The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1844-11-26 00:00:00

THE MENACED MINISTERIAL INROADS
UPON PROTESTANTISM IN IRELAND.

" The coming events cast their shadows before."
LOCIIIEL'S WARNING.

We live in an age of expediency—an age of treacherous
tampering with high and holy principles, and of cowardly
submission to the dictation of factious demagogues. Such
an age, all hietory warns us, has ever been followed in all
established states of society, by the violent breaking up of
the elements of which they are constituted—by the wreck
of valued institutions, and the triumph, for a time, of
fierce passion and anarchy. Happily, in this land, such
periods have hitherto been productive of good rather than
evil. The stern and sober genius of the British character,
temporarily obscured (r hurried aside from the even tenor
of its way into bursts of wild frenzy, has passed through
the fire not only unscathed, but even purged of the im-
purities with Which years of apathetic rest had sullied its
brightness. Like a stately tree which the tempest has
bowed well nigh to earth, it has thrown off in the struggle
the parasite plants which had wound round its trunk and
branches, crushed the foul reptiles which had been gnaw-
ing at his roots, and risen again, renovated, freshened,
and invigorated, to shadow with its verdure the herbage
and the flowers. We fear not, therefore, the coming
struggle. We fear not for any permanent damage to arise
from it to Great Britain, her time hallowed institutions,
or her liberties. But we must be prepared to vindicate
them. We must be up and resolved to bear them unsullied
and uninjured through the host of enemies by which they
are surrounded.

Happily, we are not left to speculate in uncertainty
with respect to the quarter from which the danger is to
approach us, to the hand which uplifts the weapon, or to
the battle field in which the struggle is to be fought to an
Issue. The assault comes—alas that we should have to
set down an admission so lamentable !—from the Conser-'
maim ministers of a Protestant Queen; and the objects
of attack--the first objects, for who knows how far apos-
tacy will plunge into the slough of degradation when it
has once planted there its foot?—are the established Pro-
testant Church and the Protestant University in Ireland.
The doom of these venerable establishments has already
been resolved upon. The handwriting is upon the wall;
and if the mind and the steady resolve of England come
not at once to the rescue, another session of Parliament
will see the breach which has so long been insidiously
mined, at length carried, and the united forces of Popery,
Socinianism, and Infidelity howling in'triumph over their
prostrate battlements.
We warned our readers, at the close of the last session
of Parliament, that the first step in this inroad upon the
Protestantism in Ireland was in preparation, and that it
would assume the shape of an attempted conciliation of
Popery and its allies, by the introduction of the infidel
principle of the system of the Irish Education Board into
the Protestant University of Trinity College, Dublin. And
now, we tell them, without reserve, that the disastrous
measure will be presented to the acceptance of the legis-
lature in the session which is approaching. And to what
hands is its preparation entrusted? To the arch Jesuit,
who governs that Education Board—to the sworn ally of
Popery and Socinianism, Mr. "WINE! We need say little
more of its character or its anti-Protestant tendencies,
when we state that it is sanctioned, if not suggested,
by Sir Robert Peel, arid licked into shape by Mr. Wyse.
Already the mission of the tatter gentleman, to prepare
the people of the sister country for the measure, has been
opened. At a recent meeting of the " liberal" and po-
pish parties, held In Cork, its terms were propounded by
him, vaguely indeed, yet with sufficieat clearness, as to its
general character, to rouse the enthusiasm of the anti—
English mass of the meeting in Its behalf, whilst the pro-
test against it of the Protestants present was clamour-
ously cried down. A natural result of this first overt
step has been an indignant cry of reprobation from the
Conservative press of Ireland,—amongst whom it is not
a little significant, with respect 'to the amount of Irish
opposition which he will have to encounter, that Sir
Robert's anti-Protestant policy does not meet with a
single supporter,—whilst the Popish and Repeal faction
in that country is loud in gratulation over their approach-
ing triumph, and the consummation which they see in the
distance, viz the ultimate downfall of the Protestant
church, and the submission of Ireland to the close em-
brace and the undivided authority of the see of Rome.
As a sample, and a very mild one, of the feeling of the
Protestant press upon the subject of he proposed outrage
upon Trinity College, we extract the following remarks
from the leading journal of Ireland—the Dublin Evening
Ma it :

" Within the last few years six new professorships and ten addi-
tional fellowships have increased the efficiency of its literary staff'.
The entire curriculum of studies, scientific, classical, and theologi-
cal, has Leen, within the same period, reformed and advanced ; and
the best proof of its present efficient condition is to be found in the
examination papers of the several classes and subjects of education.
In practical science a great desideratum has been in like manner
supplied by the establishment of a school of engineering. Its divinity
school bears as high a character as any in the world, and not only
supplies a learned and efficient clergy for the Established Church of
Ireland, but has for some years (and this is a matter of the utmost
importance) powerfully assisted in giving an active, zealous, and
wed-informed clergy to the west of England.
" Is such an establishment as this to be tampered with—are the
benefits, religious, moral, scientific, and social, which it diffuses
through the country to be sacrificed, or even risked, for idle theories
and crude experiments, either of a vain sciolist, or of a conceding
administration?

" The whole country will say NO to the ruinous proposition,

We mean not, however, to say that the contemplated
tampering with the Protestant character of Trinity Col-
lege will be proceeded with, without some preliminary ac-
tion upon the public mind, to prepare it for acquiescence,
by an attempt at justification. Oh, no ! Sir Robert Peel
takes few steps so direct and bold as would be a straight
forward attack upon that or any other institution. The
epithet " tortuous" is the distinguishing one of his pre-
sent policy, as it has been that of his entire political ca-
reer. Accordingly we are to have a preliminary " en-
quiry ;" we are to have astute instruments employed, of
whom, no doubt, Mr. Wyse wi'l be one, to depriciate the
character and usefulness of Trinity College, as at present
constituted and regulated, and to ferret out pleas for its
conversion into an Infidel University. We shall have
the old sectarian arguments against education in the doc-
trines of the Established Church set up by titular bishops
and backsliding Protestants. Stith a process is, in fact,
now going on ; and of the Mode in which it is being con-
ducted and its objects,, let British Protestants judge
from the following passage in the Dubin Monitor:—

" An inquiry is at this moment in progress, and the question of
academic, collegiate, and University education for Ireland is well
nigh settled No minister can any longer retard the question of a
free, liberal, perfect, and permanent system of education for Ire.
land. We anxiously await the coming session."

And what is the opinion of the well-informed Protes-
tants of Ireland, with respect to the intent and issue of
such " enquiry ?" The following passage from a late
number of the Dublin Warder will afford an ample so-
lution of the enquiry :

" While on this subject we may mention that we have received an
able letter from a scholar and divinity student of Trinity College,
which is too long for insertion in our present number, but contains
an important statement we cannot keep back. It seems that Dr.
Elrington, the Regius Professor of Divinity, in his opening prelec-
tion this term, mentioned to his class the possibility that this might
be the last year in which he would be privileged to address them
as an officer of ‘' A PROTESTANT" University. This from such a
quarter is emphatic. The same correspondent informs us that the
divinity students of Trinity College intend to meet publicly next
week in the Rotunda, to protest against any interference of Sir It.
Peel with the University, and that the Rev. R. J. M•Ghee will be
requested to take the chair. We see also that a pamphlet on the
crisis of the Church of Ireland, from the pen of the Venerable Dr.
Millar, of Armagh, has been published yesterday by Curry and Co.,
making a powerful appeal on behalf of the Church against the trai-
tor premier. Once more we say, let us be up and doing ; for, in the
words of Dr. Millar, the struggle is for the existence' of Protes,
tantiSm in Ireland."

Alas that we should have to record such doings, and
such opinions of the faithlessness, of a professedly Pro-
testant and Conservative cabinet!
But it is not sufficient for such a cabinet that the Pro-
testant character of one of the most valued institutions of
our country is to be sacrificed to the demands of Popery
—that the University of Dublin is to be prostrated and
degraded before the aggressive foot of Rome—but MAY-
NOOTEI also, the hot bed of sedition, from whose impure
recesses crawl abroad, through the length and breadth of
the empire, the spawn of the filthy teachings of Peter
Dens and his fellows in bestial and murderous suggestion;
—MAYNooTH is to be aggrandised, and her sacerdotal
propagators of treason and outrage multiplied by the
same apostate hands which are preparing to desecrate the
revered halls of old Trinity. The Popish seminary is to
receive an increased grant—a largely increased grant—
from the treasury of Great Britain ; and with respect to
the terms of such grant the Dublin Freeman informs us
that—

" On Saturday a deputation from the assembled prelates, consist-
ing of the four archbishops, waited on the Lord Lieutenant with in-
structions explicitly to declare, on behalf of that learned body, that
were an increase of the grant to Maynooth College determined on
by government, it should not be accompanied by any change in the
constitution and fundamental laws by which the college is at pre-
sent governed ; and that if accompanied by any condition, they
would feel it their duty not to accept Odle profferred increase. The
deputation had a long interview, it which Lord Eliot was present.
The answer of his excellency was by no means satisfactory, he hav-
ing totally avoided giving any promise that no change in the consti-
tution of the institution would be attempted."

Cool enough the assumption of their reverences ! In-
solent enough the attempt to dictate to the Government
the terms upon which they shall be permitted to violate,
in favor of Popery, the Protestant principles of the British
constitution. But a far better, because a more independ-
ent, authority, the Dublin Monitor, which, although a
Popish and Repeal authority, has never fallen down pub-
licly to lick the feet of O'Connell and his ruffian priest-
hood, assures us that no such gingerly scruples animate
Sir Robert Peel, in his projected sacrifice of principle to
the aggressive demands of faction. Hear the Monitor in
comment upon the above paragraph :

" We are informed that the above representation as to the nature
of the interview with his excellency and Lord Eliot is factious in
the extreme, and wholly unwarranted by the facts. The last sen-
tence is, indeed, worthy of the discomfited champion of the exploded
protest.'
"Although no definite promise was given to increase the May-
nooth grant—because his Excellency could not give one, the increase
not resting with him—it was well understood that his Excellency is
favourable to an increase, while it never was contemplated that
&itch an increase should be accompanied by any change in the
fundamental laws of the institution "

We believe implicitly the independent authority. We
reject that of the slavish organ of Popery, which only
seeks, in concert with the minister, to blind the people of
England to the full baseness and folly of his designs.

That Sir Robert Peel is not acting without some con-
cert with a portion, at least, of the Popish and Repeal
party in Ire'.and, a recent occurrence will serve to testify.
Our readers will, doubtless, remember the strenuous op-
position which was offered, during the last session of par-
liament, to the " Charitable Bequests Bill." It was
denounced, in parliament and out of doors, as an insult to
the Roman Catholics of that country ; and it was espe-
cially and indignantly declared that the Romish hierarchy
could never consent to take their seats at the new board,
or to interfere with its operation. An announcement,
however, has just been made, in the columns of the
Evening Freeman, which proves that a portion of that
hierarchy have renounced their past enmities, and, doubt-
less, for a consideration, are willing to embrace the