The Members for Oxford City, Mr. Cardwell and Mr. Vernon
Harcourt, attended the annual festival of the Oxford Druids on New Year's Day, and both made considerable speeches,—mani- festoes, as it were, to their constituents,—after dinner, though of very divergent drifts. Mr. Cardwell was, as usual, sedately com- placent. He argued that the sympathy educed by the Prince of Wales's illness had shown our monarchical institutions to be founded upon a rock. He thought that Parliament had now got to a constructive work higher than that of the free-trade period, when it was simply engaged in removing artificial obstacles to the people's wealth and happiness. The new task was difficult, and could only be done by the help of great forbearance and self-control on all sides,—by remembering that " the Government and the Legisla- ture are but the representatives of the entire community, and can only act as the agents of the whole community." After laying down these pregnant principles,—which much excite the anger of the Tory Press, who consider them ominous of some attempt to evade Ministerial responsibility,—Mr. Cardwell went on to say that if Parliament did nothing all last Session, nothing was a very troublesome business to do. For himself, be thought the abolition of University Tests, the carrying of the Ballot through the Com- mons for the first time, and the abolition of Purchase a good deal better than nothing. A propos of the deep-rooted hold of pur- chase on the British mind, he told an amusing story of the Speaker of the House of Commons having, some century or so ago, admin- istered to the kneeling Mayor and Corporation of Oxford a severe rebuke for selling the Oxford seats, whereupon, having raised themselves from their knees and retired from the House of Com- mons, they immediately, says the historian, returned to Oxford, and " took measure for selling the seats again, one to the nominee of the Duke of Marlborough, and the other to the nominee of the Earl of Abingdon,"—a vigorous course which the assembled Druids seemed rather to respect. Oxford is now doing wholesome pen- ance, through its senior Member, for its former tenacious corrup- tibility.
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