Your letter has followed me to this place, which must be my
apology for not replying to it at once. I was indeed annoyed at the
reversal of our judgment in your case at the University Court,—the
more so considering how the Court,—at all times a most absurd body to
review the decisions of the Senate—was constituted on that particular
occasion. I have not a copy of the Universities Act with me, and I
cannot therefore express any opinion as to whether this decision falls
under the category of those which are reversible by the Queen in
Council. If it does belong to this category I should say that your
best course was at once to carry it there, and I should say, with the
majority you had both in the Medical Faculty and in the Senatus, that
the reversal of the decision of so very insignificant and prejudged a
body as the Court was which judged of your case was pretty nearly
certain. If this cannot be done—which Masson or Playfair or Sir A.
Grant will at once tell you,—then I suspect the best thing is to bring
the case before the next meeting of the University Council. It has no
power to decide, but it may recommend to the University Court, and
that will bring the matter up again, and the constitution of the Court
can be better looked after than it appears to have been this time. It
may be also—though here again I am speaking without the Act, that such
a recommendation could be carried beyond the Court to the Queen in
Council. Any claim to admission on a legal construction of the Charter
would involve you in a law-suit which would not be decided for years
and would cost _x_=£s.!! Against that course I have no hesitation in
advising you, as a question of personal interest and comfort, though
of the legal merits of the question I can say nothing. I certainly, in
your case, however, would lose no time in seeing the Lord Advocate.
Substantially, I think he will be with you, and his advice in all such
matters is of great value, and will, I feel sure, be willingly given.
Mrs. Lorimer joins me in very kind regards, and in sympathy for the
annoyance which you are subjected to, and I am,
Yours very faithfully,
J. LORIMER.”
In a later letter Professor Lorimer says:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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