--was one
of the best measures in the history of this government of good measures
(1869). It dealt with many hundreds of schools, and with an annual income
of nearly six hundred thousand pounds. As the Endowed Schools bill was one
of the best measures of the government, so it was Mr. Forster's best piece
of legislative work. That it strengthened the government can hardly be
said; the path of the reformer is not rose-strewn.(196)

VI

(M99) In one region Mr. Gladstone long lagged behind. He had done a fine
stroke of national policy in releasing Oxford from some of her antique
bonds in 1854;(197) but the principle of a free university was not yet
admitted to his mind. In 1863 he wrote to the vice-chancellor how entirely
the government concurred in the principle of restricting the governing
body of the university and the colleges to the church. The following year
he was willing to throw open the degree; but the right to sit in
convocation he guarded by exacting a declaration of membership of the
church of England.(198) In 1865 Mr. Goschen--then beginning to make a mark
as one of the ablest of the new generation in parliament, combining the
large views of liberal Oxford with the practical energy of the city of
London, added to a strong fibre given him by nature--brought in a bill
throwing open all lay degrees. Mr. Gladstone still stood out, conducting a
brisk correspondence with dissenters. "The whole controversy," he wrote to
one of them, "is carried on aggressively, as if to disturb and not to
settle. Abstract principles urged without stint or mercy provoke the
counter-assertion of abstract principles in return. There is not power to
carry Mr. Goschen's speech either in the cabinet, the parliament, or the
country. Yet the change in the balance of parties effected by the
elections will cast upon the liberal majority a serious responsibility. I
would rather see Oxford level with the ground, than its religion regulated
in the manner which would please Bishop Colenso."

Year by year the struggle was renewed. Even after the Gladstone government
was formed, Coleridge, the solicitor-general, was only allowed in a
private capacity to introduce a bill removing the tests. When he had been
two years at the head of administration, Mr. Gladstone warned Coleridge:
"For me individually it would be beyond anything odious, I am almost
tempted to say it would be impossible, after my long connection with
Oxford, to go into a new con