Lord Derby tried to get an apology out of the
Lord Chancellor on Monday night for attributing to the University of Oxford in the recent debate something like a breach of engagement in refus- ing to endow the Oxford Professorship, but the University of Oxford certainly took very little by the noble Earl's move. It appears that the copyright of the Old and New Testament is in the Crown, but that the University Press is specially permitted to reprint them, and that the permission is worth something like 11,000/. to 12,000/. a year, and that this permission was entrusted to the University for public benefit and the "advancement of litera- ture," not as a mere endowment. The Lord Chancellor denied that he ever attributed to the University an express breach of a specific understanding of anykind, and withdrew the charge if he had made it ; but he persisted in saying that a University with privileges entrusted for such a purpose was not acting in good faith in deli- berately starving out one of the most industrious and learned pro- fessors of the University for a theological enmity. "If I receive money," said Lord Westbury, "for performing a duty, and say nothing, am I exempted from duty on the special plea that there was no understanding ?" "I am sorry the defence of the Uni- versity rests on no better ground. There is an old proverb against stirring up quod non bene olet." So Lord Westbury retracted the charge that the University was unfaithful to an "understanding," but substituted a general charge of untrust- worthy trusteeship, and of an odour, not of sanctity, about the motives of the injustice.
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