private liberality, the £250,000 required for the repair of buildings was to be supplied from the Land Tax. Dissenters, of course, complained that they were still to be taxed, not, indeed, directly as parishioners, but indirectly as citizens; and it did not escape them that the new impost, unlike the old, would be beyond their control. In addition to the Church Rates Bill, there was a Bill for the commutation of tithes; but both were withdrawn, the Cabinet having resolved, in view of its preoccupation with the Poor Law, that these measures should be proceeded with only if generally approved.1

The academic disabilities of the Dissenters were a greater hardship, though less obnoxious in principle, than their subjection to Church rates; and the endeavour to remove them caused much controversy both in and outside Parliament. The University of Oxford was closed to all but Churchmen; for the Thirty-nine Articles had to be subscribed on entrance; 2 and, in order to qualify for graduation, the student had to declare that he believed the whole of the Articles to be agreeable to the Word of God. At Cambridge there was no bar to matriculation; but subscription was required for a doctorate in law or medicine; and no one could graduate in Arts without a declaration of Churchmanship. Dissenters, however distinguished as students, had thus to leave without taking a degree, and were consequently disqualified for the two years' abbreviation of study which was allowed to graduates by the legal and medical societies.

Dr. Arnold was one of the very few Oxford scholars who sympathised with the Dissenters in their desire to

1 Hansard, xxi. 995; xxii. 384, 1014, 1015, 1032, 1035, 10571 Le Marchant's Earl Spencer, p. 482.

"

"It appears to me a melancholy thought and indeed a crying grievance," said Lord George Germaine in 1772, that my son at sixteen must subscribe, upon entering the University, what I cannot understand, much less explain to him, at sixty."-Parl. Hist., xvii. 245. Bentham, in 1760, subscribed at the age of twelve.

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105

obtain the full advantage of an academic education, and he drew up and circulated from Rugby a declaration in their favour; 1 but they were more fortunate at Cambridge, where they had the powerful support of Connop Thirlwall. On March 21, 1834, Lord Grey presented to the Lords a petition from Cambridge in favour of the Dissenters which was signed by sixty-three residentsabout a third of the whole number-including two Heads of Houses and nine Professors; and in supporting the petition he referred to Thirlwall as "one of the most eminent scholars in Europe." The petitioners were of opinion that the University" as a lay corporation invested with important civil privileges could rest securely on no foundation which is not in harmony with the social system of the State "; and, as Christians of all denominations were now admitted to the legislature and public office, they craved the intervention of Parliament to abolish all religious tests as a qualification for degrees. Three days later the same document was presented to the Commons by Mr. Spring Rice-not yet a member of the Cabinet, as stated in the Annual Register, but soon to enter it as Colonial Secretary; and as early as possible after the Easter recess, which was then close at hand, a Bill to give effect to the petition was brought in by one of the members for Lancashire. Short of taking the matter into their own hands, as they had done in the case of marriage and Church rates, Ministers did all they could to further this reform; but there were, of course, counter-petitions, far more numerously signed; and the Bill, after a stormy but triumphant passage through the Commons, was thrown out by the Lords. Such in any case must have been its fate; but those who acted for the Dissenters could not be congratulated on their discretion. The Cambridge petition asked only for the admission of Dissenters to degrees; but in many of their own petitions they claimed to participate in the 1 Stanley's Arnold, Letter 82.

University endowments; and Disestablishment as the ultimate, if not the immediate, aim of their policy was never disavowed. It also militated against them that as many as fifty-eight members had voted for what was euphemistically called a motion "to relieve the archbishops and bishops from their legislative and judicial duties in the house of peers." 1

That the Universities were national institutions and as such ought to be open to all was, as one would expect, the principal argument put forward by the Dissenters; but here the question presented itself how far in this sense, for any effective purpose, they could be said to exist. At Oxford-and the same may be said of Cambridge there were two systems of education-complementary in design, antagonistic in practice—the academic and the collegiate; and the latter, though still nominally subordinate, had been assured of ascendancy when the modern constitution was established under the auspices of Archbishop Laud. The University of Oxford had existed for at least a century and a half before the oldest of its colleges were founded and endowed to provide for students better accommodation, better discipline and preliminary instruction than were to be had in the licensed boarding-houses or "halls"; and the University was fully confirmed in its pre-eminence by the Laudian statutes of 1636, which made attendance in the schools essential to graduation in all the four faculties of Arts, Theology, Medicine, and Law. But the duty of "inquiring into, and taking counsel for the observance of, the statutes was practically confided to the "Heads of Houses," who for this purpose were to hold a weekly or "Hebdomadal Meeting"; and the Heads were so far from faithful to their trust that they abolished or absorbed what accommodation was still available for non-collegiate students, encouraged the professors who were poorly paid-to treat their offices as sinecures, and made all degrees nominal, except that 1 Hansard, xxii. 131, 497, 569, 596, 900.

OXFORD UNIVERSITY

107 of Bachelor of Arts, for which alone their Fellows were at all competent to teach. Sir William Hamilton, himself an Oxonian, may have made too little allowance for the formality inseparable from customary obligations when in the Edinburgh Review of 1831 he accused the Hebdomadal Board of perjury, though it is rather remarkable that this is the very charge brought against them in the Statutes, should they allow any of these enactments "to fall into desuetude and silently, as it were, to be abrogated." Some striking facts were, however, disclosed in the course of his powerful, but diffuse, indictment. "England," he wrote, "is the only Christian country where the Parson, if he reach the University at all, receives only the same minimum of theological tuition as the Squire; the only civilised country where the degree which confers on the Jurist a strict monopoly of practice is conferred without instruction or examination;-the only country in the world where the Physician is turned loose upon society with extraordinary and odious privileges, but without professional education or even the slightest guarantee for his skill." In fact, as the same writer said, "the University was annihilated or reduced to half a faculty"; and so insignificant were its remains that even Bishop Copleston was not aware that it had ever existed. "The University of Oxford," he wrote, "is not a National Foundation. It is a congeries of foundations, originating, some in royal munificence, but more in private piety and bounty." 2

Hamilton appears to have conceded that Dissenters had no right of admission to the Universities as then constituted, and both he and Arnold suggested the opening of new halls. One writer, not favourable in

1 See p. 70.

Sir William Hamilton's Discussions on Philosophy, etc., pp. 398, 419, 426, 430, 441. Hamilton's essays on this question, logical yet confused, remind one of Bentham's Church of Englandism. Both writers, despite much parade of steering, seem to lose themselves in an ocean of words.

other respects to the Dissenters, was of opinion that, when the Heads assumed control of the whole institution, the Oxford colleges were ipso facto nationalised; 1 but the historical aspect of the question was not much discussed either in Parliament or in the Press. The exclusionists had as little respect as Archbishop Howley for humanism. They held that enlightenment was not in itself desirable, and that the religious teaching required to make it innocuous must be denominational; 3 and the main point at issue was whether this principle as inculcated by the Church was so fully recognised at the Universities that an infusion of Dissenters-recognised as such-would seriously affect their studies and social routine. In regard to clerical education this could not be maintained; for Pusey was cited as a witness against Oxford in view of his statement that the hearing of ten lectures in divinity was enough to qualify for orders; and at Cambridge prospective divines were said to have been assured on high authority that it was not impossible for them to find time for such private reading as might fit them for their profession. A knowledge of the Articles had been required since 1800 at Oxford for graduation; and this was a better test of Churchmanship than the daily services which students at both Universities were required to attend. "Was it either essential or expedient," asked Lord Palmerston, "that young men should be compelled to rush from their beds every morning to prayers, unwashed, unshaved, and halfdressed; or in the evening, from their wine to chapel, and from chapel back again to their wine?" 5

1 Moberly, A Few Remarks on the Admission of Dissenters, p. 6. See p. 34.

3 "We believe knowledge without religion to be mischievous."Moberly, P. II.

Thirlwall, Letter on Admission of Dissenters, p. 7.

5 Hansard, xxii. 701.

University tests were not wholly abolished

-apart from theology-till 1871. On this subject, see Lewis Camp

bell, The Nationalisation of the Old English Universities.