Page:A review of the state of the question respecting the admission of dissenters to the universities.djvu/41

39 of "Lady Hewley's Charity." But if Dissenters of all denominations, by obtaining our degrees, were to become admissible also to these situations, this same grievous wrong would be done to the church, probably by wholesale: for the trustees of these foundations, with whom commonly the appointment of the master rests, are in many instances taken out of that class in which, and in which alone, the dissenting interest is strong—the class, namely, of tradesmen in the large towns. This was one of the principal grounds on which any strong objection was felt in this place to the granting of degrees by the London university. If it had been proposed to empower that, or any other establishment, to grant degrees different from those of the ancient universities, Fellows for instance, or Doctors of arts instead of Masters—Masters of civil law instead of Doctors, and which would not therefore have involved the acquisition of these privileges; though in common with the rest of the world we might have doubted the fitness of selecting that institution for peculiar privileges, we should, I imagine, have had no special objection as regarded ourselves. The same consequences which would have resulted from the Dissenters obtaining, through the London university, degrees the same as our own, would of course follow from their being admitted to degrees here, and this involves a wrong, for which it would be gross injustice not to provide a remedy.