like himself, had an intention of deceiving), actually charges it as "one of our greatest blunders”—a blunder betraying a total want of "common sense"-" to have referred to the Appendix and Addenda to the Statute-book," (p. 86,) i. e. to the work we reviewed, to the documents on which our argument was immediately and principally founded!*

In regard to the latter proposition, it is quite true that IF the former academical system had been repealed, and the present ratified by Convocation, the actual order of things in Oxford is legal, and the Heads stand guiltless in the sight of God and man. But, as this is just the matter in question, and as instead of the affirmative being granted by us, the whole nisus of our reasoning was to demonstrate the negative; we must hold, that since the Assertor has adduced nothing to invalidate our statements on this point, he has left the controversy exactly as he found it. To take a single instance :-Has he shown, or attempted to show, that by any subsequent act of Convocation those fundamental statutes which constitute and regulate the Professorial system, as the one essential organ of all academical education, have been repealed?-nay, that the statutes of the present century do not on this point recognise and enforce those of those preceding?—(Add. p. 129-133, pp. 187, 188, et passim.) If not, how, on his own doctrine of the academic oath, (in which we fully coincide,) does he exempt the guardians of its statutes,

* It may amuse our readers to hear how our ingenuous disputant lays out his pamphlet, alias, his refutation of "the Medish immutability of the Laudian digest." This immutability he refutes by arguing:—

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'From the general principles of jurisprudence, as they relate to the mutability of human laws. (Sect. II.)-From the particular principles of municipal incorporation, as they relate to the making of by-laws. (Sect. III.)—From the express words of the Corpus Statutorum. (Sect. IV.)-From immemorial usage, that is, the constant practice of the University from 1234 to 1831. (Sect. V.)-From the principle of adaptation upon which the statutes of 1636 were compiled and digested. (Sect. VI.)—From Archbishop Laud's own declarations in respect of those statutes. (Sect. VII.)-From his instructions to Dr Frewin, in 1638, to submit to Convocation some amendments of the statute-book, after it had been finally ratified and confirmed. (Sect. VIII.)-From the alterations made in the statute-book after the death of the Archbishop, but during the lives of those who were his confidential friends, and had been his coadjutors in the work of reforming it. (Sect. IX.)- From the alterations made in the statute-book from time to time, since the death of the Archbishop's coadjutors to the present day. (Sect. X.)- From the opinion of counsel upon the legality of making and altering sta tutes, as delivered to the Vice-Chancellor, June 2, 1759. (Sect. XI.)”—p. 16.— This elaborate parade of argument (the pamphlet extends to a hundred and fifty mortal pages) is literally answered in two words—Quis dubitavit ?

to say nothing of the other members of the University, from perjury?-(Major.) "It" (the academic oath) "is, and will always be, taken and kept with a safe conscience, as long as the taker shall faithfully observe the academic code, in all its fundamental ordinances, and according to their true meaning and intent. And with respect to other matters, it is safely taken, if taken according to the will of those who made the law, and who have the power to make or unmake, to dispense with or repeal, any, or any parts of any, laws educational of the University, and to sanction the administration of the oath with larger or more limited relations [i. e. ?] according to what Convocation may deem best and fittest for the ends it has to accomplish."—(P. 132.)— (Minor.) In the case adduced, the unobserved professorial system is a "fundamental ordinance," is exclusively "according to the will of those who made, make, and unmake the law," exclusively "according to what Convocation deems the best and fittest." *-(Conclusion.) Consequently, &c.

In confuting the propositions we have now considered, the Assertor's whole pamphlet is confuted. We shall however notice (what we cannot condescend to disprove) a few of the subaltern statements which, with equal audacity, he holds out as maintained by us, and some of which he even goes so far as to support by fabricated quotations. Of these, one class contains assertions, not simply false, but precisely the reverse of the statements really made by us. Such, for instance:-That we extolled the academic system of the Laudian code as perfect, (pp. 95, 96, 144, &c.);-That we admitted the actual system to be not inexpedient or insufficient, (p. 95); and, That this system was introduced in useful accommodation to the changing circumstances of the age, (p. 95.)-Another class includes those assertions that are simply false. For example:-That we expressed a general approbation of the methods of the ancient University, and of the

* See SANDERSON De Juramenti Obligatione, Prael. III. § 18.-too long to extract. The Assertor avers, but without quoting any authority, that Sanderson wrote the Epinomis of the Corpus Statutorum. If true, which we do not believe, the fact would be curious. It is unnoticed by Wood, in his Historia, Annals, or Athenæ,-it is unknown to Walton, or to any indeed of Sanderson's biographers. It is also otherwise improbable. Sanderson left the University in 1619, when he surrendered his fellowship, and only returned in 1642, when made Regius Professor of Divinity. The Statutes were compiled in the interval; and why should the Epinomis be written by any other than the delegates? We see the motive for the fiction; it is too silly to be worth mentioning.

scholastic exercises and studies, beyond an incidental recognition of the utility of Disputation, and that too, [though far from undervaluing its advantages even now,] in the circumstances of the middle ages; and we may state, that the quotation repeatedly alleged in support of this assertion is a coinage of his own, (pp. 6, 11, 83, 96, 97, 138, 139);—That we reviled Oxford for merely deviating from her ancient institutions, (pp. 5, 11, 12, 95, &c.); -That we said a single word in delineation of the Chamberdekyn at all, far less (what is pronounced "one of the cleverest sleights of hand ever practised in the whole history of literary legerdemain") "transformed him into an amiable and interesting young gentleman, poor indeed in pocket, but abundantly rich in intellectual energies, and in every principle that adorns and dignifies human nature!" (p. 113.)-Regarding as we do the Assertor only as a curious psychological monstrosity, we do not affect to feel towards him the indignation, with which, coming from any other quarter, we should repel the false and unsupported charges of "depraving, corrupting, and mutilating our cited passages," (p. 24);-of "making fraudulent use of the names and authorities of Dr Newton and Dr Wallis, of Lipsius, Crevier, and Du Boullay," (p. 142); and to obtain the weight of his authority, of fathering on Lord Bacon an apophthegm of our own, though only alleging, without reference, one of the most familiar sentences of his most popular work, (p. 7.)-To complete our cursory dissection of this moral Lusus Naturæ, we shall only add that he quotes us just thirteen times; that of these quotations one is authentic; six are more or less altered; one is garbled, half a sentence being adduced to support what the whole would have overthrown, (p. 20); and five are fabrications to countenance opinions which the fabricator finds it convenient to impute to us, (pp. 9, 10, 11, 110, 141.)

*

We might add much more, but enough has now been said.We have proved that our positions stand unconfuted,-uncontroverted, untouched; that to seem even to answer, our opponent has been constrained to reverse the very argument he attacked; and that the perfidious spirit in which he has conducted the controversy, significantly manifests his own consciousness of the hopeless futility of his cause.

* [And what was true twenty years ago, is, in every respect, true now.]

VI.-ON THE RIGHT OF DISSENTERS TO ADMISSION

INTO THE ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES.

(OCTOBER, 1834.)

A Bill to remove certain Disabilities which prevent some classes of his Majesty's Subjects from resorting to the Universities of England, and proceeding to Degrees therein. 21 April 1834.

THE whole difficulty of the question, in regard to the admission of Dissenters into the English Universities, lies in the present anomalous state-we do not say constitution-of these establishments. In them the University, properly so called, i. e. the necessary national establishment for general education, is at present illegally suspended, and its function usurped, but not performed, by a number of private institutions which have sprung up in accidental connection with it, named Colleges.

Now, the claim of the Dissenters to admission into the public university cannot justly be refused; nor, were the university in fact, what it ought legally to be, would the slightest difficulty or inconvenience be experienced in rendering that right available. But the university has been allowed to disappear,-the colleges have been allowed to occupy its place: and, while the actual, that is the present, right of the colleges, as private establishments, to close their gates on all but members of their own foundations, cannot be denied; independently of this right, the expediency is worse than doubtful, either, on the one hand, of forcing a college to receive inmates, not bound to accommodate themselves to its religious observances, or, on the other, of

exacting from those entitled to admission, conformity to religious observances, in opposition to their faith. Now, neither in the bill itself, nor in any of the pamphlets and speeches in favour of the Dissenters, or against them, is there any attempt made to grapple with the real difficulties of the question; and the opponents of the measure are thus left to triumph on untenable ground, in objections which might be retorted with tenfold effect upon themselves.

The sum of all the arguments for exclusion amounts to this:The admission of the Dissenters is inexpedient, as inconsistent with the present state of education in the universities, which is assumed to be all that it ought to be; and unjust, as tending to deprive those of their influence, who are assumed to have most worthily discharged their trust.-In reply, it has been only feebly attempted, admitting the assumptions, to evade the right, and to palliate the inconveniences. Instead of this, it ought to have been boldly contended:-in the first place, that the actual state of education in these schools is entitled to no respect, as contrary at once to law and to reason; and that all inconveniences disappear the moment that the universities are in a state to which law and reason demand that they be restored; in the second, that so far from unjustly degrading upright and able trustees, these trustees have, for their proper interest, violated their public duty; and, for the petty ends of their own private institutions, abolished the great national establishment of whose progressive improvement they had solemnly vowed to be the faithful guardians.

In attempting any reform of an ancient institution like the English Universities, it should be laid down as a fundamental principle, that the changes introduced be, as far as possible, in conformity with the spirit and even the mechanism of these institutions themselves. The English Universities, as spontaneously developed and as legally established, consist of two elements; and the separate perfection, and mutual co-operation and counterpoise of these elements determine the perfection of the constituted whole. The one of these, principal and necessary, is the public instruction and examination in the several faculties afforded by the University Proper; the other, subordinate and accidental, is the private superintendence exercised in the Licensed House, which the under-graduate must inhabit, and the private tuition afforded by the Licensed Tutor, under whose