which are compressed within a small compass and explained in plain easy language, in the interrogatory form. The chief arguments in proof of Christianity are here arranged and examined under twelve heads: prophecy, miracles, the preaching and styles of the Apostles and Evangelists, the sublimity of the Christian doctrine, the purity of Christian morality, its efficacy in the reformation of mankind, the testimony of martyrs, the conversion of the world, the perpetual duration of the Church, the immutability of the Christian doctrine, the accomplishment of the predictions. of the Gospel, the fate of the Jews. In this valuable tract, technical expressions and controversial allusions are avoided; and it is well calculated, as the pious author intended, to promote the general cause of Christianity."

With its small but distinguished staff of professors, Maynooth College was soon in working order. It began with something like fifty students; and it was with difficulty even that this small number could be accommodated. The old house originally taken, could barely provide room for twenty students in addition to the professors. The remainder had to lodge in the little town and attend their classes in the college. But soon new buildings were erected. Parliament made the grant of £8000 an annual concession. The sum was increased by the united British Parliament in 1808 to £9500. A legacy of £500 a year was obtained in 1803 from Lord Dunboyne, who had been Bishop of Cork, and who had apostatized and got married, but repented on his deathbed and devised all his property to the new institution. A lawsuit ensued in which Lord Dunboyne's relations pleaded undue influence and claimed that the will was null and void on account of the property laws against Catholics. John Philpott Curran acted as the advocate of the Bishops, with the result that a compromise was arrived at and the suit compounded. More ample and just provision was made for the material wants of the college in the year 1845 by the government of Sir Robert Peel. The yearly endowment was raised from £9500 to £26,000; and an additional £30,000 was granted to provide buildings suited to the high purpose for which the college was instituted. When the Prime Minister submitted his bill to Parliament a fierce storm of bigotry was raised all over the kingdom. It shrieked itself hoarse, but had practically no other effect. Once ministers had made up their minds they could not be shaken and they were liberally and loyally supported. The debates on the several readings of this bill are amongst the most remarkable in the history of the British Parliament.' The measure was fiercely contested. Representatives of the old school

1 See Hansard's Parliamentary Debates, May, June, and July, 1845, passim.

of oratory and of the new took part in the struggle. Sir Robert Peel, Lord Palmerston, Lord John Russell, Monckton Milnes, Mr. Gladstone, Lord Macaulay, Mr. Cobden, Mr. Bright, Mr. Shiel, Sir C. Napier, Lord Edward Bruce, Lord C. Wellesley and Mr. Wyre, championed the cause of Maynooth and the increased grant, whilst its opponents counted amongst their number Mr. Disraeli, J. C. Colquhoun, Sir H. Douglas, Lord Hillsborough, Mr. Newdegate, and Sir C. L. Inglis. Notwithstanding the opposition from within and from without, the bill passed the House of Commons by over a hundred of a majority. Its fate in the House of Lords was equally successful. Championed by the most respected and popular of the members of the aristocracy, it received serious opposition only from the Bishops of the Established Church and at small knot of high and dry tories and bigots. The Duke of Wellington, now in his seventy-sixth year, gave it his hearty support. The Duke of Leinster, the Marquis of Normanby, the Marquis of Landsdowne, the Earl of Rosse, Lord Brougham and Lord Campbell made eloquent speeches in its favor, whilst the opposition was left to such minor lights of debate as Lord Clancarty, the Earl of Winchelsea, and the Protestant Bishops of Cashel, Landaff and London. Its triumph secured for Maynooth the most prosperous spell of its existence, between 1845 and 1869. In the latter year the Protestant Church was disestablished in Ireland by the government of Mr. Gladstone, and, notwithstanding the ridiculous inequality and want of parallel between the two cases, the annual grant was also withdrawn from Maynooth College. A capitalized sum, amounting to fourteen years' purchase, was, however, handed over to the trustees. It amounted to £364,6co, and this sum, carefully invested and guarded by the bishops, has been the material mainstay of the college ever since. Though very inadequate to supply the wants of the college it has been supplemented from time to time by charitable members of the clergy and laity, who naturally felt that their money could be applied to no more noble and far-reaching purpose than the education of a priest.

It must not be supposed that these important changes in the fortunes of Maynooth College were allowed to pass unnoticed by the enemies of Catholicism. A regular tide of bigotry and hatred poured its abuse in torrents on the establishment. Indeed, the anti-Maynooth literature of the century would fill a good-sized library. These works provoke now only a smile of mingled astonishment and satisfaction. It is hard to believe that at a period so recent such diatribes could have been indulged in, and it is something to be thankful for that the man who would attempt to

1 Hansard's Parliamentary Debates, May and June, 1869, passim.

renew such methods of controversy at the present day would be excluded from all decent society in these countries. We might well afford to pass over in pity the ravings of these scribblers, were we not tempted to cull from them a few gems for the amusement of our readers. One of the earliest of the band was a Protestant barrister, named O'Driscoll-an apostate, we suspect; for apostates are generally got to do shady work. This individual published a book, in 1823, entitled "Views of Ireland, Moral, Political and Religious," in which we come across the following specimen :'

"The system of education adopted at Maynooth is such as to impregnate the minds of the students with sentiments of the bitterest hatred to Protestants and the most intense detestation of England. Imbued with the sanguinary spirit of intolerance and artful equivocation, it is scarcely to be wondered at that they have constantly joined in all sorts of political movements and in every species of popular agitation; that their character is one for turbulence, for sedition and immorality; that they carry out to the letter, in their practical life, the doctrines contained in the notes of the Rhemish Testament, which declare it essential for a Roman Catholic to believe that it is lawful to murder Protestants ard break faith with heretics. Primed to the full with bigotry, intolerance and hatred of England, the Maynooth priest forms, in the parish in which he is located, a nucleus of outrage upon Protestants, disaffection towards England and bitter animosity and discord. His breast, a dark concentration of sectarian fury, dogmatical self-deification and superstitious zeal, inoculates the whole neighborhood with the deadly virus, and the public mind of Ireland is thus manacled in the grinding fetters of spiritual vassalage."

In 1836 the Hon. and Rev. Baptist Noel published his "Notes of a Tour in Ireland." During this precious tour he was hospitably received and entertained in Maynooth College, which he expressed a desire to see. The courtesy and hospitality of the president and professors were repaid by such choice language as the following:

"I could not but reflect on the prodigious moral power lodged within the walls of that rough-cast range of buildings. What a vomiting of fiery zeal for worthless ceremonies and fatal errors. Thence how the priestly deluge, issuing like an infant sea—or, rather, like a fiery flood from its roaring crater-pours over the parishes of Ireland, to repress all spiritual improvement by their anti-Protestant enmities."

In the year 1841 a Barrister of the Inner Temple, in London, named James Lord-a man who seems to have had little to do at

1 Views of Ireland, Moral, Iolitical and Religious, 1823. Vol. ii., p. 3.

his profession-published a volume on Maynooth, its grant and its teaching. The volume is so full of the cant in vogue in these days that it is not worth wasting space upon. Suffice it to say that all the delicate compliments paid to the "Romish priesthood" by his predecessors in the beautiful art are repeated and commended. But the greatest storm raged in the ranks of this illassorted army during the passage of the bill of Sir Robert Peel, in 1845. It was then that the volume entitled "Maynooth Tried and Convicted" appeared. Another warlike production was entitled "The Continuation or Increase of any Grant for the Education of the Romish Priesthood a National Sin." Basketfuls of pamphlets on the wickedness of the morality taught "in the Romish Seminary of Maynooth" were distributed gratis all over the country. In these, Thomas Aquinas, Bellarmine, Menochius, Maldonatus and Dens were held up to the execration of mankind by ridiculous and, for the most part, ignorant and anonymous nobodies. Finally, a great conference of the opponents of Maynooth was held at Exeter Hall, in London, where all the rampant orators from England, Ireland and Scotland congregated to denounce the government and its project. Here Wesleyans and Baptists took their stand beside the ministers of the established church. Tresham Gregg went over from Dublin; Scotland sent delegates from its "free kirk "; the University of Cambridge supplied the organizers. For several days the whole crowd revelled in Exeter Hall, denouncing popery, intolerance (!) and Maynooth. They were allowed to let off steam in peace. The most representative and respected members of their own sects kept aloof from the proceedings, which had the good effect of concentrating the attention of the world on the narrow-minded bigotry of the delegates themselves and provoking a corresponding amount of ridicule and contempt. One of the last of the class of adverse critics of Maynooth College was a certain Sir Francis Head, who visited the college about the year 1852, and in an octavo volume entitled "A Fortnight in Ireland," published soon after, devotes considerable attention to the college, its professors, students and work. It would scarcely be fair, however, to class him with the undiscerning crowd with whom we have hitherto dealt. His criticisms are relieved by some generous passages and are distinguished by an almost complete absence of the rabid and unscrupulous misrepresentations that distinguished the earlier works. They were such,

1 Maynooth College; or the Law Affecting the Grant to Maynooth, with the Nature of the Instruction there Given. By James Lord, of the Inner Temple, Barrister at. Law.

2 See Proceedings of the Anti-Maynooth Conference of 1845. By Rev. A. S. Thelwall, of Trinity College, Cambridge. London, 1845.

VOL. XX. 4

nevertheless, as to draw from the well-known Dr. Murray a scathing and well-merited castigation.'

Whilst all the storms were blowing outside, the work of sanctification and of moral and intellectual progress was peacefully carried on in the halls and oratories of the college. In the first half of the century two of its professors stood out in special prominence. They are Louis Ægidius Delahogue and John MacHale. Dr. Delahogue was a French refugee, who had been a doctor of the Sorbonne and had taught theology for some time in the University of Paris. From 1832 to 1835 he published in Dublin several important theological treatises which, in these days, were of the greatest possible benefit to his students. They were chiefly "De Mysterio Trinitatis," "De Incarnatione Verbi," "De Sacramento Pœnitentiæ," "De Sacramentis in Genere," " De Eucharistia," "De Religione." Dr. Delahogue has sometimes been accused of Gallican tendencies in his teaching in Maynooth. That, however, is a controversy which we could not open here and have no desire to open anywhere.

Dr. MacHale, who afterwards became Archbishop of Tuam, clarum et venerabile nomen published in 1828, his "Evidences and Doctrines of the Catholic Church," in two volumes. It is a masterly work and presents a splendid vindication of Catholic doctrine against the Protestant errors most prevalent at the time. From the year 1826 to 1864 the scientific department of the college was represented by a man of original and inventive genius and of great piety, Dr. Nicholas Callan. His chief triumphs in the scientific departments were 1st, the invention of a species of galvanic battery of great power, in which lead was substituted for the platina of Grove's and the carbon of Bunsen's batteries, and in which the voltaic current, excited by a mixture of concentrated nitric and sulphuric acid, far surpassed in power anything that had hitherto been produced; 2d, the invention of an "induction coil of great power," which held its ground for eight years as the best of its kind in Europe, and which the author fully described in an article in the "Philosophical Magazine," of June, 1863. A description of the battery was also read for Dr. Callan before the "Royal Irish Academy " by Sir Robert Kane, on the 10th of May, 1847.

In later times, and to speak only of those who have gone to their reward, two other names stand prominently forward as having long been connected with Maynooth. They are those of Dr. Charles William Russell, uncle of Lord Russell, of Killowen,

1

Essays, Chiefly Theological. By Rev. Patrick Murray, D.D. Dublin, 1852. Vol. iv., pp. 27, 31.