§ MR. POLLARD-URQUHARTsaid, he rose to call the attention of the Secretary Of State for the Home Department to the circumstances under which Mr. Stirling, the Senior Wrangler at Cambridge in the year 1860, has declined to compete for a Trinity Fellowship. Everybody who knew anything of Cambridge was aware that the senior wranglership was the highest academical honour that could be obtained in the University. Mr. Stirling had been at Trinity three years; he took a first class every year; and having obtained a scholarship, wound up with the high distinction of Senior Wrangler, only to be gained for proficiency in the highest branches of mathematical knowledge. In all the colleges at Cambridge such a degree was followed by the gift of a fellowship without examination, but at Trinity College it was given by examination; but there had been only one instance in which a senior wrangler had failed to obtain a fellowship. Mr. Stirling, therefore, might be as sure of a fellowship as any one could be in the uncertainty of human affairs. Mr. Stirling, however, happened to be attached to the Presbyterian Church, the service of which Her Majesty always attended when in Scotland. The Presbyterian Church did not differ in doctrine from the Church of England; and Mr. Stirling frequently attended the service of and communicated with the latter Church. But he did not wish it to be supposed that he was willing to sacrifice his religious principle for emolument, and therefore he declined to go in for a fellowship. Now, a Trinity fellowship was valued not so much a stipend for the discharge of particular duties, but as a reward for past attainments; and it had been enjoyed by many very distinguished 1216 men—by Lord Macaulay, Lord Lyndhurst, Lord Wensleydale, the present Chief Baron and a great many others. It might be said that Mr. Stirling had no cause of complaint, since he knew the laws of the college before he matriculated; and that moreover, his high abilities and proficiencies would inevitably make up shortly for the loss which he had sustained by not obtaining a fellowship. But he (Mr. Urquhart) wished to call the attention of the House to the circumstance, not so much for the sake of Mr. Stirling as of Trinity College itself—the college to which he had himself belonged, and for which he entertained a strong feeling of respect and affection. Was it possible, he asked, that Trinity College could maintain its preeminence in literature and science if it dispensed its highest rewards in so narrow and exclusive a spirit? He believed that the case had been submitted to the Cambridge University Commissioners, and that their answer was that they had no power to interfere in the matter. The Times said last year that the time might come when it would be necessary to give the Commissioners increased powers, and he wished to ask the right hon. Baronet the Home Secretary whether he did not think that that time had now arrived?
§ MR. ANDREW STEUARTsaid, before the right hon. Gentleman answered the question, he trusted he might be allowed to state what he knew of the case. After the hon. Member for Westmeath called attention to it last year, he had made it his business to inquire into the circumstances, and he had been informed by Mr. Stirling's friends that for years he had been a communicant of the Church of England, that he had regularly attended its services, and it was believed by his friends that he would have gone forward for a fellowship, and as a matter of course have taken it. But, he was told, such was the feeling of Mr. Stirling after the hon. Member for Westmeath last year called the attention of the House and the public to the subject, that, as a man of honour, he was unwilling to come forward for the fellowship lest it might appear that he was actuated by unworthy motives. These, he was assured, were the facts of the case.