Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III UNIVERSITY CAREER—Part II " ' O return however to Asquith's more definite Union I career. In November, 1872, we find him moving a motion which he carried by two votes—' That the disintegration of the Empire is the true solution of the Colonial difficulty '. Next year his period of office as Treasurer expired and he put up as a candidate for the office of President. His opponent was Mr. Ellis Ashmead Bartlett, of Christ Church, already mentioned. " Mr. Bartlett was said in the language of the Balliol undergraduates of the time to have ' feasted the citizens at more than sixteen sesterces a head'. He had certainly cultivated the constituency by various arts, and was personally popular and agreeable and a showy and by no means ineffective speaker, if not of the most commanding order. There was a great contest. Mr. Bartlett obtained a large majority. The Conservative reaction triumphed earlier in the Union than in St. Stephen's. He was succeeded by Mr. Mowbray and he again by Mr. Gould, and it was a full year before Asquith obtained the coveted position which he so well deserved, that of the first officer of the society. " It is worthy of note that as President he nominated for his Secretary a young Canadian full of enthusiasm and with much natural gift for oratory who had just come for a year or two to Oxford as a ' Non-collegiate student,' and who had stepped at once into the first rank of Union speakers. This was Mr. G. R. Parkin, now C.M.G., and Secretary to the Rhodes Trustees. A debate set on footby this gentleman was the chief feature of Mr. Asquith's term of office. " On 7th May, 1874, Mr. Parkin moved—' That in the opinion of this House, a closer union than at present exists between England and her Colonies is essential to the highest future prosperit...