ics--I venture to think one of the great
beauties--of the English Universities that the connexion of the graduate
with his University does not come to an end when he ceases to reside,
but that the master or doctor keeps all the rights of a master or doctor
wherever he may happen to dwell. The resident body has many merits and
does much good work; but it has its weaknesses. It is in the nature of
things a very changing body; it must change far more from year to year
than any other electoral body. And, though the restriction to residents
would undoubtedly raise the general character of the constituency, it
would get rid of one of its best elements. Surely those who have
distinguished themselves in the University, who have worked well for the
University, who are continuing in some other shape the studies or the
teaching which they have begun in the University, who are in fact
carrying the University into other places, are not to be looked on as
cut off from the University merely because they have ceased locally to
reside in it. Not a few of the best heads and the best professors--I
suspect we might say the best of both classes--are those who have not
always lived in the University, but who have been called back to it
after a period of absence. To the knowledge of local affairs, which
belong to the mere resident, they bring a wider knowledge, a wider
experience, which makes them better judges even of local affairs. And
can men whom the University thus welcomes after absence be deemed
unworthy even to give a vote during the time of absence? One reads a
great deal about the real University being swamped by voters running in
from London clubs, barristers' chambers, country houses, country
parsonages. And no doubt a great many most incompetent voters do come
from all those quarters. But some of the most competent come also. The
restriction to residents would have disfranchised for ever or for a
season most of our greatest scholars, the authors of the greatest works,
for the last forty years. Yet surely sad men are the University in the
highest sense; they are the men best entitled to speak in its name,
whether they are at a given moment locally resident or not. It would
surely not be a gain, it would not increase the literary eminence or
intellectual power of the constituency, to shut out those men, and to
confine everything to a body made up so largely of one element which is
too permanent and another which is too fluctuating, o