The Council meets on the 26th June, and everything must be sent in before that date. I have seen Mr. [W. E.] Forster who has telegraphed to your secretary this evening. We have the draft of our petition at O[wens] College if you wish to consult it. It is most important to get this done and to get your Archbishop to sign. The next letter, so far as regards the Victoria University, requires some explanation. The then Chairman of the Council of the Yorkshire College, the late Dr. Heaton, was not wholly friendly to the idea of a new northern university, and ultimately he dissociated himself from his colleagues on this particular question. He was never able to persuade himself that another university was actually needed or was desirable. In his judgment the interests of higher education, so far at least as the creation of degree-granting bodies could serve them, were sufficiently assured in England by the existence of the universities of Oxford, Cambridge, and London. He viewed with considerable apprehension the attempt to establish rival universities: he imagined that the stress of competition for students might lower the standard of scholarship. Above all he was strongly opposed, in what he thought the true interests of the medical profession, to the increase in the number of possible avenues to practice: in his opinion there were already too many for an efficient standard of qualification to be maintained. It was perhaps characteristic of him to suppose that the immediate, and indeed the ultimate, effect of the establishment of the university in Manchester would be not to hearten and rouse his colleagues to fresh exertions in order to make the Leeds College worthy to be received as a member of the University: on the contrary, he thought that, by force of circumstances, the enthusiasm of the friends of that institution would be gradually damped, and their energy proportionally weakened, as the neighbouring College grew in power and prestige after being raised to the dignity of a university. He was specially concerned about the future of the Leeds Medical School, of which he had been a member for many years. It was well established and had an excellent record, but its position would, he considered, be undermined and its continued existence jeopardized by the proximity of a school attached to a degree-giving body. He was not able to carry his colleagues on the Council of the Yorkshire College with him in his view of the probable influence of the new University on its fortunes. As the sequel proved, he entirely misconceived its effect: so far from weakening the energies of its friends, events showed that it acted as the most powerful stimulus the Leeds College ever received. But Dr. Heaton’s authority and influence with respect to the Medical School enabled him to carry his point in regard to the proposed medical degrees, and the Yorkshire representatives were instructed to disavow any wish that power