posed
to treble the grant, so as to put the college on a more satisfactory
footing, by providing sufficient incomes for the professors, and a
revenue adequate to the respectable maintenance of an increased number
of pupils; and also to place the charge for the future on the
Consolidated Fund, by which step its yearly discussion in Parliament
would be altogether avoided. The measure was vigorously resisted, partly
on the religious ground already mentioned, and partly by an argument,
urged with some plausibility, that the design with which the college had
originally been founded had not been realized; that, in fact, it had not
proved a benefit to the country, but rather the reverse, by tempting
into the service of the Roman Catholic Church a humbler and poorer class
of students than could devote themselves to it when the preliminary
education involved the expense of a protracted residence in a foreign
country. But the obvious advantages of the change prevailed over these
considerations, and the bill was carried by large majorities.[262]

And now that the long cessation of controversy on the subject--which,
indeed, has been not the least beneficial fruit of this bill of
1845--permits a candid consideration of it in all its bearings, it will
probably be thought that Parliament had not often come to a wiser
decision, one more dictated by judicious liberality of sentiment, and
more imperatively required on every ground of statesman-like policy. If
the countervailing objections and advantages be calmly weighed, it may
almost be said that there was no alternative between enlarging the
endowment and putting it on a new footing, or suppressing the college
altogether. In its existing condition it was notoriously inadequate to
fulfil the design of its founder; and any establishment visibly
inadequate to its design tends to bring the design itself into some
degree of contempt. Yet even if it should be granted that there might
have been no fair ground of complaint if the college had never been
founded, to close it after its benefits, however scanty, had been
enjoyed for half a century, could not fail to have been regarded as an
unpardonable injustice and injury. The other alternative, therefore, was
practically the only one that remained; and in embracing it Peel was but
carrying out the original principle on which the college was founded. It
had been intended to be efficient; through lack of means it had proved
inefficient. The obvi