place the twelve defenders of this timid proposition in a minority; yet it must. be pleaded in extenuation that they did but re-affirm a verdict given by the House of Commons one month earlier. On November 25th, 1830, immediately after the formation of the Grey Ministry, the agitation in Oxford was such that a Proctor entered the rooms of the astonished Society, and requested their immediate dispersion on account of the disturbed state of the streets. The meetings were at that time held at Wyatt's in "the High," the spacious windows of which offered extraordinary temptation to any person who might not himself reside in a glass house, or might chance to overlook the fact of his doing so in the excitement of the moment. In March of the following year Sidney Herbert moved that "a Reform"-any reform, be it observed"in the system of parliamentary representation will ultimately prove destructive of the Constitution, and consequently of the Prosperity of this Country; and from behind that best safeguard of prophecy, the word "ultimately," eighty members hurled indignation against the remaining fifty-six who were blindly bent on their country's ruin. In April and May came the general election, destined to decide the fate of Reform. Of the two anti-reform members for Oxfordshire one had resigned; the other, young Lord Norreys, stood again. On the nomination-day he was met, a couple of miles from the city, by two or three hundred mounted undergraduates, while upwards of 800%. were subscribed in the various colleges and offered to him. It was at this juncture that "Mr. Palmer, Trinity," proposed to devote the whole funds of the Union to anti-reform purposes. The election, which in those times lasted for several days, produced intense excitement, and not a few Town-and-Gown rows, wherein Gown found pluck no match for numbers. On May 5th, therefore, the authorities of Christ Church closed their gates against exit, and the Union was deprived of the presence of its President; while on May 12th the state of the city rendered a meeting impossible. But on the 16th, Lord Norreys having resigned, began probably the grandest debate which the Union has ever witnessed, on a motion "That the present Ministry is incompetent to carry on the Government of the Country." It was adjourned to the 17th, when Gladstone proposed the terrible rider already quoted, and again to the 19th. In it took part twenty-five speakers, including on the one side Sidney Herbert, Palmer, the late Duke of Newcastle, Gladstone, and the late Earl of Elgin ; on the other, Lowe, Tait, and the proselyte Gaskell, The result was a foregone conclusion, but the Reform party were able to muster as two to five-38 to 94. Once afterwards they gathered in almost equal proportion to express their view that "continued opposition to the Reform Bill" was not "both useful and laudable:" but, so far as this question was concerned, they seem for the future to have almost "withdrawn from the Cortes." At least, on two subsequent occasions when the Union cautioned that deaf adder William IV. against creating fresh peers, they remonstrated only in feeble bands of five and eight against tyrannical majorities of ninety-two and forty-four. So much for the Oxford Union Society and Reform. When we remember that the man who has recently proclaimed himself in favour of county household suffrage denounced from within "Wyatt's Rooms" the comparatively modest measure of 1831 as threatening to "break up the very foundations of social order," let us look a little leniently on the erroneous judgments of the Oxford Union-reflecting withal that those who come forty years after us may espy the wallet on our back also. A word must be said as to the origin of that "Sunday question " which has in recent times proved so fruitful a theme of discussion to the Society. Before November, 1834, the rooms were open on Sunday, as on other days, until ten at night but in that month a motion for closing them was brought forward. Cardwell and Lowe opposed it, and Tait moved to open them between half-past three and nine. His amendment, however, was negatived without a division, and the original motion carried by 80 to 76. Vigorous efforts were subsequently made to restore the old state of things; but the dominant party mustered even stronger than before, and gradually reduced the repealers to silence. "On one occasion," says a since repentant member of the conquering faction (writing to the Pall Mall Gazette, Nov. 6th, 1866), "we succeeded, and on the night of the voting there was something very like a row, with window-breaking and other manifestations of avenging zeal not usual with decorous gownsmen. In company with Faber, who narrowly escaped serious damage, I was summoned the next day by the master of Balliol, and questioned as to the potency of the liquors with which we and others had celebrated our victory, and dismissed with flying colours." The repealers have since succeeded in reopening the rooms from half-past one until ten, nor is it probable that their success has yet reached its limit. There remains one debate of which mention must not be omitted. On November 26th, 1829, the Cambridge Union sent a deputation to persuade its younger sister of the superiority of Shelley over Byron. "At that time," said Lord Houghton, at the opening of the Cambridge Union's new premises in 1866, we were all very full of Mr. Shelley. We had printed his "Adonais" for the first time in England, and a friend of ours suggested that, as he had been expelled from Oxford, and very badly treated in that University, it would be a grand thing for us to defend him there. We were very much shocked, and our vanity not a little wounded, to find that nobody at Oxford knew anything about Mr. Shelley. In fact, a considerable portion of our audience believed it was Shenstone of whom we were speaking, and they said they knew only one poem of his beginning with the words 'My banks they are furnished with bees.'" On the other hand, an old Oxonian (Pall Mall Gazette, Nov. 2nd, 1866) declares that "we really were not so ignorant of Shelley as Lord Houghton makes us out. Either the tale of the Oxonian who confounded Shelley with Shenstone is ben trovato, or the Oxonian was facetious. We-that is, the reading men among us- -did know him, but we did not like him. Many of us were content with adhering to the simple proposition, that an atheist cannot be a poet; others, of less exclusive turn, were nevertheless satisfied that the rage for the newer bard was a mere fit of eccentricity and nonsensical Cambridge affectation, and that our old favourite Byron was worth a dozen of him." However that may have been, "with the full permission of the authorities here," says Lord Houghton, "we went to Oxford at that time a long, dreary post-chaise journey of ten hours-and we were hospitably entertained by a young student of the name of Gladstone." The leading journal of the following day states that they were "formally received by Gladstone of Christ Church and Manning of Oriel." Manning, however—he was then at Balliol— only assisted the remainder of the Committee in their reception; while Gladstone's hospitality was of a purely private character-he had but just joined the Union, had not as yet any official connexion with it, and did not deliver his maiden speech till some months later. He was, however, an Etonian, and it was by some of the leading Etonians in the two Societies that this visit was arranged. The debate was opened by the present Professor of Poetry at Oxford, Sir Francis Doyle, in favour of the Cambridge thesis: only two other Oxonians took part in it, of whom one, Archbishop Manning, was the single opponent of the motion. The Cantabs were all Trinity men-Sunderland, Hallam (Tennyson's Hallam), and Milnes (Lord Houghton). Of the spiritual eloquence of Hallam's speeches the 87th section of "In Memoriam" is probably the best monument. Of Sunderland, Lord Houghton himself says:— "There was one man, the greatest speaker, I think, I ever heard, a man with most strange oratorical gifts-a man of the name of Sunderland. He only lived in the memory of his own generation; he was only known to the Union of Cambridge." As to the effect produced by the three Cantabs, after an interval of nearly forty years it had not been effaced from the memory of two who were present. "What with the really extraordinary oratorical powers of Sunderland," wrote an old Oxonian in 1866, "and the curiously intense literary enthusiasm of poor Arthur Hallam, and the many-sided accomplishments of their distinguished survivor, we had not a chance of resistance." Let us also hear Archbishop Manning, the solitary antagonist of these most remarkable young men: "We Oxford men were precise, orderly, and morbidly afraid of excess in word or manner. The Cambridge oratory came in like a flood into a mill-pond. Both Monckton Milnes and Hallam took us aback by the boldness and freedom of their manner. But I remember the effect of Sunderland's declamation and action to this day. It had never been seen or heard before among us; we cowered like birds and ran like sheep. I acknowledge that we were utterly routed." What is the proverb about a man who "complies against his will"? Or was it from a determination not to be outdone in politeness that the Union voted by 90 to 33 the superiority of the Cambridge poet ? At any rate, the compliment paid by Byron in "English Bards and Scotch Reviewers" to the poetic merit of Oxford, as contrasted with that of his own University, was on this occasion gracefully, if unconsciously, reciprocated. Before Lowe, Cardwell, Tait, and Ward quitted the Union, there arose others capable of filling their places. Among these were the late Father Faber, Prebendary Trevor, Mr. Mowbray, and Justice Mellish. Faber spoke well as Secretary he used to prefix the letters A.S. (Anno Salutis) to the num ber of the year. Trevor came little, if at all, short of Lowe in the debates. Mr. Mowbray will have the satisfaction of seeing his son President of the Union at the approaching celebration. Since those days the Union has numbered among its officers a host of distinguished men: in politics alone we meet the names of Sir Stafford Northcote, Sir George Bowen, the AttorneyGeneral, Lord Dufferin, Mr. Ward Hunt, the Marquess of Salisbury, Mr. Knatchbull-Hugessen, Earl Beauchamp, Mr. Göschen, and the Hon. Auberon Herbertnot, however, as recently asserted, Mr. Gathorne Hardy, who (like his contemporary Dean Stanley) did not once break silence in the debates of his time. But beyond the first twelve years of the Union's existence the present paper does not purpose proceeding. Its aim has been twofold. The writer has essayed to give that which to the best of his knowledge has never been given, a slight but trustworthy outline of the earlier history of a great and illustrious society. He has further endeavoured to afford some account of the opinions entertained in youth by men on whose lips the world hangs in their maturer age. EDWARD B. NICHOLSON. |