upon another important topic, the character of the instruction given at Maynooth, and now find that we have no space for observations thereon. Suffice it then, to say, that amongst other class-books which the president, Dr. Crolly, stated to the Commissioners, that the students use, are Dalahogue's Dogmatic

Tracts, Bailly's Moral Tracts, Cabassutius on the Canon Law, and that these works have been carefully examined and by extracts proved beyond dispute, to be IMMORAL, ANTI-SOCIAL, DISLOYAL, AND UNSCRIPTURAL.*

Now Sir Robert Peel intends "to propose a liberal increase in the grant to this college, unaccompanied by any restrictions or regulations as to religious doctrines, which would diminish its grace and favour ;”† and he proposes, too, to do it by bill, and so to remove the increased allowance to that establishment from the inconvenience of an annual discussion. The charges of repairing the buildings, which it seems are from time to time to be paid by the country, will, however, be brought in with other estimates.‡

Believing that the passing of such an act will be fraught with danger to the best interests of Ireland and the empire, we will now offer a few closing remarks, to induce our readers to unite with their fellow-Protestants of every denomination, in the most strenuous opposition that the constitution will permit, to this most unprincipled design.

FIRST, it must be seen from the preceding narrative, that no compact exists between the parliament and the Roman Catholics of Ireland, to maintain this institution at the public expense. The penal laws against foreign and domestic education were the very worst part of the old code-in fact, as Mr. Burke has well said, were part of a horrible and impious system of servitude,"§ from the restraints of which the Catholics were too happy to escape, and to obtain permission to educate their priesthood at home, to think of, much less to stipulate for, an endowment from the State.

The proposal of erecting a few sizarships in the college at Dublin, for the education of Roman Catholic clergymen, was perhaps the greatest stretch of liberality that was then dreamed of. Nor did the Act of Union bind the imperial parliament to pay the grants, which during preceding years had been voted by the Irish House of Commons, but they were from time to time submitted to the decision of parliament; and thus several votes that were annually made by the Irish Commons have been discontinued, though they were to uphold Protestant foundations. Yet no one has declared that such a change violated the Act of Union.

SECONDLY, it is most certain that a country essentially Protestant,

* See "Maynooth College: or, The Law affecting the Grant to Maynooth, with the nature of the instructions there given, and the Parliamentary Debates thereon. By James Lord, of the Inner Temple, Esq. :" a book to which we are indebted for several facts embodied in this paper.

+ Debate on the Address, February 4th, 1845. § Letter to a Peer of Ireland.

Debates, March 19th, 1845.

and upholding at a vast annual cost one Protestant episcopal church, called the United Church of England and Ireland," cannot, with any regard to consistency, educate a Romish priesthood.

"When we are to provide for the education of any body of men," says Mr. Burke, "we ought seriously to consider the particular functions they are to perform in life. A Roman Catholic clergyman is the minister of a very ritual religion: and by his profession subject to many restraints. His life is a life full of strict observances, and his duties are of a laborious nature towards himself, and of the highest possible trust towards others. The duty of confession alone is sufficient, to set in the strongest light the necessity of his having an appropriated mode of education. The theological opinions and peculiar rites of one religion never can be properly taught in universities, founded for the purposes and on the principles of another, which, in many points, are directly opposite. If a Roman Catholic clergyman, intended for celibacy and the functions of confession, is not strictly bred in a seminary where these things are respected, inculcated, and enforced, as sacred, and not made the subject of derision and obloquy, he will be ill fitted for the former, and the latter will be indeed in his hands a terrible instrument."-Letter to a Peer.

This is doubtless true, and therefore if all the honours and emoluments of Trinity College, Dublin, were accessible to candidates for the Roman Catholic priesthood, they must still have close colleges like Maynooth, where the mysteries of celibacy and confession can be safely taught after the improved method set out in the text-books of Delahogue, Bailly, and Peter Dens. But then the question recursHow can a premier who has sworn himself, and heard his royal mistress swear, that the leading doctrines of the Romish Church "ARE SUPERSTITIOUS AND IDOLATROUS," propose to the country to enlarge and perpetuate a grant to teach those very dogmas? Does he wish to diffuse and perpetuate these gross errors? or is he a man of mere expediency, who can "organise hypocrisy," and sacrifice all principle at the altar of political ambition?

THIRDLY, But these fatal concessions are unnecessary, and will fail of accomplishing the political purposes of their advocates. They are unnecessary; for the Roman Catholics of Ireland can now support their own institutions. We have seen, on the testimony of Mr. Burke, that the Irish College at Paris derived the greater part of its revenues from the benefactions and legacies of priests who had been educated there. And celibacy and abstinence are, we suppose, still practised by the Irish priesthood, who have greater opportunities of acquiring wealth by the economy of their order, than their predecessors had sixty years ago. For the Roman Catholic people of Ireland are no longer in the abject poverty which marked their condition then. Now they possess the means and the disposition also, to contribute largely to support popish missioners, who have been sent to Australia, Canada, and the valley of the Mississippi. From six to eight thousand pounds per annum have been remitted from Dublin to Paris in

aid of the funds of the Œuvre de la Propagation de la Foi.* Besides this, in 1841 Dr. Murray, Roman Catholic Archbishop of Dublin, submitted the plan of a college to educate Irish priests for foreign missions to the Sacred Congregation of the Propaganda at Rome, and received its sanction and the apostolic benediction of "His Holiness," on the "Catholic Missionary College of All Hallow Drumcondra, Dublin." "Through the goodness of God, and the generous charity of the faithful," says their advertisement, "the above splendid building, standing on a retired demesne of twenty-four acres in the immediate vicinity of Dublin, and capable of accommodating two hundred students, was founded and opened as a college in October, 1843." These efforts, added to their large annual tribute in the form of "rent," to Mr. O'Connell, show that if national assistance were withdrawn, Maynooth would not want support, though now the Roman Catholics of Ireland permit it to be in the condition described by Lord Monteagle, and meanly sue in forma pauperis for money from the public exchequer for its support.

"There were five hundred students," said his lordship, "two hundred and fifty of whom were supported out of the Government grant of £9,000 a-year, or at the rate of £23 a-year, less than they would give a menial servant, who had clothing, food, and shelter beside. Sometimes this allowance was shared by two persons. Three or four students occupied the same room, and everything was out of repair. The students are prepared too rapidly, and the demand increases. There is no apparatus for scientific teaching, and the place is more like a union workhouse than a college. Now, Government might easily remedy all this, and by the extension of the grant prove to the people their sympathy, while they liberalised the character of the priesthood. £700,000 had been spent on the charter schools, which their own agents condemned, and £780,000 on the foundling hospital, which had been acknowledged a nuisance. Similar liberality to Maynooth would do more good than much that was clamoured for."+

But neither the Irish people, nor the Romish priesthood, will be satisfied with the enlarged grant. Mr. O'Connell has recently said, that £70,000 per annum ought to be granted instead of £28,000; and the magnificent plan recently published in Dublin by the Rev. Mr. Leahy, of Thurles College, for setting up a training seminary, preparatory to Maynooth, in each of the twenty-two popish dioceses of Ireland, will require as large a grant to carry it out. But Mr. O'Connell further says, that it will be received without thanks, and that it will not have the slightest effect in "bribing or seducing any one." No; the Romanists aspire to be the established church of Ireland; and, whilst the principle of an establishment is recognised

*The amount from Ireland for 1844, as reported in the French papers, was 181,905 francs, or £7579. 98.

+ Debates-House of Lords, March 12th, 1844.

Thoughts on Academical Education, &c.