THE SEAT FOR LONDON UNIVERSITY.
MR. DISRAELI'S proposal to group the University of London with the University of Durham, is a group- ing rather of the kind which Coleridge adopted in his Ancient Mariner:—
"The body of my sister's son Worked with me knee to knee, The body pulled at the same rope, But it said naught to me."
Indeed, the relationship through the maternal uncle was much closer than any which can be shown to exist between the Universities of London and Durham. The purpose of the proposed change is obvious. It is probably Mr. Mowbray's scheme for securing a Conservative vote by destroying the whole meaning and essence of the new constituency. If he had proposed to group the London University with the Cinque Ports or with a mining population, he would not have proposed anything more intrinsically absurd. If he had grouped Maynooth College with the Protestant Association, and given them a seat between them, it would have scarcely been a less statesmanlike proposition. When the University of London was first promised by the late Lord Monteagle (then Mr. Spring Rice) absolute equality in every secular respect with the older Universities, it was little anticipated that this promise should one day be fulfilled by offering to give a joint representationin Parliament to it and a University chosen apparently for the express purpose of neutralizing its characteristic tendency. The only University which is founded on the principle of universal inclusion in matters of religion, .and,on educational tests applied without any infusion of dog- matic assumptions, it is proposed to group with a Univer- sity established expressly to inculcate a special theology, and to give an education founded absolutely upon its profes- sion. If there be any idea which the University of London really represents, it is the catholic idea that perfect equality of intellectual culture may be obtained consistently with the most different theological influences, and may be tested with- out sounding the basis of any creed. If there be any idea which the University of Durham represents, it is the ultimate identification of intellectual culture with theological science ; and not only so, but of intellectual culture with a special form of theological, teaching. Both ideas may be false, or one of them may be true, or they may divide the truth be- tween them ; but to try and combine them, and ask these two Universities established on conflicting principles to send up a representative of both, would be like creating a single con- stituency out of hostile armies, or out of a bankrupt company and all its creditors. Mr. Disraeli may perhaps say in his defence for this cynical attempt to secure a Conservative mem- ber for the new constituency, that the University of London includes a great many affiliated Colleges of theological tenets as defined and distinctive as the University of Durham,— King's College, London, for instance, the Catholic Colleges of Stonyhurst and St. Cuthbert's Ushaw, and several Noncon- formist Colleges, like New College and Cheshunt College. That is quite true. But what is it which forms the con- necting link between all these Colleges except the practical principle, which the University establishes by every exa- mination it conducts, that these theological differences, how- ever wide, are consistent with a common system of general education, and with the mutual respect and forbearance which all the London graduates are taught to feel for each other by -their contests in one common field of intellectual study ? In short, the one distinctive principle of the London University is the comprehensiveness of the field of intellectual culture. The one distinctive principle of the Durham University is the identification of a single theological creed with intellectual culture. No theological College which sends up its students for the London degree, neither Stonyhtirst, nor Ushaw, nor King's College, London, nor Cheshunt, nor Manchester New College, can avoid recognizing the great modification of the dogmatics principle which this common intellectual meeting ground of all the theologies introduces into the educational theory of their alumni. Even Mr. Myles O'Reilly, the Member for Longford, who has claimed for the Irish Catholics what they are clearly entitled to if they wish it, the privilege of as separate a system of collegiate education as is pursued in the affiliated theological Colleges of the London University, yet shows in all his speeches on education how greatly the in- fluence of his organic connection with the adherents of other theologies in the London University has influenced his tone of thought, and how much it has intensified his natural Liberalism. To group a theological seminary the characteristic influence of which is to sow a deep distrust of general education in the minds of its alumni, with a compre- hensive University, the only principle of which is comprehension, in the same constituency, is a sort of grouping not merely open to all the objections taken last year against some of the proposed groups of boroughs, but to all of them in a very much exaggerated form, and many more besides. The two Uni- versities are divided locally by the whole length of England. It is doubtful whether a single distinguished graduate of Durham has any acquaintance with a single distinguished graduate of London. There is a positive antagonism of educa- tional interests. The only allies of the University of Durham in the University of London would be,—not men who hold with the Theological Academy that all education should be based on a distinctive theological teaching, but probably a few of the medical graduates, who hold . social distinc- tions much more important than political, and would like a Conservative representative because they imagine Con- servatism to be, on the whole, the creed of polite society. In a word, there is no common element in the two at all, except probably a certain amount of common knowledge of Greek and Latin. The effect of the grouping would be as bad upon the University of Durham as it would be vexatious to the University of London. The Durham graduates being greatly in a minority, and the interests of the two Universities being wholly dissimilar, there would be an effort to increase the Durham share in the constituency at a more rapid propor- tionate rate by lowering the standard of examination there, and making the degree as easy as possible,—a process, no doubt, entirely within the University's own power. Mr. Disraeli has always urged the emptying of the counties of great town popula- tions on the score of heterogeneousness of interests. But no interests so heterogeneous were ever before associated together as the Universities of Durham and London. There would be infinitely less absurdity in grouping the University of London with the Royal Society, the College of Physicians, and the Inns of Court, than in grouping it with a Church seminary in the North.
The only persons in the University of London who could pos- sibly acquiesce in the scheme,—and perhaps we are even doing them an injustice,—are the handful of men who met the other day at the Marylebone Institution, to advocate the selection of a candidate of no particular political views, but whom they wished to be, if anything, a Liberal Conservative. Now, no doubt, the association of a highly Conservative with a strongly Liberal University will greatly tend to no-particularity of view ; and if you could contrive that the number of Conservatives and Liberals should be exactly equal, the absence of all political cha- racter mightbe ensured. It isbarely possible, therefore, that these gentlemen, who seem to have shown their own complete colour- blindness on political subjects by total inability to discriminate between the various politics of Mr. Cardwell, Mr. Lowe, and of Lord Stanley, may welcome the suggestion of infusing enough alkali into the new constituency to neutralize the acid it contains at present. But the natural criticism on this policy of neutralizing the politids of the constituency is that it strikes at the very root of the case for a political representa- tion at all. Why give a corporate body a political voice which has no politics, and wishes to ignore them A neutral wants a reason for abstaining from interference, not for interfering. The worst thing a constituency could do in which care had been taken to balance the two parties, would be to send a repre- sentative to Parliament at all. There he will inevitably fall into the hands of one party or another. A man does not go into a battle-field supplied with arms and ammunition and expect to be allowed to take no part in the battle. If the University of London is to be politically neutralized, let it keep out of poli- tical life altogether. A constituency is a political body, and a constituency without polities is a dead body, which it is use- less to attempt to galvanize into life.
Of all the six University Members now sitting in the House of Commons not one is a Liberal. The Government seem to wish, by the proposal they have now made, to stifle the unpleasant protest almost certain to be made by a young but great University in favour of the Liberal tendency of the highest education. We do not think they will succeed. The attempt to trim the scales of opinion in the London University by incidentally throwing Durham into the Tory scale, has been, already even, ridiculed in every direction ; and it is, indeed, -so unworthy a party trick that the Government will in all probability be compelled to withdraw the suggestion almost without discussion.
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