254 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES. 
and counter-check between local and national authorities. It is more 
favourable to universities than a system in which there is only a single 
public authority. It is sometimes a little of a trouble (and in a moment 
of irritation one might even describe it as a nuisance) that both authorities 
are apt to crave information about the same point on different schedules. 
But the gain is much greater than the loss. 
The aid which is given by the national authority to universities in 
Great Britain is at the present time much greater than that which is given 
by the local authority.’ And it is given on a singularly liberal scheme. 
An annual sum of £1,250,000 is distributed by a Treasury Committee of 
independent scholars among the universities in the shape of block grants, 
which each university is free to spend along the lines of its own policy. 
Only in the sphere of medical education, and in respect of the grants made 
to medical schools, has any specific educational condition been attached. 
Here the policy of favouring the system of clinical units has been adopted 
by the Committee, and that policy has its critics. That, however, is the 
only action which even smacks of interference. The aid given by local 
authorities is hardly given on so liberala scheme. Local authorities are apt 
to regard universities as their own local institutions which they should control 
to a greater or less degree; and they sometimes allocate their aid to specific 
purposes only, or attach very definite conditions to their grants. Solong 
as their grants are definitely less than those of the national authority, and 
so long as there is the dualism of the local and the national authorities, 
no serious alarm need be felt. At the same time one cannot but feel that 
the local authorities are inclined to press too far the idea that ‘ democratic 
control’ of university education means its control by elected local repre- 
sentatives assembled in county or borough council. We may rejoin that 
democratic control of a university is control by its own governing body, 
provided that that body is democratically constituted, and is duly subject 
in serious matters to public criticism. And the Treasury Committee, which — 
virtually proceeds on that conception, seems closest to genuine democratic 
principles. 
On the whole, there is no serious menace to academic freedom in Great 
Britain from a system of university finance which relies, as our system does, 
on a balanced mixture of income from fees, public assistance, and private 
benefaction, with the balance perhaps inclining more and more to a prepon- 
derance of public assistance. Much, however, depends on the dualism of 
our system of public assistance, and much too on our habit of leaving 
institutions alone, to go their own way, as far as possible. The present 
position is very tolerably good, and the general English notion of self- 
government leaves our universities as free as it is good for them to be. 
There might conceivably arise a government, strongly wedded to definite 
principles, which refused to give aid to universities unless those principles 
were taught, or were not, at any rate, neglected in the instruction given by 
the universities. An advanced Labour Government, for instance, might 
possibly take objection to the teaching by a university of what, in its 
view, were ‘ capitalistic ’ economics, and the omission of the economics of 
Socialism. But the possibility is most exceedingly improbable—unless 
5 In England and Wales, during the academic year 1922-1923, the percentage of 
the total income of universities due to grants from Parliament was 38°1: that of 
total income arising from grants made by local authorities was 14-4, 
we 
