Such are the negative tendencies of the Government measure, both for good and evil: it remains to consider its positive enactments. And to begin with the beginning,—that is to say, the heads, who here for the last time take the initiative. The Hebdomadal Board, it seems, is doomed. They are not to await, like other subjects of reform, the action of the University itself; on the 10th day of October next, if this act becomes law, their corporate existence ceases. Of all the sufferers by Government legislation, they, we fear, will find the fewest champions, and meet with the least commiseration. The Tutors, whom they unwisely neglected to conciliate, have been their bitter enemies from the first. They fall a sacrifice not to any cry from without, but to domestic unpopularity. The Commissioners would have mercifully retained them as an upper house of legislature, only placing by their side another body, with equal powers and greater influence—the “remodelled Congregation.” But the Tutors’ Committee would not hear of it. “Half shares” was the formal demand of the majority of this body, just beginning to feel their own power. And as this consciousness of strength increased, the hopelessness of the struggle on the side of the existing authorities became more and more apparent. A third party, however—but weakly represented, and jealously looked upon in the Tutors’ Association, made their claim for a share in the directory; and the Professorial interest, addressing themselves directly to the ear of the Government, succeeded in making the proposed Hebdomadal Council what it is in the bill as at present—one-third Heads of Houses, one-third Professors, and one-third Masters of Arts. We have no particular objection to the proposed partition—we believe that any tolerably fair form of representation would work sufficiently well—nor have we ever been the apologists of the Hebdomadal dignitaries. We have admitted their policy to have been at once weak and obstinate; slow to move at all, and undecided in action. With a hostile commission hanging over their heads, they at first affected to ignore the danger, and then wasted, in the most unaccountable manner, the time which might, wisely used, have in great measure averted it. They appointed a committee “to consider and report upon” the recommendations of the Commissioners on 16th June 1852; that report was presented on 1st December 1853. The Tutors’ Committee, appointed five months later, presented its first report in January 1853, its second in April, its third in November, and its fourth and last in March 1854. The Tutors had large demands upon their time besides legislation—the Heads should have made it their first and most earnest duty. Yet it was not until the 24th February, after the terms of the proposed bill must have been known in the University, that a new statute was proposed in Convocation, which must have been felt at the time to be mere waste paper. Nor do we think it was wise to summon Convocation again, at four days’ notice, to divide upon a petition which the previous voting must have told them could only be carried by a narrow majority, and would therefore lose the only weight which could have attached to it as a collective protest. Nor do they seem to us to have well consulted their own dignity in the terms of that petition, after having questioned the authority of Parliament to interfere at all. Yet, in spite of all this, we confess we think the Heads have been harshly treated in this measure. There seemed to be no valid objection to a more numerous Board, in which, while the Heads retained their seats, a fair proportion of the popular element might have been infused by election. The scheme of the Commissioners was less offensive, and would have been quite as effectual. We could never see the force of the objections raised to their separate existence as an honoured estate, whose years and experience, together with the large stake which they would always hold in the prosperity of the University, would perhaps often have tempered the rash enthusiasm of younger, more energetic, but not always abler men, and whose deliberate opinion would perhaps have carried more weight, when it had ceased to be the only source of academical legislation. The very antagonistic position of two chambers, constituted on different principles, to which the Tutors object, has ere this been found conducive to good government. At all events, we can never cordially agree with any act which disfranchises—except for proved abuse, which in this case cannot be urged—any individual, or any body of individuals; and we think the present Heads might have retained their seats at the Board for life, even had it been thought expedient to diminish those seats in number for the future. We shall part from our old governors, if we must part from them, with regret; not the less because we have not implicit confidence in those who may succeed them.
It is indeed very possible, as Mr Burgon says,[[11]] “to conceive something worse than even the inactivity of the Hebdomadal Board.” As things stand now, at least we know our rulers—they represent twenty-four separate and independent interests, and are, from their very isolation, at least above all suspicion of clique or party. Will it as surely be so in the dynasty to come? Are the smaller societies as sure to be represented? We shrewdly suspect that hereafter many a small college Tutor may rue the day when, in the associated committee, he took up the pleasant trade of tinkering a constitution. He may find out, when too late, that when his hand helped to close the door of the delegates’ room against the legitimate representative of his own college, he shut out the voice of that college for ever from the great council of the University. We may live to see an “initiative,” composed of eight Heads of powerful colleges, plus eight Professors of the same colleges—plus eight Tutors or M.A.’s of the same colleges again; for their influence in the new Congregation, if exerted, will entirely neutralise the votes of the smaller colleges and halls. And if it be said that this is an illiberal view, and that such influence will not be put in motion, the answer is, that there is every reason to believe that the leading colleges have foreseen this advantage, and are prepared to use it. A far-sighted tutor of the most powerful society in Oxford objects to the constitution of the Commissioners’ congregation, on the significant ground that “it gives exactly the same influence to the largest college and the smallest hall;”[[12]] and unless these smaller societies unite in protesting against this part of the scheme, their share in the government of the University, unless in rare exceptional instances, is forfeited for ever. An amendment to clause v., by way of proviso, that not more than two members of the council shall be of the same college, might tend to secure something like a fair distribution of power.[[13]]
From the Hebdomadal Council we descend to Congregation—the Commissioners’ idea, clumsily expanded. The framers of the fourteen not very clear provisions of clause xvi., which provides for the composition of the said council, have found themselves in the position not unknown to those who, with a somewhat miscellaneous visiting list, have to give a very large party: anxious to issue as many invitations as possible, they have contrived to make exclusion very invidious, whilst no one considers his invitation a compliment. “We must draw the line somewhere, you know,” says Mr Dickens’ friend of the cheap and fashionable shaving-shop—“we don’t go below journeyman bakers.” And the coal-heaver turns away, an aggrieved and angry man. The bill is here quite as arbitrary, but hardly so distinct. Journeyman professors are included; journeyman tutors we believe not. Masters of private halls—which might contain two students—have a seat there; senior bursars, transacting the business of large colleges, have not. But of all unintelligible qualifications—“all who shall have a certificate of being habitually engaged in the study of some branch of learning or science” are to be members of this privileged body. (“Earnest” study, Lord Palmerston would have had it,[[14]] but the others would not bite.) And the authority which is to grant these “certificates of study” is, by clause xxxviii. 5, left to “any college” to “declare.” This, we think, must have been a mere successful joke of Palmerston’s inserting. Plainly the triumvirate were wise in not declaring it themselves. A certificate of study in some branch of learning or science!—how many hours a day? how are the results to be ascertained? is the candidate to be examined? If not, how is the “authority” to know? and what is to be the definition of learning and science? Would an accurate knowledge of “Bradshaw” reckon? It is a science which has never yet, we believe, been fully investigated. Would a man be allowed to “take up” the Times, including the foreign intelligence, with dates?—just at present, what with the Turkish names, and contradictory correspondence, it is much the hardest reading we know. Or the new and fashionable science of “common things,” hitherto much neglected in Oxford? It is idle to argue seriously upon such an enactment as this; it is legislation carried into its dotage. That such a crotchet could have been calmly entertained by any three sensible English statesmen, is one of those unaccountable instances in which fact is more improbable than fiction. If there is to be a remodelled Congregation, we suppose some such simple qualification as all M.A.’s bonâ fide resident, or all engaged in collegiate tuition, discipline, or administration, would fully suffice, and be at least intelligible. On the question of allowing such a large and heterogeneous body, however composed, to debate in English, we think the Tutors’ objections entitled to every consideration; they have had full opportunity of practically judging of its tendencies; and it is quite clear that it would thus become a perpetual field for loud and unprofitable discussion, subversive of the dignity and quiet of the University, and wasteful of its time.
Of the numerous petty and vexatious restrictions on the tenure of Fellowships, it is not necessary for us to dwell at length; because this portion of the bill, by an ingenious complication of difficulties, has secured the opposition of all parties, and cannot by any possibility pass as it stands. If its object was to make residence compulsory, it would have been better to have done it by a few plain words. This would have had at least the merit of being in accordance with the original intention of the founders, although few would have been found to advocate such an enactment on the ground of utility. But clause xxxvi. assumes to treat a body of men who are to be, if the other bold aspirations of this measure are carried out, the intellectual flower of England, as a set of schoolboys; establishing an inquisition into their private pursuits, which we will venture to say was never yet proposed, and which no government will be allowed to exercise, over any society of Englishmen. In this inquisitorial process, their pet invention of the “certificate of study” is again to do them yeoman’s service. This is to make sure that the intellectual genius, which their whole system is invented to foster, shall not be turned—as we are glad to find them recognise that even intellect may be—to purposes of mischief. The difficulty here, as in the other case, is in the providing the “authority” from which these certificates are to issue; for here the bill gives us no help whatever. If Fellows of colleges, chosen solely for their “superior fitness in character and attainments,” cannot be trusted to take care of themselves, who is to take care of them? “Quis custodiet ipsos custodes”? Who is this unknown “authority,” thus mysteriously veiled, whom all are to worship? Can it be Lord John?
The term of five years, the maximum allowed by the previous clause to a non-resident Fellow to prepare for a profession, is justly felt to be an arbitrary limitation; as is also the three-mile boundary, outside which no Fellow, under the provisions of the Act, is to hold a cure of souls, retaining his fellowship; and it will scarcely be believed that the Bursars, who have the entire administration of college business and estates, and who are usually some of their most valuable resident members, are, under the famous clause xxxvi., classed implicitly with the idlers, and would not be allowed to retain their fellowships at all.
We beg our readers also to remark the miserable economy, which holds out, in the shape of a boon to the Fellow who shall have spent twenty-one years in the faithful discharge of college duties, permission to retain his fellowship, exempt from such active employment, “subject to the payment of one-third of the profits thereof.” So that the Tutor who, for a third of a human life, has by his energy and ability sustained or made the reputation of his college, may find himself with failing health, or failing powers, pensioned off upon a stipend of some £100 or £150 per annum; for the case, indeed, of ill health incapacitating for an active share of college duties, or even for “earnest study”—not uncommon, alas! in men overstrained in the race for honours—has never entered into the calculations of our modern university reformers. “Work, work!” is their cry—“what else are you paid for?”
One ground of complaint, too, which we think the University has, as a body, against the general tone of this bill, independently of any injustice in its enactments, is the distrust which is implied in these and other instances where free agency is curtailed, as well as in the attempt to guard jealously all exercise of power which is necessarily, but grudgingly, preserved. Perhaps this strict surveillance is held necessary in the present corrupt state of Oxford, but is to be removed when a regenerated University has grown to the full stature, and becomes entitled to the rights, of intellectual manhood. From Lord John Russell and Lord Palmerston such treatment might have been expected; in them it might have been the expression of an honest prejudice, and a pardonable misappreciation. To have assumed, as is done in clauses xxxiii. and xxxviii., 8, that Examiners and Electors would be found wanting in common honesty, and must be bound to the “strict performance of their duties” by declaration or otherwise—(convenient vagueness!)—might have been understood as a little ebullition of feeling, natural if not dignified; though we conclude no one would have attached much real weight to such futile precautions. The Examiner or Elector who betrays his trust by an unjust decision will not think much of supporting it by a lying declaration. An Act of Parliament, we have heard, can make a gentleman; we never yet heard that it could make an honest man. But Mr Gladstone, at least for his own credit, if not for theirs who trusted him, should have eliminated these gratuitous and unworthy passages before he allowed his name to appear on the back of this bill. He had more experience of such things, and knew the Oxford spirit better. He, for very shame, should not have put this moral bribery oath to those constituents who have thrice elected him—he knows on no selfish grounds—amidst much obloquy, and, in many instances, at much sacrifice of private interest and personal feeling.
There flashes upon us also, here and there throughout the several clauses—though made to assume as unobtrusive a form as possible—the shadow of a giant influence, as yet rather felt than seen. Any vacancy in the number of Commissioners to be appointed by Parliament for the purposes of this Act,—and with the selection of whose names, as at present understood, we are fully satisfied,—is to be filled up by the Minister of the day. A report of the “state, receipts, and expenditure, and other particulars,” of every college, is by clause liii. to be forwarded, if required, to “one of Her Majesty’s principal Secretaries of State.” There is a remarkable and mysterious article in clause xliv., forbidding the Commissioners to “appoint any person extraneous to a college to exercise any authority therein,” without the consent of a majority of the Fellows of the said college. There are no scholia on this obscure passage, but we suspect it is pregnant with possibilities, and, like some other dark sayings of old, the interpretation may come too late. It is no use, in short, to try to shut our eyes to the fact, that Government has got a hold upon the colleges, and intends, as far as possible, to keep it.
Against the diversion of college revenues to the general purposes of the University,—the founding of new professorships, &c.,—the feeling at Oxford is so nearly unanimous, and so reasonable,—while those colleges upon whom alone the University had any claims of this nature, have for some time been so fully prepared to recognise them—Magdalen proposing to devote £750 per annum “at least” to the founding of prælectorships, Corpus appropriating £600 to the endowment of a professorship of Latin, and Merton promising assistance; and when these are excepted, there remain so few colleges containing the number of fellowships (20) required, in order to justify such an appropriation,—that we may hope the justice and discretion of the Commissioners may safely be trusted not to make such a diversion in the case of any college whose authorities may be conscientiously unwilling to sanction it.
The means here proposed for the extension of the University, by the unrestricted establishment of private halls, are those which we have already advocated in a previous article. Established under due regulations, they cannot prejudice the discipline of the University. It would be ridiculous to suppose that they could interfere with the colleges, whose wealthy foundations must always enable them, if they will, to educate more cheaply and with greater advantages; whilst we still believe that they will succeed in drawing to Oxford a class of students which it does not now possess, in developing the demand of which the existence is so disputed, and in proving, in spite of Mr Gordon’s clever irony[[15]] on so tempting a subject, that a more kindly and domestic discipline is both possible, and in some cases very desirable, without treating men as children. At any rate, if they fail, they will involve no interest but their own.