They proposed that Maynooth and Trinity College should be both sufficiently endowed for all purposes of ecclesiastical education, without any interference, direct or indirect, from each other or the Government, while the University should be open alike to all who had obtained distinction in the provincial colleges.

Any measure of narrower scope would, they contended, leave dullness and bigotry where it found them.
Mr.O'Connell, on the other hand, insisted on the inviolability of Dublin College as a Protestant institution, inaccessible to Catholics, except through the slough of perverted and perjured faith.

He would then have new colleges purely Catholic and entirely under the control of the Catholic bishops, but endowed by the State, and chartered to confer literary degrees.

He would extend the same right to the members of other religious persuasions.

It was answered that these positions and his arguments addressed to the academic question were irreconcilable and incompatible.