One of the most curious signs of weakness in tie:-
anole- ghts fcr the Council of University College, is, as the Pall
Mall Gazette observes, the wonderful variety and shifting,- 'less of the grounds taken by their advocates. Every con- ceivable ground has been taken in turn,—that Mr. Martineau is "unsound," i.e., not of Locke's school, as a philosopher ; that he is a Unitarian, that he is " eminent " as a Unitarian, that he is a "minister of religion," that he is "eminent" as a minister of reli- gion, that his appointment would overbalance the equilibrium of sects in favour of Unitarianism, that he holds a professorship in another college, that he is past sixty years of age. If it is not added that he is of an old Huguenot family, and that he has given a more generous appreciation to Roman Catho- lic schools of thought than any Protestant of his day, it is probably only because these pleas are not known to his opponents, and not because they are less relevant than many of those actually urged. Let us combine the objections alleged, and see what his opponents on the Council actually wish for. We suppose they desire to obtain a Trinitarian layman, or if a Trinitarian clergyman, then an obscure one,—in either case a man who has either not thought enough, or not to enough pur- pose, on religion, to render it worth while to write upon it, or, who, if he has written, has written so obscurely as to fail to attract attention,—who has never taught philosophy before, or at least is not teaching it now beyond the walls of University Col- lege, who is too young to have much experience, and who be- longs to the empirical school of thought. if that is what they really want, why not state it in the advertisements?
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