Universities could catch such men as Mr. Gladstone young, and
could bring them into Parliament as their own, before they had been laid
hold of by any other constituency. The late jubilee of Mr. Gladstone's
political life ought to have been the jubilee of his election, not for
Newark but for Oxford. The Universities should choose men who have
already shown themselves to be scholars and who bid fair one day to be
statesmen. I am not sure about the policy of bringing forward actual
University officials. There is sure to be a cry against them, and it is
not clear that they are the best choice in themselves. It may be as well
however to remember that the example was set, though in rather an
amusing shape, by the Conservatives themselves. Dr. Marsham, late Warden
of Merton, who was brought forward thirty years ago in opposition to Mr.
Gladstone, did not belong to exactly the same class of academical
officials as Professor Stuart and Professor H. J. S. Smith; still, as an
academical official of some kind, he had something in common with them,
as distinguished from either Mr. Gladstone or Mr. Raikes. At the last
elections both for Oxford and Cambridge, the Liberal candidate was an
actual Professor. Mr. Stuart indeed is much more than a mere professor;
he has shown his capacity for practical work of various kinds. But I
could not but look on the Oxford choice of 1878 as unlucky. Mr. H. J. S.
Smith was brought forward purely on the ground of "distinction,"
distinction, it would seem, so great that moral right and wrong went for
nothing by its side. Just at that moment right and wrong were
emphatically weighing in the balance; it was the very crisis of the fate
of South-Eastern Europe. But we were told that Mr. Smith's candidature
had "no reference to the Eastern Question;" he was, we were told,
supported by men who took opposite views on that matter. That is to
say, when the most distinct question of right and wrong that ever was
put before any people was at that moment placed before our eyes, we were
asked to put away all thought of moral right and moral duty in the
presence of the long string of letters after Mr. Smith's name. Better, I
should have said, to choose, even for the University, a man who could
not read or write, if he had been ready to strive heart and soul for
justice and freedom alongside of Mr. Gladstone and the Duke of Argyll.
Yet no such hard choice was laid upon us. There was a man standing by,
another bearer of