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THE OXFORD COMMISSION REPORT. NO. II.
Oaklands, Dursley, 21st Jame 1852. Sin—In my former letter I treated of the most important innovation which the Commissioners have proposed with regard to the general consti- tution of the University ; I now eome to their recommendations with regard to the several Colleges. I shall confine my remarks chiefly to two heads; the connexion between the Colleges and the University, and the proposal to free nearly all Fellowships from restrictions as to birth or education. I am not going into the wide question of what is vaguely called the "Pro- fessorial so stem." The little that I had to say about it I have said in my evidence, where I trust I have pointed out one or two fallacies which lurk in the name. I believe that both the College Tutor and the University Profes- sor have their distinct functions; but the notion that the latter can ever be a substitute for the former is sufficiently disposed of in the evidence of Mr. Pattison.
I may, however, remark a certain misapplied antiquarian vein which runs through a good deal both of the Report and the evidence on this point. They find that there was a time when there were no Colleges, (as, indeed, there was also a time when there was no University,) and that College Tutors, again, date from a much more recent period than the Colleges themselves. There seems a disposition at work to build upon this a theory that the " Colleges " have unjustifiably supplanted the " University " in the work of instruction. In the evidence of Mr. Lowe this becomes something more than a disposi- tion; he tells us plainly enough, that " a monopoly of education is given to the Colleges at the expense of the efficiency of the Univer- sity," and that he has "always looked upon the Colleges as clogs to the efficiency of the University.' In Mr. Goldwin Smith's "statement," (which, though professedly a " statement," is throughout apiece of party argument,) we find that " the Colleges have now become the University, and have absorbed all the functions of that institution, both educational and literary." Now, in the first place, this is not strictly true ; in the second place, where is the harm, if they have ? If the experience of some centuries is in favour of the Collegiate system, it proves nothing to say that there were earlier centuries when that system did not exist. Our Reformers should remember, that whatever may be the case on the banks of the Rhine and the Oder, we who live by those of Thames and Severn, of Cam and Isis, do not generally esteem it an objection to an institution that it was not made but has grown. Your German potentate can doubtless set up and set down. a University as easily as he can draw up or break a paper constitution ; but our Academical, just like our Parliamentary or our Judicial polity, has been the work of ages ; it has gradually changed and developed according to the re- quirements of successive centuries; and it proves nothing against it, either that it is now different from what it was six centuries ago, or that certain verbal anomalies may be detected in it. In a certain sense the English con- stitution is fourteen hundred years old, in another six, in another hardly one. In this case no one recommends us to go back to the earlier and im- perfect state ; why should we do so in the parallel one of the University ? The University was developed by one set of circumstances, the Colleges by another ; a gradual process has settled the respective functions of each—the Colleges to instruct, the University to examine. What argument is it against a thing that it has followed the great law of every English institution—that law to which we owe all our happiness and glory—that each age has done its own work, and gradually developed the changes required by its own circum- stances?
But Mr. Goldwin Smith's statement is surely inaccurate. The " Univer-
sity" retains the important right of examination ; and that all instruction is not confined to the agency of College Tutors is shown by the mass of evidence given on the subject of private tuition. Now the process of English develop- ment is often one of retrogression; there is a certain cycle in which old in- stitutions often silently turn up under new forma. There are many such in our political history, and so in our academical career. The private tutor is surely the legitimate nineteenth-century form of the old regent master. Here, surely, is no College monopoly ; the private tutor most certainly teaches as a member of the wider corporation. And I may ask why the Commission- ers, in their antiquarion zeal for the name of Congregation, do not really carry out their profession (page 14) to " restore the state of things" when t " consisted of the actual teachers of the University," by excluding the Heads who do not teach, and including all who do, not only the seniorTutor in each College, but all bona fide Tutors, public or private ? I do not desire any such institution, but this I conceive would be the way to " remodel" Congregation " according to its spirit and purpose in ancient times." The old Congregation is a still more democratic body than Convocation, consisting (besides official members) of the junior portion of the latter : the " modifi- cations" of the Commissioners consist in simply transforming it into a yepowria of Heads, Professors, and senior Tutors.
In a word, I believe the existing relation between the University and the
Colleges to be thoroughly sound and satisfactory : I believe that Professors, College Tutors, and Private Tutors, have all their respective places in the general system ; and I should be very sorry to see any one of the three classes swamped by any other. The only evil to be remedied is a practical and indi- vidual one,—the scandalous inadequacy, sometimes reaching nonentity, of the lectures given by certain of the professorial staff. And now for the Col- leges and their Fellowships. The zeal of Mr. Conington has happily failed to convince the Commission that common rooms should be converted into nurseries and studies into boudoirs ; in other words, the Collegiate system is to be allowed to exist. I regret, on the other hand, that they have not adopted the proposal made by myself and several others (Mr. Henney, Mr. Cox, and Mr. Bartholomew Price) to make Fellowships terminable. But I hasten to my immediate subject, the existing restrictions on the elections to Fellowships and Scholarships. With some exceptions at New College, St. John's, and Jesus College, the Commissioners recommend that all Fellow- ships should be thrown open to all candidates irrespective of their place of birth or education. I have very strong objections to this proposal, in. the thoroughgoing and reckless form which it assumes in the recommendations of the Commission.
I am no superstitious stickler for the inviolability of founders' wills ; but
I. am very decidedly convinced of two things,—first, that, though they may rightly and lawfully be set aside when necessity so requires, a most they onus probandi lies on those who assert the existence of such necessity ; se- condly, that we must not reform on any doctrinaire theory of open Fellow- ships or anything else, but reform practical abuses: where a system works ill, alter it; where it works well, let it alone, whether it be agreeable or not to any cut-and-dried system. My antiquarianism takes a different form from that of the Commissioners : they would restore what is past and gone ; I would keep what exists unless some definite practical objection can be brought against it. Now, I have always looked upon the slight peculiarities of the several Colleges, the statutable er traditional differences in the constitution and habits of each, as one of the most pleasing features of Oxford. Agree- ing in the most essential respects, each of the most distinguished Colleges has a certain character of its own, which I hold to be most desirable to preserve, as giving life and reality to the whole thing, and promoting a spirit of gener- ous rivalry among the different societies. Because Lincoln and Magdalen need reform, why should Trinity, Balliol, Exeter, or Oriel be deprived of those little distinctive marks which are among the great charms of the whole system ? The Commissioners, on the other hand, propose a dull dead uniform- ity of constitution through all the Colleges, strangely exempting one or two of the most corrupt. The good old English way would be to reform what is amiss in each particular society, and leave general theories to the Parliaments of Frankfort and Laputa. Lincoln has shown that it cannot be trusted to sleet a Rector—then place the appointment in other hands: Magdalen does not atatutably superannuate its Demies—let it be made to do- so : but leave alone those Colleges against which no such accusation can be brought. If in those Colleges, or in any other, the Fellowships are so close that a duly qualified succession is not obtained, open them so far as to allow it but do not touch Oriel or Exeter, where restrictions indeed exist, but certainly do not produce a race of incapable Fellows. But besides this, it seems to me that if all Fellowships were indiscrimi- nately opened, greater evils would arise than at present. There would be an immediate rush to the richer Colleges, which would leave only their rejected candidates for the poorer, and consequently render the latter inferior in every respect. Magdalen, with its rich endowments, its vast patronage, its mag- nificent buildings, would draw away to itself all the best students and teach- ers, and reduce Exeter, Balliol, and the like, to the condition of what at Cambridge are called " small Colleges." Of course this might be avoided by equalizing Fellowships throughout, but I do trust we have not yet come to that.
There is one other suggestion of the Commissioners on which you will, I trust, excuse me if I assume a more personal tone. It is one which comes so very nearly home to me, it casts such a slur on my most cherished ideal and on some of the happiest years of my life, that I cannot argue about it as I can on other questions. Moreover, the Commissioners have not, indeed, directly cited me as approving of it, but have placed my name in a juxta- position with it much closer than I at all admire. I allude to the proposal, which. I have no scruple in saying betokens either ignorance or heartlessness, to sever at random, in every case, the connexion between Fellowships and Scholarships. This occurs in page 162, where the name of my own College is introduced, and again in the Report relating to that College in page 236. Now I have no wish to impose the statutes or customs of Trinity on any other society ; I only ask that we may be allowed to keep our own customs when they have worked well, just as I ask that we may be relieved from one which has worked ill, (page 235.) Now, the connexion between our Fellowships and Scholarships has been the very beauty of our foundation, and, in my time at least, knit the two branches of the society together in a bond of real brotherhood and thorough realization of the collegiate ides, which I conceive was nowhere else surpassed. The Fellow had been a Scholar, the Scholar hoped to be a Fellow. Not that, as the Commissioners seem to imply, our Scholars necessarily succeed, without regard to merit; the rule both in sta- tute and practice simply is, that a Scholar, duly qualified, is to be preferred to any other person. A Scholar was, within my memory, rejected for an out-college candidate ; and among the Scholars no regard is shown to se- niority ; I was myself elected, after a far from formal examination, in pre- ference to a Scholar senior to myself. The Scholar has no prospect eet before him, as the Commissioners venture to assert, which "has a natural tendency to damp his energy and industry," (page 162) ; he only knows that, if he prove himself worthy of it, his inchoate birthright will never be transferred. from himself to a stranger. In several cases, (owing to a provision respecting the number of Fellows from a single county,) Fellowships have been thrown open to public competition, and the result has never been favourable. The Fellows so elected (as indeed could not be expected of them) have never manifested the same attachment to the College, or so thoroughly entered into its spirit, as those who had always been members of the one body, nur- tured by the bounty of the one founder. Let us then reform our practical abuses ; open close Fellowships where they work ill, but not dismiss them in the offhand style of Mr. Temple (page 130) about men "bribed, because they are born in some parish in Rutland, to remain in Oxford as Fellows." This is that kind of rhetoric which verges on something between absurdity and inaccuracy : there are very few paro- chial restrictions; and if there were, 'cparish in Rutland " is not neces- sarily a narrower limit than a parish in Yorkshire. But if we are to have open Fellowships, let them be open ; let examination, and not personal favour, or the purposes of party, be the test. Let not a Fellowship be thrown open from two counties—to one roan. That this is no groundless fear, is shown. by the manner in which the Commissioners arc not ashamed (in page 203) to refer to a transaction which is best buried in ob- livion.
There are many other points on which I would gladly descant : the scheme for "Professor-Fellows,' to which, under considerable modifications, I should not object ; the question of Ordination ; the mischievous proposal to legalize the monstrous abuse of non-residence ; and several points as to examinations and the like. But I obey your injunctions, and "spare my pen, and your space." I will conclude, for the sake of peace, with a point of !igreement. It appears (from page 75) that there is some hope of bringing 'Ancient" and " Modern " History into their natural connexion, and so undoing one of the great evils of the new Examination statute.
• See, on the other hand, the weighty arguments of Mr. Merivale.
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