Page:Notes on the Anti-Corn Law Struggle.djvu/132

 degrees of B.A. and B.L. in 1824, and the degree of M.A. three years later.

While an undergraduate at Cambridge, Mr. Villiers was a member of the "Union," a debating society, in which whether he was or was not a frequent speaker I cannot say, for though at that time I was an undergraduate of Trinity College, Cambridge, I was not a member of the "Union," and the only members of the "Union" whose names emerged beyond the walls of the "Union" debating-room were T. B. Macaulay and W. M. Praed. There were others who became noted afterwards, among whom may be named Sir Alexander Cockburn, Lord Chief Justice of the Queen's Bench; Charles Buller, and Charles Austin, whose unequalled success as a parliamentary counsel, by keeping him out of Parliament, possibly prevented him from being Prime Minister.

When Charles Villiers went to St. John's College, Cambridge, towards the end of the first quarter of the nineteenth century, an intensely aristocratic spirit prevailed over every part of Great Britain, and manifested itself in great force at the University of Cambridge. Rent of land was looked upon as the only respectable source of revenue. The profits of trade were only fitted for the pedlar class