It was shown not only in a largely-signed address of thanks.  All attempts to revive the decree at the expiration of their year of office failed.  The wiser heads in the Hebdomadal Board recognised at last that they had better hold their hand.  Mistakes men may commit, and defeats they may undergo, and yet lose nothing that concerns their character for acting as men of a high standard ought to act.  But in this case, mistakes and defeat were the least of what the Board brought on themselves.  This was the last act of a long and deliberately pursued course of conduct; and if it was the last, it was because it was the upshot and climax, and neither the University nor any one else would endure that it should go on any longer.  The proposed attack on Mr. Newman betrayed how helpless they were, and to what paltry acts of worrying it was, in their judgment, right and judicious to condescend.  It gave a measure of their statesmanship, wisdom, and good feeling in defending the interests of the Church; and it made a very deep and lasting impression on all who were interested in the honour and welfare of Oxford.  Men must have blinded themselves to the plainest effects of their own actions who could have laid themselves open to such a description of their conduct as is contained in the following extract from a paper of the time—­a passage of which the indignant and pathetic undertone reflected the indignation and the sympathy of hundreds of men of widely differing opinions.

The vote is an answer to a cry—­that cry is one of dishonesty, and this dishonesty the proposed resolution, as plainly as it dares to say anything, insinuates.  On this part of the question, those who have ever been honoured by Mr. Newman’s friendship must feel it dangerous to allow themselves thus to speak.  And yet they must speak; for no one else can appreciate it as truly as they do.  When they see the person whom they have been accustomed to revere as few men are revered, whose labours, whose greatness, whose tenderness, whose singleness and holiness of purpose, they have been permitted to know intimately—­not allowed even the poor privilege of satisfying, by silence and retirement—­by the relinquishment of preferment, position, and influence—­the persevering hostility of persons whom they cannot help comparing with him—­not permitted even to submit in peace to those irregular censures, to which he seems to have been even morbidly alive, but dragged forth to suffer an oblique and tardy condemnation; called again to account for matters now long ago accounted for; on which a judgment has been pronounced, which, whatever others may think of it, he at least has accepted as conclusive—­when they contrast his merits, his submission, his treatment, which they see and know, with the merits, the bearing, the fortunes of those who are doggedly pursuing him, it does become very difficult to speak without sullying what it is a kind of pleasure to feel is his cause by using hard words, or betraying