Some of the Professors of University College have issued an
elaborate and ingenious document, in which they defend the recent action of the Council. In it they abandon the line first taken up, and if we are not mistaken, to some extent endorsed by Professor Key himself, in his letter to the Telegraph,—that it is a matter to be regretted and avoided to have a man eminent for his religious opinions (like Professor Newman, after the publication of his Phases of Faith), in any chair of a secular college,—and limit the objection exclusively to the case of the Chair of Philosophy of the Mind and Logic. In this we think that they have needlessly weakened even such case as they previously had. The first illustra- tion of the inconvenience of a theological reputation was taken from the case of a Professor of Latin, and the great argument, which was so much paraded, as to maintaining the " balance of- sects," had as much reference to the Chair of Latin or Physiology as to the Chair of Logic. In point of fact, the special difficulty which is now raised about the latter chair has a far stronger application to the Chair of Modern History, which, like the Chair of Logic, has been filled by a divine, and in the case of Modern History by one of a wide sectarian reputation. If the Professors really see the danger they describe in filling the Chair of Philo- sophy, they should advise the Council to suppress both that and the Chair of History, which is still more open to the remark that theological bias might modify the Professor's teaching on the sub- ject of his class,—and after that, perhaps, to suppress the College.
