Great was 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, were terribly alarmed lest these 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 superstition formed no part.  Their fury, like ‘empty space,’ is boundless.  They cannot endure the thought that our minister should so far play the game of ‘infidelity’ as to take from them the delightful task of teaching Ireland’s young idea ‘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.’  Let the people of Ireland be well 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 fact 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 ministry propose anything better than the merest mockery of education, they call it ‘dangerous to faith and morals.’

Superstition is the curse of Ireland.  To the rival churches of that country may be traced ALL the oppressions suffered by its people who never can be materially improved till purged of their faith in priests.  When that salutary work shall be accomplished, Ireland will indeed be ’a nation’ in the secure enjoyment of political liberty.  The priest-ridden may talk of freedom, but can never secure it.

What then can be thought of the first-rate reformers, before alluded to, who are going to emancipate every body without the least offence to any body’s superstition?  It should be borne in memory that other people are superstitious as well as the Irish, and that the churches of all countries are as much parts of ‘a wicked political system’ as are the churches of Ireland.