Subsequent speakers, in so far as they went over the same ground, merely ploughed with Dr. Playfair’s heifer. The Marquess of Ripon was not discouraged by the small beginnings of the undertaking. All the experiences of the past showed that those institutions which had taken the deepest root, and which had flourished the longest and wielded ultimately the most extensive influence, had sprung from small beginnings. Our ancient universities had mainly sprung from individual effort, and from private endowment. We were not less wealthy than our ancestors who founded them. Surely we could do now what they did before us. He trusted that there was not to be any doubt as to the future of this institution. We were told that its managers had acted to a great extent upon faith; that they had been doing their work partly out of capital in the confidence that that capital would be repaid them by the good sense and generosity of their countrymen. Of all those who followed, and who pleaded the cause of the College, none was received with greater heartiness and enthusiasm than Mr. W. E. Forster, and there was none whose speech had a deeper or more genuine note of sympathy and encouragement. There were perhaps special reasons for the warmth of the welcome with which he was greeted. The political circumstances of the time were peculiar, and Mr. Forster was known to be the undeserved victim of them. The Liberal party was then in opposition, and Mr. Gladstone earlier in the year had suddenly thrown up his position as its leader. Public opinion had designated Mr. Forster as one of the two or three politicians of eminence who might fitly be regarded as his successor. But a considerable section of the Nonconformist Radicals never forgave Mr. Forster for his action—or what they supposed to be his sole action—respecting the religious question in the Education Act of 1870. Led by the Birmingham League, they were determined to make his selection as the party leader impossible. The League party in his own constituency of Bradford passed a resolution hostile to his claims. Eventually, rather than divide the Liberal party, Mr. Forster withdrew from the contest, and Lord Hartington, whom all sections were willing to follow, was chosen. These circumstances were well known to everybody in that large audience, and most moderate-minded men in it had the fullest sympathy with what Mr. Gladstone called “the thoroughly genuine and independent character” whose natural ambition as a statesman had been so rudely checked by the sectarian rancour of political allies. This was his reward for the wise and statesmanlike measure of 1870—one of the finest achievements to the credit of the Liberal party.