The clause which subjected to severe penalties a Roman Catholic parent who sent his child abroad to enjoy the benefits of an education which he was not allowed to receive at home, was manifestly almost incapable of enforcement, and the youths designed for orders in the Romish Church had been invariably sent to foreign colleges--some to Douai or St.Omer, in France; some to the renowned Spanish University of Salamanca.

But the French colleges had been swept away by the Revolution, which also made a passage to Spain (the greater expense of which had at all times confined that resource to a small number of students) more difficult; and the consequence was, that in 1794 the Roman Catholic Primate, Dr.Troy, petitioned the government to grant a royal license for the endowment of a college in Ireland.

Justice and policy were equally in favor of the grant of such a request.

For the sake of the whole kingdom, and even for that of Protestantism itself, it was better that the Roman Catholic priesthood should be an educated rather than an ignorant body of men; and, in the temper which at that time prevailed over the western countries of the Continent, it was at least equally desirable that the rising generation should be preserved from the contagion of the revolutionary principles which the present rulers of France were so industrious to propagate.
Pitt at once embraced the idea, and in the spring of the next year a bill was introduced into the Irish Parliament by the Chief Secretary, authorizing the foundation and endowment of a college at Maynooth, in the neighborhood of Dublin, for the education of Roman Catholics generally, whether destined for the Church or for lay professions.

It is a singular circumstance that the only opposition to the measure came from Grattan and his party, who urged that, as the Roman Catholics had recently been allowed to matriculate and take degrees at Trinity College, though not to share in the endowments of that wealthy institution, the endowment of another college, to be exclusively confined to Roman Catholics, would be a retrograde step, undoing the benefits of the recent concession of the authorities of Trinity; would be "a revival and re-enactment of the principles of separation and exclusion," and an injury to the whole community.