And now that the long cessation of controversy on the subject—­which, indeed, has been not the least beneficial fruit of this bill of 1845—­permits a candid consideration of it in all its bearings, it will probably be thought that Parliament had not often come to a wiser decision, one more dictated by judicious liberality of sentiment, and more imperatively required on every ground of statesman-like policy.  If the countervailing objections and advantages be calmly weighed, it may almost be said that there was no alternative between enlarging the endowment and putting it on a new footing, or suppressing the college altogether.  In its existing condition it was notoriously inadequate to fulfil the design of its founder; and any establishment visibly inadequate to its design tends to bring the design itself into some degree of contempt.  Yet even if it should be granted that there might have been no fair ground of complaint if the college had never been founded, to close it after its benefits, however scanty, had been enjoyed for half a century, could not fail to have been regarded as an unpardonable injustice and injury.  The other alternative, therefore, was practically the only one that remained; and in embracing it Peel was but carrying out the original principle on which the college was founded.  It had been intended to be efficient; through lack of means it had proved inefficient.  The obvious and just remedy was to supply such increased means as to create or bestow the efficiency originally aimed at.  And it was a felicitous idea to place the charge for the future on such a footing as to combine with such an increase an avoidance of the irritation which its yearly discussion had never failed to excite.

And at the same time, to carry still farther the principle of religious toleration, or rather of religious equality, he induced the Parliament to found a new university, consisting of three colleges, one in each of the three provinces of Ulster, Munster and Connaught (Leinster, as having Trinity College and Maynooth, being regarded as already sufficiently provided with university education), which should be open to students of every religious denomination, and at which, while every kind of secular education, both literary and scientific, should be given, the stirring up of religious controversy and animosity should be guarded against, by the absence of any theological professorships.  He did not, indeed, design that the still greater benefits of religious education should be withheld from the pupils, but he proposed to provide for that object by confiding their religious education to the care of the clergy of each persuasion, some of whom in each town which was the seat of a college—­Belfast, Cork, and Galway—­might be trusted for willingness to superintend it.  It was hoped that one fruit of this scheme, and that by no means its least valuable result, would be that the association of pupils of various creeds in their studies and amusements from an early age would lead