"The Government Is Giving Offense To Many
Who Have Hitherto Been Its Firmest Supporters.
There was no necessity for
the Maynooth grant; the Catholics would have been as well satisfied
without it as they are with it; for you see they are already clamoring for
the right to appoint through their Bishops the professors in the new
Irish colleges.
The Catholics were already establishing their schools, and
building their churches with their own means: and this act of applying the
money of the nation to the education of their priests is a gratuitous
offense offered by the government to its best friends." In a sermon which
I heard from the Dean of York, in the magnificent old minster of that
city, he commended the liberality of the motives which had induced the
government to make the grant, but spoke of the measure as one which the
friends of the English Church viewed with apprehension and anxiety.
"They may dismiss their fears," said a shrewd friend of mine, with whom I
was discussing the subject. "Endowments are a cause of lukewarmness and
weakness. Our Presbyterian friends here, instead of protesting so
vehemently against what Sir Robert Peel has done, should thank him for
endowing the Catholic Church, for in doing it he has deprived it of some
part of its hold upon the minds of men."
There is much truth, doubtless, in this remark. The support of religion to
be effectual should depend upon individual zeal. The history of the
endowed chapels of dissenting denominations in England is a curious
example of this.
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