In a prolonged and most earnest debate in the House of Commons, on motion for going into Committee on the Bill, June 2nd, Mr. O’Connell, after eulogising the Maynooth grant, says:—­

“Take one step more, and consider whether this bill may not be made to accord with the feelings of the Catholic ecclesiastics of Ireland.  I ought not to detain you:  I am not speaking here in any spirit of hostility.  I should be most happy to give any assistance in my humble power to make this bill work well.  I have the most anxious wish to have this bill work well, because I am desirous of seeing education promoted in Ireland; but even education may be misapplied power.  I admit that at one time I thought the plan of a mixed education proper, and I still think that a system of mixed education in literature and science would be proper, but not with regard to religious education.”

    And further on:  “Again I repeat I am most anxious for the
    success of this bill, but I fairly tell you it cannot succeed
    without the Catholic bishops....

    “There may have been harsh expressions in the public papers, but
    depend upon it great anxiety exists in Ireland to have such a
    measure.”

The second proposition would be abundantly sustained by a single sentence in Thomas Davis’s commentary on the speech from which I extract the above.

    “On our part we had feared O’Connell conceded almost too far.”

But the testimony of Mr. O’Connell himself will be considered more conclusive.

Speaking in the Association on the 6th of July, he said:—­

“I may remark for the present that on this subject a question of difference has arisen among ourselves.  Some of the members of the Association are for what is called mixed education, and others of us are against it, but that difference of opinion ought not to create any division among us, for neither the one nor the other of us is gratified by the bill as it stands.”

Again, in the course of the same speech, he said: 

“We (Mr. O’Brien and himself) did our best to avert such a calamity.  We called upon the Government not to persist in working out this bill in all its details of blackness and horror.”

He concluded by lauding Lord John Russell for his valuable assistance in the attempt to amend the bill, and finally said that, having failed in this attempt, he “flung the bill to the ministry, to deal with it as they pleased.”

Mr. O’Brien continued in London, and proposed amendments to the bill in every stage of its progress.  It was during that time he was assailed by Mr. Roebuck with all the little malevolence of his envenomed nature.  He failed in every attempt to remedy the defects of the bill, which passed its last stage in the Commons on the 10th day of July.  On the 17th of the same month, Mr. O’Connell, speaking in the Association, said: