nation, and to the foot of the throne. It solicits, therefore, extensive support, that numbers may obtain for its representations that consideration and regard, for which reason and justice would, perchance, appeal in vain.

Of the claims of the Protestant Association let us conclude our advocacy by briefly showing that, in the objections which have been urged against it, are to be found its strongest recommendations to approval and support. Its objects have been designated as too vague, too undetermined; as exhibiting no settled plan of action, as marking out no definite department of specified exertion. Yet if those who advance this argument shall consider the innumerable diversities of opinion which divide the Protestant body, and that a party so disunited can coincide only on a few points of capital agreement; they will see, in the generality of the objects of the Protestant Association, the only possibility of extensive regard and comprehensive support. A general term, to be applicable to many individuals and many species, must exclude every attribute in which any differ, and express only properties in which all agree; and a plan, to conciliate general support, must suggest only schemes which recommend themselves to general approbation, and omit every proposal of disputable expediency.

It has been objected, that the Protestant Association is a body which embraces political, no less than religious, views. The truth of this assertion it readily admits, considering it rather as a title to approval, than a topic of reproach. In reply, then, to censure which it regards as praise, the Protestant Association deems it sufficient to observe, that it is the antagonist of Romanism. And until it is demonstrated how a religion, which aims at temporal ascendancy, no less than spiritual supremacy; a religion which enforces its dogmas by the stake, the sword, and the dungeon; a religion which rests its power of conviction rather on its torture of the body, than its persuasion of the understanding;-until it is shown how this pestilential system is to be successfully opposed by polemical discussion and theological argumentation alone, the Protestant Association will contentedly under-lie the stigma of thinking political coercion no less necessary than controversial refutation. The speculative errors of Popery are not more subversive of men's spiritual interests, than are her practical enormities of their civil welfare: while, therefore, the divine confutes her arguments, let the magistrate check her crimes. He who should receive an armed highwayman with exhortations to honesty and dissuasions from rapine, would be indeed admired for his piety; yet would his discretion be more apparent, were he first to disarm and incapacitate the malefactor. The absurdities of Romish

theology let us exhibit and evince; but let us, at the same time, have a care of life and limb; let us demand some security that she shall not incarcerate us in dungeons, burn us at the stake, or shed our blood, even as though it, were water, throughout the length and breadth of the land.

OF

MR. COLQUHOUN,

AT EXETER HALL,

ON FRIDAY, MARCH 11, 1836,

Upon the Subject

OF THE

MAYNOOTH COLLEGE GRANT.

LONDON:

PUBLISHED BY L. AND G. SEELEY, 169, FLEET STREET.

1836.

Price One Penny.

SPEECH,

ETC. ETC.

MR. COLQUHOUN said, before moving the adoption of the petition which has been put into my hands, I am anxious to state to you, Sir, and to this meeting, the grounds on which I condemn the grant to Maynooth; and I must, therefore, draw your attention to the time at which this grant was first made by the government of Mr. Pitt. In 1793 the bishops of the Roman Catholic Church, the chief of whom then were Drs. Troy and O'Reilly, applied to Mr. Pitt's government requesting it to found and endow a college for the education of the Roman Catholic priesthood; and the argument they used was, that if left to found one themselves the institution would be under popular control, but if the government were to found it they would direct it for loyal and useful ends. At the same time that Drs. Troy and O'Reilly were thus communicating with the government of Mr. Pitt, they were in communication with the Roman Catholic committee then sitting in Dublin. While they were holding this language with the one, they were, in concert with Dr. M'Nevin and other members of that committee, concocting the plan of clerical education. It is well, therefore, to understand who this Roman Catholic committee were, with whom the Roman Catholic bishops were thus in confidential communication. And here it is right to recal an observation which fell from Sir W. Petty in 1672, but which is just as applicable to the state of Ireland now as it was in his day. "There are," he says, 66 in Ireland two governments-the external and ostensible government, which is the English, and the internal and mystical government, which consists of 20 Popish gentlemen of good parts and ambitious designs, who are in close correspondence with the priests, draw the funds necessary for their purpose through the hands of the priests, and by their help wield and govern the whole Roman Catholic body of Ireland." That internal government we can trace all through Irish history. We find it in the rebellion of 1641, organising and directing the movements of the Roman Catholics. It disappears for a time after the revolution; but it re-appears in Dublin in 1757; and from that time the historian of it is Mr. Wyse, the present Roman Catholic member for Waterford, who, in his "History of the Roman Catholic Association," has traced its progress. In 1793, the Roman Catholic committee was composed of several gentlemen, the leaders being Dr. M'Nevin, Mr. Emmett, Dr. Byrne, Mr. Keogh, and Mr. Wolfe Tone. The last-mentioned gentleman occupied in that committee one of the situations, both of which are now held by Mr. O'Connell. He was not the ostensible leader, the lead belonging to Mr. Keogh-but he was, that which Mr. O'Connell is, the salaried and confidential agent of the Roman Catholics, and the secret manager of all their concerns. Mr. Wolfe Tone was employed by the Roman Catholic committee to write the declarations of the Roman Catholics which were circulated among the public. In these they professed their loyalty to the King, their affection for England, and their attachment to British connection. Now this very same gentleman, who was writing these public declarations, at the same time, with the same hand, and the same pen, was recording in his journal, which has since most fortunately been published, the sentiments and designs of the Roman Catholic committee, of which he was a member. I will read you some passages from his journal. He says of the committee," that they were all sincere republicans, that their objects were to subvert the tyranny of England, to establish the independence of Ireland, and form a free republic." Of the Roman Catholics, whose attachment to England he had in his declaration professed, he says (when mentioning his plan of drawing them and the Protestants into treasonable co-operation), "the Protestants I despaired of, but I well know that, however it might be disguised of suppressed, there existed in the breast of every Irish Catholic an inextirpable abhorrence of the English name and power." He says again, "the Roman Catholics, trained from their infancy (I shall presently show you by whom they were trained) in an hereditary hatred and abhorrence of the English name." Dr. M'Nevin says, "that the Roman Catholic committee were immoveable republicans;" and that when the delegates were asked their mind, they all said, "they were for a republican government and separation from England." And it may further be remarked of the members of this committee, what Mr. Wolfe Tone informs us, that every one of them was engaged in treason; that Mr. Keogh, though from his greater art he escaped detection,

was privy to and concerned in all Wolfe Tone's designs; and that with, I believe, his single exception, they all either mounted the scaffold, or, to escape it, committed suicide, or were banished, or fled from the country. Now, it was with this Roman Catholic committee that Drs. Troy and O'Reilly were in confidential communication. Of this, however, and of their designs, Mr. Pitt's government knew nothing; all they knew was the professions of the Roman Catholics and the assurances of Drs. Troy and O'Reilly; and on the faith of these they founded the College of Maynooth, in the year 1795. They supposed that they had gained the Roman Catholic bishops, and had secured to England the affections of the priesthood. Now we turn to the journal of Mr. Wolfe Tone, and we find there, that whilst the Roman Catholic bishops were making these professions to Mr. Pitt, in 1793, they became in that very year members of that very Roman Catholic committee, joint conspirators in that conspiracy of treason which was then organising. Mr. Tone says, speaking of the priests, "whatever might have been at first their doubts and diffidence, when they saw the great body of the laity come forward, they cast away all reserve, and declared their determination to rise and fall with their flocks-a wise and patriotic resolution, which was signified to the general committee by Drs. Troy and Moylan, who assisted at the meeting, and signed the petition in the name of the great body of the Catholic clergy of Ireland;" so that at the very time when they were urging Mr. Pitt to draw them out of the popular influence, and attach them to government, by founding the College of Maynooth, they were secretly giving in their adhesions to this association of treason. At the same time, in the same year, 1793, came forward all the Roman Catholic bishops with a voluntary declaration of loyalty, and in the same year Drs. Troy and O'Reilly, with three other bishops, issued an admonition to the Roman Catholics, recommending allegiance to the King; thus blinding the English government with professions of attachment, and covering their conspiracy with these perfidious publications. And it may be laid down as a fact, which the history of Ireland in the pages, not of a Protestant, but of the Roman Catholic historian, Plowden, will establish, that the Roman Catholic bishops never issued a manifesto of loyalty, except when they had some political end to compass, or when they wished to cover some secret treason against England, which was not ripe for explosion. Of this I shall give you further proof; but in the mean time I beg you to note the conduct of Dr. Troy and his brother bishops in 1793. Besides these two manifestos, however, Dr. Troy issued a third that year, an address to the Defenders. The Defenders were, in that period, the same class of confederacies, secret and murderous confederacies, which have passed since under the different names of Ribbonmen, Rockites, White Feet, and White Boys. They were all exclusively Roman Catholic. They all took an oath to destroy the Protestant and support the Romish Church, and they were all in secret connection with the priesthood. Their common work, except when some combined movement of treason was on foot, was, and is, robbery, murder, and pillage; but they were, and are, always ready to enter into any general scheme of rebellion, which of course presents to them a wider field for destruction. At this time the Roman Catholic committee, at Mr. Tone's suggestion, proposed a general plan of treason, which was to unite the disaffected among the Protestants as well as the Roman Catholics. This Mr. Tone called the Union of the United Irishmen. The designs of this union he states in his journal with the utmost frankness. Violence, alliance with France, a general rising, were the means; the ends were to murder all the aristocracy (that he thought must follow), to confiscate all the property, both landed and mercantile of the Protestants, to root out the Protestants from the country, and to establish a republic, with, at the same time, a strong military force; a republican alliance with the Directory of France, and a war with England. It was desirable, then, for the purposes of this union, to efface the exclusive character of the societies of Defenders, and to draw them into this new confederacy of the United Irishmen. Dr. Troy's pen, therefore, was resorted to, and in 1793 he published his address to the Defenders, conjuring them to dissolve. The Defenders were most obedient. Defenderism melted away over the face of the country. The English government, who knew nothing of the secret movement, were delighted, and looked on Dr. Troy as the most loyal of men. In the meanwhile, the Defenders only passed into the deeper conspiracy of the United Irishmen, and Dr. M'Nevin tells us that the Roman Catholic clergy warmly embraced and became active members of the Union." One of them, indeed, who took rather too active a part, J. Coigley, was hanged for treasonable correspondence with France. The person (I here come to a remarkable fact as connected with Maynooth)-the person who recommended the bishops and priests to enter into this active association with the United Irishmen, was the very person whom Mr. Pitt made his channel of communication with the Roman Catholic bishops, who was sent over, as Dr. M'Nevin says, "to organise and frame the plan of education at Maynooth," and who was so much trusted by Mr. Pitt, that he was appointed First President of Maynooth. Yet this man, Dr. Hussey, was the first to recommend the bishops to join heart and hand with the Roman Catholic committee, or, to use Mr. Sheil's words in a speech at the Roman Catholic Association," he was the first to trace the progress of that spirit which has pursued the rapid course which he daringly pointed out." The Union, then, as I have said, spread rapidly over Ireland; the conspiracy thickened and advanced; Ulster was organised, Leinster and Connaught. Munster alone, says Mr.

Wyse, had not been accomplished, and 100,000 men were ready to rise in arms; thé peasantry were gained-the militia had been seduced; all that remained was to gain the Roman Catholic soldiery. At this time Dr. Hussey was moved from the sedentary mischief of his station at Maynooth to the more active post of Bishop of Waterford, and the first thing which Dr. Hussey does, is to publish an address to his priests, instigating them to inflame their people against the Protestants, and to use means to seduce the Roman Catholic soldiers from their allegiance to the King, by reminding them of their superior allegiance to their Church. At this moment, when the plans were all laid, when the train was scattered over Ireland, and it only wanted the touch for the explosion, Dr. Hussey uttered a remarkable sentence. I will give it you in the words of Mr. Sheil; speaking of Dr. Hussey, he says, "The rock is loosened from the mountain's brow,' was a sentence of his that attracted universal notice at the period when the nation stood on the verge of those sanguinary events which followed." For several years Dr. Hussey and his brother bishops had been working by every art to wrench the affections of the Irish from England, and to prepare them for rebellion. And now that the catastrophe was near, Dr. Hussey comes forward with that prophetic sentence which Mr. Sheil announces. But still, though the catastrophe was approaching, it was necessary to conceal it, and true to their system, the priests again come forward to blind the government; and in the beginning of 1798, the very year of the rebellion, when the materials were all laid, and the train was about to be fired (you will find this fact in Plowden), out comes a loyal address from almost every parish in Ireland, expressive of the attachment of the Catholics to Great Britain, and this address was signed by the priest of the parish. Then follows the rebellion. I need not enter into its sanguinary details. The priests, of course, its wily instigators, were not likely to commit themselves to its peril. Several, however, were hurried on by their passions, and did so. Fathers Roche and Murphy were actual leaders. In county Wexford alone the Roman Catholic Bishop tells us that the priests were engaged; the Roman Catholic Bishop of Killala explains why the priests were likely to be seduced into rebellion, thereby implying that many were engaged in it. The Union followed. Mr. Wise says, curiously, "It was an inevitable consequence of the rebellion-the nation, fatigued, was easily overpowered." Mr. Wyse here betrays the real feelings of his party, that the Union was a defeat, and to be hated as the badge of conquest. However, the effect of the Union was to put a stop for the time to the associations of treason, to frighten the priests, and to break up and disperse the Roman Catholic committee. The internal government was thus suspended, and for a few years we hear no more of it; but in 1805 we find it again under the new name of the Catholic Board. The old members were there-the few, at least, who had escaped the punishment of their treason-Mr. Keogh, timid, as Mr. Wyse says, from the recollection of his former deeds; and there also appears, in all his former activity, the notorious Dr. Troy, pursuing the same system as before, holding communications with the Castle, and representing himself as the friend of government, but at the same time a member of the Catholic Board, and ready to co-operate in all its designs. It was necessary, however, that their designs should assume a different character, and that they should gain from England by her concessions what they could not procure by their own treason. Accordingly, they employed Mr. Grattan and others to press their claims in parliament; and disheartened by late discomfiture, the bishops were moderate, and offered that, if parliament would grant emancipation, they would admit of a check, on the part of the King, on their nomination. This accordingly Mr. Grattan offered to Parliament in the year 1808. It is curious to turn to the debate which took place that year on the subject of the grant to Maynooth, which the Whig party wished Mr. Perceval's government to increase. After the exposure of their real designs, it is most ludicrous to turn to the views of gentlemen in parliament. Sir J. Newport says, "To reduce the grant would be to make the priesthood hostile, would place parishes under the direction of uneducated men, who would instil into their parishioners abhorrence of England." Mr. Ponsonby says, “Considering the influence which the priests had over the people, it was wise in statesmen to keep them in good humour." Mr. Grattan says, "If the priests went abroad, they would bring with them foreign connections and obligations; every means should be taken to give them an education, with native habits and feelings." Persuading themselves, forsooth, that the increase of a few thousand pounds to the College at Maynooth, would secure to England the attachment of that priesthood, whom I have just shown to be deep in all the plots and conspiracies against her. In 1810, however, matters wore a different aspect. The Roman Catholic Board had become stronger-new and bolder men had joined it. Mr. O'Connell first appears on the stage. The designs of the internal government of Ireland become more resolute and hostile. They appealed to the public of Ireland. Dr. Troy took up the arms of Dr. Hussey, and tried to sow disunion among the soldiery. A committee of grievances was appointed in the Roman Catholic Board, before which every case was brought which could inflame the public mind against the English government. Dr. Troy brought charges-false charges-but as good for their purpose as if they were true, against the management of public boards in Dublin; and, emboldened by success, the Roman Catholic bishops now withdrew the offer they had made through Mr. Grattan of a veto on the nomination of their bishops. The shortest way they had of doing this was by denying that they had ever made such a promise. Any one will find