The House of Commons may have to hear a good
deal more about Mr. Gladstone's Resolutions, but it may be comforted by ;learning that it will hear no more of Mr. Ewart's University Bill, at least as far as Oxford is concerned. For last Thursday week that learned University anticipated that well intentioned Member of Parliament by passing for themselves what he was going to try to pass for them, viz., a repeal of Archbishop Land's Statutes giv- ing the Colleges a monopoly of University education. Reformer -after reformer had " declaimed " (such is the word ordinarily -applied at Oxford to the utterances of extra-Parliamentary 'reformers) against this most hurtful piece of Protection ; "they fared their ringing shot and passed ;" but Mr. Ewart and his Committee have turned out more cogent reasoners than Sir William Hamilton, with all his reformers. To become -a graduate of Oxford, a man has now,—since Thursday week, that is,—no more necessity to attach himself to a College than he has in the case of any other University in the world, except Cambridge, -which has quite recently rejected the reform which Oxford has just accepted. The would-be graduate of Oxford will be able to regulate his own expenses there for himself, just as though he were living in Bedford or Gloucester; and the Colleges being thus -subjected to the wholesome influence of competition, we may reasonably expect to see some increase in their activities and some -diminution in their charges. Their papers, daily and weekly, the .Guardian not excepted, have taken as little notice of the matter as they do of the first half-dozen protests of a Colonial Legislature ; but the change thus silently effected is the most important one, -with the single exception of the establishment seventy years back of an examination system, which has ever been carried out, we may almost say which has ever been proposed, even for Oxford, ;since the evil Lauclian epoch.
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