LEAVE. FIRST READING. (Hansard, 25 April 1870)

THE SOLICITOR GENERAL
said, he had to ask for leave to introduce a Bill to alter the Law respecting Religious Tests in the Universities of Oxford, Cambridge, and Durham, and in the Halls and Colleges of those Universities. At that time of the night he would not enter upon any general remarks; but as the Bill he wished, as the organ of the Government, to bring in was somewhat different from those hitherto presented on that subject to the House, perhaps he might be allowed briefly to state its outlines. For some years past he and others, who had the conduct of that mea- 1811 sure, had endeavoured to confine its scope and operation to the Universities, and I the Universities alone. The proposal of the right hon. Member for Kilmarnock (Mr. Bouverie) had dealt separately with the question of the Colleges; but it had subsequently appeared to himself and others that the distinction between the University and the Colleges could not be maintained, and, consequently, with the full sanction of the right hon. Member for Kilmarnock, the two Bills had been amalgamated. That measure, however, still left it optional with the Colleges to repeal or not repeal the laws relating to religious tests, as far as their own societies were concerned, except as far as they might be restrained by their own statutes or ordinances; and last year the hon. Member for Brighton (Mr. Fawcett) proposed an Amendment which substantially took away that liberty, and made it compulsory on the Colleges to abolish those tests as well as on the University. To that Amendment he himself had offered a strenuous opposition; not that individually he and those who acted with him were opposed to it; but that they thought it perhaps not altogether right to permit an Amendment of so serious a character to be made in the Bill, without their having the courage to make it themselves; and further, that they had a hope that the measure then presented to the House might have been accepted by their opponents as a reasonable compromise for the settlement of a long-vexed question. That Amendment was accordingly resisted and rejected; and the Bill substantially as it had been proposed was sent up to the House of Lords by an overwhelming majority of this House. The Lords, however, declined to accord it even the decent honours of a second reading. That fact emancipated him, even if he stood as a private individual, from any further obligation to attempt to disregard, as, perhaps, he had too much done, the feelings of this House by keeping the measure in the form it had hitherto assumed. But the Government were not bound by any former acts of his, and they had thought it right in the present Bill to incorporate the Amendment of the hon. Member for Brighton, with, he trusted, some improvement of expression and detail, so as to render the measure a really full, complete, and comprehensive one on the great subject with which it dealt. The 1812 present Bill, therefore, placed the Universities and the Colleges precisely pari passû; it abolished absolutely all religious restrictions and tests in the Universities and the Colleges alike, and it left the Church of England on an exactly equal footing with every other religious body in the country as far as the operation of the law was concerned. The Church must maintain herself, if hereafter she was to maintain herself, by her own inherent power, by her influence, by her cultivation, by her personal worth, and not by force of law. The progress of opinion in matters of that kind in the minds of Churchmen on that side was gradual, and they were obliged to come to the conclusion that, in the altered state of things in which we lived, the Church was to be defended by different means and arguments from those by which she was defended 50 years ago; and she must rely on the hold she could maintain over the affections of the country—not on coercive or protective statutes. The proceedings of the other House must satisfy any reasonable man that any less complete and comprehensive mode than that they now proposed must fail to settle that question once for all. Further, since last year, the Universities themselves had spoken on the matter by the mouth of a most eminent and distinguished deputation to his right hon. Friend at the head of the Government; and it would not be well that Parliament should lag behind the open declaration of opinion made by that body. The Government proposed to deal with the Universities absolutely both for the present and the future; but in regard to the Colleges, they proposed to deal only with the Colleges now subsisting, while they left the founders of future Colleges perfectly free to enact anything they thought fit in the way of religious liberty or restriction in their statutes. As an individual, he thought it would be exceedingly illiberal to attempt to interfere with their complete freedom of action by legislative enactment, and the thing, if attempted, would be abortive. Exclusive societies could be founded if men chose to found them; and if they were to be founded, it would be better they should be founded in liberal institutions rather than in places where the associations would be less liberal than they hoped would be the case after the passing of that mea- 1813 sure. He did not deny that the Bill would affect the Church of England; but he did deny, as a matter of opinion, that it would injure that Church, which he "believed would maintain herself without the restrictions hitherto imposed by law. At any rate, he was satisfied that the measure was wise and just, and one that ought no longer to be delayed. The hon. and learned Gentleman concluded by moving that the Chairman be directed to move the House that leave be given to bring in the Bill.

MR. GATHORNE HARDY
said, he fully agreed with his hon. and learned Friend (the Solicitor General) that the position of the Church of England did not depend on this Bill, or any other which might be introduced even by the right hon. Gentleman at the head of the Government; but he could not think it would be a benefit to the Church of England to deprive her of her property. His hon. and learned Friend seemed to be of opinion that such a course would be of advantage to the Church; but he did not think her best friends would concur with the hon. and learned Gentleman in that opinion. The Solicitor General had spoken of the House of Lords as if it also needed improvement. Certainty his hon. and learned Friend had abandoned a conciliatory tone on the subject of the Universities, and was now at the point on which Gentlemen on the Opposition side had anticipated he would reach.

§ MR. SPENCER WALPOLE
said, he was taken somewhat by surprise at the statement that the Universities approved the principle on which this Bill was framed. He could undertake to say that at least two-thirds of the resident members of the University of Cambridge, many of whom took the most active part in the education given by that institution, were opposed to the kind of measure shadowed out by the hon. and learned Gentleman. Those gentlemen wore anxious that the fullest benefits of the education given by the University should be extended to every class of Her Majesty's subjects; but that the instruction carried on in the Colleges should be in future, as it had been hitherto, based on religion, and that the religious teaching and character of the Colleges should remain unimpaired. He believed the same to be the feeling in the University of Oxford.