Dr. Lushing ton on Dissenters' The question of nonconformist grievances was brought under the notice of Parliament by Dr. Stephen Lushington on March 11, 1834. Such were the want of general registration, difficulties connected with marriage grievances, and burial, exclusion from the universities, and 1834- liability to rates and other compulsory levies for the maintenance of the Established Church. Lord John Russell introduced, but did not carry through, a bill for permitting Dissenters to be married in their own licensed places of worship, instead of going to church as heretofore. Wood's The measure which especially roused the anger of Churchmen and Conservatives at Oxford and Cambridge was the University Tests Bill, brought in by George Matthew University Wood, Member for South Lancashire, 'to grant Tests Bill, to Her Majesty's subjects generally the right of 1834. admission to the English universities, and to equal eligibility to degrees therein, notwithstanding their diversities of religious opinion, degrees in Divinity alone excepted.' Debates in The debates were conducted on the ordinary lines of such discussions. The supporters of the motion said that no harm had been done by the admission of nonconformist students at Cambridge, which dated from 1772, and that it was unjust to refuse them degrees; there was no danger of their demanding votes, fellowships, and headships, which rightly belonged to the Church of England. They dwelt on the hypocrisy of religious subscription, and argued that the admission of Dissenters to the universities would help to heal divisions and be beneficial both to those who gave and those who received instruction. The opponents of the motion held a much easier brief. They said that the Dissenters would not rest till they had gained admission to all the prizes of the universities; there was no finality in such legislation, and every concession would be used as a lever to effect the prime object of the Nonconformists, the destruction of the Establishment. Religious education would become a mockery; it would be based upon a meaningless or dishonest compromise. The Duke of Wellington-whose arguments for leaving things alone were always effective, since they were always sensible, dealt with things as they were, and raised no difficulties which did not 0 VIII DEBATES IN PARLIAMENT 179 exist in fact remarked that the University of Oxford was a corporation with power to act for itself, and the sixty-three petitioners were a dissatisfied minority, though consisting of most respectable individuals. Why should the legislature, on such showing as this, override the wishes of the corporation? Lord Durham, in reply, used an argument which the Duke would appreciate: Did the Duke of Wellington ask whether his officers were members of the Church of England before sending them into action, and was there any good reason why a doctor or a lawyer should be orthodox? Bishop Blomfield doubted whether the proposed change was really desired by the Dissenters. In his view religious education, which all parties desired, could not be and ought not to be colourless. Bishop Phillpotts bluntly said that to remove disabilities was to persecute the Church of England. In the Commons, where the debate was interrupted by scenes of the greatest disorder, the argument most keenly urged and combated was from the national character of the universities. They were founded for the good of the nation, and attached to the Church at a time when the Church included the whole nation, whether before or since the Reformation. Now that the Church of England, though still the Church of a majority, was no longer, except by law, the national Church, it could not fairly lay claim to a monopoly in a national institution. This argument, as was seen when disabilities were removed many years later, applied equally to the M.A. university franchise, to scholarships, fellowships, tutorships, and headships in the colleges, and to professorships and other places of emolument and dignity in the University. But for the present no one proposed to touch the colleges, nor to admit Dissenters to more than public examinations and titular degrees. Other speakers complained of the disadvantage to the sons of business men at Liverpool or Manchester, many of whom were Unitarians, who could not give their sons the educational and social advantages of University life. The argument from Founders' intentions was difficult to meet; for, as James II. said, the heads and fellows of colleges were bound by their unrepealed statutes to say mass every day for the souls of their benefactors. Daniel O'Connell, who took part in the debate, accepted the Protestant character of the University as an established fact, but contended that a Protestant Church had no exclusive right to pre-Reformation endowments. Other speakers said that the universities were places of religious education, and seminaries for the clergy; Dominus illuminatio mea is the motto of Oxford. The newly-founded Liberal University of London had admitted no religious teaching within its walls, and the measure proposed pointed the same way, and would go far to unchristianise the universities and with them the country. University thrown out The House of Commons passed the bill by 164 to 75 (28 July): the Lords rejected it four days later by a majority of 102. This defeat seemed final. The Tests Bill first impulse had spent itself, and reaction had by the Lords, begun. Oxford and Cambridge, it seemed, were 1834. to be as heretofore the property of the well-to-do classes, and in particular the nursery for the Anglican ministry. In holding this position, the Conservatives did not think they were doing any injustice to the Nonconformists. Their view, which had much to commend it, was that the reformed Church of England had a full right to the property and the position of the medieval Church of England, a right which was a sacred trust, to be administered in the interest of true religion. Toleration of dissent was not an act of justice, but a concession of charity or policy. The admission of Dissenters to university lectures and examinations, already conceded, gave them no claim to a share in college or university endowments and duties. This was the doctrine which prevailed at both universities, and any changes in the present system of government must be carried from outside or not at all. For some years no further step was taken: but university reform was not forgotten when a more favourable time came. The rejection of Lushington's bill gave the Liberals an argument, which was pressed home upon Peel's Government by Wm. Tooke, Member for Truro, Lord John Russell, and others, namely, that it was reasonable to give Dissenters the opportunity of obtaining degrees in arts and medicine, even if of less dignity than those conferred by the ancient universities, and that this was more urgent under the present Government VIII DEBATES IN PARLIAMENT 181 than when Lord Melbourne's Ministry were willing to remove obstacles at Oxford and Cambridge. It was also suggested that King's College, as well as University College, should be incorporated in one general London University, which should confer degrees by its own examinations, independently of the professors of the two colleges. Lord Melbourne came into office in April of the same year, and the charter asked for by the Duke of Somerset, Chairman of the Council of University College, was granted on August 19, 1835. The object of the Government in conceding it was announced in an official document to be 'to provide a mode for granting academical degrees in London to persons of all religious persuasions without distinction, and without the imposition of any test or disqualification whatever.' It was stated that students of other bodies similarly incorporated would apply to University College for degrees in arts, law, and medicine, through the medium of a Board of Examiners, who were to receive a charter of incorporation under the title of the University of London. The arrangement thus initiated was accepted, and the principle established that the University should be an examining body and confer degrees on qualified students, and that London the duty of teaching should be left to the colleges. The charter was accordingly granted on November 28, 1836. The Earl of Burlington, afterwards Duke of Devonshire, a distinguished scholar and man of science, and afterwards Chancellor of the University of Cambridge, was nominated by the Crown as Chancellor; and Lord Brougham, Bishops Maltby, Stanley, Thirlwall, and Otter, Hallam, Macaulay, Cornewall Lewis, Arnold, and Grote were elected among the members of the Senate. King's College thus became incorporate with the University, retaining its own staff of professors, and preserving intact its connexion with the Church. Henceforward religious differences had no place in the history of university education in London. University granted, charter 1836. AUTHORITIES: GENERAL.-As in Chapters V. and VII. For the Braintree case, Walpole and Paul, Histories. R. D. Hampden, Observations on Religious Dissent; Lewis Campbell, The Nationalisation of the Universities. CHAPTER IX Various THE LIBERAL MOVEMENT THE various interests of the new century may be judged by a glance at the literature of the time. Cobbett and Bentham, Ricardo, Malthus, the Mills, Erasmus Darwin and currents in the geologists stand queerly by the side of Wordsliterature. worth and Coleridge; we have also the literary critics, as Hazlitt and Lamb; the company of poets, at the head of whom stand Byron, Scott, Keats, and Shelley; and the writers of fiction and romance, lurid and fantastic, or domestic and realistic. In all directions the ancient bands of sentiment and tradition were being weakened; in religion, literature, and politics the ideas which attracted the age were new creeds of universal brotherhood and enfranchisement, dreams of 'pantisocracy,' new births of liberty and equality; the name of liberty was in all mouths. The world cannot go on without dogma, it must have a belief to live by; and those who cried loudest for liberty were the apostles of a new dogma, as intolerant as any which preceded it, the dogma of science. Whether the field of their efforts was theological, historical, political, or literary, they were at work in pulling down old faiths and clearing the ground for a new faith, or rather a new set of principles for faith to deal with, one of the first being the ancient Greek saying, μέμνασ ̓ ἀπιστεῖν, ‘be not too ready to believe.' The sentiment of the time showed itself in emotional religion, whilst the dogmatic temper asserted itself by exalting ancient authority, or sought to settle historical principles, and so to lay the foundation for a new deductive philosophy. This involved much pulling down as well |