356 MEMOIR OF AUGUSTUS DE MORGAN. 



1866. the high law officers whether a meeting could legally be convened 

 for the purpose named in the requisition, and, if it could, without 

 waiting for the result of it. In the first place, the Council had a 

 perfect right to do this. By the very charter of the College the 

 power of appointing Professors is committed to the Council, and 

 not to a General Meeting : manifestly because the Council is a 

 body capable of judicial action, and a General Meeting is a 

 popular body, and not a fit instrument for such a purpose. The 

 Council is elected by the proprietors to discharge this and other 

 duties ; but they are not mere delegates of the proprietors, and 

 it has never been considered that they were bound to receive 

 instructions from them. No doubt the General Meeting may 

 express an opinion upon the acts of the Council ; but the duty of 

 the Council was to do what they thought best for the College, 

 and then to await the judgment of their constituents. If the 

 Council had delayed to act, for the purpose of deferring to a vote 

 of the meeting, they would have abdicated their proper function. 

 Our sole purpose is to uphold the legitimate authority of the 

 Council, and to vindicate their right (and, indeed, we might 

 insist upon it as their duty) to consider all circumstances which 

 make a candidate more or less fit to discharge the duties of the 

 office which he seeks. When the first report of the Senate was 

 drawn up, the Senate named Mr. Martineau as the best candidate ; 

 and although the objection presented by his ministerial position 

 was discussed, it was not insisted upon, and therefore it was not 

 mentioned in the report. When the second report was framed, 

 which was rendered necessary by the reception of additional 

 evidence, the relative position of Mr. Martineau and Mr. Robert- 

 son was certainly not left what it was before ; and, moreover, 

 the attacks upon the College made it incumbent upon us dis- 

 tinctly to recognise in the Council, and members of the Council, 

 the right to consider all points in the position of Mr. Martineau, 

 or any other candidate, which seemed to them likely to affect his 

 fitness for the Professorship. We learn now, on what we must 

 consider good authority (the Spectator of January 26), that 

 the issue to be submitted to the meeting is substantially the 

 same as the proposition of the writer in the Athenceum, which 

 we have discussed above. The resolution announced runs thus : 

 * That in the opinion of this meeting any candidate, who is other- 

 wise the most eligible for any chair or other office in this College 

 or the School, ought not to be regarded as in any manner dis- 

 qualified for such office because he is also eminent as a minister 

 or preacher of any religious church or sect.' The writer in the 



