MAYNOOTH.
It is due to the character of this Journal, unflinching in its Conservative politics through one entire stormy generation, that, in any great crisis of public interest, or in any fervent strife of public opinion, it should utter its voice strongly; under the shape of a protest and a parting testimony to the truth, where the case practically may be hopeless; under the shape of a hearty effort, co-operating with other efforts, where the case is not hopeless. There is nothing more depressing to patriotic honour and loyalty than the cowardice of despondency, even when a cause has touched the very brink of defeat; and we believe that no spectacle of firmness is more naturally congenial to the temper of our countrymen, than the fidelity which still makes signal of its affection in circumstances desperate for resistance, and which in mortal extremities will not relax its hold from a cause once conscientiously adopted. Do we insinuate by this that the anti-Maynooth cause looks desperate? Our trust is otherwise. But if it were, what we say is, that not the less the duty remains sacred of hoping after all light of encouragement seems to have departed. This in any case; whilst, in the present, that duty is trebly sacred, because a whole succession of objects will remain upon which our future hopes must retreat, even if this foremost intrenchment should be forced. Maynooth will be no solitary aggression on the great cause of Protestanism: that carried, others will rapidly follow: their "aspiring heads" are already above the horizon; and it is necessary to defend the first line in a spirit of gaiety and confidence, were it only that the second line and the third may not be abandoned under the contagion of dismay.
Of late this Journal has a good deal retired from the strife of politics. Our readers must not misunderstand this. It was not through any treachery to that duty of hope which we have been insisting on as sacred: it was through a change in the public rather than in ourselves. Ireland had for some time narrowed itself into Mr O'Connell; domestic feuds had dwindled into the corn question. Neither of these subjects, it is true, was so utterly exhausted that we could not have found something new to say. But by the intolerable persecution of much speaking and much writing upon two wearisome topics, the public attention at last fell into a mere lethargy, from which it could not be roused to vibrate or react under any amount of stimulation. The audience fell away to nothing as the garrulity of the speakers increased; the public patience languished as its abusers multiplied. Now, however, Ireland is again restored to us as a fountain of interest under a new and most agitating impulse. Never, for many years, has the public mind fermented with so uncontrollable a fervour. Ascendency upon one field at least for Popery is now felt to be making a forward rush; the balance of the constitutional forces, for a government essentially Protestant, is threatened with overthrow; and, if this Maynooth endowment prospers, Protestantism will receive a deadly wound in the empire which is, and has been, and by Providence was appointed to be, its main bulwark.
In speaking to this question, it is our purpose to array briefly before the reader its gravest aspects; to press upon his attention one or two which have been entirely neglected; to do this with the utmost rapidity that is consistent with distinct explanation of our meaning; but all along, with no purpose of rousing angry prejudices, or appealing to any one sentiment that a candid man of any one party could describe as bigotry. We disapprove entirely, as a needless irritation to Roman Catholic feelings, of going back to the Revolution of 1829. If that great event were now pending, instead of being sixteen years in the rear, it would be our duty, at any cost of possible offence in any quarter, to speak of it as our conscience might require us to speak. But, as things are, this would be to offer a wanton provocation, utterly useless for any practical end, and tending towards the continued alienation of many excellent fellow-subjects. Wrong or right, the policy of "Emancipation" has triumphed; the thing is done, and cannot be undone; we must now adapt ourselves to a system which has become the law of the land. It is in such a case as with the past errors of a man's life: if he is wise, he will not suffer his energies to waste themselves upon unavailing regrets. To revoke the irrevocable being an effort so manifestly childish, he will apply himself to an effort which is rational, manly, and full of hope—to the correcting or mitigating of those consequences from his errors which are most threatening for his future welfare.
Social forms often show the same principle of vitality and reproduction; and, after the deadliest convulsions, put forward corresponding tendencies to restoration of their natural health and equilibrium. It is one, indeed, amongst the tests of excellence in any political constitution, that it can stand very rude shocks, and that it has internal resources for healing all injuries not organically destructive. Catholic emancipation, whatever might be thought of it if viewed from a station of unlimited power to choose or to reject, must now be reconciled to our minds for better and worse; and in peaceable times will gradually adjust itself to the working of our political system, settling into the general economy of the machine. But this Maynooth endowment tends to other results. The steps are inevitable from this centre to the very outermost periphery that bounds the ambition of Irish Popery; viz. to absolute ascendancy for itself, to absolute overthrow of Protestantism in Ireland, and therefore to ultimate separation of that island from the British empire, so far as the dreadful effort is concerned. For we must not overlook the modern symptoms of the case. Formerly, as in 1782 for instance, Ireland dreamed not of any further advantages than such as could be extorted from the occasional difficulties of England under foreign hostility, and such as should be sanctioned by English parliamentary concession. But under the long agitation of Mr O'Connell a new party has grown up, which regards Ireland—however inferior for aggressive war—as strong enough, by means of its excessive population, and the local advantages inherent in every possessor of the soil, for throwing off the connexion with England. Independence, on the footing of a separate nation, is seriously aimed at by the young blood of Ireland; not with a view to any imaginary advantages from development of native resources or alleviation of taxes, but on the single excitement of nationality. And by this ultimate object, as undoubtedly a favoured object working underground and extensively in the Ireland of 1845, we must measure the tendencies of an endowment conferred by Parliament upon the Popish religion.
Rightly to judge of any favour or privilege whatever conceded to Popery, we must consider the position of Popery with respect to the altered prospects of the world as it now is, and the duties of Protestantism, permanently as well as specially, in relation to the changed and changing attitude of our own particular crisis. But these being the capital aspects of the case, we will first of all notice those more manageable and rememberable topics which are flying abroad upon the popular breath amongst our antagonists.
It is alleged that we, the confederate opponents of the grant, are not natural allies. Being heterogeneous, our opposition cannot be cordial. Why not? If comprehensive unanimity, and undistinguishing unanimity, were an indispensable condition towards a legitimate confederacy, then it would be an impossibility that any combined action of men (which is one main purpose of human society) should ever arise. Some of us think it a high duty of the state to endow and favour that form of Christianity which the predominant opinion (as collected from the total empire) pronounces the true one. This is our own creed; and it is our further belief that this duty is strengthened where not only the general opinion has pronounced itself strongly for that particular religious system, but where also the history and the institutions of the land have unfolded themselves for centuries, and through memorable struggles, under the inspiration of that system, conforming to it, and receiving its impress. On the other hand, considerable masses of those who now pull together with ourselves, are permanent protesters against all state endowments of any one particular church; and not only so, but they object to any possible mode of connexion between the government and the functions of ecclesiastical bodies. What of that? Those are most thoughtless, or else incapable of self-control, who at such a moment of common peril remind us of differences utterly impertinent to the question. Can we not abstract? If we are in discord upon political points, are we not agreed upon the great interests of our common Protestantism? Why must we be in harmony further than as to the one vast cause which we jointly defend? Upon this logic, Whigs and Tories meeting upon the same deck must not unite to "sink, burn, and destroy" the enemies of their common country; or two households, Radical and Conservative, in the same village, must not work the same engine for the extinction of a fire which threatens every hearth. As to the case of those who oppose the grant exclusively on the principle of hostility to state endowments of religious bodies, all of us see clearly that they travel on our road no inch further than it leads to a private purpose of their own, and that they will violently wheel away from us at the point where our purposes begin to divide. But, in the mean time, our purposes at this moment, and for the instant result, do not divide; and their support is good for so much of the struggle as they are conscientiously able to share with us.
But surely, say another class of objectors, though it is a pity that the Irish are not Protestants, it is better that they should have Popery for their form of religion than no religion at all. True. And if this were the alternative necessity, viz. that, Popery decaying, all religion must decay in Ireland; then we also should cordially support any safe mode (but not this mode) of raising the standard of education for the priestly instructors of Ireland. But we are not called upon to legislate for that dilemma. If, indeed, the case were that of a Popish regiment, it is clearly the duty of government to provide a Popish chaplain, and to see that he is properly qualified for his office; because, if you do not open a regular channel to Popish instructions, you are sure that both conscience and worldly honour, paramount principles for cherishing amongst soldiers, will lead them to withdraw from all other instructions. Not being Papists, the men will become practically infidels. But the case is far otherwise for the Irish people. Government is not summoned to provide any part of an improved equipage for an Irish religious establishment. That is done, or done sufficiently. Whether as Protestant or Catholic, every man has access to religious instructions and religious consolations. There is no call to improve the quality of the priestly ministrations; for, considering the quality of the doctrines and usages which are essential to Popery, we do not believe that the Irish priesthood is much open to improvement as a machinery for carrying out its own indefeasible purposes. To raise the standard of respectability at Maynooth, would not alter the character of the creed which Maynooth teaches. And when it is said that, with a higher education, the Romish priesthood would be more likely to breed schism or incipient reformation within their own order, we doubt greatly as to the interpretation of the facts upon which that speculation is grounded. The Reformation, which shook the sixteenth century, did not arise, (as we see it alleged,) because Luther or Melanchthon was so much above the standard of monkish education. Men quite as extensively learned as they, and even more highly endowed by nature, had but the more passionately undertaken the cause of Papal Rome in consequence of those great advantages. Luther was strong in the strength of his forerunners. The men of Luther's age inherited the zeal and the light kindled by three centuries of growing truth. And what put the crest and plumage upon the aspiring hopes of that period, was the providential madness of Rome, and the towering altitude of her corruptions, which just then, from mercenary causes, soared aloft more audaciously than ever before. In the present state of the Papal church, and under the new hopes which we shall point out further on, as just now opening upon her, it is more than ever improbable that any laxity of discipline at Maynooth, or in the general government internally of the Irish church, will be suffered to leave openings for heresies to arise. Essentially, Rome is aware that, for the next half century, beyond all the churches of earth, she will be a church militant. Escaping decay during that critical period from the immense diffusion of general knowledge, [but of knowledge not by any means concurrently connected with spiritual knowledge]—Rome is likely (as we shall soon argue) to take a prodigious bound forward. And if, on the other hand, any great fermentation of truth should commence in the Popish church of Ireland, and that a vacuum should thus be created, into which the priests could no longer carry their minstrations acceptably, that vacuum would be instantly filled by zealous Protestants. Such a change would be so far from leaving any part of the Irish poor denuded of spiritual aid, or in any way exposed to the risk of infidelity, (according to the objection,) that Protestant help would arise (we are well assured) in a ratio more than corresponding to a necessity that must naturally have been gradual in its development. And thus it would appear—that, by strengthening Maynooth, Government, so far from protecting the people against the chances of infidelity, would (in the case supposed) have been intercepting the fair chances of our own Protestant missions. Besides, that (according to a constant reproach of our antagonists, which they must not be allowed to forget exactly when it furnishes an argument inconvenient to themselves,) the regular clergy of the Irish Protestant establishment, having churches (as they insist) without congregations, will always compose a staff large enough to intercept any possible expansion of infidelity that could attend the declension of Popery through one generation at the least. Fully agreeing, therefore, that Popery is a blessing to Ireland by comparison with any risk of no religion at all, we deny firmly that she exposed to such a risk. And if unhappily she were, a most Irish mode of averting that risk it would be—to fortify the claims of Maynooth, that last asylum of unhallowed and fraudulent casuistry, a casuistry which, like the traditions of the Scribes and Pharisees, makes void the pure law of God.