ADDRESS TO THE THEOLOGICAL STUDENTS OF THE COLLEGE OF MAYNOOTH, 1822.

I REALLY know not how to address you. I must confess, and it is no affectation of modesty, that, arriving at this period of the year, which is about to close our labours, I feel more than ordinary embarrassment. It may excite surprise that one who has been so often accustomed to address with the confiding familiarity of colloquial language, should at once assume such solemnity of tone, and that the ordinary routine of business should be so suddenly invested with such serious and impressive interest. This is the very circumstance that accounts for my embarrassment. The subject itself is calculated to depress by its associations, and the consciousness that I have more than once dwelt on it, perhaps to satiety, embarrasses me more. On this topic I struggle between the difficulties incident to variety and sameness, and approach it with apprehension, lest, in attempting to be new, I should cease to be natural. Were it my first time I might, of course, tempt you to accompany me by holding out the hope of instruction or amusement; but it is hard to cure the distrust created by repeated disappointments, and sure I am that few are possessed of the powers of the prophet, who could so change the scenes or charm the senses as to cheat his companions into the persuasion that they were conducted by another guide, and that they were travelling another

way.

I did, therefore, think to take leave of you without this formality; but I found on reflection that I had gone too far to recede. What is usually done is expected by the

next generation, and a construction of slight or indifference might be put on the omission of a usual practice. Lest, therefore, my silence might be mistaken for sullenness, which surely I have had no reason to entertain, and conscious that ceremony is seldom resorted to except towards them for whom a respect is entertained, I have resolved to overcome all the difficulties that were suggested, and to say a few words of past or future occasions, which, however indifferent in themselves, might derive some value from the circumstance of their being a tribute of reciprocal regard and attention.

The freedom, with which I have occasionally animadverted upon any departure from decorum, when I conceived animadversion was due, is a proof that I have no secret arrears of misconduct to settle with any individuals. I am not one of those, who, at their parting would fain solicit an act of indemnity for the past; no, Gentlemen, as long as I continue I purpose to persevere in the same line of conduct. If I were even to take my leave for ever, an undeviating adhesion to my duty is the reflection that would give me most consolation; and what would gratify me next is, that I had to direct individuals, to purchase whose esteem it was not necessary to depart from that duty. The infliction of reproof might have excited a transient uneasiness in those who might have been its object; but now I am glad, not, because they were made sorrowful, but, because the rebuke, that inflicted pain, became the instrument of their correction.

Different modes of treatment are suited to different temperaments. Towards those who are insensible to the strong, though silent, influence of religion and propriety uniform rigour may well be adopted. But for me, I felt I had to address a body, whose love of good order seconded my own, and that in checking any casual

manifestation of levity I was less the controller than the organ of your own sentiments. I should incur the reproach of my own mind if, through weakness, I should connive at any disorder; and I should be equally ashamed of the littleness of perpetually putting forward an authority which, if not necessary to exercise, it is prudence to conceal. If, therefore, the order of the class has not been disturbed by the exhibition of any scene, of which the recollection would embitter our feelings at the present moment, the praise is more due to a preventing attention on your part, than to any forbearance of mine; and as St. Chrysostom well remarks, in his treatise of the Priesthood: "One has but little merit for those virtues which have not been tried by the opposite temptations."

To this commendation, which I willingly give to the general propriety of your conduct, I must add the expression of an equal satisfaction at the zeal and success with which you have appeared to have prosecuted your studies. In almost all I observed a bent of mind which gave a decided preference to theology; and in many I was happy to find a spirit of inquisitive, and yet tempered criticism, united to a respectful though intelligent doubt. However, lest dwelling too long on your intellectual progress might seem to betray some complacency, I shall defer that topic to the occasion on which, I trust, you will acquit yourselves to the satisfaction of all the spectators. At the examination every individual will have ample room for the display of his talents; and you will be led from the commencement to the end of the treatise, without discrimination, as chance or memory may suggest. I am glad, indeed, to have as yet one or two tests to fix my own judgment in the adjudication of literary rewards. The ardent competition that has spurred the speed of the candidates, and the closeness

with which some have pressed upon each other's footsteps, make it desirable still to lengthen out the ground to put their strength to a further trial. I wish I had it in my power to say, in recompense for your industry: "Nemo non donatus abibit;" but as that is impossible, I must confess I feel myself considerably embarrassed. In the ascending scale of merit there are some whose pretensions approach by such a trembling line, that one might be inclined to adopt the contrivance of some of the magistrates in the disturbed districts, who, unwilling to have their names appear first in certain requisitions, suffered their love of precedence to give way to their apprehensions, and condescended to equalise themselves by writing their signatures in the form of a circle. For the adoption of this plan, however, there is no precedent. I shall only observe that where there is a marked distinction, the associates shall not be multiplied, and that where no such difference is discernible, equality of merit alone, and not precedent or example, shall determine their number.

You may imagine that I mean to amuse you once more by bringing out the different feelings of the disappointed, by anticipating the various topics of reproach or consolation in which some congenial groups may indulge to soothe each other's disappointment, and ingeniously discover some latent cause for such preference or exclusion. No, Gentlemen, I will not disturb your gravity by such an exhibition, trusting that there is a reserve amongst you, which will not suffer you to be so buoyed up beyond a just standard, by these insidious compliments, under which insincerity may lurk for the purpose of, afterwards, exposing you to their derision.

I will content myself with making one serious re

flection, less for the purpose of shielding myself against any distrust, which I am conscious you do not entertain, than for the purpose of giving just views to the inexperienced, and of directing those, whose lot it may be, on a future occasion, to dispense, in a more exalted theatre, the dignities of the Church.

The dispensation of justice is too sacred a trust for the intrusion of any other feeling. And the adjudication of literary rewards I look upon as a matter of the most rigid justice. My esteem for the body of the class. indeed is great; but I trust I will not be considered disrespectful in saying, that there is not an individual, whom I do not consider as valueless, when compared with the strictness of my own obligation. Now there is no assignable reason to influence one except some individual partiality. If any might be so weak as to sacrifice justice to personal considerations, a little reflection would convince them of their folly. You could not expect even any particular gratitude from the individual, because, thankfulness on such an occasion is what a man of sense would not wish to have, and which a man of delicacy would forbear to express. When there is little expectation of gratitude there can be no temptation to confer a favour. It is a recorded saying of Louis XIV., founded on that extensive range of observation, which he acquired from his commanding position, that he never conferred a place but he made one man ungrateful and many discontented. Now, if such be the case with mere gratuitous favours, where there is no just cause for enmity, because no injury is done, and where in the other there might be some claim to gratitude as there was none in the distinction, how much more so in a matter of justice, when the excluded may labour under the illusion that he has been deprived of a right, and