248 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES. 
When F. D. Maurice was deprived of his chair, in 1853, for his views on 
eternal punishment, it was not definitely stated in the resolution of the 
governing body that he had contravened those Articles. It was stated, in 
vaguer terms, that his opinions were ‘of dangerous tendency . . . calculated 
to unsettle the minds of the theological students . . . detrimental to the 
usefulness of the college.’ None the less, though the action taken by the 
governing body was not grounded, and perhaps could not have been 
grounded, on a definite contravention of the Thirty-nine Articles, the 
existence of a rule of subscription to those Articles was the real basis of 
that action. 
A much more difficult question arises when we turn to consider the 
action of a professor outside his class-room. Here, again, the case of 
F. D. Maurice occurs to the mind. He was attacked in 1851, and virtually 
censured, though not deprived of his chair, for his connection with the 
Christian Socialist movement. The case is curiously typical, and curiously 
apposite to our modern difficulties, even though it occurred over seventy 
yearsago. Croker had launched the attack in the Press, and besides attack- 
ing Maurice he had drawn the college into the issue, by stating that ‘it added 
to his surprise to find the holder of such views occupying the professorial 
chair . . . in King’s College, London.’ Some general considerations of a 
large pertinence are suggested by Croker’s action and words. The Press 
may defend, and by its own position as a natural champion of freedom of 
expression of opinion it will often actually defend, the freedom of a pro- 
fessor ; but just because it is necessarily set on publicity, it is also a danger 
to that freedom. It does not help the free course of thought that its 
delicate difficulties should be cried in the streets. The Press, again, will 
always attach the label “ professor,’ and the name of his institution, when 
it chances to mention in any connection an ordinary citizen who is also a 
professor at any institution. By such attachment a sad result is entailed. 
If the citizen who is also a professor speaks on a public issue, he is made to 
involve his institution in what he says. If what he says is unpopular, he 
may make his institution unpopular: it may lose students: it may lose 
benefactions.1 What is the institution to do? Should it make a rule, 
such as the Principal of King’s College seemed to suggest in 1851, “ that 
you will do your utmost to bear in mind the duty and importance of not 
compromising the College’? If it makes such a rule, it will be bound to 
define what is compromising, and it will be bound in the last resort to 
enforce its definition. In order to prevent itself from being compromised, 
it will compromise itself terribly. A professor may compromise it in part : 
it will compromise itself as a whole. A wise president of a great American 
University—President Lowell of Harvard—has put the point admirably in 
his annual report for the Session 1916-1917: ‘If a University or College 
censors what its professors may say . . . it thereby assumes responsibility 
for that which it permits them to say. This is logical and inevitable, but 
it is a responsibility which an institution of learning would be very unwise 
in assuming.’ A wise university will run any risk of being compromised 
by its members rather than compromise its entire self. 
But if the university is wise to tolerate, the professor is wise to be 
severely moderate and master of himself. It is true that he is a citizen, 
1 This is stated, or implied, by the Principal and Councii of King’s College in 
1851. See the Life of F. D. Maurice, by F. Maurice, ii., p. 80, p. 98, p. 101. 
