We beg our readers also to remark the miserable economy, which holds out, in the shape of a boon to the Fellow who shall have spent twenty-one years in the faithful discharge of college duties, permission to retain his fellowship, exempt from such active employment, “subject to the payment of one-third of the profits thereof.” So that the Tutor who, for a third of a human life, has by his energy and ability sustained or made the reputation of his college, may find himself with failing health, or failing powers, pensioned off upon a stipend of some £100 or £150 per annum; for the case, indeed, of ill health incapacitating for an active share of college duties, or even for “earnest study”—not uncommon, alas! in men overstrained in the race for honours—has never entered into the calculations of our modern university reformers. “Work, work!” is their cry—“what else are you paid for?” One ground of complaint, too, which we think the University has, as a body, against the general tone of this bill, independently of any injustice in its enactments, is the distrust which is implied in these and other instances where free agency is curtailed, as well as in the attempt to guard jealously all exercise of power which is necessarily, but grudgingly, preserved. Perhaps this strict surveillance is held necessary in the present corrupt state of Oxford, but is to be removed when a regenerated University has grown to the full stature, and becomes entitled to the rights, of intellectual manhood. From Lord John Russell and Lord Palmerston such treatment might have been expected; in them it might have been the expression of an honest prejudice, and a pardonable misappreciation. To have assumed, as is done in clauses xxxiii. and xxxviii., 8, that Examiners and Electors would be found wanting in common honesty, and must be bound to the “strict performance of their duties” by declaration _or otherwise_—(convenient vagueness!)—might have been understood as a little ebullition of feeling, natural if not dignified; though we conclude no one would have attached much real weight to such futile precautions. The Examiner or Elector who betrays his trust by an unjust decision will not think much of supporting it by a lying declaration. An Act of Parliament, we have heard, can make a gentleman; we never yet heard that it could make an honest man. But Mr Gladstone, at least for his own credit, if not for theirs who trusted him, should have eliminated these gratuitous and unworthy passages before he allowed his name to appear on the back of this bill. He had more experience of such things, and knew the Oxford spirit better. He, for very shame, should not have put this moral bribery oath to those constituents who have thrice elected him—he knows on no selfish grounds—amidst much obloquy, and, in many instances, at much sacrifice of private interest and personal feeling.