Mr. Lowe headed the resistance and spoke against the amalga-
mation with Durham in two very vigorous speeches, the last of them, that of Tuesday, one of the first ability. But he did not stand alone. To Mr. Grant Duff and Mr. Denman was due much of the credit of insisting on delay, when it was found late on Monday night that the Liberals had gone away without looking for so speedy a division. Mr. G. Trevelyan, M.P. for Tynemouth, also did himself great credit, not only by standing aloof from the knot of Durham Liberals who egged on the Government to give this sop to their University, but by ironically proposing to group Durham rather with Oxford than London, ais being . homogeneous with Oxford on the question of a Church test. And Mr. Cardwell finally turned the scale, as far as argument was concerned, by forcing Mr. Mowbray to admit that the Convocation of Durham is limited by a dogmatic Anglican teat, and that he had ho power to pledge the University to abolish that test. The sinister feature of the debate was Mr. Mowbray's rash pledge, that the Govern- ment would give the right of election to all Durham graduates apart from any religious test, which, when Mr. Disraeli was seriously challenged by Mr. Gladstone, he was compelled to repudiate, though he made no disclaimer till long after Mr. Mowbray had sat down. It would have been anomalous indeed, for Government to wrench the constituency out of the hands of the corporate body—Convocation—simply on the ground of a Church test for the maintenance of which it has fought so long and vigorously at Oxford and Cambridge.
