26 FEBRUARY 1876, Page 1

This, then, is to be the reform, and the money

gained is to be spent in paying the University Professors better, and in providing the University with better facilities for teaching. But what is to be the machinery of the reform ? There is to be a University Commission, with which, when it is contriving a reform for a special College, three elected members of the College are to sit. The reforms proposed by this joint body are to be laid on the table of the Houses of Parliament, and if not objected to, to become law. But before this system comes into operation, there is to be a time of grace, till the end of 1877, within which time the Colleges may prepare and submit to the Commissioners a scheme for their own reform ; and these statutes, if approved by the Commissioners, are, as we understand, to become law without the assent of Parliament.. The Archbishop of Canterbury justly observed that this Bill depends absolutely for its value on the persons of the Commissioners to be appointed, on whose use of their discretion almost everything turns. Indeed, it is less a plan of reform than an appointment of Academical Reformers, with full dictatorial power to carry reform, at least with the assent of Parliament, at the point of the sword.