In relation to the recent disgraceful proceedings at Queen's College,
Oxford, it seems to us that very inadequate penalties were awarded to the offenders, even without taking any account of the shocking blasphemy with which the University rowdies heightened the general brutality and indecency of their behaviour. We have read an account of what actually happened, by a quiet and respectable arologist of another College, which strikes us as showing the almost incredible amount of sympathy felt for such ungentlemanly and vulgar proceedings, even by those who are in no way responsible for them. He mentions the wine-party which preceded the disorder, and the loss of sobriety which resulted from it, and then remarks that, being in an uproarious condition, the revellers went round and "sagged" several men in their rooms, which he treats as quite common and hardly blameworthy. Then he explains that one man was denuded of his night-shirt, and made to run round the Quad in the snow, but remarks that the only really serious thing was the attempt to throw ridicule on the Communion Service by administering bread and whiskey to others of the revellers. The Dons, he thinks, were quite right in punishing this last atrocious bit of blasphemy severely ; but they took, he thinks, an unjustifiably harsh view of the other incidents "which ought to have been passed over." That a respectable undergraduate, not involved in any responsibility for the rowdyism, should take such a view of the matter, seems to us aleftost the worst aspect of the case. Of course the attempt to bring sacred things into coarse ridicule was beyond measure disgraceful; but why should the outrages on all decency and social rights which preceded it have been passed over P If they had been committed by men of a different class, the law would have dealt promptly with the assault, and, in our opinion, the ordinary law should be invoked in all cases of this sort.
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