It comes out that we rather need a Corrupt Practices
Bill for University Convocation votes,—at least, if the payment of travel- ling expenses by the competing parties be a corrupt practice. And undoubtedly it is a very unfair advantage for either side to take, if the other side has any scruple in taking it also, as seems to have been the case in the late contest in Oxford about the Select Preacherships. There is, we believe, no doubt that the Conserva- tives paid travelling expenses for the poorer M.A.'s on their side, and that the Liberals did not,—that they lost various votes through the poverty of some of their party and their own dislike to offer travelling expenses. The same thing happened, we be- lieve, on the election of Mr. Gathorne Hardy, when Mr. Glad- stone was thrown out ; and also on the election to the Sanskrit Professorship, which was very shamelessly made a party move in the University. It is clear that the practice is open to very great abuse, and in our opinion an election of any candidate should be vitiated by the offer of travelling expenses on behalf of his party. In some way or other, at all events, a battle of purses should be excluded from University politics.
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