The Sun.
London, England, 1853-02-23 00:00:00

his own private feelings he should vote for its continuance,
for he had received greater kindness from Roman Catholics

than from members of the Church of England. But, be-
lieving that the object of the act had failed, he should feel
bound to support the motion.
Mr. DUFFY was glad the hon. member for North War-
wickshire had made some additions to his case this year.
He had quoted extracts' from seven Irish newspapers and
one English periodical. Now, he knew something of Irish
newspapers, and he was ready to take issue with the hon.
member on the only portion of the evidence which•had not
been already answered in that house. The hon. gentleman
quoted extracts from these seven newspapers as illustra-
tions of the results of education in the College of Maynooth.Now, he affirmed that there was not one of these
newspapers which was not a thorough
partisan against
the Irish priesthood. (Hear, hear.) If he read their names
in Ireland it would be enough. They were notorious and
common calumniators of Ireland, and if they had not been
answered, it was because nobody in Ireland ever thought
them worthy of an answer. (Cheers.) The honourable
gentleman had also quoted some extracts from. Sir Francis
Head's book on Ireland. Sir Francis Head spent a fort-
night in Ireland, one week of which was spent in travelling,
and the other in pondering over the evidence which he had
collected. (A laugh.) As he (Mr. Duffy) had the oppor-
tunity of testing two or three of his statements, under the
heading of priests' speeches, he would communicate the
result to the house. In three cases the ferocious priests
named and quoted by Sir F. Head were Presbyterian minis-
ters. (A laugh.) In another case, the extract was so atro-
cious that Sir F. Head would not venture to give the
priest's name ;he styled him the Rev. Mr. —. The
atrocious sentiment attributed to this anonymous priest
was this :—" I am descended from farmers, and the time
will come, I trust, when it will be as hard for an extermi-
nating landlord to" get into Parliament as for a camel to
pass through the eye of a needle." Now this was an ex-
tract from a speech of his (Mr. Duffy's) own. (Great laugh-
ter.) So much for the extracts from Sir F. Head's book.
With regard to the English periodical, the Rambler, he
would ask how Protestant gentlemen would like to be
made responsible for a Protestant Rambler, edited by the
honourable member for North Warwickshire. (Hear.) All
he could say was, that he did not read the Rambler, and
that he repudiated its doctrines. (Hear.) He thought he
might now pass by the extracts, and come to the gist of
the question. What did hon. members want to get done
by supporting the motion ? Did anybody expect that the
withdrawal of the grant would prevent the teaching of
the Catholic religion or the training of the Irish priests ?
Honourable gentlemen ought to know that when it
was martyrdom for Irish Roman Catholic priests to teach
in Ireland, there was no lack of them to do their duty and
to take the consequences. He did not think that less con-
venient accommodation would deter men from teaching who
I would face martyrdom to do so. The hon. member for North
Warwickshire might recollect that there were Irish priests
when there was no Maynooth, and he did not think it wholly
impossible that the President of the United States, or the
new Emperor of the French, might be glad to renew the
relations which formerly subsisted between those countries
and the Irish priesthood. According to Sir Francis Head,
the Emperor Napoleon was the best friend that England
had, while the Irish priests were her greatest enemies ;
would it not be a good thing to send them to him, that
he might teach them to become friends to England. It
never could be expected, he warned honourable gentlemen
of this, that if so small a sum as this were refused to the
Catholics of Ireland, they would go on paying for the
Establishment which instigated this very movement ; and
he, for one, said that if the house affirmed the proposition
before it, the Irish Church Establishment must speedily fall;
that when they withdrew the endowment from Maynooth,
from that hour he shotild hold himself bound not to pay
another shilling of tithe. And what was the use of -what
they were doing ? If they could not stop the teaching of the
Catholic Church in Ireland, was it worth while, or was it
right to insult the Catholics ? Did it become a grave Parlia-
ment, with grave business to do, to spend a day or two every
year in going through this farce ? Nobody believed this
motion would pass ; then why was it brought forward ? In
point of fact they were assailing some two dozen ecclesias-
tics ; and a grave senate, year after year, set up these men
as a target to fling imputations upon ; but he knew these
men, and he knew that they had made Maynooth one of
best ecclesiastical seminaries in the world. In history, in
philosophical and biblical literature, in ecclesiasticathistory,
they had published books and essays which had been found
most valuable and would endure. As for the students and
their politics, he was sorry to say that the politics of their
professors were much more in accordance with the senti-
ments of the house than with his or with those of the ho-
nourable gentleman who sat about him. He said, then, that
he did not think this motion would pass. He saw Parlia-
ment at last learning, and ready to admit, that it is only
by consulting the wishes of the people to be legislated for
that legislation can have any success. He saw this at the
Cape of Good Hope ; the colonists had declined to accept
convicts ; Parliament had acceded to their wishes' and in
so doing had done rightly. In Van Diemen's Land the
same ; and now there was a bill before the house which
embodied the principle once more, and to which he should
give his most hearty support—the Clergy Reserves Bill.
They had tried in Canada the same experiment as in
Ireland, setting province against province, religion against
religion, Celtic Canada against Saxon. And now, when
they had seen its failure, when they applied to distant
colonies a wiser system, he begged them to let that same
system extend and be applied to Ireland. (Hear, hear.)
he hoped that they would say, We mean to do in Ireland
as we have done in Canada, in Van Diemen's Land, and at
the Cape—to consult the wishes of the people in our legis-
lation for them.
Sir J. YOUNG hoped that without offence to Mr.
Spooner, for whom he entertained the highest respect, he
might be allowed to state the deep regret he felt that the
honourable gentleman had brought forward the proposi-
tion before the house—a useless and irritating proposition,
that could not be attended by any good consequences, and
that could not fail to add to those feelings of alarm and
discontent on religious subjects, and to those feelings of
sectarian animosity which had had such calamitous results
in Ireland. At the same time he was not surprised that
it had been brought forward. Certainly a portion of the
press in Ireland, and a portion of the gentlemen who took
part in politics there, had not used language to calm the
anxieties or soften the asperities which had been alluded
to. But those gentlemen represented the feelings only of
a small minority. They did not represent the Irish
nation. (Hear, hear.) The honourable member for
North Warwickshire based his arguments on two grounds
—one, that he objected to the principle, another that
the Roman Catholics by their misconduct at the recent
elections had disentitled themselves. The hon. member
stated that the principle on which Maynooth was founded
was subversive of religion, hostile to loyalty, incompatible
with the allegiance due to the constitution. He would draw
the hon. member's attention to the argument of an English
bishop in 1798, as it appeared in a letter addressed by him
from Ireland to Lord Castlereagh. That bishop said he
thought it a most unwise measure to suffer the education
of the Roman Catholic clergy to return to its old course,
and be conducted abroad, the consequence of which would
be, that they must go to nations, perhaps hostile, and run
the risk of adding civil to religious prejudices in this way.
Surely the matter had been well considered. The subject
was reviewed in 1800. It underwent ample discussion in
1808. Under the administrations of Mr. Pitt and of Mr.
Perceval, whose Protestantism would not be doubted, the
system was considered. In 1846,when it was decided by
Sir Robert Peel to put the college on a new basis, the Duke
of Wellington, in the House of Lords, spoke to the same
effect. The ground on which Maynooth was endowed was
not the ground of kindness to the Roman Catholics, it was
the ground of imperial policy. It was to prevent those
priests who, in times past, in times present, and—even if
you abolish Maynooth to-morrow—in times future, will
still exercise great influence over the minds of the people
of Ireland—it was to prevent them from acquiring foreign
impressions and Ultramontane opinions. That the founda-
tion of this college was beneficial in point of policy was an
opinion endorsed by Grattan, whom no one exceeded in
knowledge of his country and loyalty to the throne. Sir
Robert Peel, when called upon to deal with the question,
found the supply of books insufficient, that of food even
scarcely enough. To eke out their small means it was
necessary to lengthen the vacations, and to send young men
home for longer than was right before they had completed
their education, and before they had gone through all that
training which was necessary to fit them for the trials and
the celibacy of a priest. What Sir R. Peel had done was
well known. The hon. member said this measure had not
been received with gratitude by Ireland. Sir R. Peel said
it was received with as much gratitude as he expected—
(laughter)—with as much as he or any other statesman
ought to have expected. (Hear, hear.) He (Sir J. Young)
believed at this moment there were tens of thousands of
Roman Catholics in Ireland whose hearts beat more
warmly towards England for this grant to Maynooth, and
even if this were not yet so, they might depend upon it
that, ultimately, ingratitude and suspicion must be over-
come by constant kindness. But then the hon. member
had said the Roman Catholics have disentitled themselves
to any further favour at our hands by their misbehaviour
at the late elections. He was not prepared to deny or to
defend what took ploce at many of those elections. But
he would ask them not to be hasty in condemning, but to
look at the circumstances under which the recent elections
in Ireland occurred. Great excitement had been prevailing
in England ; and in many cases in Ireland, contests were
entered into by gentlemen who, in his opinion, were them-
selves morally responsible for what took place, since they,
rashly, and with their eyes open, without any chance of
success, except by the most unconstitutional means, had
started a needless and irritating opposition. The man who
did so was morally guilty of any excess that took
.place ;
and there were such men in more than one county in Ire-
land. Then, just before the election, there appeared a
proclamation against Roman Catholicprocessions—(hear)—
which appeared so ill-timed to the Roman Catholics in Ire-
land, that they at fist thougt it neither more nor less
than an electioneering squib. There were also the riots at
Stockport, in which Roman Catholics had been grossly ill-
treated, and even their chapels broken into and sacked.
But what use had the honourable member made of the ex-
citement to which he had referred ? There were about
3,000 Roman Catholic priests in Ireland, and the honour-
able member had produced ten or twelve cases out of the
whole of that number to support his views. If the
honourable member really meant to change the whole
priesthood and people of Ireland, he had evidently pro-
duced most inadequate proofs. (Hear, hear.) He (Sir J.
Young) was not disposed to favour the priests, but he was
there to do justice as far as lay in his power, and he must
say that the honourable member with those few cases had
not succeeded in making out his charge against the large
body of the priesthood. But the honourable member came
forward as a religious instructor and inculcated upon the
house high moral precepts ; he had even quoted Scripture,
and had spoken of the small number of those that were
saved. But Scripture could be quoted against as well as
by the honourable member ; and he (Sir J. Young) would
beg to recall to his recollection the case of a great city
which was about to be destroyed for its sins, and to suffer
the vengeance of the Almighty, and a man became wearied
of asking for pardon on account of it before the Divinity
was weary of granting it. But the hon. gentlemen re-
versed Scripture, and instead of being ready to pardon all
because of one good person, he was prepared to condemn
all because there were a few bad. ("Oh, oh," and cheers.)
The honourable member had argued as if this fund came
from exclusively Protestant sources, and as if it were
a free gift for the purposes for which it was
designed. But let it be recollected that there were
in Ireland 3,500,000 or 4,000,000 of Roman Ca-
tholics, and in England a smaller number, say that
there were altogether 5,000,000 of Roman Catholics
in the Empire. It would not be wrong to say that
these Roman Catholics paid 5,000.0001., or 7,000,000/.
to the taxes of the country; and out of that,
large sum which was held by them, would the hon. mem-
ber refuse them so small a pittance of 30,0001. for the edu-
cation of their clergy. (Hear, hear) ? He (Sir J. Young)
did not look upon this as a question of money, but as a
question of policy, the soundness of which had been proved
by the experience of a long course of years, and which had
been sanctioned by some of the wisest statesmen that Eng-