ALL SOULS COLLEGE AT THE BAR. T HE three junior Fellows
of All Souls College, Oxford, have well deserved the victory which they won on Saturday in Lambeth Palace. By their perseverance and gallant determination to vindicate at once law and equity, they have done good service to the cause of learning, and have defeated one of the most odious corporations in the United Kingdom.
We should like to know what purpose the stately College of All Souls ever served, except to stand up in the sunshine and beautify the High-street and Ratcliffe-square, and afford shelter and provender to a clique of courtly Fellows ? What was All Souls College in its prime, but a genteel monkery ? It was the nearest approach to a monastery of old extant in these realms, save and except that the abbot and his friars did not relieve the poor at the gate or give the traveller bed and board. Richly endowed, no student ever passed its portals. Nominally a learned corporation, learn- ing was the last qualification of the brotherhood. In the selection of Fellows regard was paid to birth and good man- ners, but not to scholarship. A clubbable man, whose grandfather had sat in the House of Lords, or adorned the bench of Bishops, and who had not been plucked, was pretty sure of his election. A scholar of good manners also, but whose grandfather had been an attorney, or a nobody, found the door fast locked. Thus the wealth of the foundation was expended in providing for a set of Protestant monks of good birth, and what was intended for a college of learning, was, with selfish ingenuity, converted into a Club, which supplied the University with nothing but an occasional Vice- Chancellor, and a periodic relay of proctors. In short, the place was a sort of almshouse for cadets of great families, and the parasites of great families ; one of the most con- spicuous instances of a perverted charity, in the long roll of charities which men have perverted, and justified themselves in perverting, upon pious pretexts. When the reforming spirit determined to invade the University and Colleges of Oxford, of course the close corporation of All Souls could not hope to escape. The Commissioners, however, dealt tenderly with this monkish abode. They did not disturb the sacred quiet by thrusting undergraduates into the Club ; but they laid hands upon ten of these useless fellowships and suppressed them ; they founded two professorships, and they directed in tolerably plain terms that in the election of Fellows the choice of the Warden should fall upon "that candidate (being otherwise duly qualified according to the statutes in force for the time being) who, after such examination, shall appear to them to be of the greatest merit and most fit to be a Fellow of the College, as a place of religion and learning, with special re- ferenceto the subjects recognized in the said school." The subjects in which the candidates were to be examined were duly specified—Jurisprudence and Modern History ; and to mortals gifted. with an average amount of conscience, it seemed that the reign of exclusiveness and sloth was over in this College, and that in due time it would become the abode of ripe scholars, the fostering mother of poor but learned men. There could not be a greater delusion. The monks were not to be so easily beaten. They took the ordinance of the Commissioners in its non-natural sense and inter- preted the words "most fit to be a Fellow of the College" to mean most fit to be a member of the Club. A candidate of "the greatest merit" was still to mean what it had always meant, that "every person to be qualified for a Fellowship should be bonis conditionibus et moribus perornatus,' " and the election was carried on in secret, by means which violated the ordinance.
Happilytherewere three Fellowswho resisted the attempted. perversion of the reform, and claimed the judgment of the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Visitor of the College, upon the construction so adroitly placed upon the ordinance. In that appeal they have been successful. Lord Wensley- dale and Dr. Travers Twiss, as assessors of the Visitor, delivered judgment on Saturday, and the effect of their judgment is, that the Warden and Fellows must execute the ordinance according to its natural, and not its non-natural sense. The ordinance supersedes all statutes inconsistent with itself. It has a special object, namely, "to constitute the Foundation Fellowships of Archbishop Chicheley a means for the encouragement of the study of Jurisprudence and Modern History, two branches of knowledge especially suit- able to the requirements of the present times, the other Colleges in the University supplying ample means for en- couraging the study of other subjects having a more especial bearing upon the education of candidates for holy orders." An examination in such subjects as are recognized in the School of Jurisprudence and Modern History, is the sole test and criterion of intellectual qualification, though in estimating the fitness of a candidate to be a Fellow of the College, his moral and religious character must be considered. He must not be an atheist, an unbeliever, an irreligious man, nor a person of coarse rude habits and overbearing temper ; but there are "questions of degree, and the eminence of a candi- date may be such in the prescribed branches of learning as to outweigh, in the opinion of the electors, some objections of this nature ; on the other hand, his merit may be insuffi- cient to counteract them." And, moreover, the ordinance does not intend, and this is a vital point in the eyes of the Club, "that every person to be qualified for a Fellowship should be bonis conditionibus et moribus perornatus, as a condition precedent to his election." Then as to the mode of examination, it is directed that it shall be of the usual kind by "marks," thus overturning the by-law of the Warden and Fellows, which directed the examiners to make no report on the order of merit, and prohibited them from answering questions touching that order. There is, however, to be a certain amount of secrecy in the proceedings, and although it is specially, laid down that the examination is to be bond fide into the comparative merits of the candidates, we shall be curious to see whether the Warden and Fellows will act in the spirit of the iudgment of their Visitor, or whether they will find a pretext in th,e letter for maintaining the Club on the old footing. We that not ; but if they should make a second attempt to drive a coach-and-six through an Act of Parliament, then Parliament must take more rigorous measures to vindicate its authority and break up the Club.
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