mined to give my strenuous support to this bill. Yes, Sir, to this
bill, and to every bill which shall seem to me likely to promote
the real Union of Great Britain and Ireland, I will give my support,
regardless of obloquy, regardless of the risk which I may run of losing
my seat in Parliament. For such obloquy I have learned to consider as
true glory; and as to my seat I am determined that it never shall be
held by an ignominious tenure; and I am sure that it can never be lost
in a more honourable cause.

*****

THE CHURCH OF IRELAND. (APRIL 23, 1845.) A SPEECH DELIVERED IN THE HOUSE
OF COMMONS ON THE 23RD OF APRIL 1845.

On the twenty-third of April 1845, the order of the day for going into
Committee on the Maynooth College Bill was read. On the motion that the
Speaker should leave the chair, Mr Ward, Member for Sheffield, proposed
the following amendment:--

"That it is the opinion of this House that any provision to be made
for the purposes of the present Bill ought to be taken from the funds
already applicable to ecclesiastical purposes in Ireland."

After a debate of two nights the amendment was rejected by 322 votes to
148. On the first night the following Speech was made.

I was desirous, Sir, to catch your eye this evening, because it happens
that I have never yet found an opportunity of fully explaining my views
on the important subject of the Irish Church. Indeed, I was not in this
country when that subject for a time threw every other into the
shade, disturbed the whole political world, produced a schism in the
Administration of Lord Grey, and overthrew the short Administration of
the right honourable Baronet opposite. The motion now before us opens,
I conceive, the whole question. My honourable friend the Member for
Sheffield, indeed, asks us only to transfer twenty-six thousand pounds a
year from the Established Church of Ireland to the College of Maynooth.
But this motion, I think, resembles an action of ejectment brought for
a single farm, with the view of trying the title to a large estate.
Whoever refuses to assent to what is now proposed must be considered as
holding the opinion that the property of the Irish Church ought to be
held inviolate: and I can scarcely think that any person will vote for
what is now proposed, who is not prepared to go very much farther. The
point at issue, I take, therefore, to be this; whether the Irish Church,
as now constituted, shall be maintained or not?