Professor Bonamy Price, the ablest of the late Dr. Arnold's
Rugby coadjutors, and for many years back Professor of Political Economy at Oxford, died on Sunday afternoon at the age of eighty, after many months of declining health. He was born in Guernsey in 1807; became a pupil of the Rev. Charles Bradley, of High Wycombe, the father of the present Dean of Westminster, at the age of fourteen, whence he proceeded to Worcester College, Oxford ; took a double first-class in classics and mathematics in 1829; was appointed Mathematical Master at Rugby in 1830; was promoted to a classical mastership in the same school in 1832, and took charge there of the fifth form. In 1838 he succeeded Prince Lee, the late Bishop of Manchester, as master to "the twenty," the picked boys of the fifth form from amongst whom the vacancies in the sixth form were filled up by competition; and remained in the school till 1850, when he resigned his post, shortly before Dr. Tait left it for the Deanery of Carlisle. He was appointed between 1850 and 1868 a member of two Royal Commissions, one on the Scottish fisheries, which reported in favour of the branding of the Scotch herrings by the Government,—a report of which he was justly proud,—and one on the Queen's Colleges in Ireland. In 1868 he was elected to the Professorship of Political Economy at Oxford, which he filled with great ability till his death. And latterly he was a member both of the Duke of Richmond's Royal Commission on Agriculture, and Lord Iddesleigh's on the Depression of Trade. His separate report on the Irish Land Question in the former Commission, led to Mr. Gladstone's famous expression that he treated the Irish Land Question on the same abstract principles on which he would have treated a Land Question affecting the inhabitants of Saturn or Jupiter. Mr. Price was a warm Liberal, but as Liberal views gained ground, he became a strong Constitu- tionaiist, insisting on the necessity of a second Chamber, and on the importance of the House of Lords. He was a vivid thinker, a lively talker, and full of simple and genuine admiration for his many friends, even though they were greatly his own inferiors in power. He leaves in many minds and hearts a void which it will be impossible to fill.
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