The retirement of Sir Robert Inglis from Parliament occasions a
new election of a Member to represent Oxford University. Many will regret the departure of Sir Robert, for other reasons besides that of entailing the preliminaries of election on the Uni- versity in vacation-time. Although little supported, Sir Robert Inglis was liked; although his doctrines were very generally dis- tasteful, the man was always acceptable. The House of Commons likes to have in it some person who can creditably utter the established commonplaces and precepts which most parties have outgrown, but which still survive as the standards of something that is prescriptively respectable in Church and State relations. Perhaps the House never will grow so Radical as not to employ that species of good old Tory functionary, a kind of ex-officio Joseph Surface, to utter the professions which men think it right to have uttered on solemn occasions, although they have not the face to utter them themselves. It is all the better if the functionary has some kind of heart in his business ; and if to that he can add a respectable understanding, he is a rarity. Sir Robert Inglis presented the combi- nation. He stuck to a sort of High-Tory-Evangelical Conserva- tism, dressed up in the worldly fashion of the day, as if he were Mem- ber for Bishopdom. He had a good scholarly expression, awell-turned bald forehead, and moreover an agreeable heartiness of manner that became the good old English gentleman. Who his successor is to be is not yet determined. Several have been mentioned. The Ox- ford supporters of Mr. Gladstone, who succeeded in spite of so much difficulty, had fixed their eyes on Mr. Bounden Palmer; but a decided opposition would have been made to "a second Gladstone." The London Liberals have pitched upon Sir William Heathcote, in the probable hope that the opposite party may accept him, although he was the Chairman of Mr. Gladstone's Election Committee, as a respectable compromise.
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