SIR ERASMUS WILSON CHAIR OF PATHOLOGY xxix. 



restrictions set upon them are so stringent as to be almost 

 prohibitive of their being accepted. When one thinks of the 

 enormous sums of money which have been left for bursaries in 

 time past, and which still come pouring in on all hands, when 

 one considers the questionable efficiency of the subsidizing of 

 students' fees by the immense sum of money comprised in the 

 Carnegie Grant, several questions naturally assert themselves: — 

 Has this money been laid out to the best advantage ? is it 

 subserving the purpose for which it was intended ? and has it 

 been directed into channels which are likely to yield the highest 

 return in the future. 



So long as Scotland, as in the 17th and i8th centuries, was 

 a poor country, the good purpose subscribed by leaving money 

 for bursaries could not be gainsaid. These bursaries in early 

 times did an infinity of good in encouraging learning. Deserving 

 merit through them met with its due reward, and was fostered 

 and encouraged until such time as it blossomed forth in the 

 cultured man of letters. But it becomes those who have the 

 welfare of our Universities at heart, as well as those who are 

 anxious about the education of the country in general, to ask 

 themselves whether the system has not been overdone. Scot- 

 land is no longer a poor country ; wealth has accumulated in it, 

 and prosperity has followed the steps of those of her sons who 

 have launched out in her various enterprises, indeed, to an 

 extent which, reading the annals of a period so late as the end 

 of the eighteenth century, could not have been anticipated by 

 her most sanguine of prophets. 



There is evidence, accordingly, that the subsidizing of the 

 fees necessary for education at our Scotch Universities is in 

 great part uncalled for at the present day, and, moreover, there 

 is a suspicion abroad that it is actually doing harm by destroying 

 the honourable feeling of independence and self-reliance which 



