278 



NATURE 



[January 20. 1898 



district, its rapid growth, and the reputation it had acquired, 

 which was due in large part to the capacity and the character of 

 the teachers it had been able to attract. The Mason College at 

 the present time was hampered by a lack of resources. They had 

 not the funds to deal with the growing requirements of the 

 time and of the district, to provide proper appliances, proper 

 buildings, and proper remuneration for those who acted as 

 professors and demonstrators in the institution. The Lord 

 Mayor had been good enough to say that the deficit was a 

 moderate one, but deficits had a most uncomfortable habit of 

 increasing, and, although the endowment which was provided 

 for the College by the munificence of Sir Josiah Mason was 

 sufficient for it in its infancy, it was inadequate for present 

 requirements. The trustees had always contemplated the pos- 

 sibility that they would be able to crown the edifice of their 

 educational institution by the establishment of a local University 

 to meet the requirements of the district, and he need hardly 

 point out that if that object found favour in their eyes, as the 

 greater included the less, so the relief desired would come in 

 the creation of a properly-endowed University into which the 

 Mason College would be practically absorbed. He hoped the 

 ambition to which he had referred would not in the present 

 day be considered unreasonable. 



THb Multiplication of Universities. 



There was a time, no doubt, when members of the older 

 Universities, and men who were altogether independent of 

 them, believed that the multiplication of Universities would 

 injure education ; that it would lead, in a certain sense, to the 

 degradation and the lowering of the value of the degrees which 

 Universities conferred ; but very much had happened in the last 

 twenty years, and he could hardly imagine any reasonable man 

 arguing in that strain at the present moment. The fact was 

 the need of the local University had been recognised, and at the 

 present time Birmingham, and the surrounding district, was the 

 only great centre in England which was not already provided 

 with such an educational institution. Liverpool, Manchester, 

 and Leeds had their Victoria University ; Newcastle was closely 

 connected with Durham ; Wales had its own University ; Lon- 

 don had a University of a kind, which, when Londoners were 

 able to make up their minds, would no doubt develop into some- 

 thing much better. He could not conceive of any district at the 

 present time which more needed or more deserved the estab- 

 lishment of such an institution than the district in which he was 

 speaking. But if they went outside England the argument was 

 greatly strengthened. They looked to Germany for an example 

 and a model of everything in the way of educational organisation 

 and progress. Education was made in Germany, and they were 

 not ashamed to take the lesson to heart. Germany, with forty- 

 six millions of people, had twenty-one Universities. Their own 

 sister kingdom, Scotland, with four million people, had four 

 Universities ; in England and Wales, with nearly thirty millions 

 of people, they had six Universities; A priori, at any rate, he 

 thought they had made out a case for a University. 



jEducation in the Midlands. 



But there were other reasons he drew from the educational 

 history of the district. The right hon. gentleman then proceeded 

 to sketch the rapid and remarkable development of education in 

 the district, speaking in high terms of the educational institutions. 

 They had Mason College, which at last had been incorporated as 

 a full University college. Was it not clear that after that which 

 had been accomplished so rapidly they might ask without pre- 

 sumption for an institution which should crown that circle of 

 their educational opportunities, and which should direct and 

 control and guide and coordinate these local educational works, 

 and so put themselves in a position to equal and rival every other 

 part of the kingdom ? He would like to strengthen his argument 

 by a quotation from a man who, perhaps more than any other, 

 was qualified to speak upon that subject — ;he meant the late Prof. 

 Huxley, who said : " But a city University is, in my judgment, 

 a corporation which has charge of the interests of knowledge as 

 such, and the business of which is to represent knowledge by the 

 acquirement by its members of increased knowledge, by their 

 investigations to diffuse knowledge, by their teaching, and last, 

 but not least, to create a respect for knowledge among their 

 fellow men by their personal example and influence." Prof. 

 Huxley was writing then in reference to the proposed creation of a 

 University for Manchester. Whatever argument was then 

 applicable to Manchester was applicable in no less a degree to 



NO. 1473. ^OL, 57] 



Birmingham and the district, because he believed that there was- 

 no district in the kingdom that was so distinct in what he might 

 call the peculiar genus, knowledge, and character of its people, 

 and in the nature of its occupations as that great manufacturing 

 district which had the vast population of more than 2,000,000 

 or so in and around Birmingham within a radius of twenty or 

 thirty miles. 



The Objects of the University. 

 What did they mean by a University? What new institution 

 was it they desired to place in Birmingham ? They meant, he 

 took it, a great school of universal instruction not confined to 

 any particular branch of knowledge, but taking all knowledge 

 as its province, and arranging regular courses of complete in- 

 struction in all the great branches of information. They must, 

 in the second place, use that knowledge so that the professors 

 and teachers should be associated with the students, and all 

 should be students together, and so that those who came to 

 teach should continue to learn, and so that the most im- 

 portant work of original research should be continuously 

 carried on under the most favourable circumstances ; and, 

 lastly, they meant by a University a body which should have 

 power to control the courses of education and to confer 

 degrees which should test the value of its instruction. He 

 put that last because he believed that of the three objects of 

 the University it was the least important, although it was 

 necessary to a University, and without it Mason College had 

 lost a number of students. One thing he might at once 

 admit. Any new Uni%'ersity which they might succeed in 

 establishing would not be in any sense a competitor with the 

 old Universities of Oxford and Cambridge. Those Universities 

 appealed necessarily to classes many of whom they could not 

 expect to touch, and they offered associations, traditions, and 

 conditions which they could not under any circumstances 

 attempt or hope to emulate. Therefore, while they could not 

 imitate Oxford and Cambridge if they would, he would say 

 also that they would not if they could, because, while the 

 older Universities supplied a want of their own, and if any- 

 thing were to happen to them they would leave an incalcul- 

 able gap in all that was interesting and picturesque in English 

 life and English history, yet when they came to create new 

 Universities in this modern time and under modern conditions 

 it was something rather different that they had in view. He 

 would say, rather, that they should take as their modal, not 

 indeed absolutely, the great Universities of Scotland— of Edin- 

 burgh or of Glasgow. He thought the University of Glasgow 

 was built, much as they hoped theirs would be, upon a pre- 

 existent college which had subsequently been absorbed or de- 

 veloped into a University. But there was no doubt whatever, 

 from the experience of such Universities as those he had re- 

 ferred to, that to place them in the middle of a great industrial 

 and manufacturing population was to do something to elevate 

 the whole mass to higher aims and higher intellectual ambi- 

 tions than would otherwise be possible to people engaged 

 entirely in trading and commercial pursuits. 



The Need of Money, 

 Rome was not built in a day, and their University would, he 

 dare say, for generations yet to come give opportunities to 

 liberal benefactors to improve and extend it. But one thing 

 was essential, one thing they must do — put the University in a 

 position to attract the best teachers, to attract men of the 

 highest reputation, and to keep them there when they 

 had induced them to come. Pointing out how this ideal 

 could be attained, Mr. Chamberlain remarked that all 

 they wanted was very little — only money ; and that, he 

 hoped, would be forthcoming. The sacrifice must be pro- 

 portioned to the importance ol the object they had in view. He 

 had no idea that Birmingham or the district would be satisfied 

 with a starved University. He would rather wait another fifty 

 years if necessary than start with everything pinched and mean 

 about them, with insufficient buildings, with inadequate appli- 

 ances, and, above all, with insufficient remuneration for those 

 whom they employed. Therefore, he urged that they should 

 start the scheme with a determination to make it a great suc- 

 cess. Let them start it with an endowment which, at all events, 

 would secure the main objects which they had in view. It was 

 calculated that what would be required would be 250,000/. He 

 was not at all inclined to minimise a demand of that sort made 

 under the circumstances. Money would not be spent in colossal 

 buildings. They must come later on. It was chiefly to secure 



