sions, ought to be instantly repealed, and these rates-which, in his opinion, were a fair provision-if the hon. Member's proposition were adopted, must be given up. He could not conceive, he really could not see, if the hon. Member called upon that House to support the union; if he called upon them to support the present tithe-commutation in Ireland, which was working better than could have been or was anticipated, how, with any sense or candour, the hon. Member could grudge the paltry grant of 8,900l. a year, which was all that they gave for religious purposes to the great portion of the people of Ireland, or to the supporters of that religion which extended its influence through every part of Ireland. The last thing which had been brought against this offending college at Maynooth was, that a large part of the students had lately taken the temperance pledge at the hands of a Roman Catholic clergyman, Father Matthew, and in so doing, in his opinion, they were giving an excellent example, and afforded a good omen for the flocks about to be committed to their charge. And he thought that the hon. Member for Kent would do better by teaching his fellowreligionists in England, and even some in his own neighbourhood in Kent, to imitate the example, and to lay aside the filthy habit of drunkenness, and adopt a life of sobriety, which would perhaps bring with it some of the Christian virtues of charity and good-will; and that the hon. Member would thus be doing more good to that religion which he so warmly cherished, than by calling upon Parliament to deny the grant which was now doled out to a large portion of our Roman Catholic fellow subjects in Ireland. dians; and although he complained of the logic and casuistry of the doctrines at Maynooth, the hon. Member himself exhibited rather loose logic and some casuistry, when he referred the proceedings at the election of Poor-law guardians to the education at Maynooth and the writings of Thomas Aquinas. He would not now go into an account of those proceedings, as they might be made matter for judicial inquiry. He could only say with respect to them that the statements which he had received were of a most conflicting nature; and whether the taking of tenants from their beds was so constraining and compulsory a proceeding as the hon. Member for Kent had represented, he could not now say. He would only now refer to what had been the parting remark and the mainspring of the petitions which had been presented to the House, the objection to any grant of public money for the maintenance of the Catholic religion, and the statement that it was wrong to support a religion which the hon. Member charitably and kindly called idolatrous and anti-social. He should not quarrel with the hon. Member's conviction upon that point. He knew it to be a conscientious objection on his own part, and so might it possibly be on the part of the petitioners, although they had not, perhaps, exercised their own opinions so freely as they would have done if some artful misrepresentations had not been made use of. They started, however, with the proposition that it was wrong to support a religion of which they disapproved. That might be a very good opinion to hold; but it appeared to him, that any one who conscientiously held that opinion, was bound to support the voluntary system. How any one could, Sir Robert Inglis said, the noble Lord in common candour, say, that it was had endeavoured, in this discussion, to wrong to support a religion which they raise questions with which, as he conceived, thought erroneous, and yet exact the very the Government of this country had nothing same support for another religion of others to do. The Government had no right to who equally thought that erroneous-how think it an open question whether the they could allow the great majority of the established religion of this country should people of this country to impose upon the be looked upon in the same light as the vast majority of the people of Ireland, the faith of the Dissenters. The Government duty of supporting persons to advocate was bound to support the religion of the the tenets which the majority in Ireland State, and that religion alone which the deemed wrong, he could not conceive. It State recognised as truth. For himself, seemed to him to be utterly at variance he never would consent to pay a sixwith every notion of consistency, of can-pence for teaching as the word of God dour, and of sense. In this sense, the what he believed to be contrary to that laws which required the payment of word. We were living in a Christian Church, and the State and the Government | votes for charities, which the Irish Parliaought to give no support to any church ment regularly maintained. So long as but the Established Church founded upon those votes remained unaltered, he felt truth ; because if they adopted any other that he ought not to resist the vote for this rule, they might give a grant to every col. college. He did not feel at liberty-he lege---to the college of Mill-hill or Hoxton would not say bound—to enquire what paras well as the college of Maynooth. But ticular tenets were taught, any more than the noble Lord went even further, and had he would feel himself at liberty to dispute uttered sentiments which would never have the disposition of a legacy bequeathed been tolerated in any Member of the Go- through him to another individual. He vernment forty years ago. [Ironical cheers only felt bound to discharge the trust from the Ministerial benches.] A pretty committed to him, and to pay over the compliment was that interruption to those money as a matter of course. But when who, on conviction had granted, or against Parliament had taken away from other intheir conviction were compelled to grant, stitutions the money which the Irish Parto those who now cheered, the seats which liament had granted, then every case stood enabled them to cheer. The noble Lord on its own merits; and those who stood had twice used the term “ parochial clergy,” on the claims of precedent, and of a legacy as applied to the Roman Catholic priests; from a deceased Parliament, here ceased to so that the present Government must re- have a firm footing. He thought himself cognise the Roman Catholic priests as the at liberty to say, that he would be no party parochial clergy of Ireland; and the noble to the teaching of any such tenets." He Lord thought, that instead of 8,9001., they felt that he was not bound to be a party to ought to add to the amount, for the pur- it, because, although it might be true, that pose of adding humanities and refinements an agreement had been entered into, it to the severer studies of the college. Be had been broken in other respects, and he it so, if the members were of the Estab-conceived that the nation was not bound to lished religion, [Cheers from the Ministerial hold itself to any Christian obligations, exbenches.] but unless the hon. Members who cept such as called for the support of its cheered, and among them the hon. Mem- Church-that Church was at variance with ber for Kerry, were prepared to vote sums the college of Maynooth. He, therefore, for the support of the Memnonites and the should vote for the motion of his hon. Morganites, were prepared to propose Friend the Member for Kent. grants to members of every persuasion, they Mr. Sheil: Salamanca would, in the could not support the present grant. He Spanish Cortes, be faithfully represented held that it was not right, when the great by the Member whom a Protestant Unimajority of the people of England recog-versity delegates to this House. He is a nised the Church of England as the repo; consistent politician, whose virtues are sitory of divine truth, that they should give to any other religion the countenance best illustraied by the Horatian metaphor, give to any other religion the countenance for if any man ever was, the hon. baronet which this vote was likely to afford. The noble Lord had imputed something like must be on all hands admitted to be “touncharitableness to the hon. Member for tus teres atque rotundus." In some of Kent, for representing the Church of Rome his positions, however, there is a good by strong expressions, but he would ask the deal of anomaly; he says, that because noble Lord himself, whether at the table of the Protestant Charter schools were dethat House, he had not characterized the prived of the fund once annually voted to tenets of the Church of Rome by the same them, we ought to perpetrate what amounts terms as his hon. Friend had used ? There to a violation of Conservative principle in fore, the noble Lord ought not to complain reference to the Catholic seminary at Mayof his hon. Friend for characterising that nooth. The case of Maynooth rests on a same Church by the same terms which the clear contract entered into before the noble Lord himself had used. He had Union, and ratified by Act of Parliament. been content in former years, and when he I have been a good deal surprised that this was a young Member of that House, to act has never been quoted, at least has vote for this grant as a legacy from the never been relied on as strongly as it Parliament of Ireland ; but even then he ought to have been in this House. In had often felt great repugnance to the 1795, the British Government felt that grant, and of late years had voted against the foreign education of the Catholic became apprehensive that doctrines hostile | for Kent, who referred to what happened to British interests might be diffused in 1808, did not allude to the opinions of through Ireland through the system of Mr. Perceval. Mr. Perceval was a great instruction which then prevailed; the in-enemy of Popery-bore it the deepest anfusion of Jacobinism into foreign semin- tipathy, yet found himself bound by conaries was dreaded, and it was considered tract-bound by two Irish Acts of Parliato be most impolitic to encourage a conti- ment. It was not, I trust, in the spirit of nental connection with Ireland, through" pious fraud " that the Member for Kent the colleges in which the Catholic clergy suppressed Mr. Perceval's opinion. For had, previous to the foundation of May- forty years the grant has been annually nooth, been educated. It does strike me made, but I have more recent authority indeed to be most preposterous to intrust than that of Mr. Perceval. I hold in my to foreigners, who may become our worst hand Mr. Gladstone's book on the Church, foes, the instruction of men who exercise, in which, after condemning Maynooth, he and ought, and must continue to exercise, says, that if it rests on the public faith, so vast and so legitimate an influence over the public faith must remain inviolate. Sir, the Irish people. The Catholic clergy are while the Member for Oxford was ina most powerful corporation; the paro-veighing against the Catholic religion, havchial minister is found in every priest, and over the whole frame of our Church presides a hierarchy, composed of able and enlightened men, whose talents, whose station, and whose virtues concur in giving them a great and inevitable sway. We have in our Church all the advantages resulting from a division the most minute, accompanied by a perfect centralization. It seems obvious, then, that the members of such a body ought not to be driven from their country to seek for that instruction among your enemies, or your rivals which you are called on to deny them. Mr. Pitt felt, that the ministers of Catholic Ireland ought not to be conductors of French principles or instruments of French machination, and accordingly, the college of Maynooth was founded and endowed under the 35th of George 3rd. That act recites the expediency of endowing a Catholic seminary, and a grant of 8,0001. (after various provisions for the establishment and regulation of Maynooth) is made by that Act of Parliament. The college having been thus endowed, another act was passed in 1800, confirming the former act, and making further regulalations. Thus Maynooth, before the Union, became one of the national institutions of Ireland. It was in some sort incorporated with the State. The Union passed, and the grant was continued to be regularly voted by the Imperial Parliament. In 1807 the Whigs increased the grant to 12,000l.; but Mr. Perceval reduced it from 12,000l. to 8,000l., on the express ground that the Imperial Parliament was bound to give what the Irish Parliament had granted by a legislative donation. It ing Mr. Gladstone's book in my hand, I I "Thou almost tempt'st me to forswear my faith, And hold opinion with Pythagoras," The hon. Gentleman furnishes a proof of metempsychosis, for he must have lived two hundred years ago, and played a conspicuous part in that celebrated Parliament of "Praise God" legislators, associated by history with the name of a religious statesman of whom such strong reminiscences are presented by the hon. Member for Kent. Mr. Litton said, that his objection to the grant of public money to the College of Maynooth was founded simply upon the mode of education adopted in that seminary. If ever there were such a contract as that to which the right hon. Gentleman had alluded, it must be considered as a contract made between the Roman Catholic clergy of Ireland and the people of both countries, and a portion of that contract was, that doctrines useful to the morality, the religion, and the peace of Ireland, should be taught in that college. This he contended had not been done. He maintained that the doctrines taught at Maynooth were deeply injurious to the welfare of the country; that they were doctrines of great intolerance towards the Protestants of Ireland; that they were doctrines of great immorality, stating that allegiance to the pope was higher than allegiance to the lawful sovereign of these realms; and he was convinced that if hon. Members would take the trouble to look into the classbooks referred to by the hon. Member for Kent, they would find that these doctrines, and worse, were taught and inculcated in this scholastic seminary. No denial had been attempted to be given to the statements on this point which had been made by his hon. Friend near him. He was a friend to a real and just system of education, and he was opposed to a system which inculcated doctrines inimical to the best interest of the nation at large. The Roman Catholic priests who sanctioned the doctrines promulgated at Maynooth were the fixed, the determined, the avowed enemies of the Established Church; they proclaimed the doctrines of that church to be heretical, and they claimed the ascendancy of the church of which they were members. Feeling that the Established Protestant Church afforded the only means of protecting the liberties of Ireland, and looking upon the attacks already made upon that Church, he should give his vote in favour of the motion of Mr. H. G. Ward said, he could not but think the argument of the hon. and learned Gentleman who had just sat down somewhat singular, inasmuch as the hon. and learned Member had complained of the desire for ascendancy on the part of the Roman Catholics, and declared his intention to vote in support of the ascendancy of another church. The hon. Baronet, the Member for the University of Oxford, by his speech to-night, had answered the arguments upon which he must found his motion on Tuesday next, on the subject of Church extension, for the hon. Baronet had to-night said he would not give sixpence in support of any religion which he did not believe to be true. The hon. Baronet had, therefore, laid it down as a principle that no man should contribute to a church in the doctrines of which he had no belief. The hon. Member for Kent, had in the mildest manner, and with the meekest spirit, laid down tonight the most intolerant and bigotted principles ever heard in that House within the last few centuries His speech formed a forcible illustration of Byron's lines: "He was the mildest-mannered man afloat That ever scuttled ship or cut a throat." He had called upon the House to legislate upon the principle followed by the Inquisition in Spain, and to apply a secular arm to the extinction of all dissent. The hon. Member by his resolution called upon the House to rescind the grant of 8,9001. voted to the Roman Catholic priesthood, while upwards of 5,000,000l. was enjoyed annually by the clergy of the Established Church. The hon. Member had said that Maynooth college had failed to effect the objects for which it was established, and he had cited the language of Mr. Pitt to show that the principal object was to establish a college of loyal men. Now, he begged to ask, whether the scholastic establishments of this country had answered that end? Was the hon. Baronet the Member for the University of Oxford, satisfied in that respect even with his own establishment? Did the hon. Member for Kent, looking to the occurrences which had taken place in his own county, mean to claim for it exclusive loyalty? Could he refer to the transactions near Canterbury with feelings of either pride or satisfaction? The hon. Member had also spoken of the political character of the priesthood hon. Member whether there was a county | by purer or more disinterested motives in England, in which the clergy of the than his hon. Friend, the Member for Church of England were not the best pos- Kent, who had brought forward this mosible whippers-in at any election. There tion. But he (Sir R. Peel) had not the was just as much of politics mixed up in slightest hesitation as to the vote he should the English Established Church as in any give on that motion, or in avowing the church in the world. He said this with grounds upon which he should oppose the regret, for he thought it a misfortune to pledge contained in it. In the first place, the country and a blot upon the Esta- it would be calculated to give equal dis blished Church; but while such a system satisfaction to those who would be affected existed here, it was too much to talk of by the vote, whether the grant were to be the Irish clergy as those who alone exer- immediately withdrawn, or whether the cised political influence. He wished to House pledged itself to a withdrawal at a put this question upon the basis that future period, for if there had been a conthere were faults in both establishments; tract, as was contended, that contract on the one side there was the Irish clergy would be quite as much violated by a struggling for existence, and the clergy of withdrawal of the grant next year, as if it the Established Church struggling for were to take place now. Having passed ascendancy. The one was supported by the grant for the last thirty or forty years, 5,000,000l. annually, while the Irish and as persons had prepared themselves clergy were to be denied the paltry pit- for Maynooth, on the faith that it would tance of 8,9001. Much had been said on not be withdrawn, the pledge to withhold the subject of the petitions which had it next year would be productive of quite been presented against the grant to May- as much embarrassment as if it were pronooth; on inquiry it would be found that posed to withhold it at present. For his the signatures did not exceed those affixed own part, he did not think that there were to the petitions praying for the abolition sufficient grounds for violating an implied of the dog-cart nuisance. It was with understanding upon which Parliament had great pleasure that he observed the right acted for thirty years, and he could not hon. Baronet, the Member for Tamworth, acquiesce in any motion for withholding had returned to his place; it was neces- the grant unless stronger grounds were sary the right hon. Baronet should be made out to show him that he had been there in order to rebuke the follies of in error in the votes which for the thirty some of his followers on this occasion, years that he had been in Parliament he and to redeem his party from the diffi- had given upon this subject. The founculties in which they were placed by the dation had been established in Ireland at arguments of the hon. Member for Kent, a period when religious animosities ran as and of the hon. Baronet the Member for high, at least, as they did at present, and the University of Oxford. The right hon. political divisions were as great as they Baronet had come in just in time to were now. It had been established by a redeem the errors of his friends, and if Parliament exclusively Protestant as an not by his speech, at least by his vote on instrument to produce a disposition fathis occasion, to draw a line of distinction vourable to the Established Church, and between his own conduct and that of his to discourage the Jacobin doctrines which followers. a foreign education was calculated to engender in those who were educated for the Roman Catholic priesthood of Ireland. The grant had survived the Act of Union, and had been continued by Mr. Perceval in 1806, though something diminished in amount. It was continued even after the event connected with the election of 1806 by Mr. Perceval, who thought that its continuance was necessary for the fulfilment of the public faith. It was still further continued after the removal of the disabilities which affected the Roman Catholics, and, being retained under all Sir R. Peel said, the hon. Gentleman was a correct prophet with respect to the vote he (Sir R. Peel) should give on the present occasion, but the hon. Gentleman was not equally happy in his anticipations as to the speech he (Sir R. Peel) should make. He did not intend to rebuke those who had proposed and supported the present motion, neither should he express any compunction or regret for the course he was about to take. He was bound to say, that no man at present in this House, or who had ever sat in it, when he did come |