THE OXFORD REFORM BILL.

BLACKWOOD’SEDINBURGH MAGAZINE.No. CCCCLXIII.MAY, 1854.Vol. LXXV.

BLACKWOOD’S

EDINBURGH MAGAZINE.

No. CCCCLXIII.MAY, 1854.Vol. LXXV.

On Friday night, April 2, 1854—or rather at half-past one on the Saturday morning—there passed to its second reading in the House of Commons, represented at that time by twenty-four members, a Bill “to make further provision for the good government and extension of the University of Oxford.” A measure, declared by her Majesty’s Government so important as to demand their careful deliberation—heralded by its promoters as a new charter of intellectual liberty for England—denounced by its opponents as unconstitutional and illegal—appears to have commanded, at this crisis of its parliamentary existence, as little of the attention of the House as if it had been a Welsh highway act or an Irish grievance. True, the debate occupied its fair share of the time of the Commons, and filled its due number of columns in the morning papers. If the reporters as well as the speakers found themselves occasionally upon rather difficult ground—making some trifling confusion between “Students” and “Tutors,” and leaving out here and there a negative which must have rather confused their non-academical readers—such little inaccuracies are neither surprising nor important in a debate in which almost every speaker seems to have been anxious to assure his hearers, such as he had, that he meant nothing—at all events, that he did not mean what he said, still less what he might have said on some previous occasion; where the reputed parents of the bill, Lord John Russell and the Chancellor of the Exchequer, were rather its apologists than its advocates, promising amendments even before they were proposed; while Mr Blackett, as the organ of the “root-and-branch” men, puzzling himself how to deal with the sop thrown to him and his party—sweet to the taste but far from satisfying—tendered his best thanks for a measure which he concluded by saying “the Liberal members of that House could never adopt.”

The truth is, that there is an apathy in the public mind upon this great question which has reacted upon its representatives. The University Commission, as a political speculation, has been a failure, and the game of Academical Reform has lost much of its piquancy by a change in the players. Setting aside the question of the legality of parliamentary interference, it was found, somewhat to the surprise of a large section of those who had swelled the cry for a commission—well-meaning, but ill-informed on such subjects—that the most active, as they were the most able university reformers, were to be found within the walls of the University itself. That there was also a section to whom such a discovery was a disappointment, we have little doubt. At all events, from that time the public interest in the subject appears to have gradually died away. Visible excitement of men’s minds, since the issuing of the Commission, there has been none. And since the presentation of the Report, when even the warmest imagination could no longer picture the goodly revenues of Oxford transferred to the London University, or handed over to a Whig minister of education, the extremes of both parties, obstructive and destructive, must have felt their occupation gone;—moderate non-academical politicians began to vote the whole thing rather a bore—and theOxford Blue Book, of which more copies were sold we believe than of any similar publication, went the way of all blue books, and was seen no more except on Tutors’ tables. In no circles, political or social, in town or country, did University Reform become the topic of the day. If you heard three people together in conversation on the subject, two at least were Oxford men. They, indeed, with that propensity charged against them, with some truth, of “talking shop,” as it is called—and which, with deference be it said in this large-minded and Catholic generation, is better at all events than talking nonsense—they “ventilated” the subject sufficiently, each having usually some pet scheme of his own for the regeneration of Alma Mater, under which, if you were to believe the author, she was to come forth in the renewed beauty of her youth, without losing aught of the reverend features of age.

But while the country at large has been taking things so quietly, Oxford herself has been neither unmoved nor silent. Her bitterest enemies cannot have charged her, during the last few months, with inactivity. Schemes of reform and extension, which a few years ago would have startled the most zealous of theprogressistas, have been poured into the Home Office, since this year began, at a rate which would seem to have disconcerted even the impassable Palmerston. There is not wanting both external and internal evidence of Lord John’s present bill having been ushered into the world somewhat in a hurry; in fact, there was some risk of his being outbid in the improvement market. Even our old friends of the Hebdomadal Board had made wonderful progress since we last wrote of them, and, as an undutiful boating undergraduate of our acquaintance phrased it to us, “put on an awful spurt at the end.” College Visitors have been called on to discharge unwonted duties; Heads and Fellows have been closeted in their respective common-rooms for days together; statutes that were before as the Eleusinian mysteries are recklessly published, with their owners’ new interpretations thereof, “by command of her Majesty,” and may be bought, together with the select epistles of Palmerston to his newfamiliaresin Oxford, for the small charge of one shilling and threepence; and Mr Parker’s well-known counter teems with pamphlets. Many a College dignitary appears to have had Job’s wish realised; his enemy has written a book, and he, as in duty bound, has been down upon him, in another, immediately. The brother Professors of Modern History and Hebrew, besides a stout pamphlet each, have had a little private (published) correspondence, in the latter part of which the professorial tone predominates over the brotherly. The Professor of Poetry has a letter—more poetical than anything else—to the Warden of Wadham, who has not replied; not having, possibly, a poetical taste. Of minor and anonymousbrochuresthere are more than we care to number. From this category we must carefully exempt the clever argument in defence of the private tenure of College property by Mr Neate of Oriel—himself a staunch university reformer, and a supporter of the Commission; and the unanswerable appeal of Mr Woodgate of St John’s to the “National Faith,” as pledged to founders by the acceptance of their endowments.

The introducers of the bill congratulate themselves, with some complacency, on the satisfaction with which it has been received in Oxford. True, when Mr Blackett expressed his disgust at the fact as an evident proof of its utter inefficiency, the Chancellor of the Exchequer hastened to contradict himself, and to assure his friends ofthatparty, that the remonstrances against it had been many and vehement, and that it was by no means such an innocent measure as they feared. The truth is, the feeling of the University on this great question has been much misunderstood, and, we believe not intentionally, misrepresented. This is in itself unfortunate, and adds to the difficulties which the world without suddenly finds besetting what seemed at one time an easy and a popular question: but more unfortunate than all will it be, if the comparative apathy of the public mind arises from a delusive notion that the bill now before Parliament is the advance of a government of progress against an antiquated corporation, fortified with prejudices, and tenacious of vested interests; that the two great parties in the struggle are, a growing nation, clamorous for intellectual food, and a rich and covetous university, like an unnatural stepmother, proffering them stones for bread, and keeping her rich gifts for some few favoured children. For such is the view carefully set before men’s minds by those whose designs against the universities of England would accept Lord John Russell’s bill, or even the bolder scheme of the Commissioners, as a very small instalment of what they deem justice. Unless the people of England can be disabused of this false notion,—and by the people, we beg here to be understood to mean especially those classes to whom some political authorities restrict the term, “the masses”—unless they can learn somewhat more truly what their rightful claims upon their national universities are, and who are perilling, and who defending them, and how far they are likely to be secured or lost by the measures now in contemplation,—they may only find out too late that they were led to confound friends with foes, and to cast recklessly from them the solid advantages which wise and good men in days gone by had bequeathed them, for the sake of a glittering dream.

Even in Oxford itself, it seems to have been too much assumed that a broad line of distinction could be drawn, placing on the one side the advocates of progress, who were desirous of remodelling the constitution of the University, and re-distributing its revenues, at whatever cost; and, on the other, those who thought they saw in every change a dangerous innovation. Whereas, in fact, both these extreme sections would at any time have made but a very poor show in the Convocation-house, the former especially having been always inconsiderable in numbers, and more noisy than influential; while the ranks of the latter, more open to argument and conviction, were thinning day by day. That the first were represented in Her Majesty’s Commission was a mistake in its composition, of which the present Government at all events have begun to feel the consequences embarrassing; it has furnished weapons against them to the hands of both supporters and opponents: either too much was intended, or too little has been done. The two great points on which a vast majority of members of Convocation, resident and non-resident, found themselves united in a hostile attitude against the government of the day, were, first, the constitutional right of Parliament to interfere at all; and, secondly, theanimusof the Commission. As to the necessity for practical reforms, for rearranging some of the machinery of university education, and extending its basis,—this had for years impressed itself upon most thinking minds,—had at least received a formal acknowledgment at the hands of a committee of the Hebdomadal Board so long ago as 1846, and had been elaborately, if not wisely, dealt with in the new Examination Statute of 1850; a measure which, whatever may have been its tendencies, could not be charged with narrowness or prejudice, and showed, at least, much zeal and pains-taking in its compilers, and an honest wish to meet the educational wants of the age. The real difficulties—not the faults—of Oxford were, that she was fettered by a code of Caroline Statutes which checked her attempts to take a freer attitude, and a form of local government which was the very reverse of representative. Had some friendly ministry given her the power, as she had the will, to rid herself of these incumbrances, we should have had a measure of reform and extension—we are not afraid of the words—not perhaps so showy and sweeping as the present, but much better considered, and therefore more really effectual. No one can have read the evidence laid before the Hebdomadal Committee, and the Tutors’ Association, and considered the various suggestions there embodied, from men of very different minds, sometimes widely at variance with each other, but almost always thoughtful and fairly argued, without feeling that we have there the only materials out of which any wholesome scheme for the “good government” of Oxford is to be built, and can there trace the hands best fitted to combine them. And the strongest argument in favour of the bill now before Parliament is, that its authors have borrowed from this legitimate source their best enactments.

To the Tutors’ Association indeed, especially, Oxford will hereafter in any event confess herself much indebted. Numbering some fifty or sixty of the most able and active college and private tutors—men of all shades of party—practically acquainted with the real wants and difficulties both of College authorities and undergraduates, and conscientiously desirous of remedying them—they took upon themselves, not without some obloquy, an anomalous and quite unrecognised position in the University,—that of a voluntary and independent legislative body, and supplied for a time, in this irregular manner, the defects of the academical constitution. By this gentle pressure from without, the Hebdomadal Board were made aware of the state of public feeling, and were brought to act somewhat more in harmony with it. To them we owe the changes of 1850—changes which, we say again, in many important features we cannot think improvements, and which we quote only in evidence of a progressive tendency. To them we shall owe almost all that is valuable in the Government measure of 1854.

For let no one suppose that the bill now introduced by Government is the scheme of her Majesty’s Commissioners. The spirit which dictated their Report peeps out, indeed, here and there, in some of its most objectionable enactments; but, on the whole, their ponderous blue folio has contributed much less than the four modest pamphlets issued by the Tutors’ Association; and when those important modifications shall have been made in it, either in committee or in the Upper House—without which this measure can never become the law of England—it will be difficult for the late commissioners to recognise, in its altered features, the rickety and unpleasant-looking offspring of their own incubations. Their sole representative in the newly-proposed Commission, if he ever takes his seat in the altered company in which he must be rather surprised to find himself, will be called upon to administer an act of a character widely different from the recommendations which received his signature in April 1852. And before we briefly discuss the objections, both of principle and detail, against the bill as it stands, we would first of all draw our readers’ attention to these points of difference.

The leading idea of the Commissioners’ scheme was, as every one knows, the Professoriate. The multiplication of professors was to be the remedy for all shortcomings in the way of education; a government by professors was to close all mouths which were complaining of the powers that be, and demanding representation; college revenues, applied to the liberal support of professors, could no longer excite the envy, or awake the rapacity of reformers, but must be held to have been at last applied to their rightful uses; examiners, appointed by professors, were at last to achieve the difficult task of satisfying every candidate; to be a professor was to be all that man ought to be—a guarantee amply sufficient for religion, learning, and energy—an office which could teach independently of vulgar details of actual instruction, diffusing scholarship through the University by its mere presence—

“Dives, et sutor bonus, et solus formosus, et est rex.”

Where this new race of more than mortal teachers was to spring from, was a point for which, it will be remembered, the Commissioners made no provision; but as to their mode of appointment there was no difficulty whatever. All newly-created chairs (pretty comfortable berths too) were to be filled with nominees of the Crown—in plainer words, of a future minister of public education,—for we should have soon found that office even more necessary than a secretary at war,—and these, with such as were already subject to the same appointment, would have had an absolute majority in the remodelled House of Congregation. But this is by no means the only mode in which, if the Commissioners should have had their will, Oxford would have been gradually converted into a national gymnasium under Government superintendence, and at the same time a gigantic field of patronage. They did not, indeed, go so far as to recommend, because in their delicate consideration for the feelings of others they thought it might be “distasteful” to the societies themselves, but they evidently entertained with favour Mr Senior’s cool proposition,[1]that “the power of selection of Heads of Houses should be given to the Crown, under the advice of the prime-minister.” And in Recommendation 44 we have the first step made towards it—that the election to these offices should,if possible, be left to the Fellows of Colleges; but that in case abuses in these elections should continue, provision to abate them should be made by an alteration in the mode of election. To what this subtle proviso might have led, and was intended to lead, it requires no peculiar spirit of divination to foresee. Again, the staff of professors and the “Crown,” indirectly through these its nominees, was, by the Commissioners’ scheme, to have the control of the studies, and the sole appointment of the public examiners, although on this latter head not a tittle of evidence went to show that the present mode of nomination (by the vice-chancellor, as representing the governing body, and by the two proctors, as representing the Masters of Arts collectively) had in any instance been abused; it being a truth so notorious, both in and out of the University, that we have rather taken it for granted than given it its due weight as the highest of all testimonies in favour of the existing system, that whatever disappointment there may have often been amongst the candidates for honours, the honesty and integrity of the award has never been questioned for a moment.

These features, then, at all events, are not reproduced in the bill of 1854. Another pet idea of the Commissioners, which they may claim exclusively as their own—for very few of their own chosen witnesses in Oxford approved it, and those somewhat hesitatingly, and with awkward apologies—was that of unattached students, who were to be the great means of increasing the numbers, and new-leavening the morality of Oxford. Whether this wild project fell before the grave and loving Christian arguments of Dr Pusey,[2]the quiet irony of Mr Gordon,[3]or the bitter but amusing sarcasms of theQuarterly Review, it is certain that it has found no favour in the eyes of our present university reformers. The “independent monads” have vanished.

So it has fared again, with that sweeping clause in the Commissioners’ Recommendations (32), that “all persons elected to Fellowships should be released from all restrictions on the tenure of their Fellowships arising from the obligation to enter into holy orders,” which, when viewed in connection with the abolition of all religious tests in the appointment of teachers, and the last-named provision for a large class of students who would have been as far as possible removed from religious influences, with their confessed longing to tread the forbidden ground of the admission of Dissenters, clearly showed their object to be the severance of the University as much as possible from the Church; the gradual withdrawal of the whole education of the place out of the Church’s hands—for the theological as well as other studies were to be “supervised” by the professors;[4]—and the future admission, not only to degrees, be it remembered, which is the only right openly claimed at present, but to the emoluments and the dignities of our old religious foundations, of men of any religion, or of no religion at all. It is true that even the small amount of change proposed in this direction by clause xxxiv. of the present measure, forces upon us unpleasant suspicions, and seems founded upon no better reason than that some Fellows of colleges in Oxford are impatient of the restrictions, or forgetful of the professed objects, under which and for which they were elected; still, practically, it is admitted it would not tend materially to secularise the tone of the colleges, or weaken the clerical element in the University generally.

These disagreeably prominent features of the report of 1852 will not be found in the bill of 1854. Other minor points there are, in which the views of the Commissioners have been set aside, in deference, as we may hope, to the deliberately-expressed opinions of the University. The abolition of the distinctive ranks of nobleman and gentleman-commoner, odious in the eyes of the popular reformer, but proved to be at least harmless, and probably beneficial in practice, has not been insisted on; a light straw, perhaps, yet serving as some indication of the setting of the reform current just at present. The general matriculation examination, from which such benefit was hoped to the general standard of scholarship at entrance—often it must be confessed very low—a point in which we are not sure but that the Commissioners were in the right by accident, this too we hear no more of, it would seem in deference to the opinion of the University.[5]And even in the great question of the throwing open the foundations, the clauses of the proposed act, though, as we shall be prepared to show presently, utterly indefensible, whether on the ground of justice or expediency, are yet not so sweepingly destructive as Recommendation 40 of the Commissioners’ Report.

There is another point too, the great difficulty and the great evil, as we think, not of the Oxford system, for the system itself does not recognise it, but of Oxford practice, which, as the bill would surely have been powerless to deal with effectually, its promoters have perhaps done wisely in not dealing with at all. Of private tuition, with the expenses which it involves, the idleness which it encourages, the specious pretexts under which it has gradually wormed its way into a sort of quasi-official existence, and is fast sapping all university and collegiate education as such, and substituting the flimsy trickery of “cram” for the sound and wholesome scholarship of other days,—we have expressed our opinion elsewhere in no measured terms.[6]And we are thankful to my Lord John, or Palmerston, or our own clever and, as he assures us, affectionate representative,—whichever we are to thank for such benefits, for none of these gentlemen seem over anxious to take the credit of their good deeds,—that they have left this question, at all events, for the University to deal with it at its own discretion. The private Tutors, we rejoice to say, are not recognised as yet, even in name, by act of Parliament. If we have no “enabling powers” to get rid of them, they are at least not forced upon us by “extraneous authority.” The Commissioners themselves found them a ticklish subject to handle; they took them up unwillingly, apologised for them in a deprecating manner, as being ugly but useful, and were glad to let them go. It was not the only point upon which, for excellent reasons, they were compelled to differ from their own witnesses. Clause xxxvi. 1, is, we hope, specially intended to ignore them as lawfully “engaged in the tuition or discipline of the said University.” And assuredly a “heavy blow and a great discouragement” is dealt out to their present occupation in the wide powers given to open private halls; whilst, at the same time, we are glad to think it opens a legitimate field of usefulness, and, we hope, emolument, to the many talented and excellent men so employed; for it is against the whole system of private tuition that our strictures are directed, and not the individuals who are forced to take a false position by its general prevalence. It is the more necessary to draw public attention to this prudent omission in the bill, because already voices are raised in complaint against it. This body is too numerous and too influential not to have its organs both in and out of the House. The fluent Mr Byng, representing one phase of young Oxford, takes the earliest opportunity of claiming for them their share in the new representation;[7]and it would be very hard if they had not their champion among the pamphleteers. We only trust that no parliamentary friend, by some ingenious insertion of words, will be allowed to establish a new reading of the aforesaid clause in their favour. So much for the evil which this bill might have proposed to do, and which it has happily left undone. These are its virtues of omission; it has also its sins. If it has sometimes firmly resisted the mischievous proposals of the Commissioners, it has in no case had the courage to take a bold line of its own. One measure of practical reform which would have trenched upon no rights, and violated no principle, and therefore, perhaps, was not sufficiently telling to recommend itself to the Commissioners—but which the public would have thankfully acknowledged, and which the University could hardly have objected to—was the removal of the inconvenient fiction, which demands four years for the first degree, whilst, in the thirteenth term, the beginning of the fourth year, the final examination may be, and often is, passed, not only with success, but with honour. We are not arguing, it must be remembered, for an actual shortening (unless it were by the odd thirteenth term) the academical course, which we agree with Mr Justice Coleridge in regarding as an evil; but merely for insisting, in the case of all pass-men, that the period which is now the minimum should also be the maximum of their university course, and that the absurd and expensive anomaly of “grace terms” should be altogether done away with. We will not trouble our readers again with the arguments on this subject which we have used before;[8]but we must confess the disappointment with which we have looked in vain through the Reports, both of the Hebdomadal and of the Tutors’ Committee, and find this most simple and convenient re-arrangement,—change it can hardly be called—either wholly overlooked, or only noticed to be dismissed without consideration. It is totally distinct in principle from the 12th Recommendation of the Commissioners, “that, during the latter part of their course, students should be left free to devote themselves to some special branch or branches of study”—which of course is neither more nor less than a postponement of classical literature, to what is popularly called “Useful Knowledge,” against which we should assuredly protest as strongly as any of the Oxford witnesses; three clear years of four terms each, all strictly kept, would save undergraduates some expense, much indecision and confusion as to when they shall go up, would be easier understood by the public generally, and would not involve the sacrifice of a single hour of classical training,—nay, in connection with one little improvement to be mentioned presently, might allow more time to be really devoted to it than at present. We are glad to recognise the “consent, though with great doubts of its expediency,”[9]to this view of one of the most real, because one of the most cautious and moderate reformers in the University. And we still entertain some confidence that it is a principle which must find its way into a well-digested scheme of collegiate reform, whenever we have one.

Another measure which we had hoped to have seen suggested by the bill, important as it certainly is to the “good government” of Oxford—but on which we are sorry to find both the Oxford committees rigidly silent—is the shortening of the long vacation. On this subject, necessarily a distasteful one to college Tutors, we have already, in a previous article, spoken at some length, and nothing has been written or said to shake in the slightest degree our strong opinion of its desirability. In all the evidence which has been sought or volunteered by the Tutors, this point has been studiously, as it seems, avoided. Only Sir F. Rogers, (who is not a Tutor) follows us in pressing this, as he also confesses, “unpalatable suggestion.”[10]He sees in it, as we do, the simplest means of shortening the time of a general university education, without in the least impairing its efficiency. Exeter College also, in the abstract of proposed changes in its statutes, forwarded to the Home Office, Feb. 1, 1854, has set a solitary example of endeavouring to reclaim to collegiate study some portion of that pleasant but not very profitable four months during which Alma Mater usually turns her children out of doors: “It is proposed that a Tutor or Fellow reside during the greater part of the long vacation, to enable undergraduates to reside there for the purpose of study.” In these few lines we gladly hail one of those just and sensible reforms in which Exeter does not now for the first time take the lead,—which are overlooked because they are so simple in themselves, and so plainly within the reach of every college, but which, when once seen in action, cannot fail to be generally adopted.

Such are the negative tendencies of the Government measure, both for good and evil: it remains to consider its positive enactments. And to begin with the beginning,—that is to say, the heads, who here for the last time take the initiative. The Hebdomadal Board, it seems, is doomed. They are not to await, like other subjects of reform, the action of the University itself; on the 10th day of October next, if this act becomes law, their corporate existence ceases. Of all the sufferers by Government legislation, they, we fear, will find the fewest champions, and meet with the least commiseration. The Tutors, whom they unwisely neglected to conciliate, have been their bitter enemies from the first. They fall a sacrifice not to any cry from without, but to domestic unpopularity. The Commissioners would have mercifully retained them as an upper house of legislature, only placing by their side another body, with equal powers and greater influence—the “remodelled Congregation.” But the Tutors’ Committee would not hear of it. “Half shares” was the formal demand of the majority of this body, just beginning to feel their own power. And as this consciousness of strength increased, the hopelessness of the struggle on the side of the existing authorities became more and more apparent. A third party, however—but weakly represented, and jealously looked upon in the Tutors’ Association, made their claim for a share in the directory; and the Professorial interest, addressing themselves directly to the ear of the Government, succeeded in making the proposed Hebdomadal Council what it is in the bill as at present—one-third Heads of Houses, one-third Professors, and one-third Masters of Arts. We have no particular objection to the proposed partition—we believe that any tolerably fair form of representation would work sufficiently well—nor have we ever been the apologists of the Hebdomadal dignitaries. We have admitted their policy to have been at once weak and obstinate; slow to move at all, and undecided in action. With a hostile commission hanging over their heads, they at first affected to ignore the danger, and then wasted, in the most unaccountable manner, the time which might, wisely used, have in great measure averted it. They appointed a committee “to consider and report upon” the recommendations of the Commissioners on 16th June 1852; that report was presented on 1st December 1853. The Tutors’ Committee, appointed five months later, presented its first report in January 1853, its second in April, its third in November, and its fourth and last in March 1854. The Tutors had large demands upon their time besides legislation—the Heads should have made it their first and most earnest duty. Yet it was not until the 24th February, after the terms of the proposed bill must have been known in the University, that a new statute was proposed in Convocation, which must have been felt at the time to be mere waste paper. Nor do we think it was wise to summon Convocation again, at four days’ notice, to divide upon a petition which the previous voting must have told them could only be carried by a narrow majority, and would therefore lose the only weight which could have attached to it as a collective protest. Nor do they seem to us to have well consulted their own dignity in the terms of that petition, after having questioned the authority of Parliament to interfere at all. Yet, in spite of all this, we confess we think the Heads have been harshly treated in this measure. There seemed to be no valid objection to a more numerous Board, in which, while the Heads retained their seats, a fair proportion of the popular element might have been infused by election. The scheme of the Commissioners was less offensive, and would have been quite as effectual. We could never see the force of the objections raised to their separate existence as an honoured estate, whose years and experience, together with the large stake which they would always hold in the prosperity of the University, would perhaps often have tempered the rash enthusiasm of younger, more energetic, but not always abler men, and whose deliberate opinion would perhaps have carried more weight, when it had ceased to be the only source of academical legislation. The very antagonistic position of two chambers, constituted on different principles, to which the Tutors object, has ere this been found conducive to good government. At all events, we can never cordially agree with any act which disfranchises—except for proved abuse, which in this case cannot be urged—any individual, or any body of individuals; and we think the present Heads might have retained their seats at the Board for life, even had it been thought expedient to diminish those seats in number for the future. We shall part from our old governors, if we must part from them, with regret; not the less because we have not implicit confidence in those who may succeed them.

It is indeed very possible, as Mr Burgon says,[11]“to conceive something worse than even the inactivity of the Hebdomadal Board.” As things stand now, at least we know our rulers—they represent twenty-four separate and independent interests, and are, from their very isolation, at least above all suspicion of clique or party. Will it as surely be so in the dynasty to come? Are the smaller societies as sure to be represented? We shrewdly suspect that hereafter many a small college Tutor may rue the day when, in the associated committee, he took up the pleasant trade of tinkering a constitution. He may find out, when too late, that when his hand helped to close the door of the delegates’ room against the legitimate representative of his own college, he shut out the voice of that college for ever from the great council of the University. We may live to see an “initiative,” composed of eight Heads of powerful colleges, plus eight Professors of the same colleges—plus eight Tutors or M.A.’s of the same colleges again; for their influence in the new Congregation, if exerted, will entirely neutralise the votes of the smaller colleges and halls. And if it be said that this is an illiberal view, and that such influence will not be put in motion, the answer is, that there is every reason to believe that the leading colleges have foreseen this advantage, and are prepared to use it. A far-sighted tutor of the most powerful society in Oxford objects to the constitution of the Commissioners’ congregation, on the significant ground that “it gives exactly the same influence to the largest college and the smallest hall;”[12]and unless these smaller societies unite in protesting against this part of the scheme, their share in the government of the University, unless in rare exceptional instances, is forfeited for ever. An amendment to clause v., by way of proviso, that not more than two members of the council shall be of the same college, might tend to secure something like a fair distribution of power.[13]

From the Hebdomadal Council we descend to Congregation—the Commissioners’ idea, clumsily expanded. The framers of the fourteen not very clear provisions of clause xvi., which provides for the composition of the said council, have found themselves in the position not unknown to those who, with a somewhat miscellaneous visiting list, have to give a very large party: anxious to issue as many invitations as possible, they have contrived to make exclusion very invidious, whilst no one considers his invitation a compliment. “We must draw the line somewhere, you know,” says Mr Dickens’ friend of the cheap and fashionable shaving-shop—“we don’t go below journeyman bakers.” And the coal-heaver turns away, an aggrieved and angry man. The bill is here quite as arbitrary, but hardly so distinct. Journeyman professors are included; journeyman tutors we believe not. Masters of private halls—which might contain two students—have a seat there; senior bursars, transacting the business of large colleges, have not. But of all unintelligible qualifications—“all who shall have a certificate of being habitually engaged in the study of some branch of learning or science” are to be members of this privileged body. (“Earnest” study, Lord Palmerston would have had it,[14]but the others would not bite.) And the authority which is to grant these “certificates of study” is, by clause xxxviii. 5, left to “any college” to “declare.” This, we think, must have been a mere successful joke of Palmerston’s inserting. Plainly the triumvirate were wise in not declaring it themselves. A certificate of study in some branch of learning or science!—how many hours a day? how are the results to be ascertained? is the candidate to be examined? If not, how is the “authority” to know? and what is to be the definition of learning and science? Would an accurate knowledge of “Bradshaw” reckon? It is a science which has never yet, we believe, been fully investigated. Would a man be allowed to “take up” the Times, including the foreign intelligence, with dates?—just at present, what with the Turkish names, and contradictory correspondence, it is much the hardest reading we know. Or the new and fashionable science of “common things,” hitherto much neglected in Oxford? It is idle to argue seriously upon such an enactment as this; it is legislation carried into its dotage. That such a crotchet could have been calmly entertained by any three sensible English statesmen, is one of those unaccountable instances in which fact is more improbable than fiction. If there is to be a remodelled Congregation, we suppose some such simple qualification as all M.A.’sbonâ fideresident, or all engaged in collegiate tuition, discipline, or administration, would fully suffice, and be at least intelligible. On the question of allowing such a large and heterogeneous body, however composed, to debate in English, we think the Tutors’ objections entitled to every consideration; they have had full opportunity of practically judging of its tendencies; and it is quite clear that it would thus become a perpetual field for loud and unprofitable discussion, subversive of the dignity and quiet of the University, and wasteful of its time.

Of the numerous petty and vexatious restrictions on the tenure of Fellowships, it is not necessary for us to dwell at length; because this portion of the bill, by an ingenious complication of difficulties, has secured the opposition of all parties, and cannot by any possibility pass as it stands. If its object was to make residence compulsory, it would have been better to have done it by a few plain words. This would have had at least the merit of being in accordance with the original intention of the founders, although few would have been found to advocate such an enactment on the ground of utility. But clause xxxvi. assumes to treat a body of men who are to be, if the other bold aspirations of this measure are carried out, the intellectual flower of England, as a set of schoolboys; establishing an inquisition into their private pursuits, which we will venture to say was never yet proposed, and which no government will be allowed to exercise, over any society of Englishmen. In this inquisitorial process, their pet invention of the “certificate of study” is again to do them yeoman’s service. This is to make sure that the intellectual genius, which their whole system is invented to foster, shall not be turned—as we are glad to find them recognise that even intellect may be—to purposes of mischief. The difficulty here, as in the other case, is in the providing the “authority” from which these certificates are to issue; for here the bill gives us no help whatever. If Fellows of colleges, chosen solely for their “superior fitness in character and attainments,” cannot be trusted to take care of themselves, who is to take care of them? “Quis custodiet ipsos custodes”? Who is this unknown “authority,” thus mysteriously veiled, whom all are to worship? Can it be Lord John?

The term of five years, the maximum allowed by the previous clause to a non-resident Fellow to prepare for a profession, is justly felt to be an arbitrary limitation; as is also the three-mile boundary, outside which no Fellow, under the provisions of the Act, is to hold a cure of souls, retaining his fellowship; and it will scarcely be believed that the Bursars, who have the entire administration of college business and estates, and who are usually some of their most valuable resident members, are, under the famous clause xxxvi., classed implicitly with the idlers, and would not be allowed to retain their fellowships at all.

We beg our readers also to remark the miserable economy, which holds out, in the shape of a boon to the Fellow who shall have spent twenty-one years in the faithful discharge of college duties, permission to retain his fellowship, exempt from such active employment, “subject to the payment of one-third of the profits thereof.” So that the Tutor who, for a third of a human life, has by his energy and ability sustained or made the reputation of his college, may find himself with failing health, or failing powers, pensioned off upon a stipend of some £100 or £150 per annum; for the case, indeed, of ill health incapacitating for an active share of college duties, or even for “earnest study”—not uncommon, alas! in men overstrained in the race for honours—has never entered into the calculations of our modern university reformers. “Work, work!” is their cry—“what else are you paid for?”

One ground of complaint, too, which we think the University has, as a body, against the general tone of this bill, independently of any injustice in its enactments, is the distrust which is implied in these and other instances where free agency is curtailed, as well as in the attempt to guard jealously all exercise of power which is necessarily, but grudgingly, preserved. Perhaps this strict surveillance is held necessary in the present corrupt state of Oxford, but is to be removed when a regenerated University has grown to the full stature, and becomes entitled to the rights, of intellectual manhood. From Lord John Russell and Lord Palmerston such treatment might have been expected; in them it might have been the expression of an honest prejudice, and a pardonable misappreciation. To have assumed, as is done in clauses xxxiii. and xxxviii., 8, that Examiners and Electors would be found wanting in common honesty, and must be bound to the “strict performance of their duties” by declarationor otherwise—(convenient vagueness!)—might have been understood as a little ebullition of feeling, natural if not dignified; though we conclude no one would have attached much real weight to such futile precautions. The Examiner or Elector who betrays his trust by an unjust decision will not think much of supporting it by a lying declaration. An Act of Parliament, we have heard, can make a gentleman; we never yet heard that it could make an honest man. But Mr Gladstone, at least for his own credit, if not for theirs who trusted him, should have eliminated these gratuitous and unworthy passages before he allowed his name to appear on the back of this bill. He had more experience of such things, and knew the Oxford spirit better. He, for very shame, should not have put this moral bribery oath to those constituents who have thrice elected him—he knows on no selfish grounds—amidst much obloquy, and, in many instances, at much sacrifice of private interest and personal feeling.

There flashes upon us also, here and there throughout the several clauses—though made to assume as unobtrusive a form as possible—the shadow of a giant influence, as yet rather felt than seen. Any vacancy in the number of Commissioners to be appointed by Parliament for the purposes of this Act,—and with the selection of whose names, as at present understood, we are fully satisfied,—is to be filled up by the Minister of the day. A report of the “state, receipts, and expenditure, and other particulars,” of every college, is by clause liii. to be forwarded, if required, to “one of Her Majesty’s principal Secretaries of State.” There is a remarkable and mysterious article in clause xliv., forbidding the Commissioners to “appoint any person extraneous to a college to exercise any authority therein,” without the consent of a majority of the Fellows of the said college. There are no scholia on this obscure passage, but we suspect it is pregnant with possibilities, and, like some other dark sayings of old, the interpretation may come too late. It is no use, in short, to try to shut our eyes to the fact, that Government has got a hold upon the colleges, and intends, as far as possible, to keep it.

Against the diversion of college revenues to the general purposes of the University,—the founding of new professorships, &c.,—the feeling at Oxford is so nearly unanimous, and so reasonable,—while those colleges upon whom alone the University had any claims of this nature, have for some time been so fully prepared to recognise them—Magdalen proposing to devote £750 per annum “at least” to the founding of prælectorships, Corpus appropriating £600 to the endowment of a professorship of Latin, and Merton promising assistance; and when these are excepted, there remain so few colleges containing the number of fellowships (20) required, in order to justify such an appropriation,—that we may hope the justice and discretion of the Commissioners may safely be trusted not to make such a diversion in the case of any college whose authorities may be conscientiously unwilling to sanction it.

The means here proposed for the extension of the University, by the unrestricted establishment of private halls, are those which we have already advocated in a previous article. Established under due regulations, they cannot prejudice the discipline of the University. It would be ridiculous to suppose that they could interfere with the colleges, whose wealthy foundations must always enable them, if they will, to educate more cheaply and with greater advantages; whilst we still believe that they will succeed in drawing to Oxford a class of students which it does not now possess, in developing the demand of which the existence is so disputed, and in proving, in spite of Mr Gordon’s clever irony[15]on so tempting a subject, that a more kindly and domestic discipline is both possible, and in some cases very desirable, without treating men as children. At any rate, if they fail, they will involve no interest but their own.

There is yet one principle boldly laid down in this bill—for one principle it is under several forms—so cruel and so unwise, involving such a deep wrong to the memory of the dead, and such contempt for the claims of the living, that it forms alone one of the most solemn questions ever submitted to the decision of the legislature. Beneath this great injustice—if once it pass into law—all the minor evils of this measure may take shelter and be forgotten. If Parliament, more faithful to Oxford than her own sons and representatives, shall deliver her from this, we know of no surrender of her liberties which would be too great a price to pay. It is proposed by this bill to take away the heritage of the poor; Oxford is to be no more what she has been for above five hundred years—“the almshouse of noble poverty.” It is by the merest rule of consequence that the same hands sweep away the rights of families, of counties, and of schools. “No preference shall, after the passing of this Act, be accorded to any candidate by reason of birthplace, kinship, education at any school, orIndigence, over any other person of superior fitness in character and attainments,” (clause xxviii). These are the words. Then follow some grudging exceptions in favour of kinship, of districts, and of schools;nonein behalf of poverty. For this wholesale confiscation the Commissioners had striven hard to prepare the public mind; voices within the walls of Oxford itself had shamefully avowed it as their object; the doctrine of “open competition” and “abolition of preferences” has been preached as an intellectual gospel; and still good and wise men have been slow to realise its growth: whilst those against whose rights it is aimed are lured into a blind belief in it.

Let the people of England look to it. If their old adage be true, that “learning is better than house and land,” a heritage is passing from them. “The nation has a claim to the national universities,” it is said. If it means anything, it means this—that rank, and wealth, and worldly position are not to hold them, to the exclusion of the poor seeker after knowledge. Will they believe us, if we tell them, that the great and good men who in other days built and endowed these colleges, said more than this; they said the pooraloneshould hold the seats of honour there, if they could prove that they were led by the love of learning to enter in and take possession. The sons of the rich and noble might resort there for education; but their fellowships and their scholarships, endowed by their bounty, were for the poor for ever. Is this truth disputed? Is there any moral doubt that the poor scholars of England are the true heirs of the “city of palaces,” any more than of the true purpose of the Hospital of St Cross, which has just engaged so much of the public attention? Is there one whit more iniquity in Lord Guildford’s acts, than there will be in this act, if it passes? We believe that in this case, as well as in that, the public is not awake to the fact, and needs to have the wrong set very plainly before them in order to appreciate it. Ancient statutes—even were the handwriting legible, and the Latin easy—are not popular reading. Yet there are some things in them which would open, to many a shrewd reader amongst our middle classes, a new chapter of the rights of man. It might form a novel, and not wholly unprofitable, theme for a popular lecturer to teach his hearers that the Scholars or Fellows of Oriel were, by the founder’s will, to be not only “casti et humiles” but “indigentes;” not necessarily first- or second-class men, who had spent large sums of money upon private tutors, but merely“ad studium habiles,” “proficere volentes;”that the same qualifications, nearly word for word, repeated as a sacred formula, are those for the Scholars or Fellows of the rich and noble foundations of St John’s, of Merton, of Balliol; that at Magdalen—perhaps now the most luxurious of all our colleges—they were, andarecommanded by the same statutes, by which they claim to hold their rich endowments, to elect “pauperesetindigentes,” guarding the rights of the poor by a double title. And it might not be uninstructive to trace the different interpretations put, in different ages, upon those strange old Latin words—especially the last new interpretation of them; and, by the help of grammar and dictionary, impressing upon an audience, by this time somewhat interested, the rapid advance made, in this age of progress, and under a government of progress, both in the philosophy of language and the recognition of popular rights. There is many an honest Radical, hating a parson or a lord, who no doubt chuckles over reform in any shape, but especially reform of the universities—they being, as it were, hot-beds for raising parsons, and lords, and such-like. He regards this bill as a little step in the way in which we are to go,—not much, but something,—“the beginning of the end,” as our clever friend of theExaminerhas it. He thinks it is to “throw open” the good things to his children which the higher classes have hitherto been giving away quietly among each other. Such men look upon Oxford as aristocrat, and the Commission as the popular champion. Never was a more complete delusion. Who will be the fortunate claimants for these “open” scholarships, which are to be wrested, as Mr Woodgate ably and eloquently shows, from country grammar-schools to which the middle classes resort, from districts which some benevolent founder, risen himself to wealth from a humble origin, wished in his grateful affection to connect with his name for ever—in some cases from orphans—who are to inherit them? They are to be rewards of “merit;” we have so much unrewarded merit going about in this generation; and merit is nothing now without reward. It will be, in nine cases out of ten, boys from the head forms of Eton, Harrow, Rugby, Westminster—

Back to Index Next