In short, Mr. Gladstone's construction of the Act is quite
as admissible as Lord Salisbury's, and as it appears that he did actually offer the living to two members of the Oxford Convoca- cation before offering it to Mr. Harvey,—so conclusively proving, if anyone was so silly and paltry-minded as to doubt, that there was no irritation against Oxford for rejecting him in 1865 in the Prime Minister's mind,—the collapse of the attack upon him was not• surprising. The sharpest saying of the debate was Mr. Greene's. He charged the Prime Minister with acting like a groom, who, when asked by his master why he was leading a horse round the yard with the housemaid upon it, said that the horse was going to be sold, and he was anxious to qualify himself for making the statement that " it had carried a lady." Mr. Mowbray and Mr. Gathorne Hardy bungled the attack, and Mr. Gladstone showed strikingly his singularly strong grasp of legal argumentation.
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