f time.' In the
end the church of England test was removed, not only on admission to the
university, but from the bachelor's degree. Tests in other forms
remained, as we shall in good time perceive. 'We have proceeded,' Mr.
Gladstone wrote, 'in the full belief that the means of applying a church
test to fellowships in colleges are clear and ample.' So they were, and
so remained, until seventeen years later in the life of an
administration of his own the obnoxious fetter was struck off.

MR. DISRAELI ON THE BILL

The debates did not close without at least one characteristic
masterpiece from Mr. Disraeli. He had not taken a division on the second
reading, but he executed with entire gravity all the regulation
manoeuvres of opposition, and his appearance on the page of Hansard
relieves a dull discussion. If government, he asked, could defer a
reform of the constitution (referring to the withdrawal of Lord John's
bill) why should they hurry to reform the universities? The talk about
the erudite professors of Germany as so superior to Oxford was nonsense.
The great men of Germany became professors only because they could not
become members of parliament. 'We, on the contrary, are a nation of
action, and you may depend upon it, that though you may give an Oxford
professor two thousand a year instead of two hundred, still ambition in
England will look to public life and to the House of Commons, and not to
professors' chairs.' The moment the revolution of 1848 gave the German
professors a chance, see how they rushed into political conventions and
grasped administrative offices. Again, the principle of the bill was the
laying of an unhallowed hand upon the ark of the universities, and wore
in effect the hideous aspect of the never-to-be-forgotten appropriation
clause. If he were asked whether he would rather have Oxford free with
all its imperfections, or an Oxford without imperfections but under the
control of the government, he would reply, 'Give me Oxford free and
independent, with all its anomalies and imperfections.' An excellently
worded but amusingly irrelevant passage about Voltaire and Rousseau, and
the land that was enlightened by the one and inflamed by the other,
brought the curious performance to a solemn close. High fantastic
trifling of this sort, though it may divert a later generation to whose
legislative bills it can do no harm, helps to explain the deep disfavour
with which Disraeli was