loucester in the lords, as chancellor of the university, and by
Mr. Goulburn in the commons, as one of its representatives. A similar
document was presented from the university of Oxford by Mr. Estcourt,
and on the 9th of May a second petition was sent from Cambridge, signed
by one thousand members of the senate who had not signed the other.

Although Mr. Wood brought his bill into the house soon after the Easter
holidays, it was not till the 20th of June that he was enabled to move
the second reading. Mr. Estcourt proposed as an amendment that it should
be read that day six months. Mr. Herbert seconded the amendment. Messrs.
Paten, Poulter, and Ewart spoke in favour of the bill, contending
that the alteration was necessary, no less for the benefit of the
universities, than in justice to the dissenters. By the present system
the latter were impeded in their progress to the bar, by having to keep
terms for five years instead of three; and were prevented from becoming
fellows of the college of physicians, for want of academical degrees.
These were positive and weighty grievances, which ought, it was urged,
to be remedied. Mr. Spring Rice complained that it was unfair to treat
the bill, not according to its own deserts, but according to measures
which might or might not be immediately connected with that now under
discussion. He asked what could be more inconsistently unjust than
the practice of Cambridge, where dissenters were admitted so far as
instruction was concerned, but then excluded from everything to which
instruction ought to lead? They were admitted to the fullest and most
complete course of study until the twelfth term, when, on being brought
into fair competition with their fellow-students, the odious principle
of exclusion intervened: the dissenter was told that, however obedient
he had been to college regulations, however high the eminence he had
acquired, still he would not be allowed the badge or symbol of his
acquirements, simply because he was a dissenter. The house, indeed, had
the benefit of experience; for in Dublin dissenters were admitted to
degrees, though excluded from fellowships, and all participation in the
internal management of the university. And what mighty mischiefs, he
asked, had followed the admission? Was the university less orthodox in
its principles? or less a Protestant foundation than before? Had
the zeal of its public instructors been lessened, or their sphere of
usefulness narrowed