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A SPEECH

DELIVERED IN

THE HOUSE OF COMMONS ON THE 9TH OF JULY, 1845.

On the first of May, 1845, Mr. Rutherfurd, Member for Leith, obtained leave to bring in a bill to regulate admission to the Secular Chairs in the Universities of Scotland. On the morning of the sixth of May the bill was read a first time, and remained two months on the table of the House. At length the second reading was fixed for the ninth of July. Mr. Rutherfurd was unable to attend on that day; and it was necessary that one of his friends should supply his place. Accordingly, as soon as the Order of the day had been read, the following Speech was made.

But,

On a division the bill was rejected by 116 votes to 108. in the state in which parties then were, this defeat was generally considered as a victory.

MR. SPEAKER,

I HAVE been requested by my honorable and learned friend, the Member for Leith, to act as his substitute on this occasion. I am truly sorry that any substitute should be necessary. I am truly sorry that he is not among us to take charge of the bill which he not long ago introduced with one of the most forcible and luminous speeches that I ever had the pleasure of hearing. His audience was small; but the few who formed that audience cannot have forgotten the effect which his arguments and his eloquence produced. The Ministers had come down to resist his motion: but their courage failed them: they hesitated: they conferred together: at last they consented that he should have leave to bring in his bill. Such, indeed, was the language which they held on that and on a subsequent occasion, that both my honorable and learned friend and myself gave them more credit than they deserved. We really believed that they had resolved to offer no opposition to a law which it was quite evident that they perceived to be just and beneficial. But we

have been disappointed. It has been notified to us that the whole influence of the Government is to be exerted against our bill. In such discouraging circumstances it is that I rise to move the second reading.

Yet, Sir, I do not altogether despair of success.

When

I consider what strong, what irresistible reasons we have to urge, I can hardly think it possible that the mandate of the most powerful administration can prevail against them. Nay, I should consider victory, not merely as probable, but as certain, if I did not know how imperfect is the information which English gentlemen generally possess concerning Scotch questions. It is because I know this that I think it my duty to depart from the ordinary practice, and, instead of simply moving the second reading, to explain at some length the principles on which this bill has been framed. I earnestly entreat those English Members who were not so fortunate as to hear the speech of my honorable and learned friend, the Member for Leith, to favor me with their attention. They will, I think, admit, that I have a right to be heard with indulgence. I have been sent to this house by a great city which was once a capital, the abode of a Sovereign, the place where the Estates of a realm held their sittings. For the general good of the empire, Edinburgh descended from that high eminence. But, ceasing to be a political metropolis, she became an intellectual metropolis. For the loss of a court, of a Privy Council, of a Parliament, she found compensation in the prosperity and splendour of an University renowned to the farthest ends of the earth as a school of physical and moral science. This noble and beneficent institution is now threatened with ruin by the folly of the Government, and by the violence of an ecclesiastical faction which is bent on persecution without having the miserable excuse of fanaticism. Nor is it only the University of Edinburgh that is in danger. In pleading for that University, I plead for all the great academical institutions of Scotland. The fate of all depends on the event of this debate; and, in the name of all, I demand the attention of every man who loves either learning or religious liberty.

The first question which we have to consider is, whether the principles of the bill be sound. I believe that they are sound; and I am quite confident that nobody who sits on the Treasury Bench will venture to pronounce them unsound. It does not lie in the mouths of the Ministers to say that literary instruction and scientific instruction are inseparably

connected with religious instruction. It is not for them to rail against Godless Colleges. It is not for them to talk with horror of the danger of suffering young men to listen to the lectures of an Arian professor of Botany or of a Popish professor of Chemistry. They are themselves at this moment setting up in Ireland a system exactly resembling the system which we wish to set up in Scotland. Only a few hours have elapsed since they were themselves labouring to prove that, in a country in which a large proportion of those who require a liberal education are dissenters from the Established Church, it is desirable that there should be schools without theological tests. The right honorable Baronet at the head of the Government proposes that in the new colleges which he is establishing at Belfast, Cork, Limerick, and Galway, the professorships shall be open to men of every creed; and he has strenuously defended that part of his plan against attacks from opposite quarters, against the attacks of zealous members of the Church of England, and of zealous members of the Church of Rome. Only the day before yesterday the honorable Baronet the Member for North Devon* ventured to suggest a test as unobjectionable as a test could well be. He would merely have required the professors to declare their general belief in the divine authority of the Old and New Testaments. But even this amendment the First Lord of the Treasury resisted, and I think quite rightly. He told us that it was quite unnecessary to institute an inquisition into the religious opinions of people whose business was merely to teach secular knowledge, and that, it was absurd to imagine that any man of learning would disgrace and ruin himself by preaching infidelity from the Greek chair or the Mathematical chair.

Some members of this House certainly held very different language but their arguments made as little impression on Her Majesty's Ministers as on me. We were told with the utmost earnestness that secular knowledge, unaccompanied by a sound religious faith, and unsanctified by religious feeling, was not only useless, but positively noxious, a curse to the possessor, a curse to society. I feel the greatest personal kindness and respect for some gentlemen who hold this language. But they must pardon me if I say that the proposition which they have so confidently laid down, however well it may sound in pious ears while it is expressed in general terms, will appear, as soon as it is applied to the real concerns

* Sir Thomas Acland.

of life, to be too monstrous, too ludicrous, for grave refutation. Is it seriously meant that, if the Captain of an Indiaman is a Socinian, it would be better for himself, his crew, and his passengers, that he should not know how to use his quadrant and his chronometers? Is it seriously meant that, if a druggist is a Swedenborgian, it would be better for himself and his customers that he should not know the difference between Epsom salts and oxalic acid? A hundred millions of the Queen's Asiatic subjects are Mahometans and Pagans. Is it seriously meant that it is desirable that they should be as ignorant as the aboriginal inhabitants of New South Wales, that they should have no alphabet, that they should have no arithmetic, that they should not know how to build a bridge, how to sink a well, how to irrigate a field? If it be true that secular knowledge, unsanctified by true religion; is a positive evil, all these consequences follow. Yet surely they are consequences from which every sane mind must recoil. It is a great evil, no doubt, that a man should be a heretic or an atheist. But I am quite at a loss to understand how this evil is mitigated by his not knowing that the earth moves round the sun, that, by the help of a lever, a small power will lift a great weight, that Virginia is a republic, or that Paris is the capital of France.

On these grounds, Sir, I have cordially supported the Irish Colleges Bill. But the principle of the Irish Colleges and the principle of the bill which I hold in my hand are exactly the same and the House and the country have a right to know why the authors of the former bill are the opponents of the latter bill. One distinction there is, I admit, between Ireland and Scotland. It is true that in Scotland there is no clamour against the Union with England. It is true that in Scotland no demagogue can obtain applause and riches by slandering and reviling the English people. It is true that in Scotland there is no traitor who would dare to say that he regards the enemies of the state as his allies. In every extremity the Scottish nation will be found faithful to the common cause of the empire. But her Majesty's Ministers will hardly, I think, venture to say that this is their reason for refusing to Scotland the boon which they propose to confer on Ireland. And yet, if this be not their reason, what reason can we find? Observe how strictly analogous the cases are. You give it as a reason for establishing in Ireland colleges without tests that the Established Church of Ireland is the Church of the minority. Unhappily it may well be

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doubted whether the Established Church of Scotland, too, be not now, thanks to your policy, the Church of the minority. It is true that the members of the Established Church of Scotland are about a half of the whole population of Scotland; and that the members of the Established Church of Ireland are not much more than a tenth of the whole population of Ireland. But the question now before us does not concern the whole population. It concerns only the class which requires academical education: and I do not hesitate to say that, in the class which requires academical education, in the class for the sake of which universities exist, the proportion of persons who do not belong to the Established Church is as great in Scotland as in Ireland. You tell us that sectarian education in Ireland is an evil. Is it less an evil in Scotland? You tell us that it is desirable that the Protestant and the Roman Catholic should study together at Cork. it less desirable that the son of an elder of the Established Church and the son of an elder of the Free Church should study together at Edinburgh? You tell us that it is not reasonable to require from a Professor of Astronomy or Surgery in Connaught a declaration that he believes in the Gospels. On what ground, then, can you think it reasonable to require from every Professor in Scotland a declaration that he approves of the Presbyterian form of church government? I defy you, with all your ingenuity, to find one argument, one rhetorical topic, against our bill which may not be used with equal effect against your own Irish Colleges Bill.

It

Is there any peculiarity in the academical system of Scotland which makes these tests necessary? Certainly not. The academical system of Scotland has its peculiarities; but they are peculiarities which are not in harmony with these tests, peculiarities which jar with these tests. is an error to imagine that, by passing this bill, we shall establish a precedent which will lead to a change in the constitution of the Universities of Cambridge and Oxford. Whether such a change be or be not desirable is a question which must be decided on grounds quite distinct from those on which we rest our case. I entreat English gentlemen not to be misled by the word University. That word means two different things on the two different sides of the Tweed. The academical authorities at Cambridge and Oxford stand in a parental relation to the student. They undertake, not merely to instruct him in philology, geometry, natural philosophy, but to form his religious opinions, and to watch over his morals. He is to be bred a Churchman. At Cambridge

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