Lord Salisbury returned hastily from Francelast week, to strike one
parting blow at the Government. In the House of Commons, some few University men, Professor Bryce, the able Member for the Tower Hamlets, who knows the academical needs of Oxford as few men know them, being, we believe, one of the leaders, had introduced into the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge (Statutes) Bill an amendment enabling the Govern- ment to add to the Universities Committee of the Privy Council, —a Committee empowered to send back to the Commission statutes which seem to them to need alteration, and even in some cases to alter them without any such reference,—two additional members, which would have given the Government a majority in that Committee,— a wholesome enough power, sure to be most moderately and conservatively used. Lord Salisbury, however, would not suffer it. He returned from Dieppe on purpose to move the rejection of this amendment yesterday week, and, of course, at that absolutely last moment of the Session, this involved the rejection of the Bill. The Chancellor of the University of Oxford could not bear to concede to a Liberal Government the power of making the least conceivable adminis- trative change in the great University, over the fostering of whose Conservatism he watches sleeplessly, but in vain.
