Omer or Salamanca, for
their education, Pitt established for them a college at Maynooth, for
the endowment of which Parliament was annually asked for a grant of
about L9000. The sum had long been felt to be altogether inadequate to
the requirements of the foundation. As early as the year 1807, Lord
Liverpool, then Home-secretary, had contemplated a large increase of the
grant, though the weakness of the government, then presided over by the
Duke of Portland, prevented him from carrying out that and other
measures which he had conceived in a kindred spirit. Moreover, the grant
was rarely proposed without giving rise to a warm debate raised by a
party whose too tender consciences forbade them to sanction any measure
appearing to foster a religion from which they dissented. And to remedy
the two evils (the one arising from the want of a sufficient provision,
the other from the spirit of religious controversy, for which the House
of Commons was certainly very ill-calculated), Peel, in 1845, proposed
to treble the grant, so as to put the college on a more satisfactory
footing, by providing sufficient incomes for the professors, and a
revenue adequate to the respectable maintenance of an increased number
of pupils; and also to place the charge for the future on the
Consolidated Fund, by which step its yearly discussion in Parliament
would be altogether avoided.
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