486 Encouragement of Scientific Research. [October, 
search they remember naturally that the nett income of 
Oxford, taking the university and the colleges together, 
amounts to the startling sum of £400,000 a year. Of this 
income £91,545 a year are absorbed by the “ Fellowships,” 
which at Cambridge account for £92,820 annually. “ These 
Fellowships at present are mere sinecures, with not even 
ostensible duties attached to their possession. The value of 
a Fellowship at each University may be taken to vary be- 
tween £200 to £300 per annum, paid, for the most part, in 
the form of a life-pension, terminable on marriage. These 
prizes are awarded in open competition, either by special 
examination, or as an indirect result of a high place in the 
public examinations.” Surely, then, these Fellowships are 
the very thing we are in search of for the endowment of 
research. But the moment this change is mooted, there 
rises from amongst those who think, or at least call, them- 
selves Conservatives a hostile hum made up of the words 
“ confiscation, spoliation, violation, communism, revolu- 
tion, confusion, pious founders,” and the like ; and amidst 
the sea of sound we catch exhortations to this effeeft Our 
Universities are educational or tuitional, not investigational. 
If you want places for the advance and increase of human 
knowledge, found and endow them yourselves !” 
At the same time Liberalism, so-called, stands chiefly 
mute, fearing lest its Chinese idol, competitive examination, 
should be overthrown, and his joss-house burnt in the 
struggle. A few only are found who declare boldly that, per 
fas aut nefas , the dead hand of the pious founder notwith- 
standing, such sums must be seized and applied to a more 
useful purpose. But what if both parties, on closer examina- 
tion, are found to be in the wrong ? What if the skeleton- 
hand of the pious founder, instead of being held up in menace 
to bar our way, is found to be beckoning us on ? What if 
we require to effect the needed reforms, no confiscation, but 
merely a carrying out of the original design of old worthies ? 
Contrary to the belief alike of their friends and their foes, 
our great national universities are not exclusively and in- 
tentionally mere places of education. It was never the in- 
tention of the founders, whether of the universities or of 
their individual colleges, to make them mere places where a 
set of young men were to be crammed for examination. 
The advancement of knowledge was an end constantly kept 
in view. The Fellows were supposed to be a body of men 
giving up the whole of their time to study and research. 
Thus, in Merton College, the Fellows “ are to employ them- 
selves in the study of Arts, of Philosophy, the Canons, or 
