Chapter XXXI, of Cassells Illustrated History of England, Volume 9 page 2

A bill for the abolition of religious tests in the universities and colleges of Oxford and Cambridge was brought in this year (February, 1869) by the Solicitor-General, Sir John Coleridge. With regard to the universities, the bill rendered unlawful, not only the requirement of any subscription or other test from the candidate for any university degree, but also the exaction of any declaration in the nature of a religious test from any professor, teacher, lecturer, or university officer of any kind, as a condition of his taking or holding office. With regard to the colleges, the bill only removed all restrictions upon their freedom of action which had been imposed on them from time to time by the authority of Parliament itself. "It leaves the colleges," said the Solicitor-General, "controlled by their statutes; it leaves them controlled by the feelings of their members; it leaves them controlled by all the associations which gather round them, and which are, after all, upon most men's minds as effective as any parliamentary action can be; and it relieves them only from those restrictions which have been imposed from time to time by Acts of Parliament." He mentioned the case of a Jew who had come out Senior Wrangler at Cambridge that very year, but was deprived by his religion of that natural culmination and reward of great academical distinction which a fellowship usually conferred. Other cases, he added, had come under his knowledge of Oxford men who had renounced fellowships and other offices of emolument sooner than subscribe their belief unreservedly to every part of the Thirty-nine Articles. In cases such as these, should a college desire to open its doors more widely, it would no longer, should his bill become law, be impeded in doing so by the operation of any law of the land. Its own statutes might still hamper its action in the direction of liberty, but a method of altering these, should the great majority of the governing body desire it, had already been provided by the University Reform Act of 1854. It was true that there were certain colleges the statutes of which could not be altered without the con sent of their respective visitors, and that these visitors were sometimes bishops, who were professionally unlikely to be willing to extend the benefit of the foundation to Nonconformists. This defect the present bill did not deal with, but the Solicitor-General pretty clearly intimated that it would be made the subject of future legislation.

Mr. Mowbray, the new Conservative member for the University of Oxford (who had lately been elected to the seat held for many years with so much dignity and suavity by the excellent Sir William Heathcote), spoke in opposi tion to the bill; but the general feeling of the House was strongly in its favour. It even received the powerful sup port of Sir Roundell Palmer, who announced that, since the question was last discussed in the House, reflection had induced him considerably to modify the point of view from which he had formerly regarded it. He was now opposed to tests, partly because they were ineffective for the purpose intended; partly because, even if effective, they were impolitic. They were ineffective to keep out the unprincipled atheist or sceptic, who was ready to swallow with a philosophic smile the toughest theological formula that might be presented to him. Nor were they of the slightest use in the case of a man who was orthodox at the time of taking the test, but had subsequently become a free-thinker, since neither law nor custom permitted that a man who had once become a member of Convocation should be liable to any further questioning. But even if they were supposed to operate effectually to the exclusion of all but orthodox Churchmen, Sir Roundell Palmer was now disposed to doubt the policy of retaining them. It was vain, he thought, to endeavour to keep the universities up to a level of churchmanship essentially higher than that which prevailed in society at large. In proportion as members of the Nonconformist body forced their way to the front in all departments of political and social life, in that, or nearly in that, proportion it was desirable that they should be found also among the governing and representative men of the universities. If Churchmen had no cause to dread the competition of Nonconformists on the former fields, neither need they dread it on the latter. These remarkable admissions show that, even in the mind of so sound a Churchman as Sir Roundell Palmer, the questions at issue between the Church and Dissent no longer appeared as questions of principle. For if he had deemed the principles of Dissenters, as such, to be false and pernicious, and the principles of Churchmen to be true and salutary, the circumstance that the former were making their way in general society would not have induced him to open the seats of the higher education to their influence, but rather to keep their atmosphere untainted as long as possible. A man might consistently allow his children to try several different systems of diet, but he would not be justified in allowing them to feed on what he knew to be poisonous. If Sir Roundell Palmer, with many Conservatives, was willing to throw open the universities to the Dissenters, it must have been because they recognised the fact, that no vital differences of principle separated them from members of the Church of England. At the same time, in order to guard the principle of religious education, and give to it more prominent expression in the language of the bill itself, Sir Roundell Palmer proposed a slight alteration in the preamble, and the introduction of two new clauses. By the first, the established system of religious worship, education, and discipline within the colleges was expressly reserved intact. By the second, it was provided that every professor, tutor, or lecturer in an English university should, after his appointment, and before entering on the duties of his office, make and subscribe a declaration before the Vice-Chancellor, or before the head of his college, that he would " never endeavour, directly or indirectly, to teach or inculcate any opinion opposed to the divine authority of the Holy Scriptures, or to the doctrine or discipline of the Church of England as by law established." A test similar to this, but omitting, of course, all reference to the Church of England, was substituted in 1853 in lieu of the old and rigid Calvinistic test for lay professors in the Scotch universities. After an admirable speech from Dr. Lyon Playfair in support of the bill, it was considered in committee. Sir Roundell Palmer carried the first of his two clauses without difficulty, but abandoned the second, mainly, it would seem, in consequence of an appeal from Dr. Lyon Playfair, whoso long and intimate acquaintance with the Scotch universities enabled him to speak with authority. The corresponding declaration required of lay professors in Scotland was, he admitted, not felt nor objected to, because it was considered to be, on the whole, " innocent and irrelevant; " but it had degenerated into a mere formality, and could not be supposed to exercise the slightest preservative effect on the religious belief of either professors or students. " It is not that tes," added the honourable gentleman, " which preserves religion in our Scotch universities, but the inherent truths of religion itself." The bill then passed through committee, and was read a third time.

"When, however, the University Tests Bill reached the Lords, it was treated with little ceremony. It was past the middle of July, and the Peers were still smarting under the sense of the disrespectful treatment which their amendments to the Irish Church Bill had met with in the other House, and indignant at the menacing comments of the press. Farther in the road of Liberalism they were resolved not to be pushed this session. Lord Carnarvon, when the bill came on for the second reading, moved the previous question, and, after a short and unimportant debate, his motion was carried on a division by a majority of 91 to 54.

The attention of Parliament was taken up on many nights during this session by a singular incident, half painful, half ludicrous, which occurred in the sister island. While the Parliament sitting at Westminster was endeavouring, in the midst of difficulty and opposition, to remedy a long-standing grievance affecting the majority of the Irish people, a perverse faction in Ireland, as if to show that neither justice nor equity would ever satisfy them, but that they hated for hatred's sake, was applauding a magistrate for publicly expressing his sympathy with the act of the Fenian assassin who shot at the Duke of Edinburgh. Mr. Daniel O'Sullivan had been elected by the corporation Mayor of Cork for the year 1869. Under the Municipal Act for Ireland, the Mayor is a justice of peace for the city of Cork during his year of office, and cannot be removed either by the Lord Lieu tenant or by the Government. Soon after the beginning of the year Mr. O'Sullivan commenced to sit as a magistrate in the police court of Cork. From almost the first day that he took his seat on the bench down to the beginning of May his conduct was systematically devoted to lowering the administration of the law and bringing it into contempt, and in using insulting and abusive language towards his brother magistrates. He would say that "he was there by the will of the people;" "his opinion on that bench was as good as the biggest Orange man's in the country;" "the prejudices of the other magistrates were against the people;" "he would apply to have all the magistrates suspended." But all this was a trifle compared to what followed. On the 27th April, the Mayor presided at a banquet given in Cork in honour of two discharged Fenian prisoners, called Colonel Warren and Costello. In proposing the toast of "Our exiled countrymen," the Mayor said that " he believed a spirit of concession had been aroused on the part of the dominant race. He did not say whether it was owing to Fenianism, or to the barrel placed outside the prison at Clerkenwell; but he believed he paid a solemn act of justice to his own countrymen - as solemn an act of justice as if he were a high priest - when he said those noble men, Allen, Barrett, Larkin, and O'Brien, who sacrificed their lives for their country, ought to be remembered and respected as good Catholics and good patriots. There was at this moment in the country a young prince of the Irish nation. When that noble Irishman, O'Farrell, fired at the Prince in Australia, he was imbued with as noble and patriotic feelings as Larkin, Allen, and O'Brien were." (Here the speaker was interrupted by great cheering, and cries of " He was.") " He believed that O'Farrell would be as highly thought of as any of the men who had sacrificed their lives for Ireland. They all saw how a noble Pole had fired at the Emperor of Russia, because he thought that the Emperor was trampling upon the liberties of the people. Well, O'Farrell probably was actuated by the same noble impulses when he fired at the Prince. O'Farrell was as noble an Irishman as the Pole, and as true to his country, for each was impelled by the same sentiment to do what they did." This foolish and criminal rant was received with loud demonstrations of applause by Mr. O'Sullivan's audience. The Government was soon informed of what had happened, and the con duct of the Mayor formed the subject of more than one interpellation in Parliament. It was not to be borne that these incitements to assassination should be addressed to an excitable population by the responsible upholder of law and order in an important city. The hands of the Government were presently strengthened by receiving a memorial addressed to the Irish Executive by more than thirty magistrates of the city of Cork, presided over by the Lord Lieutenant of the county, Lord Fermoy, in which complaint was made of the seditious language and disorderly behaviour of the Mayor, as tending to spread disaffection, and to throw contempt on the administration of justice. There was not much time k> be lost, for the Mayor of Cork is entitled by his office to sit as first commissioner in any commission to be executed within the county of Cork; so that, unless promptly deposed or disenabled, Mr. O'Sullivan would be associated with Her Majesty's judges in the Commission of Assize during the ensuing summer. What, then, was to be done P No executive authority, either in England or Ireland, possessed the power by law of dismissing the Mayor. The Attorney-General for Ireland might be instructed to file a bill against him, but the process would be too dilatory, since the trial could hardly come on before October. There was no resource but legislation; a general law might be passed, placing the mayors of all Irish corporations under the control of the Crown; or else a short Act, disqualifying Mr. O'Sullivan by name, but affecting the rights of no other person. The Government preferred the latter course, and the "O'Sullivan Disability Bill" was prepared accordingly, and leave to introduce it was moved for by the Irish Attorney-General (Mr. Sullivan) on the 5th May. The learned gentleman admitted that this mode of dealing with the offence charged was exceptional, but he maintained that the circumstances of the case were exceptional in the highest degree. Nor was precedent entirely wanting, for in the reign of George II. the Government of the day had procured the enactment of a similar special law, for the purpose of deposing the Lord Provost of Edinburgh from his office, that functionary being held to have shown weakness and timidity in dealing with the mob on the occasion of the celebrated Porteous riots. A long and animated discussion followed; but in the end leave was given to bring in the bill, a copy of which, and of the order for the second reading, was ordered to be forthwith served on Mr. O'Sullivan. The bill purported to disable Daniel O'Sullivan, Esq., from holding, enjoying, or taking the office of mayor or justice of the peace, or any office or place of magistracy, in the city of Cork or elsewhere in Ireland. The bill was read a first time, and witnesses were ordered to attend and be examined at the bar of the House on the occasion of the second reading. But on the day appointed for the second reading, when counsel in support of the bill were about to be heard, and witnesses examined, Mr. Maguire, one of the members for Cork, rose and produced a letter, which he read, from Mr. O'Sullivan, placing his resignation of the mayoralty in the hands of Mr. Maguire and the O'Donoghue. In fairness to the Mayor, one or two sentences from this letter ought to be quoted. He declared, in the most solemn and emphatic manner, that the language attributed to him did not in any way express or represent his real meaning; and, further, he solemnly declared that he would himself be the first person to rush to the protection of human life if he knew it to be in danger. " I may also state that I look to the regeneration of my country through constitutional and remedial measures such as that [the Irish Church Act] now passing through the House of Commons, and my belief that the battle of my country is to be fought on the floor of that House." Mr. O'Sullivan must surely have held with the cynic philosopher, that " language was given to man to conceal his thoughts; " for if these were indeed his sentiments, no language could have been devised better calculated to disguise them than that which he used at the Fenian banquet. After hearing the letter, Mr. Gladstone rose and said that, assuming Mr. O'Sullivan's resignation to be, though not technically, yet really and substantially complete, the Government would proceed no further with the Disability Bill.