from a Liberal Administration.' The allusion is, of course, to the
Maynooth Grant--a measure of practical relief to the Irish Catholics,
which would, without doubt, have thrown Sir Robert Peel out of office if
he had been left to the tender mercies of his own supporters. Disraeli
was fond of asserting that Peel lacked imagination, and there was a
measure of truth in the charge. He was a great patriotic statesman,
haunted by no foolish bugbear of consistency, but willing to learn by
experience, and courageous enough to follow what he believed to be
right, with unpolitical but patriotic scorn of consequence. Men with
stereotyped ideas, who persisted in interpreting concession, however
just, as weakness, and reform, however urgent, as revolution, were
unable to follow such a leader.

Peel might lack imagination, but he never lacked courage, and the
generosity of vision which imposed on courage great and difficult tasks
of statesmanship. He could educate himself--for he kept an open
mind--and was swift to seize and to interpret great issues in the
affairs of the nation; but it was altogether a different matter for him
to educate his party. In the spring of 1845, Sir Robert Peel determined
to meet the situation in Ireland by bold proposals for the education of
the Catholic priesthood. Almost to the close of the eighteenth century
the Catholics were compelled by the existing laws to train young men
intended for the work of the priesthood in Ireland in French colleges,
since no seminary of the kind was permitted in Ireland. The French
Revolution overthrew this arrangement, and in 1795, by an Act of the
Irish Parliament, Maynooth College was founded, and was supported by
annual grants, which were continued, though not without much
opposition, by the Imperial Parliament after the Union. On April 3, Sir
Robert Peel brought forward his measure for dealing in a generous manner
with the needs and claims of this great institution. He proposed that
the annual grant should be raised from 9,000_l._ to upwards of
26,000_l._, that a charter of incorporation should be given, and that
the trustees should be allowed to hold land to the value of 3,000_l._ a
year. He also proposed that the new endowment should be a charge upon
the Consolidated Fund, so that angry discussions of the kind in which
bigotry and prejudice delight might be avoided. Moreover, in order to
restore and enlarge the college buildings, Sir Robert finally proposed
an immed