The Express.
London, England, 1851-05-23 00:00:00

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The Rey. Dr. Rogerson had an interview with Earl Grey
at the Colonial-office yesterday.
Despatches were received yesterday at the Colonial-ofilce
front the Governor of New South Wales.

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LONDON, FRIDAY, MAY 23.

OXFORD is true to herself. While the rest of the
world were dividing themselves between Epsom
Downs and the Crystal Palace, the venerable Uni-
versity was employed in running a heat against the
spirit of the age, and making an exhibition of
bigotry on the banks of the lads, not less instructive
in its way than the exhibition of industry on the
banks of the Serpentine.
On Wednesday last, by a majority of 249 against
105, convocation decided in favour of petitioning her
MAJESTY to revoke the royal commission for impair-
ing into the studies and discipline of the University;
or, should that modest application fail, then to allow
counsel to be heard against its legality, before the
QUEEN in Council. The only thing that sir-
prises us in this result is, that so large
a number as one hundred and five graduates of
the university should have had sufficient virtue and
magnamity to appear in convocation for the purpose
of recording their protest against this foregone con-
clusion of the Heads of Houses, and the great bulk
of the resident masters. Surely there was an excel-
lent spirit in these men. A lawful holiday—the
fresh air of the hills—the enlivening revelry or oua
one great national festival—a day's free lounge in
the world's bazaar—all these things they knowingly
abandoned for certain defeat and unrelieved dulness;
for the Latin prose of proctors, and the Ciceronian
platitudes of public orators. Honour, we say, to
these 105. In days when a "count out" seems fast
becoming the normal fate of the most important
'questions, we arc learning to value the preference of
serious duties to seductive pleasures.
But what are we to say of the venerable mother
herself, her 249 worthy sons, and her notable peti-
tion ? Let us consider for a moment the true state
of the ease, not as it presents itself through the
obscure medium of antiquarian precedent and special
pleading chicanery, but by the broad daylight of
common sense.

Here is an institution founded for purposes purely
educational, endowed with vast wealth, and pos-
sessing magnificent resources. To the more
candid thinkers of all parties—even to men
who, in other respects, are distinguished by
a certain timidity of conservatism —it has
long been apparent that the quality of the education
supplied at this institution is not what the actual
mind of this country requires ; that it is in many
respects vastly inferior to that supplied elsewhere at
immeasurably smaller cost. Ihe wealth of the
colleges, so far from having increased the usefulness
or extended the benefits of the University, is very
generally supposed to have diminished the one, and
confined the other. Oxford, it is commonly alleged,
has sunk from a place of professorial education into a
school of tutorial training. The mode in which
college funds are administered, and college fellow-
ships regulated, is very generally stated, even by
Oxford men themselves, to be singularly un-
favourable to the literary and scientific development
both of the teachers and the taught; narrowing
culture within the limited curriculum of common-
room attainments, and discouraging all that incon-
venient boldness and originality of research which
might carry the independent student beyond the
range of the college tutor. Again, who can have
conversed on the subject of this university, with any
Oxford man, not being a fellow of a college, or a
member of the hebdomadal board, without having
heard the freest admission of the necessity of making
the most thorough-going change in the existing ,
mode of admission to the university, and residence in
the colleges—in the regulation ot the studies, and
the scale of the expenditure.
Not to be tedious: Oxford as she exists has been
given up in argument for years past as wholly inde-
fensible ; while no honest man of competent under-
standing and average information as to the real facts
of the case can be found sincerely to affirm that there
is any reasonable prospect of seeing Oxford reform
herself. This being so, the crown selects seven
Oxford men—one of them a bishop, another the
head of a house, a third an university professor, the
remaining four or the majority of them either
actually or recently college tutors—and makes
them commissioners "for inquiry into the state,',
discipline, studies, and revenues of our lini-
versity. of Oxford." To these commissioners
power is given in the usual form to call before them
such persons, and to examine such documents as may
in their judgment be likely to afford the fullest in-
formation on the subjectinto which they are com-
missioned to inquire.
These commissioners, as all the world knows, with
their clever secretary, Mr. STANLEY, have been sit-
ting, do sit, and in all human probability, with pro-
voking indifference to petition or protest, will con-
tinue to sit, diligently and successfully prosecuting
the business which her MAJESTY has confided to their
care. It is generally understood, that in spite of the
most cordial repugnance, and the most eager refusals
on the part of heads of houses and other college
magnates, to give the slightest information,
they have in various ways contrived to
become possessed of a mass of accurate and important
information, so ample in extent, that the real diffi-
culty which now presses upon them is rather one of
selection than of accumulation. In this state of
things, and when nearly nine months have elapsed
since the issuing of the commission, the university
has thought fit to set her seal to the notable petition
the adoption of which was carried last Wednesday.
We have not space to criticise the tenor of this
remarkable document, blending as it does in fine
combination the sonorous cadences of a St. Msitv's
sermon with the verbose accuracy of a bill in Chan-
cery.
Its most amusing passages
.are those in which the
petitioners adopt a tone of injured virtue and out-
raged right; plead ignorance of the nature of the
charge to be investigated; and, with singular good
taste, accuse Queen Vitioats of "inviting secret ac-
cusations against them," a proceeding which they
"humbly submit is not only contrary to your Ma-
jesty's love of justice, but also is calculated to create
general distrust, to impede the course of improve-
ment, and to destroy, the confidence and stability
which arc essential for the well-being of an uni-
versity-7
In the good taste and well-balanced pulpit tone of
this portion of the petition we trace the heavy hand
of the hebdomadal board: in the suggestion " that if
there existed any cause of complaint against your
petitioners, the same should have been openly
preferred and decided in some one of your Ma-
jesty's established courts of justice," there is
a touch of comic absurdity, which almost looks as
though one of the eminent legal advisers had seduced
his grave clients into the perpetration of an uncon-
scious joke. The arraignment which England is
preparing to bring against this venerable institution
is one which it would rather puzzle any oue of her
MAJESTY'S established courts of justice to decide.
Before the public opinion of England this cause must
be tried; by the will of England, moulded into act
by her legislature, the sentence must be pronounced.
Meanwhile, what is to be done upon the petition?
The law advisers of the crown are, it seems, clearly
of opinion that the commission is of unimpeachable
legality ; and, in the judgment of common sense, the
question seems insusceptible of a doubt. How can it
be illegal to empower one set of men to ask questions
of another set of men, if you create in the
former no power to enforce, and impose on
the latter no legal obligation to give, an
answer? Or why is it unconstitutional to per-
mit SAMUEL, Bishop of NORWICH, and his co.id-
jutors to call for the production of documents which
those interested in them may, at their own free
choice, either produce or withhold ? Who shall say,
that her Majesty would be ill-advised were she to
decline listening to the prayer of a petition founded


lon $ grievance 60 imaginary, and dictated by motives
so discreditable ?

MR. BAINES is the opponent whom Mr. DISRAELI
has really most need to fear, the rival whose matter-
of-fact rhetoric he has most cause to apprehend.
While the honourable member for Bucks expatiates
upon the abstract justice of voting an inquiry into
the nature of the burdens upon land, the right honour-
able chief of the Poor-law Commission quietly pre-
pares and uno.tentatiously prints on a single page. of
parliamentary foolscap the particulars of a positive
relief from local taxation within the last twelve
months to a very substantial amount. There is
nothing vague or evasive about the statement in
question. It does not talk of the contingent! but of
the actual—not of possibilities in the event of a fu-
ture administration, but of performances by that
which exists.

The document before us is a return presented to
the House of Commons, "Showing the amount of
money expended fur in-maintenance and out-door
relief in 607 unions and single parishes in England
and Wales, during the half-years ended at Lady-day
1830 and 1831 respectively. There are, besides, 500
unions and single parishes under local acts and under
Gunner's Act, which are not included in the
return, as not being capable of the same elas-
tication ns those directly subject to the control
of the Somerset House authorities, so that,
in point of fact, the figures thus presented
to us, embrace but a portion, and not the whole of
the kingdom. They relate, however, to all parts of
the country, and especially to the agricultural dis-
tricts. A glance at the names of the counties and their
populations will suffice to satisfy the most sceptical
that there is no respect of places or of employments
in its compilation.
What then do we fild? That the gross total of
expenditure in poor relief in the last hnlf-year was
1,679,429/.' against 1,819,272/. in the preceding
year,being a decrease of 139,8431. Now here is a broad
and palpable fact,—namely, the absolute diminution
of local burdens affecting peculiarly and oppressively
real property, if Mr. DISRAELI is to be believed, to
the extent of upwards of seven per cent. within the
spaoe of the last 12 months. In Buckinghamshire
the reduction in the cost of poor relief in the parishes
and unions included in the return has been 1,8231.,
or about wren per cent.; in Essex, 3,8471., or some-
what ovePsit per cent. ; in Bedfordshire, 1,2731., or
siren per cent, and upwards; while in Hereford,
Wilts, and Kent the reduction is stated at about the
same proportion. But in other counties the dif-
ference is still more striking. In Derbyshire,
Flint, Westmoreland, and Devonshire, the per
tentage of decrease in half-yearly expenditure
reaches eiyht per cent. ; in Leicestershire,
and Staffordshire it amounts to more than ten: in
Durham it exceeds eleven ; and in Cornwall it ex-
ceeds twelve. We do not quote still higher figures
because they relate to districts which are more em-
phatically manufacturing or mercantile. The relief
they have obviously enjoyed from similar pressure is
not less a subject of just congratulation to all who
wish well to the interests of their country. But wo
desire to direct at present undivided attention to the
circumstantial evidence here afforded of the
distinct and direct compensation given by
free trade to the localities and classes that
some men would represent as having derived from
its operation nothing but loss. Sometimes we are
told that wages have fallen so low in consequence of
free imports of food, that the labourer is daily forced
to eke out existence by resort to the rates. Where
is the evidence of any change of this kind here? At
other times we are assured, that although the gene-
rosity of the gentry and the philanthropy of the
farmers will not suffer them to reduce wages as
much as the low price of produce demands, they are
unable to employ halt as many hands as they other-
wise would, and, of course, that all the unemployed
must live on the rates. How is this reconcileable
with the facts above stated of diminished cost of ex-
penditure ? Which ever way we look at it, the irrcs
sistible inference is the same. Whether we believe
that wages are maintained, or that hands are re-
tained in work, the result to the agricultural in-
dustry of the country is undeniable—that its load of
local taxation has been practically lightened by low
prices to the extent of at least seven per cent, during
the past twelve months.
11 hat is still more important in this view, is, that
as the cause is not a casual but a permanent one, the
effect is likely to be lasting likewise. Trade may ,
again and probably will suffer from the recurrence of
seasons of depression : and, when it does, Lancashire
and Warwickshire, Middlesex and the West Riding
may be obliged to put their hands in their pockets
oftener than they now are called upon to do for the
maintenance of the able-bodied labourer out of em-
ployment. lint these busy hives of toil and
thrift do not murmur against freedom of impor-
tations, nor did they in the bad times of 1848
and 1849. It is only from certain portions of
the exclusively agricultural community that any I
voice of reaction has come, and the case made by
their self-appointed tribune and champion has been,
that amid general prosperity the landed interest is
the only one that suffers. In mitigation of this suf-
fering, Mr. DISRAELI has again and again proposed
to the House of Commons to go into committee for
the purpose of inquiring whether by shifting the in-
cidence of poor rates and other local charges, the
weight upon rural shoulders should not be
alleviated at the cost of the mercantile com-
munity. The House of Commons has uniformly
refused this invidious invitation ; but while
Protection in disguise has been talking vainly of
what might, could, would or should be done, if it
were but allowed to do its will—Free trade without
pretension has actually wrought a great and lasting
change in the same direction; which has in it this
superior merit of not having been partial, or accom-
plished at the cost of the other portions of society.
fhe return above quoted shows a still greater benefit
derived from the cheapness of food by the commer-
cial communities. It may be more temporary, but
certainly the agriculturist has no pretence to com-
plain.