f those three classes the first is evidently that which
takes the most untenable ground. How any person can think that Maynooth
College ought to be supported by public money, and yet can think
this bill too bad to be suffered to go into Committee, I do not well
understand. I am forced however to believe that there are many such
persons. For I cannot but remember that the old annual vote attracted
scarcely any notice; and I see that this bill has produced violent
excitement. I cannot but remember that the old annual vote used to pass
with very few dissentients; and I see that great numbers of gentlemen,
who never were among those dissentients, have crowded down to the House
in order to divide against this bill. It is indeed certain that a large
proportion, I believe a majority, of those members who cannot, as
they assure us, conscientiously support the plan proposed by the right
honourable Baronet at the head of the Government, would without the
smallest scruple have supported him if he had in this, as in former
years, asked us to give nine thousand pounds for twelve months. So it
is: yet I cannot help wondering that it should be so. For how can
any human ingenuity turn a question between nine thousand pounds and
twenty-six thousand pounds, or between twelve months and an indefinite
number of months, into a question of principle? Observe: I am not now
answering those who maintain that nothing ought to be given out of
the public purse to a corrupt church; nor am I now answering those who
maintain that nothing ought to be given out of the public purse to
any church whatever. They, I admit, oppose this bill on principle. I
perfectly understand, though I do not myself hold, the opinion of the
zealous voluntary who says, "Whether the Roman Catholic Church teaches
truth or error, she ought to have no assistance from the State." I also
perfectly understand, though I do not myself hold, the opinion of the
zealous Protestant who says, "The Roman Catholic Church teaches error,
and therefore ought to have no assistance from the State." But I cannot
understand the reasoning of the man who says, "In spite of the errors
of the Roman Catholic Church, I think that she ought to have some
assistance from the State; but I am bound to mark my abhorrence of her
errors by doling out to her a miserable pittance. Her tenets are so
absurd and noxious that I will pay the professor who teaches them wages
less than I should offer to my groom. Her rit