The Secretary for War, Mr. Gathorne Hardy, moved the second
reading of the Oxford University Bill on Monday night, when Mr. Lowe attacked the measure, in a curious and not very accurate speech. He urged at some length, and with some plausibility, that an inquiry into the reforms needed, ought to have pre- ceded the appointment of a Commission, but, with little know- ledge of the circumstances, maintained that no one reason had been given for not being satisfied with things as they are. Then he delivered a great panegyric on the " idle Fellowships," as the great prizes which draw men to the Universities,—a plea for them which we have examined sufficiently elsewhere,—and alleged that to transfer revenues from the Colleges to the University was to transfer it from the useful and hard-working to useless and lazy recipients. What an assertion was this !—" It was hundreds of years since the University of Oxford educated anybody, and there was not the slightest chance that, any number of hundreds of years hence, it would educate anybody again." Why, all the students of Natural Science,—whom Mr. Lowe usually rates even higher than students of language and literature—are educated almost exclusively by the University, and without the Museum, which belongs to the University, and not to the Colleges, could hardy be educated at all. Nor would any good Oxford mathematician deny that the distinguished University Professor does at least as much for mathematics as the College tutors do, and in a higher field of study. Mr. Lowe's hitting was un- usually wild.
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