The Sun.
London, England, 1868-11-18 00:00:00

NOMINAPION SPEECHES.

Spouting is baying full vent. We shall be able to drink
our full of politics, as given by candidates in the coming
week. But out of so much that was weak and washy,
there was really some strong food given by one or two
candidates. About the most notable, perhaps, among the
speeches was Mr. Lowe's for London Uuniversity. In com-
mencing he congratulated the university on the position
it had attained. He had not himself the honour of
being a graduate of that university, but that circumstance
would enable him to say of its members that which their
modesty would probably prevent them from saying of
themselves. He believed he had the honour of represent-
ing a constituency which would bear a comparison with
any other in the kingdom—not excepting either of the elder
universities—Oxford and Cambridge. Their degrees were
granted after a more difficult and searching examination
than was required for the ordinary degrees at either
Oxford or Cambridge. Their parliamentary representation,
too, had not become, like that of the University of Oxford,
a mockery and a misery. It had not, as at Oxford,
fallen into the hands of persons who knew
nothing of the university itself, and who only
thwarted the wishes of the men who really performed
the educational work of Oxford, and to whom Oxford owed
all its efficiency and reputation. Neither had they become
like the University of Dublin, a close borough for the law
officers of the Crown. In their university capacity they
had no prejudices to consult. Among them there was a
clear distinction made between the governing body
and the examining body, and their examinations were in
consequence conducted with a strictness and an earnestness
which would never be found to exist in corporations in
which it was naturally the interest and the desire of the
examiners for degrees and honours to deal as leniently
as possible with the candidates who came before them.
Passing to subjects of more general interest, he took up
the subject of education. They were told that he was an
advocate of the lower description of education, and that he
looked upon education from a mean and sordid point of view,
only valuing it for the money it might bring, That opinion
had arisen from the fact that when speaking at Edin-
burgh of the case of youths who left school at the age
of fourteen or fifteen, for the purpose of engaging in the
ordinary operations of trade or manufactures, he had
recommended that their education should be mainly con-
ducted with a view to qualify them for their special
pursuits. He might, of course, have offered different advice
upon that occasion; he might have quoted Cicero, pro Areltia
poctd, and other classical writers,for the pin-pose of exhibiting
the inherent attractions of literature; but among his sins
cant had never been included. He had no idea of sending
people ruffles when they wanted a shirt. He believed that
if the class of youths to whom he had at the time been
referring were prepared for their respective callings, and
received some amount of general culture, their parents and
their teachers might he well satisfied. Indeed, he was
not sure that he would not go as far as Cobbett, who, when
some one observed to him that he should like to see every
poor man in the country reading Bacon, replied, "I would
rather see him eating bacon." (Laughter.) No one
could rejoice more than he should do to find the utmost
possible amount of culture extended to every portion of
cur population. Excluded from a participation in manly
and in field sports, he was peculiarly sensible of the value of
a high-class education. He should be the last man to say
that intellectual culture did not possess in itself charms
infinitely greater than the mere acquisition of money to
which it could lead. An interesting " personal explana-
tion" followed about Reform. Mr. Bright Lad lately
stated that he (Mr. Lowe) was at present doing penance
in sackcloth and ashes for some sins of his com-
mitted two years ago. Now, he was no ascetic,
and although Mr. Bright might know him better than
he knew
.himself, be could assure them that nothing he
had ever said, or Written, or thought, could authorise Mr.
Bright to place him in that penitential position. What he
bad dolie he had done honestly and sincerely, and it was
for time alone to show whether or not he had been right.
He was there that day to retract nothing, to explain away
nothing, and to affect penitence for nothing. Mr. Lowe
proceeded to comment upon the position, the crisis, into
which a Reform Bill had hurried this country,
and continued : The question at present to be considered
by every good citizen was, how the country could be
protected from injury throughout that transition state
which he held to be inevitable. No doubt, in the opinion
of the present Government, nothing had been-changed.
They believed that to-morrow would give them as to-day,
and much more abundantly. They talked of "No
Popery " as if they were living in the days of Lord
Eldon. There was nothing, in fact, changed, except the
basis of everything, and that change they ignored.
He believed that we ought all now to endeavour
to ascertain bow that change was to be encountered,
and, in his opinion, the wisest thing we could do was to
profit by the lesson we might derive from the experience
of the United States of America. He found that inAme-
riea the power of the House of Assembly was controlled
by the action of an independent Senate, by
the rights of local State Legislatures, and by the
authority given to the courts of law of declaring whether
any particular measure was opposed to the principles
of the Constitution. In England the House of Com-
was the supreme depository of all power, and he
did not wish to disturb that arrangement. But he thought
that the House of Lords might be strengthened, not
by the creation of life peerages, but by giving a seat and
a vote in the House to every one who had held certain
offices, just as in ancient Rome every person who had
served the State in certain capacities was admitted to the

Senate. He would not make such seats hereditary ;he
would have the holders known by their names as commoners;
and he believed that by the adoption of such aproposal, new
blood would be constantly infused into our Upper House,
and a new authority would be given to its de-
liberations. He would, after the example of America,
provide for the general education of the people. For that
purpose he would retain our present voluntary system ;
but in those districts in which voluntary efforts were found
to he inefficient he would give the local authorities the
power of striking an educational rate, and he would invest
the Privy Council, or whatever other central body might
be preferred, with the right of calling on those local
authorities to exercise that power, while he would provide
that all schools maintained by public rates should be sem"
schools. By such a measure all that was good in our
present educational system would be retained, and where
that system was most defective it would be most usefully
supplemented. As to the compound householder, he thought
a distinction might be most usefully drawn between that
class which lived on the border land between pauperism
and independence, and that it would be wise to adopt some
such principle as that which had been suggested by Mr.
Poulett Scrope, by which every man who paid less than £4 a
year should be exempted from the payment of rates, and
should at the same time be excluded from the franchise.
That principle was, he believed, applied in Ireland and in
Scotland—why should it not be extended to this country?
There was another subject, and one of a more lively nature,
of which they had all heard a good deal of late, namely,
the question of the Irish Church. He believed that the
maintenance of that Church had become utterly impos-
sible. The Government seemed to think that they could
take their stand upon it as upon a rock, but they had
themselves undermined it ; they had put the powder in
the mine, and yet they had objected to its being blown up.
The Irish Church occupied a large amount of Mr. Lowe's
speech. It had been proposed that the Irish Church
should be disestablished at once, and that then the livings
should be allowed to fall in one by one on the death of
each incumbent. But in his opinion that would be a most
unjust and most impolitic course of proceeding. The
Church would still exist as a badge of conquest and
tyranny. If the Irish Church was to exist at all, it
must rely on the voluntary efforts of its members and
supporters, which such a system would tend to dis-
courage. When the State assistance was withdrawn from
the Church, private individuals must supply some great
central fund for its maintenance, and a period of strong ex-
citement, such as would be created by the application of
the principle of immediate disendowment, would be the
most favourable for the raising of such a fund ; while if
the ministers of religion were allowed to drop off one by
one, no earnest exertion probably would ever be made to
supply their place. He did not mean that the clergy.
men of the Irish Church should be deprived of their vested
interests, but he meant that the State ought to enter into
what would be a fair compromise with them, and that as
they would be relieved from the performance of all duties,
they should receive only a proportionate compensation.
But, further, they could not, lie believed, disestablish
that Church as long as they refrained from disendowing
it, because they could not allow the scandal of leaving a
public fund in any hands without watching over its appro-
priation. The other suggestion he had to make in
reference to that question was, that if the Irish Church were
disestablished and disendowed no further relations of any
kind should be maintained between it and the State, and
that was, he thought, a perfectly reasonable proposal.
Passing from this subject, lie had to express a
hope that they wou'd mend their manners in Perna.
nient Burin; the approaching session, and that they
would not, for instance, allow a Minister to come
down to the House of C,mmone and say that he had
got a power of dissolution in his pocket, and that he
would exercise, or abstain from exercising that power,
according to the mode in which they might behave them-
selves. He had lived in many countries, and some of them
not inhabited by the most respectable kind of people;
and his experience of human nature was, that men
often compromised their principles for the sake of place
and power. But never until the present time had he
heard a Minister boldly come forward and avow such coin.
premise. They had been distinctly told that the Govern.
ment had acted as they had done, not for the sake of
giving effect to their principles, but 1p ogler Att)key