THE ECONOMICS OF UNIVERSITY EDUCATION 367 



corporation, or be allowed to set up any trade, either in a 

 village or town corporate." 



This passage is remarkable for the wide difference between 

 the means recommended to promote elementary education and 

 those which are sanctioned by the present practice of most 

 civilised nations. The principles that public money may be 

 spent in providing elementary education, and that some form 

 of compulsion may be used, are accepted ; but the " little school " 

 in each parish or district is nowadays represented by a building 

 which must comply with the sanitary and educational ideals 

 of experts. The fee, which was not to be " wholly paid by 

 the public," is entirely provided by the community. The direct 

 responsibility of the teacher to the parent, which the payment 

 of fees by the latter was to secure, is replaced by responsibility 

 to a public authority. The " small premiums and little badges 

 of distinction," which were to encourage attendance, are repre- 

 sented by scholarships to Secondary Schools, and thence to 

 the Universities. The indirect compulsion of requiring a 

 minimum of attainment before the pupil is allowed to earn his 

 living by setting up " any trade, either in a village or town 

 corporate," is replaced by the knock of the School Board visitor, 

 with the magistrate in the background. 



I do not enlarge on these points, because my subject is 

 University and not Elementary education ; but it is impossible 

 to avoid two conclusions. Firstly, that the public purse is pro- 

 viding for elementary education an enormously larger sum than 

 Adam Smith contemplated, or would in all probability have 

 approved ; and, secondly, that, whether the bases of his argu- 

 ments were valid or unsound, the conclusions he drew from 

 them are not in accord with the practice or the public opinion 

 of to-day. 



The cases of the very young and the poor, important as they 

 are and costly as the latter has proved to be, are, however, from 

 Adam Smith's standpoint, only exceptions to the general rule 

 which requires the direct dependence of the teacher, both finan- 

 cially and also in respect of the subjects taught and the manner 

 of teaching them, on the student and his friends. He assumes 

 throughout that, if this control is exercised, it is necessary and 

 desirable that the student should pay the greater part of the 

 cost of his own education. "The institutions for the education 

 of youth," he says, "furnish a revenue sufficient for defraying 



