solemnly proposed and vigorously pressed forward by a cautious minister of England, coinciding also with the spasmodic throes of the Irish people to establish an independent nationality, have doubtless spread through the councils of the Vatican as much of what will probably be found visionary expectation, as through the hearts of our own Protestant countrymen, they have spread of what equally, we trust, will be converted by this national insurrection against Maynooth into visionary fear. Another point we are bound to notice, as error generally diffused--though shocking to just logic. It is said, by way of reproach to ourselves--the England of this day--that we took all the splendid endowments of Oxford, Cambridge, and so forth, from Roman Catholics; which being so, we are bound to make some restoration of the spoils to the Catholics of this day. Was there ever heard more complex absurdity? Mark its stages: 1st, If you _had_ taken them from Catholics of the 16th century, how would _that_ translate any interest of property in the institutions to people of the nineteenth century, simply as professing the same faith? We took various spoils about 1780 from Hyder Ali, the sultan of Mysore: in 1799 we took others more costly from his son Tippoo: will that entitle some prince of Turkestan, or Bokhara, in the year 2000, to claim these spoils on the plea that he is a Mahometan? An interest of inheritance would thus be vested in the emptiest of abstractions. 2d, They were _not_ Catholics, in a proper sense, who founded the chief colleges at Oxford, &c. The Roman Catholic faith was not developed fully at the period when many were founded: it could not be developed even as a _religious system_, until after the great polemic writers, on the one side and the other, had drawn out the differential points of doctrine. And when partly developed, or showing a tendency to certain conclusions, it was not fully _settled_ until the Council of Trent. Next, as a _political interest_, it was not at all developed until between the beginning of Luther and the termination of Trent. Impossible it was that it should; for until a counter-pole existed, until an antagonist interest had arisen, the relations of Popery, whether political or religious, must have been indeterminate: as a kingdom surrounded by deserts and trackless forests, cannot have its frontier line ascertained.