On Thursday night Sir G. Jenkinson moved his amendment, the
effect of which would have been to compensate Maynooth out of the Consolidated Fund instead of out of the Irish Church property,—on the ground, which we confess seemed to us strong, that the Government had pledged themselves to devote the whole surplus to purely Irish purposes, whereas both the Itegium Donum and the Maynooth Grant being now paid out of the Imperial Exchequer, to compensate these grants out of the Irish Church properby is in fact relieving the taxation of the United Kingdom —which cannot be called a purely Irish purpose. To this Mr. Gladstone made two replies,—first, that these imperial grants had been made only as a set-off against a special injustice to Ireland,— the application of the Church funds to the religion of the minority,—and now that we are relieving Ireland of the injustice, it is only fair to relieve the United Kingdom in the same way of the set-off against it. Next, as we are lending Ireland the advantage of Imperial credit in winding up the Church, we are really enhancing the value of the surplus applicable to general Irish purposes by a very large sum,—by considerably more than the compensation to Maynooth and the Presbyterians, so that in fact we are devoting more than the surplus which Ireland would have, if no Imperial credit were used in the process, to purely Irish purposes. This is an exceedingly ingenious, if not a wholy satisfactory reply, and the House apparently thought it better. Sir G.
