THE OXFORD PHYSIOLOGICAL LABORATORY.
ITO THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR.")
Mr. E. B. Nicholson has declared himself to be the 'high local authority for the statements I challenged in the -Spectator for last week, I trust you will extend to me your well- known courtesy by allowing me to write a few lines, in reply to -his letter which appeared in your issue of the 24th inst.
Mr. Nicholson practically brings three charges against me :— (1), That I have mistaken a name ; (2), that I had had some unfair access to the signatures of his memorial to the Council ; (3), that I had made "a public imputation on our bona fides," .i.e., of the memorialists. To clear the ground, let me repeat that did not and do not wish to discuss the subject-matter of the anemorial. I stated distinctly that my letter referred to that part of the paragraph in your paper of the 10th inst. which, -owing to erroneous information, gave, in my opinion, a mislead- ing account of the relation of Magdalen College to its Professor Fellow, Dr. Burdon Sanderson, and further, to the physiological teaching of the University.
To charge one, I plead guilty, and frankly accept Mr. Nichol- son's correction. That I was misinformed as to an initial is not 'much to the point, save as at extenuating circumstance. With this my inference on the fifteen miles' radius falls to the ground. Freely admitting this, I still assert that the rest of his letter -does not in the least shake the position I took up. I still maintain that the memorial does not number among its signa- tures one-eighth of the governing body of the College, and that those outside that body do not amount to one-third of its resident members of Congregation. Equally strong was my position from the first,—that the physiological teaching of the University had for years been carried on in the Magdalen College Laboratory, -under a Government licence, and with the full consent of the College, a portion of my letter which Mr. Nicholson seems to ignore.
Charge two is wide of the mark. I had no private Mess to his
-memorial at all, but simply made an application to the Council for a copy of the Magdalen College signatures only, which was readily granted. Impossible of acceptance as the conjecture -appears to Mr. Nicholson, any member of the Council would at once have informed him that the moment his memorial was ,presented to that body it became public property. Why Mr. Nicholson should be so anxious for concealment, I am at a loss to imagine.
Charge three. To clear oneself and one's friends of an imputation unjustly made, by a correction of the facts and infer- ences upon which it rests, is perhaps necessarily to retort that imputation upon those who bring the original charge. I am equally anxious with Mr. Nicholson to avoid personal recrimina- tion, and would rather leave the question on which aide the bona fides did or did not exist to be decided by the public on the evi- dence before them. I am not anxious to pursue the inquiry, as, after all, my censor has not been able to show more than a single technical flaw in my argument, a flaw which I have acknowledged as arising out of the confusion of a single initial. I am therefore naturally contented to leave the matter where it is. How affairs really stand now, Mr. Nicholson tells us in his postscript, which saves me the trouble of stating that the Council, a body elected by Congregation, of which Mr. Nicholson is a member, have refused to consider his memorial. Surely this is the most significant fact he has yet presented to our notice.—I am, Sir, &C., EDWARD CHAPMAN, M.A., Fellow and Tutor of Magdalen College. 3fagdalen 'College, November 27th.
[Mr. Chapman has admitted that he charged the Memorialists with making a false statement on the strength of a hasty in- ference of his own which turned out to be false. Surely that was quite indefensible. The correspondence must end here.—
Spectator.]
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