re, what we say
is, that not the less the duty remains sacred of hoping after all light of
encouragement seems to have departed. This in any case; whilst, in the
present, that duty is trebly sacred, because a whole succession of objects
will remain upon which our future hopes must retreat, even if this
foremost intrenchment should be forced. Maynooth will be no _solitary_
aggression on the great cause of Protestanism: that carried, others will
rapidly follow: their "aspiring heads" are already above the horizon; and
it is necessary to defend the first line in a spirit of gaiety and
confidence, were it only that the second line and the third may not be
abandoned under the contagion of dismay.

Of late this Journal has a good deal retired from the strife of politics.
Our readers must not misunderstand this. It was not through any treachery
to that duty of hope which we have been insisting on as sacred: it was
through a change in the public rather than in ourselves. Ireland had for
some time narrowed itself into Mr O'Connell; domestic feuds had dwindled
into the corn question. Neither of these subjects, it is true, was so
utterly exhausted that we could not have found something new to say. But
by the intolerable persecution of much speaking and much writing upon two
wearisome topics, the public attention at last fell into a mere lethargy,
from which it could not be roused to vibrate or react under any amount of
stimulation. The audience fell away to nothing as the garrulity of the
speakers increased; the public patience languished as its abusers
multiplied. Now, however, Ireland is again restored to us as a fountain of
interest under a new and most agitating impulse. Never, for many years,
has the public mind fermented with so uncontrollable a fervour. Ascendency
upon one field at least for Popery is now felt to be making a forward
rush; the balance of the constitutional forces, for a government
essentially Protestant, is threatened with overthrow; and, if this
Maynooth endowment prospers, Protestantism will receive a deadly wound in
the empire which is, and _has_ been, and by Providence was appointed to
be, its main bulwark.

In speaking to this question, it is our purpose to array briefly before
the reader its gravest aspects; to press upon his attention one or two
which have been entirely neglected; to do this with the utmost rapidity
that is consistent with distinct explanation of our meaning; but all
along, with no p