OXFORD UNION

Evening Star, Issue 21318, 24 January 1933, Page 9

OXFORD UNION

NURSERY OF THE FAMOUS MANY CABINET MINISTERS CELEBRATED NAMES At the centenary banquet of the Oxford Union held on February 29, 1924, Lord Curzou, Chancellor of the University and ex-president of the Union, said: “ Among the ex-presidents of this society have been no fewer than twenty Cabinet Ministers, a very formidable feat of production; and they also include twelve bishops and two or three archbishops—a quite abnormal exploit of gestation.” As far back as records run there have always been undergraduates at Oxford who thought the rough and tumble of debate at the union beneath their intellectual or social dignity, but the society has been fortunate to find that the State, the church, the law, and learning were generally glad to honour in after-life those whom the Oxford Union had elected to its presidential chair ? writes Hugh Molson, M.P., himselt an ex-president of the union in the ‘Daily Mail.’ William _ Gladstone, three times Prime Minister, was president of the society in 1830, and to that generation at Oxford, as to a slightly later generation in the House of Commons, he was the ‘‘rising hope of the stern, unbending Tories.” A remarkable speech expressing these views persuaded the society to condemn the'Reform Bill of 1832 —a noteworthy debate, in which five other future Cabinet Ministers and a future archbishop all participated. NOTABLE PREMIER. The Second Prime Minister produced by the union was Lord Salisbury, who was assiduous in his attendance and was junior treasurer for three terms, but never became president. His son, then Lord Robert (now * Viscount) Cecil, was more successful, but Lord Hugh, certainly the finest of the distinguished family, has remained in comparative obscurity. Birkenhead, who _ employed the “union style,” with its cult for paradoxes, epigrams, and sweeping invective, certainly was its most brillaint exponent, and with a maiden speech that was almost a parody of that stylo he stepped at once to the front rank of debaters in the House of Commons; with the same style, umveakened and unmellowed by time, he dominated in his last years the House of Lords. He

endeared himself to recent generations ot Oxford men by the magnetism of Ins apparently perennial youth: if Curson was never immature, Birkenhead never seemed quite grown up. Many famous historical figures who occupied the chair of the union must be dismissed with a mention. There was Lord Elgin, who, as GovernorGeneral, first introduced responsible government into Canada and was the first of two of his name to be Viceroy of India; Cardwell, who as Secretary for War abolished the purchase of commissions in the Army, and afterward became Chancellor of the Exchequer; Goschen, likewise Chancellor of the Exchequer and responsible for the great debt conversion scheme of 188 S; Robert Lowe, with his gift of scathing invective, who was Home Secretary and later went to the Treasury; H. W. Cripps, who begat Lord Parmoor. MEN OF MARK. Then there were Lord Dufferin, a great Viceroy of India and Ambassador to France; the sixth Earl Beau•charap and his two sons, of whom one, the seventh Earl, was Lord President of the Council; Lord Milner, great proConsul and member of the War Cabinet with Curzon; Lord Midleton, successively Secretary of State for War and for India; Lord Crawford, Cabinet Minister and steadfast foe of artistic Philistines in high places; S'teelMaitland, whose triple record of Fellow of All Soul’s, rowing blue, and president is still unrivalled—a notable list. The churches have given high office to many ex-presidents. Cardinal Manning, that great English ecclesiastic, whose conversion to Rome had so profound an influence, was president the year before Gladstone. Other presidents were eloquent Samuel Wilborforce, Bishop of Oxford; Mandell Creighton, historian an(j, Bishop of London; and Tait, also of London until he went to Canterbury. To-day the provinces of both Canterbury and York are ruled by ex-presidents, GREAT JUDGES. The names of great judges of the past are perhaps not so popularly known—Lord Solborne, Disraeli’s Lord Chancellor; Lord Chief Justice Coleridge, called “the silver-tongue orator ”; Lord Bowen, a great name in the law reports; Lord Pnillimore, most notable of a notable family; and Lord Sumner, who is still with us. Among scholars was Bryce, who might have been England’s first great Roman lawyer had Mr Gladstone not inveigled him away from the Regius Chair to the lesser distinction of the Cabinet; Dicey, whose luminous mind first analysed the rule of law in the English Constitution; llbert, law member of the Council of India and Clerk to the House of Commons; James, the venerable master of St. John’s Collegeand Warren, the famous president of Magdaffin. _ In Sir John Simon and Mr HoreBelisha we have two ex-presidents in the present Ministry. Other ex-presi-dents now in the House of Commons are Mr Robert Bcrneys, Mr John Buchan, Mr Dingle Foot, Mr Kingsley Griffith, Mr Alan Lennox-Boyd, Sir Gervais Renton], Mr H. J. Scrym-geour-Wedderburn, and Sir Arthur Steel-Maitland. , Whatever the future may hold in store for them, it will be found that cx-presidents of the union can _ still maintain the tradition of service in responsible offices.