Page:A review of the state of the question respecting the admission of dissenters to the universities.djvu/23

21 Parliament. He neither attempts to divert the attention of his readers from the main question at issue, by ridiculing the custom of subscription to the Articles; nor dwells upon the favourite and oft-repeated sophistry of the right of interference with the colleges, on the ground of their endowments having been given by Roman Catholics, and therefore having been, as it is assumed, transferred at the Reformation to their present possessors by the state.

Instead of harping upon these paltry sophistries, he begins by making some admissions, in which nearly all the arguments of the supporters of Mr. Wood's bill are given up, and their views openly declared to be mischievous and absurd. He expressly disclaims all right or intention of interfering with the colleges—admits the incompatibility of the compulsory admission of Dissenters into them with the existing religious education, and religious observances, and fully allows the injustice and inexpediency of attempting to subvert that education and those observances, to facilitate the admission of Dissenters.

Having made these concessions—concessions entirely overthrowing all the arguments used by the advocates of the Dissenters in the last session of parliament, the reviewer proceeds to take up an entirely new ground, and to argue that the difficulty of the question arises solely from the departure that has taken place from the original constitution