The Right Honourable Sir Henry Enfield Roscoe P.C., D.C.L., F.R.S. / A Biographical Sketch

by T. E. Thorpe

Subsequent speakers, in so far as they went over the same ground, merely ploughed with Dr. Playfair’s heifer. The Marquess of Ripon was not discouraged by the small beginnings of the undertaking. All the experiences of the past showed that those institutions which had taken the deepest root, and which had flourished the longest and wielded ultimately the most extensive influence, had sprung from small beginnings. Our ancient universities had mainly sprung from individual effort, and from private endowment. We were not less wealthy than our ancestors who founded them. Surely we could do now what they did before us. He trusted that there was not to be any doubt as to the future of this institution. We were told that its managers had acted to a great extent upon faith; that they had been doing their work partly out of capital in the confidence that that capital would be repaid them by the good sense and generosity of their countrymen.

Of all those who followed, and who pleaded the cause of the College, none was received with greater heartiness and enthusiasm than Mr. W. E. Forster, and there was none whose speech had a deeper or more genuine note of sympathy and encouragement. There were perhaps special reasons for the warmth of the welcome with which he was greeted. The political circumstances of the time were peculiar, and Mr. Forster was known to be the undeserved victim of them. The Liberal party was then in opposition, and Mr. Gladstone earlier in the year had suddenly thrown up his position as its leader. Public opinion had designated Mr. Forster as one of the two or three politicians of eminence who might fitly be regarded as his successor. But a considerable section of the Nonconformist Radicals never forgave Mr. Forster for his action—or what they supposed to be his sole action—respecting the religious question in the Education Act of 1870. Led by the Birmingham League, they were determined to make his selection as the party leader impossible. The League party in his own constituency of Bradford passed a resolution hostile to his claims. Eventually, rather than divide the Liberal party, Mr. Forster withdrew from the contest, and Lord Hartington, whom all sections were willing to follow, was chosen. These circumstances were well known to everybody in that large audience, and most moderate-minded men in it had the fullest sympathy with what Mr. Gladstone called “the thoroughly genuine and independent character” whose natural ambition as a statesman had been so rudely checked by the sectarian rancour of political allies. This was his reward for the wise and statesmanlike measure of 1870—one of the finest achievements to the credit of the Liberal party.

As he stepped to the front of the platform to make his contribution to the cause of the College he was received with round after round of applause, and for some minutes he was unable to proceed. Men instinctively recognized that the effort for which he pleaded was but another link in the educational chain which he had done so much to forge—the Endowed Schools Act of 1869 and the great Education Act of 1870. His was but a short speech, but each strong, vigorous utterance went home. The College was to be as its name implied—a county institution—not merely of the town in which it happened to be situated. They might as well at once acknowledge that the call which had been made by civilization upon civilized people had not been so much responded to by England as it had been in some other countries. But they had awoke to the fact that a call was made upon them. They had a habit of being late, but not too late.

This demonstration had an immediate effect upon the fortunes of the College. One practical result was a considerable increase in financial support. Some of those who had already given, gave largely again; and many additional subscribers came forward. The existence of the College was made known throughout the length and breadth of the county. The Inaugural Ceremony met with a splendid “press.” One of the most gratifying features was the “uplifting” tone of the speeches: speaker after speaker pointed out what should be the true character of the institution: it was not to be a mere Trade School—not simply a Technical College but a centre of liberal culture and of higher education, containing within it the potentiality of a University discipline.

To those who had ears to hear, and an imagination to conceive, the future of the College was plainly indicated within the first twelve months of its existence. It was this aspect of its destiny that appealed so strongly to that eminent journalist and man of letters, the late Sir Wemyss Reid, at that time editing the Leeds Mercury, and to which he gave emphatic expression in those forcible leaders so characteristic of his pen. So long as he remained in Leeds, Reid proved a staunch friend of the College and was ever ready to do what he could for its welfare. Nor was the educational press in general at all backward in extending a welcome to the infant institution: certain members of the teaching staff did yeoman service in enlisting its interest and sympathy.

The result of this organized effort, in which all concerned—members of the Council, officers, teachers—worked with enthusiasm and unanimity, was seen in the record of the subsequent session’s work.

From this time onward the successive Annual Reports of the College constitute an unbroken story of continued development. It was not, of course, surprisingly rapid, but it was steady and continuous. The progress of the institution was general; it was to be measured by the gradual increase in the number of its teachers, in the character and range of their subjects, and in the sessional entry of the students. It is, perhaps, significant of the change that a quarter of a century had made in the attitude of the middle class towards educational matters that the growth of the Yorkshire College, during its early years, should have been relatively far greater than that of Owens College at the corresponding period of its existence. But there may have been other factors to account for, or at least to increase, the difference. The generally acknowledged success to which the Manchester foundation had attained at the time of the establishment of the Leeds College may have been, and probably was, by the force of example and desire of emulation, a potent contributory cause.

The courses of study at Owens College, so far as circumstances and its means would permit, were avowedly based, at the outset, on the examples of the older Universities. The little regard that was then paid to Science by the Trustees was indicated by the small stipend that was attached to the science chairs as compared with those on humanity subjects. There was no general recognition, even in the home of Dalton, of the beneficent part that science was able to play in the industrial life of the district. On the other hand, the Yorkshire College started wholly untrammelled by the traditions of ancient seats of learning, and its counsels were only remotely influenced by those who had been nursed in them. As its original designation implied, its projectors clearly recognized the value of science in relation to industry. They founded the College, indeed, in the strength of their conviction. They began, in fact, at a point to which Owens College had arrived when Roscoe made his influence felt upon its policy.

It cannot be said, however, that the educational aims of the governing body of the Leeds institution to begin with were very sharply defined; nor was the action of the Council always consistent. This was, perhaps, inevitable in a body which contained no professed educationists. Most of its members had everything to learn of the technique of education, and, as is not unknown in the history of similar institutions, it was some time before the Council could be induced to adopt formal means of availing themselves of the knowledge and experience of the academic element they sought to direct. At the outset there was no clear apprehension by them of the lines upon which the College should develop.

There were two distinct parties in the Council, and their views occasionally conflicted. The College had been ostensibly founded to serve the industrial interests of the district, and the support of many of its wealthy manufacturers had been enlisted solely on that ground. This fact led a certain section of the Council to attempt to impress upon the College the character of an institute of technology. Whilst they were willing enough to extend its science side so long as it bore directly upon industrial needs, they had but little sympathy with the literæ humaniores, and all attempts to include such subjects were viewed with disfavour as a departure from the original intentions of the projectors. But the majority of the Council soon came to have a higher conception of the true functions of the young institution, and it was only the limitations of their means—their poverty and not their will—that prevented them from attempting to realize their ideals. To this section the example of Owens College was, without doubt, a constant stimulus. It served eventually to direct the College upon the lines upon which it ultimately developed. But for a time this diversity of aim on the part of the government of the College made itself manifest with each attempt to enlarge its curriculum.