Ireland constitute seven-eighths of the entire population; and though their portion of the general burdens of the country is not in the exact ratio of their number, yet that number will enable us to form some idea of the amount of their contributions to the purposes of the state. Of course, they have a right to expect a proportionate share of advantages in return. But that share they do not receive: and it is past endurance, therefore, that the very persons who profit most largely by this injustice, should turn round upon their defrauded countrymen, and endeavour, by their calumnies, to deprive them even of the paltry pittance that is doled out to them. We subjoin a few items, which may startle the most hardened upholder of the present outrageously disproportioned application of Ecclesiastical Revenues, and other funds, appropriated to the support of Protest

antism.

Estimated amount of the Tithe Compositions of

Ireland

+ Estimated Income of the Irish Ecclesiastical Commissioners

£668,888 14 2

83,440 3 3 Net Amount of Episcopal Revenue in Ireland, on an average of three years, ending Dec. 31st, 1831 128,808 8 3 Between 1802 and 1834, the following sums were ex

So far, the expenditure is purely Irish, and strictly Protestant.

Net Income of the Sinecure Rectories in England and

Wales

£ 17,095

§ Return ordered 18th April 1834.

| Ibid.

Ibid.

** Miscellaneous Estimates, 1836.-The number of Dissenters is 494572.(Paper ordered 14th August 1834.) Thus, while the Protestant Dissenters in Ireland scarcely reach to one-fifteenth of the number of their Catholic fellow-countrymen, they receive annually three times the sum voted to the latter. This disproportion, however, is trifling compared with that noticed above.

* Report of Commissioners of Ecclesiastical Revenues.

K 2

+ Money expended in purchasing Lands and Glebes for the Poor Clergy in England, between 1800 and 1831 Commissioners for Building Churches :—

1,607,650

| Additional Ecclesiastical Establishments in the W. Indies:

Opposite to this enormous array of Protestant expenditure, we find the single, solitary sum annually voted by Parliament

Education of the Roman Catholic Clergy of Ireland, £8,928. Here is a specimen of the equal rights enjoyed under the British Constitution !!

To obviate the possibility of cavil, we have abstained from noticing the revenues of Trinity College, Dublin; because Catholics are admitted to a small share of the advantages it affords; and, as the Maynooth Grant is exclusively for the Irish Catholic Clergy, in making the contrast, we shall omit altogether the items of expenditure which are not strictly Irish.

If we divide equally over the intermediate years the entire sums granted to Charter-schools, Foundling Hospitals, the Society for the Suppression of Vice, and the Board of First-Fruits, and take the sum of the separate items applied annually to the support of Protestantism in Ireland, we shall arrive at the astounding, and apparently incredible fact, that, under the free and equal laws of Britain, THE STATE APPROPRIATES, for the sup

PORT OF THE RELIGION OF ONE-EIGHTH OF THE ENTIRE POPULATION, ABOVE ONE HUNDRED AND SEVEN TIMES THE SUM ANNUALLY VOTED TO THE REMAINING SEVEN-EIGHTHS. Or, confining ourselves to particular items of the same order, if, with the amount of public money granted to Maynooth College, from its foundation, in 1795, to the present year, we compare the grants made to the Protestant Charter-schools alone, we shall find that the sum voted, in a period of thirty-two years, for the maintenance of this bungling, ill-managed, and atrocious

+ Return ordered 28th August 1833.

↑ Paper ordered to be printed, 18th July 1836. § Paper ordered to be printed 18th July, 1836.

Ibid.

¶ Ibid.

system, is not far from three times the amount, which, up to the present time, the British Parliament has dealt out by annual votes, for the support of this solitary Catholic Institution, amid the growling bigotry, or contemptuous indifference, of the inveterate enemies of Catholics.

And yet this grant, as the public knows, is neither permanent in its nature, nor uncontrolled in its application. It is held on the precarious tenure of an annual vote of the House of Commons; and is subject, not only to the management of Trustees and Visitors appointed by act of Parliament, but also to the rigorous scrutiny of the Board of Public Accounts. If this annual vote were a matter of mere routine, the system, though ungracious, might yet be tolerable. But it is the very reverse. More of insult and calumny, and misrepresentation, has been disgorged against the Catholic religion, in the stupid debates upon this paltry grant, than on any other subject that has been introduced to the notice of the House: and many a time, while writhing under some of these periodical inflictions, we have found it difficult to regard the College in any other light than as an appendage of the State, which is supported, simply that it may be the creature of its insolent caprice, or the butt of its bigoted malignity.

It could hardly be expected, that any establishment should rise to great literary distinction, when left to its own resources, particularly, if they were narrow, or inadequate to the demands upon it: still less, under the jealous eye of a suspicious and illiberal taskmaster. The same arts, which fled before the oppression of the barbarian, returned to light under the fostering munificence of Leo; and, in every age, the enlightened patronage of the monarch has invariably called all the energies of genius into action. The lot of Maynooth College, however, has been cast in another urn. The reader will recollect the situation of British politics, at the period of its foundation,-the long series of misfortunes which had attended the British arms, the loss of the North American colonies, the gloomy aspect of Continental affairs, the still more formidable union which prevailed at home, and, above all, the gathering spirit of disaffection which, to the knowledge of the government, was spreading among all classes in Ireland. Under such circumstances, no one can mistake the soundness of the policy, which sought, by concessions to the Catholic party, at once to secure a claim to their gratitude, and excite the jealousy of their Presbyterian confederates. But, if the desire of securing the gratitude of the Catholic party were sincere, it is to be regretted, that the kindly policy, which prompted the boon in the first instance, was defeated by the cold indifference which left the young Institution to contend, unassisted, with the difficulties inseparable

from its early labours, and the virulent opposition which it encountered from every quarter. All its movements were observed with suspicion-its loyalty on the one hand, its sincerity on the other. Its energies were cramped by this perpetual surveillance. Improvements, from time to time, becoming necessary or desirable, were left untried, for want of means to make the experiment. Once, indeed, under the administration of the Duke of Bedford, £5000 were voted for the execution of some projected improvement. But the hope inspired by this indulgence was again blasted-the application for a renewal of this grant was unsuccessful; and the College, although confessedly incompetent to supply the wants of the Catholic Mission of Ireland, has been suffered to struggle on, with the same inadequate resources. Hence, the original bounty of Parliament, inconsiderable as it was, has been in part diverted from its primitive purpose. The funds, allotted for the education of the candidates for the priesthood, were necessarily, as the numbers began to encrease, employed in erecting new buildings for their reception; and it is a positive fact, that the extensive pile of building, in which the students of Maynooth are now accommodated, has been raised by the hard-wrought economy of years, from the narrow means doled out annually by government. Even supposing, therefore, that, in the practical details of the Collegiate system, anything objectionable should be discovered, it is easy to see to whom the deficiency is to be attributed. If more has not been done, the fault lies with those whose bigotry has been a drag-chain on the liberality or justice of the legislature; and, far from exposing, they should rather fling their mantle over, defects, which are, indisputably, of their own creation.

But it is time to turn to the pamphlets. From a sort of apathy which we have often had occasion to observe, where a body, not individuals, was concerned, no notice seems to have been taken of them, by any member of the establishment thus violently assailed. Indeed, few would be willing to lower themselves into collision with the scurrility which characterizes the latter of the two. At home, where the circumstances of the case, and the real character of the Institution are known, this silence produces comparatively little mischief. But, at a distance from the source of information, many may be destitute of the means, many also of the inclination, to investigate the truth; and this, therefore, no less than the tone of cool, unblushing assurance, in which the charges against the College are put forward, must be our apology for devoting some pages of the present number to their exa

mination.

One word before we proceed farther, with regard to the degree

of credit due to the statements contained in " Maynooth in 1834." The alleged author was a student of the College for somewhat more than a year-and-a-half; having passed through the Christmas and Summer Terms of the Rhetoric, and the Christmas Term of the Logic, year. At the end of this short course, the details of which were very unpromising, he was expelled from the College; and seems to have employed the period which has since elapsed, in seeking redress, or, more properly, revenge, having appealed to the Lord Lieutenant, to the Visitors, to the Parliament, and, in several forms, to the public at large. Under any circumstances, a statement coming from such a quarter, should be received with suspicion. If, however, the writer had possessed tact enough, to adopt a tone of moderation, and consider well how far he might push his accusation, without destroying all semblance of probability; if he had not, by the looseness of his argument, no less than the virulence of his invective, stamped upon the motives of his protégé undoubted evidence of an anxiety to abuse, rather than to examine, to gratify personal feelings, rather than to give the public a credible statement of abuses which called for correction, he might have gone a good way in disarming this natural distrust, and secured some chance of a patient reading, if not of sympathy, for his imagined wrongs. But, as it is, we conceive it impossible that any man, no matter how bigoted, should read even a few pages, without seeing through the flimsy veil which has been flung over his motives, and which, flimsy as it is, was adopted in this second edition, as the reader will remember, only "in deference to the punctilious judgment" of the Orange publishers of Dublin! The writer, indeed, who had the boldness to charge the whole body of Superiors and Professors with deliberate perjury, and the no less odious crime, subornation of perjury,* cannot be expected" to feel much delicacy with regard to the less statutable offences of ignorance and intolerance: and it would be idle, indeed, to look for much regard to truth in one, who is unblushing enough to represent the whole body of students, as lost so completely to every feeling of honour and moral dignity, that "he never knew a dangerous syllable dropped in the presence of three students, of which the Dean did not gain cognizance."+-Even in mere matters of fact, he has not taken the trouble to guard against obvious and palpable contradictions. He decides, for example, as from his own knowledge,‡ on the merits of Professors whose classes, even from his own account, he never could have attended: he expresses his opinions of lectures, at which he never was present;