The Lords debated the Test Abolition Bill on Monday, when
Lord Salisbury carried the absurd new test which we criticized last week by a somewhat bare majority, five, the Archbishop of York (Dr. Thomson) and the Bishop of Manchester (Dr. Fraser) both of them speaking as well as voting against it. The Marquis of Salisbury urged it on the House, almost solely from what he called the parents' point of view. He knew, he said, that according to the theory of University Liberals a "parent is only an inconvenient appendage to an Undergraduate." Still he held young men should be brought up as the parents wish, and the parents do wish that they should not be taught infidelity, and therefore he would pledge all teachers to teach nothing contrary to the Divine autho- rity of the Scriptures of the Old and New Testament. And this, although all the evidence taken before the Committee goes to prove that the Oxford tutors are most delicate in their aversion to sowing any doubts in the minds of their pupils, and that the scepticism actually disseminated there is mostly an utterly in- direct result of metaphysical study. As Lord Kimberley justly said, the only safeguard which meets Lord Salisbury's case would be an establishment of an Index Expurgatorius at Oxford, containing the names of all the books which are likely to shake the founda- tions of young men's faith. What he does propose is as wide of the mark as the famous remedy of shutting the stable door after the steed is stolen.
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