He kept his word. Leading the Opposition in 1870, he supported Mr. Forster’s great measure, though he strongly opposed the Cowper-Temple Amendment--one which has undoubtedly kept much religious acrimony alive. His speech on these clauses can still be studied with advantage. In 1854, Lord John Russell introduced his bill for the “good government of the University of Oxford.” Here, again, Disraeli objected to undue Government interference. He thought that this “great seat of learning” should deal with these problems itself independently, and in the spirit of the age. It was designed to create professors on the Prussian model. Disraeli showed that in Prussia there was then small “sphere for the genius, the intellect, the talent, and the energy of Germany, except in the professorial chair.” There were not then great opportunities for a public career in Germany. “In this country you may increase the salaries as you please; but to suppose that you can produce a class of men like the German professors is chimerical.... We are a nation of action, and you may depend upon it that, however you may increase the rewards of professors ... ambition in England will look to public life.... You will not be able, however you think you may, to lay your hand upon twenty-five or thirty professors suddenly, capable of effecting a great influence on the youth of England. You cannot get these men at once. It will be slowly, with great difficulty, by fostering and cultivating your resources, that you will be able to produce one of these great professors--a man able to influence the public opinion of the University. Whether, then, you look to the great change which you propose with respect to these private halls, which is in fact a revolution of the collegiate system; or whether you look to the great alteration you contemplate by the revival of the professorial instead of the tutorial system--on both points you will meet, I think, with disappointment.... If I were asked, ‘Would you have Oxford, with its self-government, freedom, independence, but yet with its anomalies and imperfections; or would you have the University free from those anomalies and imperfections and under control of the Government?’ I would say, ‘Give me Oxford free and independent, with its anomalies and imperfections.’”[105]