Perhaps the argument most decisive with the Court was that given by Roscoe. He said they had to consider the large number of persons who came to the Owens College for special instruction, and more particularly for engineering and mathematics, but who had never been at any school where Latin was taught. Those were the men who carried off the best engineering prizes, and for them it was that this door had wisely been kept open. They must not be guided by what Oxford or Cambridge had done, but by what was good for their own district and what was advisable at the present moment. Let them remember what a number of men such as he had mentioned there were in their neighbourhood, and how flourishing were the mathematical schools, and then let them say whether they could cut off those schools and men from university education. The “innovators” won the day by a majority of 2 to 1, and thus effected “the dethronement, never to rise again, of this mischievous idol.” It was amusing to notice the perturbation which this departure from a time-honoured tradition caused in certain scholastic circles and among the self-styled “friends of culture.” But on the whole the action was favourably commented upon by the more influential newspapers and leading educational journals. It was regarded as the inevitable consequence of modern necessity, and of the gradual recognition that the traditions of mediæval schoolmen were not sacrosanct or necessarily the best adapted to new requirements. In drafting the Constitution of the new University power was of course taken in accordance with established procedure, and in deference to the democratic tendencies of British seats of learning, to form the body known as Convocation, and those of the former students of Owens College who came within certain definitions were made its first members.