The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1845-02-18 00:00:00

od, whose termination is not
very apparent, of a tax most unpopular and harass-

retention fora peric

e income tax. For no
slight boon would the public have been disposed to

t to the continuance of such a tax. It was
nly under an emergency which threatened impeach-
lent of the national honour that we consented to
its imposition. And if the cry for its removal now
be not loud and urgent, it is solely because the
benefit which we hope for to all classes from the re-
ductions now proposed upon articles of great con-
sumption, and upon raw materials of manufacture,
overbalances, in the opinion of the public, the
weight of the impost to which we are called upon
to submit, in order that those reductions should be
made.

SUOMI

e not here about to examine in detail the

propositions which compose the Budget.
nese will be found elsewhere very lucidly given in
our abridgement of the Premier's statement, to
which we direct the attention of our readers. Upon
one or two of these propositions, however, as highly
important to the trade of this port, we may offer a
.s; and, first, we take leave to tender our
cind those of a large and important body of
our fellow-townsmen for the remission made of the
duty upon foreign staves. We have frequiently
urged upon the attention of Government the inju-
rious pressure of this duty upon the interests and
the industry of our coopers, whose export business
to our colonies and foreign countries it has almost
annihilated. A portion of this business it may now

various
11

few remart

thanks

be almost too late to recal from the channels into
which it has passed. We are satisfied, however,
that a cheap supply of foreign staves will very ma-
terially revive the energies of the native artizan, and
infuse a large amount of prosperity amongst the
classes employed in this once important branch of

The argument which is most prominently l.ut
forward by the advocates of an increased grant to
Maynooth, and the only one which can at all be
listened to by Protestants, is that in concedieg such
funds to an institution designed to propagate the
popish heresy, they are only carrying out the spirit of
a direct compact, entered into some time or other by
the British nation. Yet, in all the debates which
have taken place in Parliament, and the many dis-
cussions out of doors, upon this important subject,
we have not had definitely pointed out to us any
clause of such act, or the evidences of any arrange-
ment by the ministry who passed it, from which
such alleged compact can he traced. We have been
at some pains to ascertain the ground upon which
its existence is just now so confidently asserted ;
and we find nothing to warrant such assertion. On
the contrary, a dispassionate examination of the cir-
cumstances attendant upon the establishment of
Maynooth by the Irish Parliament, and of its sub-
sequent recognition by the Imperiai L'Tislature,
brings us to the conclusion that a contract on the
part of the state permanently to support that insti-
tution was never even dreamt of.
To the readers of the LIVERPOOL STANDARD
this, we are aware, is no new feature in the subject.
It was very forcibly urged upon the Protestants of
this town in the following passage of a speech by the
Rev. Hugh W.Neile, which we extract from our file
of 1841 :

" As they were aware, the subject of Maynooth College
had been discussed in the House of Commons for a con-
siderable time. A motion had been made every year for
the withdrawal of a grant of about £9,000 a-year made in
the Irish estimates for the :up -ort of that college. That
motion, however, had been ne zatived every year. Last
year the friends of the colter had been pressed more
closely than they ever had been before, and they were
obliged to put forward more strength in its defence. One
of them, the hon. and learned member for the county of
Tipperary, brought forward an act of the Irish parliament,
by which he alleged, or gave it to be understood, that the
grant to Maynooth College was granted in the act of
union with Ireland. That was a staggerer,—(hear, bear)
—because the lovers of our country would be sorry tojoin
those who agitated for the repeal of the union, or of any
part of it. However, after inquiry, it was found that no
act of the Irish parliament involved any such contract;
that the act of union said nothing about such a contract,
but it was found at the same time that an act of the Irish
parliament, called the 35th Geo. 111., that was, which was
passed in the year 1795, appointed certain government
officers of state, judges in Ireland, to be visitors of the
College of Mayucotb. This seemed to give that college
an union with the state, and some persons said it amount-
ed to an union with the state ; that was a matter upon
which others held a different opinion, bat so long as that
act was in existence, even the friends of our measure felt
they could not ask for a withdrawal of the grant to May-
nooth College. For his own part he did not see why we
might not ask for a withdrawal of the grant in spite of
any such act, as it did not appear to him to invol,t, any
compact to continue the grant. Still there were such
things as parliamentary etiquettes, and the hon. member
for Kilmarnock, Mr. Colquhoun,—(cheers,)—anxious to
remove every impediment out of the way, and to clear the
course for the withdrawal of the grant, had prepared a
bill, which he had obtained leave this session to introduce
into parliament, the proposal of which bill was, that the
act in question should be repealed; that is, that by the
authority of parliament the Lord Chancellor of Ireland
and certain of the judges should no longer be visitors of
the College of Maynooth. The prayer of this was strength-
ened by another circumstance. It so happened that in
the year 1800, just before the union with Ireland, another
act passed the Irish legislature, restraining the powers of
the visitors of Maynooth College, preventing them from
entering into any inquiry respecting the religious discipline
or doctrines taught within the walls ; so that, although by
the former act they continued nominal visitors, by the
la' ter act they were prevented from efficiently performing
the office of visitors. One act practically neutralised the
other, without repealing it directly ; and the object of Air.
Colquhoun's bill was to repeal both of them, or, at least,
o much of them as referred to the College of Maynooth.
Then there would be an opportunity for the hon. and
learned member for Tipperary, or any of his companions,
producing even the appearance of an excuse in any act of
parliament as a screen for Maynooth College."