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(5) "On the Extension of the Universities—Letter III," Inquirer, April 15, 1854, pp. 226-227.
This letter repeats several of the ideas which Bagehot had introduced into his essay on Oxford: that out of simple justice Dissenters should be admitted into Oxford and Cambridge, although in practical terms this would not result in much of an increase in their student bodies; that most people should not attend a university (it would disqualify them for living) but should receive a practical training in a trade; but that those people in the community who require an intellectual discipline in order to pursue a profession or to take broad views of modern society will find a university education indispensable. In this letter, too, something of Bagehot's humour appears: "The plan for a solicitor's education is to rear him in suits; for a miller's to involve him in flour; for a butcher's, to lead the dawning faculties gently and tenderly to the topic of meat."
Parallels in sentence form, as well as in idea, may be found between this letter and Bagehot's writing elsewhere. The Inquirer correspondent states: "The great security for a man's perpetually thinking of his business is his not knowing anything else to think of; the great security for his doing his duty is his not knowing anything else to do." Two years before in the third letter on the coup d'état (January 24, 1852, p. 52) Bagehot had written: "The best security for people's doing their duty is that they should not know anything else to do; the best security for fixedness of opinion is that people should be incapable of comprehending what is to be said on the other side."
Finally, in this last letter on university education the writer in the Inquirer employs at length an anecdote from Scott which Bagehot had used more briefly:
What, for me, puts the capstone on this argument that Bagehot wrote these letters on university reform is the fact that each letter, like each of the letters on the coup d'état, is signed "Amicus."
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