ook as if those constituencies to
which we might naturally look for the return of members of more than
average personal eminence were committed, in the choice of their
representatives, not only to one particular political party, but to
absolute indifference to every claim beyond membership of that
particular party. It would be unreasonable to expect a conscientious
Conservative to vote for a Liberal candidate; but one might expect any
party, in choosing candidates for such constituencies as the
Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, to put forward its best men. And
we cannot, after all, think so ill of the great Conservative party as to
believe that the present representatives of Oxford and Cambridge are its
best men. We ought indeed not to forget that, whatever Mr.
Beresford-Hope has since shown himself, he was brought forward, partly
at least, as a man of scholarship and intellectual tastes, and that he
received many Liberal votes in the belief that he was less widely
removed from Liberal ideas than another Conservative candidate. This
would seem to have been the last trace of an old tradition, the last
faint glimmering of the belief that the representative of an University
should have something about him specially appropriate to the
representation of an University. In Oxford that tradition had, on the
Conservative side, given way earlier. Another tradition gave way with
it, one which I at least did not regret, the tradition that an
University seat should be a seat for life. It sounded degrading when a
proposer of Mr. Gladstone stooped to appeal to the doctrine, "ut semel
electus semper eligatur." But be that rule wise or foolish, it was on
the Conservative side that it was broken down. It gave way to the rule
that Mr. Gladstone was always to be opposed, and that it did not matter
who could be got to oppose him. Again I cannot believe that the
Conservative ranks did not contain better men than the grotesque
succession of nobodies by whom Mr. Gladstone was opposed. But in the
course of those elections the rule was established at Oxford, and it now
seems to be adopted at Cambridge, that anybody will do to be an
University member, provided only he is an unflinching supporter of the
party which, as recent elections show, still keeps a large majority in
both Universities.

Mr. Gladstone was very nearly the ideal University member. I say "very
nearly," because to my mind the absolutely ideal state of things would
be if the