NATURE 



381 



THURSDAY, MARCH 16, 1876 



UNIVERSITY REFORM 



THE discussion in the House of Lords on the second 

 reading of the Oxford University Bill cannot be 

 said to have been satisfactory. Those who took part in 

 the debate were, almost without exception, Oxford men 

 with high honours ; and they evidently represented the 

 opinions of the majority of Oxford residents. It is, 

 indeed, a singular circumstance that there should be 

 among the peers so large a proportion of persons who 

 have gained first-classes, and who have themselves held 

 " idle fellowships ; " a proportion greater than can be 

 found in the House of Commons. But the experience 

 contributed by them, however valuable, ought not to have 

 monopolised the whole discussion of the matter in a 

 legislative assembly. Such experience is of the nature 

 of one-sided evidence, which should be heard and weighed 

 before a decision is reached ; but which cannot be per- 

 mitted to substitute itself for a thorough discussion of a 

 subject of national importance. This aspect of the 

 debate is the more to be regretted, because it will tend to 

 encourage the feeling, which seems to be already pre- 

 dominant at Oxford, that the limited vision of the present 

 race of University residents, together with their own 

 pecuniary interests, is to determine the course of acade- 

 mical reorganisation. The hopes raised by Lord Salis- 

 bury's first speech will be dashed to the ground, if 

 such petty matters as the ditiference between the 

 legislative functions of convocation and congregation, 

 the influence of the parochial clergy on either body, or 

 the period during which an " idle fellowship " should be 

 tenable, are thrust forward as the supreme considerations. 

 These subjects, no doubt, require to be discussed and 

 settled, once and for all ; and it is, perhaps, an omission 

 that they have not found a place in the Government 

 measure. But no misfortune would be graver than if it 

 were to go to the country, as the Liberal peers seem to 

 wish, that the Bill does not contain principles of reform, 

 in comparison with which these details sink into their 

 proper insignificance. 



Lord Salisbur)'s speech was welcomed, certainly by 

 men of science, and we believe also by all those whose 

 ideal of a university is not confined to what they learned 

 during their adult school-days at Oxford or Cambridge, 

 because he unhesitatingly announced two new principles, 

 upon which the whole merits of the scheme turn. He 

 proposed that the University should be endowed at the 

 expense of the colleges, and that scientific research should 

 take its place in the University by the side of religion and 

 learning. Now, these two main principles were entirely 

 disregarded in the discussion of last Thursday ; or, when 

 they were referred to, were " damned with faint praise." 

 The Archbishop of Canterbury, whose speech was, on the 

 whole, worthy of his position, professed himself ignorant 

 of the precise meaning to be attached to the word 

 " research ; " as if there had not been, during the last 

 three years, abundance of discussion on the subject in 

 the press, and as if it had not been defined in the report 

 of a Royal Commission. Both Lord Carlingford and the 

 Earl of Morley reproduce the old argument, which to 

 those familiar with the topic has long ago been worn 

 Vol. XIII.— No. 333 



threadbare, that the endowment of teaching professors is 

 the only endowment of research which is either desirable 

 or possible. It is not necessary in these pages to show 

 how entirely is this objection founded upon ignorance. It 

 is enough to observe that those very persons who are the 

 most ardent advocates of the present system of awarding 

 fellowships as sinecures, express themselves as most fear- 

 ful of the danger of opening these sinecures to the physical 

 sciences, and imposing on their holders the duty of original 

 investigation. Lord Morley was in his day a distinguished 

 classical student at Balliol College ; but, so far is he from 

 understanding the new demands of the present time, that he 

 concluded his speech with the following idle peroration : — 

 " I trust that the University, reinforced by the proposed aids, 

 will take up the proud position she has so long held, and will, 

 I hope, long continue to hold, as the head and centre of all 

 science and learning." With regard to the proposal to 

 satisfy the admitted wants of the University out of the 

 surplus income of the colleges, hardly a word was said. 

 Everybody was too anxious to support the condemned 

 system of " idle fellowships," to bestow a thought upon 

 the profitable uses to which these misapplied funds might 

 be devoted. And so the House of Lords read the Oxford 

 University Bill a second time, without any deliberate con- 

 sideration of its essential features, but evidently prepared 

 to dispute in Committee over all sorts of uninteresting 

 details. 



There is, however, one important point, on which not 

 only the House of Lords, but also the nation at large, 

 seems in danger of being misled. This has reference to 

 the intentions of founders, and the original object for 

 which fellowships were endowed. It seems to be uni- 

 versally assumed that the intention of the founders was 

 primarily to promote religion, and secondarily education. 

 " Orignally," said the Earl of Carnarvon, "religion was 

 the object of the University' ; then, after a struggle, 

 learning was added ; " and now it is proposed to com- 

 plement the two former by the addition of research. 

 Against the theory implied in the last clause nothing can 

 be urged ; but the two former statements represent a 

 most perverted view of history. The Archbishop of 

 Canterbury, who ought to be better informed, is equally 

 wrong, though less positive. " We know very little, per- 

 haps, now of the exact intentions of the founders. W"e do 

 know that many of them were desirous to benefit their 

 own souls by having masses celebrated in their own 

 Colleges ; . . . but when that is said, we know very little 

 more than that they had a general desire to pro- 

 mote education." Now, as a matter of fact, there is 

 no historical evidence whatever, to show that the Uni- 

 versity or the colleges commenced with religious 

 observances, and that learning had a hard fight 

 to enter in. So far as we know anything about the 

 condition of the University of Oxford in the pre- 

 collegiate epoch (and it is true that our knowledge 

 of that period is very small), it is certam that the Univer- 

 sity of Oxford, like the sister University of Paris, was an 

 j assembly of teachers and students, by no means of priests 

 I and monks. Study was the primary object then, as later, 

 to which religious functions were only subordinate. No 

 doubt the majority of the learned men were clerici, i.e., 

 in orders, but so were the lawyers at that time, and the 

 Universities are no more ecclesiastical corporations than 



