Yours lovingly,
Edith.”
Meanwhile the great decision of the Edinburgh Lords had been formally given. The Lord Justice-General, being Chancellor of the University, gave no judgment, but the Lord Justice-Clerk and four others, including all the remaining judges of the First Division were in favour of the women students. The seven remaining judges, including Lord Mure and Lord Shand, were against the women students; so the case was lost by the usual “narrow majority.”
The adverse judgment was based mainly on the opinion that the University Court had, in 1869, done an illegal thing in admitting women to the University at all, and on this ground the authorities were held excused from all responsibility towards the women themselves.
As we look back on the episode after all these years, the point that stands out is the brave and luminous judgment of the Lord Justice-Clerk, of which the following is, from our point of view, the most interesting passage:
“To deny the women students the degree which was essential to their entering the profession, and with a view to which they had studied, on the pretext—for it was no better—that no such end was ever contemplated, was entirely unjust and unwarranted; and that all the more that all the evils said to be connected with the admission of females to the University attached only to the study which was permitted, while the honour could injure no one, and was only valuable as the passport to the medical profession, with which, as a body, the defenders had no concern. That this question of graduation, from whatever cause, was in reality the sole matter in dispute, was sufficiently evident from the pleading of the defenders themselves. No doubt they devoted a large portion of their argument to prove that women never had been, and never ought to be, admitted to University study; but in the sequel they disclosed with sufficient frankness that if the pursuers would have contented themselves with mere certificates of proficiency, and would have abandoned their claim for graduation, they might possibly have fared better. This alternative implied university study, and, therefore, as graduation was the cardinal point in the case, his opinion was that, on completing the curriculum as matriculated students, the pursuers were entitled by the existing rules of the University to be admitted to graduation, and, indeed, he had found little of argument addressed to prove the contrary. This, in his opinion, was sufficient for the decision of this case. It was, however, maintained by the defenders that the University Court had no power to pass these regulations; they said that by the constitution of the University no woman could be admitted either for study or for graduation, and that the regulations and all that has followed upon them were therefore a mere nullity, and could receive no effect. He thought this answer entirely irrelevant. Questions might no doubt arise between the superior and subordinate powers in the University as to the legality of the former’s orders, and these might legitimately be called in question. But, when a student had entered the University, and had duly conformed to the rules on the faith of which he entered, it would be no defence on the part of the Senatus to his claim to graduate that the rules under which he had been admitted were liable to legal objection. The duty of the Senatus was to obey the de facto law of the University, and any other principle would be not only subversive of academical discipline, but would lead to the greatest injustice, as he thought was the case here. The matriculation of the student created an implied contract between him and the University authorities that, if he complied with the existing rules, they would confer the benefits in the hope of which he resorted to the University. They could not, after the student had performed his part of the engagement, refuse to fulfil theirs, on the ground that the contract was made under rules which it was beyond the power of their academical superiors to make. They could not compel the student, as a condition of his graduation, to take upon himself the defence of the laws of the University; his sole duty was to obey them, and if their lawfulness was disputed, that must be done in a question with those who made them, not with the student who trusted to them.”
The women students were ordered to pay the expenses of the appeal: and thus ended the hard fought “Battle in Edinburgh.”
CHAPTER XVII
THE QUESTION IN PARLIAMENT
How far S. J.-B. was depressed in mind and body by the events of that wearing fight, we can fairly guess. But nothing had happened to disturb in the smallest degree her faith,—her philosophy of life. She never doubted that she was fighting the battle of the Lord; but—greatly though she hoped, sure though she felt of final victory for her cause—she was always, in the background of her being, absolutely prepared for the defeat of any one of her plans. In the thick of the combat, she seemed so engrossed that comrades and onlookers were wont to say,—“Defeat will kill her,” but this was a complete misunderstanding of her attitude. The moment defeat came, it was accepted as simply the will of God, though it well might be that God still meant her to try again.
In the occasional great affairs of later life it was positively startling to contrast her apparent inability to recognize another side to the question at issue with her instant acceptance of an adverse decision when it came. But for the vital record we now possess of her youth, most people would have had no clue. She was not ordinarily taken for a religious woman; but it is simply true that the watchword of her life—passively and actively—was Fiat voluntas tua.