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.
They are all but frantic, and certainly not without reason, for the
Irish Colleges Bill is the fine point of that wedge which, driven home,
will shiver to pieces their 'wicked political system.' Whatever improves
Irish intellect will play the mischief with its 'faith,' though not at
all likely to deteriorate its 'morals.' The best guarantee for national
morality is to be found in national intelligence; nor need any one feel
alarmed at the progress of principles and measures inimical to faith in
either Romanism or Protestantism. Let the people of Ireland be properly
employed, as a preliminary to being well educated, and speedily they may
_deserve_ to be singled out as 'the most moral people on the face of the
earth.'

An educated nation will never tamely submit to be priest-ridden, and
well do Ireland's enslavers know it. The most stupid of her priests,
equally with the shrewdest of her 'patriots,' are quite alive to the
expediency of teaching as facts, the fraudulent fables of the 'dark
ages.' To keep the people ignorant, or what is worse, to teach them only
what is false, is the great end of _their_ training; and if a British