The Irish peasantry clamour for 'Repeal,' never considering
that did they get it, no essential change would be made in their social,
moral, or to say all in one word, _political_ condition; they would
still be the tool of O'Connell and other unprincipled political
mountebanks--themselves the tool of priests.
Great has been the outcry raised against the 'godless colleges, that
Sir Robert Peel had the courageous good sense to _inflict_ on Ireland.
Protestant as well as Romanist priests are terribly alarmed lest those
colleges should spoil the craft by which they live. Sagacious enough to
perceive that whatever influence they possess must vanish with the
ignorance on which it rests, they moved heaven and earth to disgust the
Irish people with an educational measure of which religion formed no
part. Their fury, like 'empty space,' is boundless. They cannot endure
the thought that our ministers should so far play the game of
'infidelity' as to take from them the delightful task of teaching
Ireland's young ideas 'how to shoot.' Sir Robert Inglis _christened_
this 'odious' measure, a 'gigantic scheme of godless education,' and a
large majority of Irish Roman Catholic Prelates have solemnly pronounced
it 'dangerous to faith and morals,' Neither ministerial allurements, nor
ministerial threats can subdue the cantankerous spirit of these bigots.
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