ulty.
Tell us plainly what are the precise terms of the contract which you
suppose Great Britain to have made with Ireland about this college.
Whatever the terms be, they will not serve your purpose. Was the
contract this, that the Imperial Parliament would do for the college
what the Irish Parliament had been used to do? Or was the contract this,
that the Imperial Parliament would keep the college in a respectable and
efficient state? If the former was the contract, nine thousand pounds
would be too much. If the latter was the contract, you will not, I
am confident, be able to prove that twenty-six thousand pounds is too
little.

I have now, I think, said quite as much as need be said in answer to
those who maintain that we ought to give support to this college, but
that the support ought to be niggardly and precarious. I now come to
another and a much more formidable class of objectors. Their objections
may be simply stated thus. No man can justifiably, either as
an individual or as a trustee for the public, contribute to the
dissemination of religious error. But the church of Rome teaches
religious error. Therefore we cannot justifiably contribute to the
support of an institution of which the object is the dissemination of
the doctrines of the Church of Rome. Now, Sir, I deny the major of this
syllogism. I think that there are occasions on which we are bound to
contribute to the dissemination of doctrines with which errors are
inseparably intermingled. Let me be clearly understood. The question is
not whether we should teach truth or teach error, but whether we should
teach truth adulterated with error, or teach no truth at all. The
constitution of the human mind is such that it is impossible to provide
any machinery for the dissemination of truth which shall not, with the
truth, disseminate some error. Even those rays which come down to us
from the great source of light, pure as they are in themselves, no
sooner enter that gross and dark atmosphere in which we dwell than the
they are so much refracted, discoloured, and obscured, that they too
often lead us astray. It will be generally admitted that, if religious
truth can be anywhere found untainted by error, it is in the Scriptures.
Yet is there actually on the face of the globe a single copy of the
Scriptures of which it can be said that it contains truth absolutely
untainted with error? Is there any manuscript, any edition of the Old or
New Testament in the orig