The Sun.
London, England, 1865-05-17 00:00:00

that the students have really a command over them,
and because they almost defy the art of the crammer
to fix them mechanically in the learner's brain. The
advantage also of enabling university trained men
to compete successfully is obvious. It was said by
Sir C. Wood that as a fact success is won by these
and one or two other studies. If so, that is a satis-
factory result, for India can only gain the full ad-
vantages of the competitive system when the highest
class of men who might be tempted by an Eastern
career are enabled to enter the service.

HERALD.—The Chancellor of the Exchequer is
under no very great obligations to his friends. If
ever a cause was placed upon a feeble footing, if
ever a foundation was laid in sand, it is the defence
set up by,Mr. Gladstone's friends to carry his re-
election for Oxford University. What is the burden
of all that Dr. Pusey and Sir J. Coleridge have
adduced ? It merely amounts to this—personal con-
fidence. But that confidence is simply credulity. It
dare not appeal to past acts or future probabilities
in Mr. Gladstone's career. It resolutely evades both.
It looks away from both. It is satisfied with a blind,
unreasoning, fatuous, implicit belief in an object
whose antecedents and future it dare not scrutinise.
Such a confidence very much resembles the idolatry
of wilful ignorance. It is beyond the reach of argu-
ment, or persuasion, or sense. It is, in fact, a re-
versal alike of the decrees of experience and of
reason. It is to reason backwards. Because Mr.
Gladstone has erred and strayed times without num-
ber, and in degree beyond precedent, therefore his
friends profess to wonder that rational beings take
exception to his principles and his code of morals,
and they plume themselves all the more on their own
passive obedience and profound acquiescence. But
this is not the rule in any other department of life.
Show them a culprit who has been a dozen times
committed : would the defenders of Mr. Gladstone
adduce that as a reason for trusting him again ?
The most singular matter, however, in this personal
advocacy of Mr. Gladstone is its utter irrelevance.
What have personal feelings to do in the discharge
of a public trust ? The question is this—has Mr.
Gladstone fulfilled the part of a representative of the
University of Oxford, or has he not ? Do his views
and proceedings command the approbation on public
grounds of the majority of that constituency? Why,
Dr. Pusey himself in 1854, if we are not mistaken,
poured out a volley of the heaviest reproaches that
were ever launched against Mr. Gladstone, in con-
nection with the Oxford University Reform Bill.
And Sir J. Coleridge himself, in the active part
he has taken in Church defence, has not only
passed the severest sentence of reprobation upon
Mr. Gladstone, but has deprived his own appeal of
any credit it might otherwise have deserved. Upon
this point of personal claims, or supposed claims, we
are right glad to note the widest contrast between
the addresses of the committees of the rival candi-
dates for the University of Oxford. Mr. Glad-
stone's friends, ashamed to refer to plain ,matters oi
fact, deal largely and exclusively in general and
personal allusions. Their idol, forsooth, has repre-
sented the University for eighteen years, with great
advantage to its interests. Whence those great
advantages ? From the University Reform Bill of
1854, or from his advocacy of Dissenters in 1864 on
Mr. Dodson's bill ? From his support of Sir M.
Peto's bill to throw open churchyards and churches
to all sects, or from his denunciation of the Irish
Church ? But " his high, pure, and independent
character, his eminent talents, and splendid public
services, have added distinction to the seat, and
entitle him to a continuance of the support which
the constituency has habitually given to a worthy
representative once elected." But the question is,
is Mr. Gladstone a worthy representative ? Let his
committee establish that fact first of all. Then we
shall allow that, if his character be as described, if
his talents be so eminent, and his public ser-
vices so splendid, he is all the more entitled to
keep his seat. If, however, as we maintain, Mr.
Gladstone neither is, nor ever was, a worthy
representative ; if, as we believe, from his first
election to this time, he has won his seat and re-
tained it by most unworthy means ; if, in short,
for eighteen long years he has literally sold the
University, and so far the Church also, to their
worst foes, then we require his " high, pure, and
independent character ' to be attested by some
better authority than his own committee before we
assent to such high-flown flourishes ; then we say
that his talents, if they be so eminent, render him
all the more dangerous ; and we should also
like to have his hypothetical splendid public
services weighed in the same scale with his
truly splendid delinquencies and deficiencies.
Contrast, now, with the appeal for Mr. Glad-
stone, that issued by Mr. Gathorne Hardy's com-
mittee. The latter deals simply with the most ob-
vious facts—facts which may be verified by every
individual. And as if to put Sir J. Coleridge's
statements to the blush, those facts relate wholly
and exclusively to public events. Not one word of
purely personal eulogy and private predilections is
to be found in the whole of the address of Mr.
Hardy's committee. From beginning to end it dis-
cusses such matters only as properly enter into the
question of the candidate's fitness for the post to
which he aspires. In other words, whilst Mr. Glad-
stone's committee is reduced to the necessity of rais-
ing a false issue, and of a palpable suppression of the
truth, Mr. Hardy appeals for support to the only
proper tests for a University candidate. So far from
personal feeling dictating the opposition to Mr. Glad-
stone, it is the sole basis of his own appeal, and yet
the only topic of which no trace can be found in the
address of Mr. Hardy's committee. The truth is,
however, that each party stands on his own merits ;
but their positions are, one legitimate and the other
illegitimate, one reasonable and the other unreason-
able, one bold, honest, and manly, the other
cowardly, dishonest, and puerile. To- paraphrase
Mr. Gladstone's appeal we have only to consider the
complexion of his supporters, that they represent
every destructive faction at Oxford, that Tractarians
jostle with Puritans, with broad Church, and no
Church, and any Church, and Iconoclasts of every
hue ; that aspiring pedagogues in particular swell
the motley list ; that more will vote for the Chan-
cellor of the Exchequer than for Mr. Gladstone ;
and that, as the chief of apostates, he will be sup-
ported by every renegade in the University. Now,
to Auch a group as that, what more satisfactory than
a false issue such as is raised in Mr. Gladstone's ad-
dress ? On the other hand, who are they who
will feel constrained to support Mr. G. Hardy ?
None save those who dare to face the truth and
contend for it ' • none save those who, taking a
deep interest in the real issue at stake—the issue
as between the Established Church and religious
equality, or rather between monarchy and demo-
cracy—ivill first of all raise that issue clearly, and
then take a decided course in support of the former.
To us, indeed, the great mystery is this—why should
Mr. Gladstone's committee be so ill-advised as to
start the question of purity and independence of
character ? As to the former quality, we deny that
Mr. Gladstone has a shadow of a chance for re-
election, except in so far as his eighteen years' con-
nection has debauched the public morals of the
University. During that long connection how many
University electors has he beguiled? How many
of his present supporters would have voted for him
in 1847 had Mr. Gladstone been what he is now or
could his _future have been known ? We venture
to say that he would not have reckoned 500 sup-
porters in all. The difference, then, between that
number and those who now support him is not so
unfair a gauge of the corrupt influence exercised by
him upon the University during his eighteen years
of tergiversation. Yet we are commanded to regard
Mr. Gladstone as a model spectacle of independence
of character and ingenuous boldness. After eigh-
teen years of careful, calculating, deliberate apos-
tasy, each step apparently measured by the needs
of the hour, we are required to behold a miracle of
sturdy independence and chivalrous courage. And
now, when such an example has produced kindred
results so lamentable, Mr. Gladstone's perverts have
the complacency to turn round and feign an un-
bounded indignation and a pious horror that honest
men wish to recover their rights and pull down a
usurpation of imposture. However, the day of
requital is at hand. We will not believe that the
University of Oxford is the one constituency in this
free country upon which the renegade can count as
upon a safe and permanent retreat, and which he
can abuse to his bent until his full career be run.
Meanwhile they who contemplate such a course
pay but a sinister compliment to a clerical con.
stituency.
Les

COMPENSATION CLAIMS.—At the Lord Mayor's
Court on Monday, in the case of " Joseph v. the
Metropolitan Railway,".a claim was made for £9,000, and
the jury gave £2,734. The claimant was a manufacturing
silversmith in Aldersgate-street, near- Barbican, and sold
off his stock after notice to treat, and by auction sustained
a loss of £l,lOO. Property had so much increased in value
that £lOO a year was asked for a " miserable" fish shop.
Mr. Sergeant Parry and Mr. Joyce were for the claimant,
and Mr. Lloyd (Mr. Budge with him) for the company. At
the Sheriff's Court, Red Lion-square. on Saturday, in a
compensation case, " Combo and Delafield v. the Metropo-
litan Railway," the jury, for some property in Farringdon-
road, partly consisting of a public-house (George the
Fourth), awarded £4,750.

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