The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser. — 1844-12-31 (Liverpool, Merseyside, England)

ANTI-TRINITA RIAN COL LEGES.—We believe we may now state with certainty that Sir James Graham, and that portion of the Cabinet which encourage every thing anti-Protestant in Ireland, have come to the resolution of founding two colleges—the one in Uister, the other in Munster; Belfast and Cork being the localities fixed upon, in opposition to, if not in rivalry with Trinity College, Dublin. It is, we understand, decided upon, that these new establishments are to be founded and provided for by special charters and parliamentary grants, independent of all other funds ; and that for. the present they are to have the power of granting degrees in medicine, law, and arts ; and, of course, for the sake of old Ireland and Lilliboero, in music. For the present— mark for the present—the anti-Trinitarian Stinkomalees —the Back-lane Colleges revived—are not to have the power of granting degrees in divinity. This is a concession for which we hope the Provost, Fellows, and Scholars of Trinity College will feel, as they ought to do, abundantly grateful."  Surely such an announcement ought to excite every true friend of his Church, and of that noble institution to which the sister country, and even our own town, owes so greatly the spread of Protestant truth amongst us, to hurl their indignant reprobation against its authors. But no. A few of the honest operatives of the land may be induced to stand side by side with their clergy in opposition to such an attempt to endow Popery and Infidelity at the public cost; but the leading members of the Conservative body will hang back and crouch beneath the encroaching foot, of utilitarianism, and the contempt of their more humble, yet more honest, labourers in the cause of the Constitution, exclaiming, as they cling to their fast-filling moneybags, in the spirit of Horace's miser—  " Populus me sibilat Ac mihi plaudo, simul ac contemplor Nummos in arca!"  May we ask of them for whom it is—to conciliate what faction it is—that Sir Robert Peel has resolved upon these outrages upon one of the noblest Protestant Universities in the empire ? The character of that faction—alas it is almost too numerous and potent to be called by the name—is illustrated, far better than it could be by any description of ours, in the narrative, which will he found in another part of our paper, of the late infamous proceedings at the funeral of the Earl of Limevick. It is to conciliate the offscourings of the Repeal and Popish parties that Sir Robert Peel consents to throw down the strongest Buttress, which stands between them and the preservation from ruin of the Established Protestant Church in Ireland It is to win the affections (!) of men, whose Hates, handed down from father to son, through a period of nearly fifty years, have just developed themselves in a violation of the decencies which ought to attend the solemn rites of Christian burial of the meanest of their fellow-men, and a wolfish attempt to sacrafice to their fury even the insensate ashes of its illustrious object. The murderous rabble of Limerick demand "Secular Education" ; a conservative administration are about to found for their use a University ! We turn from the subject with sorrow and shame.