36 MEMOIR OF AUGUSTUS DE MORGAN. 



1831. attempts in progress to remove the obnoxious individual. The 

 medical school is peculiarly subject to this evil, owing to the very- 

 frequent jealousies of one another which arise among the mem- 

 bers of that profession. No man will feel secure in his seat ; 

 and, consequently, no man will feel it his interest to give up his 

 time to the affairs of his class. And yet this is absolutely 

 necessary in the general school at least, for from the moment 

 when a class becomes numerous the preparation, arrangement, 

 and conduct of a system of instruction is nearly the business of 

 a life; at least, I have found it so. If a Professor is easily 

 removable, he will endeavour to secure something else of a more 

 certain tenure ; he will turn his attention to some literary under- 

 taking, or to private pupils, while he remains in the institution, 

 in order that he may not be without resource if the caprice of the 

 governing body should remove him and this to the manifest 

 detriment of his class, which, when it pays him well, ought to 

 command his best exertions. In addition to this, he will al- 

 ways be on the watch to establish himself in some less precarious 

 employment, which he will do even at pecuniary loss, since, 

 especially if he have a family, it must be his first object. In this 

 way, the University will become a nursery of Professors for 

 better conducted institutions of all descriptions, since no man, 

 or body of men, desirous to secure a competent teacher in any 

 branch of knowledge, will need to give themselves the trouble to 

 examine into the pretensions of candidates as long as any one 

 fit for their purpose is at the University of London. The conse- 

 quence will be a perpetual change of system in the different classes 

 of the University, and the eventual loss of its reputation as a place 

 of education. These evils may be very simply avoided by mak- 

 ing the continuance of the Professors in their chairs determinable 

 only by death, voluntary resignation, or misconduct either in 

 their character of Professors or as gentlemen, proved before a 

 competent tribunal, so framed that there shall be no doubt in the 

 public mind of the justice of their decision. 



But this, it has been said, will be to give the Professors a 

 vested interest. I assert that, in the proper sense of the words 

 vested interest, it ought so to be. Who have more interest in 

 the well-being of the University than I and my colleagues ? Is 

 it the Proprietary and the Council, on account of the capital 

 invested by them, and their zeal for the advancement of educa- 

 tion ? In the latter we yield to none of them ; and as to 

 pecuniary risks, I, for example, have invested the whole results 



