DR. CARPENTER AND THE LONDON UNIVERSITY.
[TO TES EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR"]
SIR,—I cannot but think it "rather unfortunate" that you should blame me for having, as a Crown member of the Senate of the University of London, written to the Times in support of Sir John Lubbock's candidature ; the fact being that my letter had been written and dispatched before I was made aware of my appointment.
It is further " unfortunate " that you should not have seen in the Daily News the introductory paragraph of my letter (omitted in the Times), in which I specified the impu- tation cast by the Editor of the Spectator upon the supporters of Sir John Lubbock, as my reason for writing it. Regarding myself as in a perfectly independent position, and knowing that several of the most distinguished Graduates agreed in the views expressed by Professor W. S. jevons, in his short but weighty letter to the Daily News of Saturday last, I could see no reason why I should not step forward to vindicate them from what seemed to me a most undeserved censure, by showing that the question might be fairly looked at from a stand-point quite different from your own, and that those who supported Sir J. Lubbock's candidature might fairly do so, without showing "either that they do not value rare power when it belongs to themselves is they would value it anywhere else, or that University culture does not teach those who possess it to appreciate that power at all."
The most •" unfortunate" thing in the whole matter, as it appears to me, is that the Editor of the Spectator should have wound up his perfectly fair advocacy of Sir George Jessel's claims with the imputation upon those who differed from him which gave occasion to my defence of them.—I am, Sir, &c.,
WILLIAm B. CARPENTER.
56 Regent's Park Road, W., May 17th.
[We regret our mistake in assuming that Dr. Carpenter knew of his appointment as a Crown member of the Senate, when he wrote his letter. Otherwise, we have nothing to retract. It is unfortunate when a non-elector, whose whole influence in rela- tion to the University is absolutely ejusdem generis with that of the Crown members, and not a little derived from his intimacy with the Crown members, intervenes in a political question of this nature. The observation on which Dr. Carpenter remarks is of course one in which he does not agree ; but of course also he cannot agree in the general drift of our comparison between the two principal candidates; and it is rather quaint to treat as an " imputation " on the supporters of Sir John. Lubbock a sentence in which we simply drew, by way of summing up our whole statement of the case, the natural inference from the com- parison which WO had instituted, and which every one who had agreed in our previous estimate must have drawn, too.—En. Spectator.]
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