It might be easily inferred, were it not stated expressly in the angry controversies with his successor, that the discipline of the College was much relaxed, and many abuses tolerated by this amiable man. The old Statutes regulating studies in the autumn (out of term) had fallen into desuetude; the Chapel was shut up in July, and all business ceased for six weeks. Residence was not enforced at this time, or indeed at other times, in the case of poor scholars, who went as tutors into country houses. Still worse, the marriage of several Fellows, in spite of their solemn oath of celibacy during their tenure, was connived at, and thus a habit tolerated of trifling with solemn obligations, which not only brought great scandal upon the College, but lowered the general dignity and respectability of the Governing Body. Most of them were in debt to the College, and with the expectation of never having payment enforced. It also appears accidentally, from a document printed by Taylor, that the Wide Street Commissioners, making a report to the Irish Parliament in 1799 on the condition of the College property extending from the north precinct to the river, found that the houses and land had, by some great oversight, been let on a long lease (60 years), at a small rent, to the Bishop of Raphoe.[93]
We may assume that the great social successes of Andrews’ Provostship encouraged the Government, on his death, to promote another layman, and lawyer, into the vacant post. It was doubtless argued that, with the increase of wealth and splendour in the College, it must be represented by a public man, a man of the world, and a good speaker. But the new Provost, John Hely Hutchinson, lacked other and not less necessary qualifications which had made Andrews so successful. In the first place he had never been a Fellow, and thus was not only ignorant of the routine of College work, but also of the characters and susceptibilities of the Fellows. It was but natural that such of them as were baulked in their advancement by his appointment, and who thought themselves more worthy to hold it, resented the promotion of a stranger by political influence. Though Hutchinson managed to gain over certain members of the Board, he found others irreconcilable, and he is alleged to have dealt with them in unscrupulous fashion, both by attempted bribery and by open oppression. The moral standard of his profession, and indeed of the official classes throughout Ireland, was very low. Every successful man seems to have feathered his nest by obtaining or creating sinecures, nor was there any limit to the rapacity which accumulated them in the same hands. It was well that Hutchinson did not set himself to plunder the College for his family; the few cases of inferior officers whom he thrust upon the College, which his adversaries have exposed, are mere trifles.
But he was ambitious of political power for his sons; and he certainly strove to make the College a pocket-borough. This attempt brought about him a nest of hornets. The fact was, that bribery or intimidation, which might be used with hardly any risk in constituencies of ordinary electors, was sure to stumble upon some young gentleman of high character and independence among the Fellows or Scholars, and thus be exposed.
On the other hand, the abuses tolerated by Andrews gave the new Provost a great power of intimidation, which he could have used very effectually. Fellows with wives and large families, who had broken their solemn engagement to celibacy, and resided outside the College, contrary to the Statutes, who, moreover, owed to the College large sums of money for the purchase of rooms, which they could not pay, were practically in the Provost’s hands. It is much to be regretted that when a layman, an outsider, and a public man chanced to be set over the Society, he did not take in hand thorough reforms on these all-important points—reforms which could hardly be expected from an old member of the Corporation, promoted after years of acquiescence or participation in the growing laxities of discipline.
But the school in which Hutchinson was educated was even morally worse than that of the culpable Fellows. There must be substantial truth in the constant allegation, proved by two Parliamentary inquiries, that the Provost’s assertions of discipline were not just and uniform, but intended to promote his political power. Both in 1776 and in 1790, when Hutchinson secured the return of his elder and younger sons respectively by a very narrow majority, there were petitions against them on the ground of intimidation and bribery, and the evidence then given is the real ground of the severe judgment which the local historians have pronounced against the Provost. In the former petition his son was unseated; in the latter—remarkable for having Lord Edward Fitzgerald and the future Duke of Wellington among its members—the casting vote of the chairman saved the sitting member. The evidence in both cases is so very similar, that we cannot but wonder at the incaution of the Provost, who was probably saved from a second disgrace only by his personal influence with the Chairman of the Committee. In this latter case, however, Hutchinson disowned altogether the person who acted as go-between, and who made offers to the scholars. He was private tutor to the Provost’s family, but was dismissed, and excluded from the precincts of the College by order of the Visitors.
The case is therefore strong against the Provost, though we should remember that in those days all Parliamentary elections in Ireland were carried on by similar means, and that bribery was only condemned by the law, not by the moral sense of the community.
This public evidence has, however, not weighed in the minds of historians so strongly as the violent pamphlet called Lachrymæ Academicæ, written against the Provost by his bitter personal enemy, Dr. Patrick Duigenan, who as a Junior Fellow was at perpetual variance with his chief, and at last resigned his Fellowship to take a Chair of Law, which was increased in value (with the Provost’s consent) to induce his resignation. This exceedingly violent ex parte statement seems to me chiefly valuable for its allusions to the internal affairs of the College not at issue in the dispute. The tone is scurrilous, and the confident prediction that a few more years of the Provost’s manipulation must ruin the College falsified by the facts. Instead of securing all the posts in the College for partizans of his own, the Provost met with more and more opposition, especially from the Junior Fellows, as years elapsed. In 1775, a scholar whom he had deprived insisted upon a Visitation, in which Primate Robinson, the Vice-Chancellor, decided against the Provost. In 1791, another Vice-Chancellor, Lord Clare, decided against him on the right of negative, which he claimed under the Statutes in every election. The sense of the Statute is plain enough. It ordains that the majority of Provost and Board shall decide elections; but if such majority could not be obtained after two scrutinies—that is to say, if the Senior Fellows had divided their votes among three or more candidates, so that none of them had more than three—then the Provost’s vote, even if it stood alone, shall decide the election. This very reasonable Statute was, however, so worded, that another interpretation was possible, ordaining that even in an absolute majority of votes the Provost’s must be one. Lord Clare decided rightly that the disputed words una cum Præposito, vel eo absente Vice-Præposito, merely meant that the Senior Fellows could not elect without the presence of either of these officers.[94]
This Visitation concludes the long history of the quarrels of the political Provost with his Fellows. He was then an old man, and though he showed considerable vigour in arguing his case, it is evident that the fire of his ambition was burning low, and his combativeness decreasing with the decay of his physical powers. It is a great pity that while a collection of scurrilous tracts—Pranceriana, Lachrymæ Academicæ, and others—were published and widely circulated, and are still quoted against him, his own account of the history of the College, of his own doings, and of the character of his opponents, has remained in MS., and even this MS. is not now in the Library, but in possession of Mr. Charles Todd. It is therefore only known through the few extracts which those writers have made who have had access to this source. The impression produced by these extracts is strongly in Hutchinson’s favour; he speaks with admiration of some of his opponents, and with great calmness of his own political mistakes. Until this important document is thoroughly examined, the case for Provost Hutchinson cannot be considered complete, nor can we determine all the motives of his policy. We can, however, infer from the public acts of his government the following conclusions.
In the first place, he clearly desired to modernise the education of the students, not only by modifying their course of study (of which Dr. Duigenan says he was an incompetent judge), but by making them practise accomplishments quite foreign to old Collegiate discipline. The account of his improvements suggests that he advanced in the direction which Andrews had set for the College, but so rashly as to make his government a parody of that of his predecessor. Having himself called out his man, and fought a duel, he could not possibly interdict the use of arms among the students; and we hear strange and probably exaggerated accounts of the number of students killed or maimed in affairs of honour.[95] Akin to the practice of arms was the practice of horsemanship, which brought upon him some ridicule when he desired to have a riding-school attached to the College. This idea was probably suggested to him by country gentlemen, who thought that their sons should receive a complete training for their after life in the University. The same ideas prompted him to found Chairs of Modern Languages, which have lasted to this day, and which proclaimed the startling novelty that not dead languages only, but the living languages of Europe are part of a liberal education. However late and imperfect the teaching of modern languages at the University may have been, we can here also infer that it was the solicitation of parents of the higher classes which made Hutchinson propose these changes, all of which tended to make the students men of the world.